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Extinction Rebellion

Started by MoonDust, November 17, 2018, 10:52:14 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

garbed_attic

Quote from: manticore on December 21, 2018, 02:17:29 PM
I called the BBC coments line on 03704 101060 and talked biefly to a nice woman who was obviously prepared for what I was going to ask, that -

The BBC declares a climate and ecological emergency.

She will refer it on.

Try it, it's all perfectly civilised, no one gets hurt!

Edit: Okay - four emails (using sample email in previous post), a phone call and an online complaint.

It's all good fun, try it people!

I will agree the woman I spoke to was very polite!

Twit 2

All of this is another reason to be annoyed with the baby boomers. We will probably pass the point of no return in the next ten years or so. The last thing these get-a-mortgage-by-farting-at-some-bricks-then-have-three-kids-and-regular-holidays-off-one-income-before-retiring-at-a-sensible-age-and-becoming-a-property-millionaire cunts will do is die just before it all goes tits up.

My dad, when I mentioned Extinction Rebellion: "What's that?"

Grave.

My father in law, when I asked him about that Brexit: "Just a load of scaremongering; it'll all be fine."

Grave.

Mother/mother in law: no opinions, because the men have those.

Graves.

garbed_attic

Yes - I wrote a little story about that...

Once upon a time in the West there was a generation of humans who both perpetrated and overcame what many later referred to the greatest human atrocity of all time. Their children lived the happiest lives in all of recorded human history and, in so doing, brought themselves and the rest of the human race to extinction. The end.

manticore

Quote from: gout_pony on December 23, 2018, 03:03:57 PM
Yes - I wrote a little story about that...

Once upon a time in the West there was a generation of humans who both perpetrated and overcame what many later referred to the greatest human atrocity of all time. Their children lived the happiest lives in all of recorded human history and, in so doing, brought themselves and the rest of the human race to extinction. The end.

Now I'm triggered!

Climate change began in the C19th. Global warming and species extinction are the ultimate results of the capitalist industrial revolution and short of the 'baby boomers' of the west creating a social revolution the progress of both was inevitable.

It was some of the 'baby boomers' who stood up in the '60s and '70s against late capitalism and started the modern ecological movement of which Extinction Rebellion is the latest manifestation, and from what I can see many of its leaders are 'boomers'. 'Boomers' started movements with crazy names like 'gay liberation' and 'women's liberation'.

This generation war crap is just lazy. How have the succeeding cohorts with their apathetic neoliberalism-addled minds been an improvement on the mass of deluded 'boomer' idiots?

Tl:dr We all suck!

Twit 2

I didn't mean the boomers caused anything, just that they are lucky to have existed in the timeframe they have.

garbed_attic

Quote from: manticore on December 23, 2018, 05:20:01 PM
Now I'm triggered!

Climate change began in the C19th. Global warming and species extinction are the ultimate results of the capitalist industrial revolution and short of the 'baby boomers' of the west creating a social revolution the progress of both was inevitable.

It was some of the 'baby boomers' who stood up in the '60s and '70s against late capitalism and started the modern ecological movement of which Extinction Rebellion is the latest manifestation, and from what I can see many of its leaders are 'boomers'. 'Boomers' started movements with crazy names like 'gay liberation' and 'women's liberation'.

This generation war crap is just lazy. How have the succeeding cohorts with their apathetic neoliberalism-addled minds been an improvement on the mass of deluded 'boomer' idiots?

Tl:dr We all suck!

Well it *was* a parable/ fairytale so it wasn't really going in for nuance.

That said, I have just read...



https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30841993-a-generation-of-sociopaths

garbed_attic

It was written by a pretty smug seeming venture capitalist though so I took some portions with a pinch of salt! He does, however, come down esp. hard when it comes to the Boomers' track record on environmentalism, arguing that it was only under Boomer presidencies that environmentalist became a truly partisan issue, pointing out, for instance, Theodore Roosevelt's founding of much of the nation's national parks.

This quietly furious article places the matter half-a-generation earlier tho:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: Twit 2 on December 23, 2018, 01:45:55 AM
All of this is another reason to be annoyed with the baby boomers. We will probably pass the point of no return in the next ten years or so. The last thing these get-a-mortgage-by-farting-at-some-bricks-then-have-three-kids-and-regular-holidays-off-one-income-before-retiring-at-a-sensible-age-and-becoming-a-property-millionaire cunts will do is die just before it all goes tits up.

My dad, when I mentioned Extinction Rebellion: "What's that?"

Grave.

My father in law, when I asked him about that Brexit: "Just a load of scaremongering; it'll all be fine."

Grave.

Mother/mother in law: no opinions, because the men have those.

Graves.

Meanwhile, my mum, a supposed socialist says she's worried about Brexit and her desire is for things to be calm and stable.

I had to remind her the hundreds of thousands of people sleeping rough, the mountain of debt people are propped up on and even this fantasy being maintained only by stripmining state assets, printing fiat money and keeping interest rates artificially low. That's not even getting into the exploitation of the planet and the military industry.

I told her things are not stable, that we are on a collision course with disaster regardless of what happens with Brexit with millions suffering along the way.

What she meant was she didn't want things to change for her. So long as things appear calm on their horizons, even if its surface superficiality these people don't care.


garbed_attic

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on December 23, 2018, 07:10:42 PM
Meanwhile, my mum, a supposed socialist says she's worried about Brexit and her desire is for things to be calm and stable.

I had to remind her the hundreds of thousands of people sleeping rough, the mountain of debt people are propped up on and even this fantasy being maintained only by stripmining state assets, printing fiat money and keeping interest rates artificially low. That's not even getting into the exploitation of the planet and the military industry.

I told her things are not stable, that we are on a collision course with disaster regardless of what happens with Brexit with millions suffering along the way.

What she meant was she didn't want things to change for her. So long as things appear calm on their horizons, even if its surface superficiality these people don't care.

I love my parents but that last sentence is a pretty decent summation of their position too, sadly :(

manticore

Quote from: gout_pony on December 23, 2018, 06:47:22 PM
It was written by a pretty smug seeming venture capitalist though so I took some portions with a pinch of salt! He does, however, come down esp. hard when it comes to the Boomers' track record on environmentalism, arguing that it was only under Boomer presidencies that environmentalist became a truly partisan issue, pointing out, for instance, Theodore Roosevelt's founding of much of the nation's national parks.

Okay, on the first page of that goodreads page there's a review of that book that, though i wouldn't endorse it completely,  encapsulates quite a few of the reasons why I woudn't give a piece of bullshit ideological moralistic culture criticism like that the time of day:

If you are going to read this book, something you have to keep in mind is that the author is an extremely wealthy and successful investment banker and venture capitalist. Throughout the book, he fails to see that what has actually caused the problems in America that he points to in the data such as the decrease in savings rate, increase in cost for college, failure to address environment change, and discrediting of science are people exactly like himself.

He uses broad generalizations about cherry-picked quotes from a single book on psychology to support random points, basically saying that anyone who exhibits any of these behaviors to any extent must be a "sociopath". He depicts young people's desire to avoid going to war in Vietnam as a selfish thing, as though wishing not to be in the military for a war you didn't sign up for somehow makes you a bad person. I should go ahead and just keep my mouth shut, even if I don't want to be there? Why should someone else determine for me that I might go die in a war they're not fighting in themselves, especially one more about politics than any real safety concern for my country? It is human nature, not just the nature of one generation, to wish to live freely, make choices about whether or not to be sent off to potentially die, and to protest when it affects you personally.

He depicts sexual promiscuity and the use of illegal drugs as "sociopathic" behavior - surely just because this can be a symptom of sociopathy doesn't mean that every single person who engages in this behavior is a sociopath. He even states himself that he holds more "conservative" values on this front - did you ever consider this may affect your views on that behavior?

People engaging in promiscuous sex and using LSD might conflict with your own personal values, that's your decision. However, those actions didn't cause or even predict the issues with our country today, and to draw some kind of line between that and calling every person who engaged in that behavior a sociopath is insane. There were plenty of cultural influences going on that created those movements beyond just being a selfish sociopath as the author likes to think. Funny, considering the author talks about a resistance to living in reality and fact as a quality of sociopaths. He sounds exactly like what he is, a conservative, old, Christian white man blaming Hippies just because he doesn't like them.

Overall, I do believe that our country has declined in many areas since the 1970s, but I don't think it's the fault of an entire group of normal people responding to the culture and society they find themselves in. The real creators of this reality are the extremely wealthy (like our author), who make up the majority of lawmakers and the ones who make decisions such as cutting tax rates, going to war, and whether or not to support and subsidize education. The average person can only look at this reality and decide how to make the best of it for themselves and their families, and it's unfair to characterize the rise of the influence of the wealthy as the decisions of an entire generation. The contribution of the average person was in deciding who to vote for, this is true.

However, when you look at the world today, corporations and the wealthy have an even more extreme amount of influence than they ever have. This is the real trend line we should be looking at as we look for who to blame for where we find ourselves today.

One last note, I am not a Baby Boomer. I am a Millennial, and I think this is the rantings of a wealthy person trying to spread the blame onto everyone instead of those like himself. I have so much more I could say about this book, but overall it sounds like blatant bullshit from a conservative man who wants to blame more open sexuality and liberal values instead of the few who actually caused the problems.

garbed_attic

On Vietnam he provides data which suggests that Boomer resistance to being drafted was not primarily due to pacifism since surveying from the time suggests that they were the age bracket most likely to be in support of the war. His main argument however is that, as a generalisation, Boomer interest in the war sharply fell away once they were no longer at risk of being drafted.

QuoteWhat establishes the Boomers as a political generation is that the Boomers' overriding political ambitions have been defined not in conventional terms like race or gender, but by age or life cycle [...] The Vietnam draft was, obviously, age based, as were the domestic responses, like lower thresholds for voting and drinking. And Boomer (and thus American) politics will continue to be driven by life cycle, with the Boomers' desire to maintain old-age benefits over-riding all over political concerns.

In terms of sheer voting numbers, it is inarguable that Boomers have had a significant influence upon who has gotten elected over the last few decades. Boomers also controlled congress by the early 1990s.

With regards to DSM classifications - if one believes that they provide a useful diagnostic framework, they are what they are. Gibney didn't invent them. The reviewer is wilfully representing Gibney's argument and the way in which the DSM operates. Clearly one symptom (such as drug experimentation) does not on its own indicate someone is a sociopath, but may do as part of a broader diagnostic picture, according to the DSM. Likewise, I do not believe that Gibney is saying that literally every Baby Boomer is a sociopath, but that as a generation American Boomers' behaviours, opinions and policies conform to many of the DSM's criteria. It's mainly a structural framework.

Personally speaking, the opening chapters on drugs and hedonism had little to no moral interest to me. Where I found the book convincing was when it came to Boomer finances and the taxation policies the generation has supported, which Gibney convincingly demonstrates have been enormously self-serving.

While the reviewer argues that blame for social-political immoralities of the 1970s to the present should be placed squarely on the heads of a tiny percentage of "the creators of this reality" it strikes me as a very Adam Curtisy history from above approach, compared to what Gibney is doing, which is in the tradition of the Howe/Strauss theory of generations and so rather more bottom-up.

garbed_attic

All that said (i.e. I think the book was convincing on economic points) obviously no individual is automatically a sociopath by virtue of being an American Baby Boomer.

garbed_attic

The more I reflect on it, the more I think you have a point though manticore :P

I mean... the guy //does// seem like kind of a dick!

manticore

Quote from: gout_pony on December 23, 2018, 09:33:34 PM
On Vietnam he provides data which suggests that Boomer resistance to being drafted was not primarily due to pacifism since surveying from the time suggests that they were the age bracket most likely to be in support of the war. His main argument however is that, as a generalisation, Boomer interest in the war sharply fell away once they were no longer at risk of being drafted.

Well he can tell that to the kids who had their heads broken by police on anti-war protests, or who were mowed down at Kent State. If you look into the history of the anti-war movement and you see an overwhelming moral revulsion and a consciousness of the evils done in the interests of US imperialism. Is he really suggesting that most those young anti-war activists were doing it out of simple fear of the draft? Most of the new left protesters also made links between Vietnam and the movement for black people's rights at home, the military-industrial complex, technological rationality and commodity capitalism.

There were obviously a mass of flaws in the 60s movements, but it sounds to me as if his critique is mostly full of shit. If he makes the connection between the hippie counterculture, hip capitalism and the lapse into libertarianism then that would be perfectly valid, though that argument's been made a thousand times before.

QuoteIn terms of sheer voting numbers, it is inarguable that Boomers have had a significant influence upon who has gotten elected over the last few decades. Boomers also controlled congress by the early 1990s.

Yes, most boomers are liberal or conservative, just like the generations before them. Is he in love with '50s America? If he blames a distict 'boomer' mentality' for the 2008 crash, what does he think caused the 1929 Wall Street Crash? It sounds as if he's doing the usual thing of deflecting from social and economic critique into moralisation, which is just what you'd expect a conservative venture capitalist with a book to sell to do. He's giving a generation of narcissists generated by neoliberalism a new version of 'never trust anyone over thirty', which is pretty ironic when that was one of the things that was wrong with the narcissistic side of of the 60s generation he despises.

QuotePersonally speaking, the opening chapters on drugs and hedonism had little to no moral interest to me. Where I found the book convincing was when it came to Boomer finances and the taxation policies the generation has supported, which Gibney convincingly demonstrates have been enormously self-serving.

Instituted by Reagan and Thatcher and their circle under the guidance of Friedman and Hayek, not bloody boomers. Reagan/Thatcher were even more popular with people born pre-1945 as with 'boomers'. I was a late boomer and hardly anyone I knew voted for Thatcher, we fucking hated the lot of them.

QuoteWhile the reviewer argues that blame for social-political immoralities of the 1970s to the present should be placed squarely on the heads of a tiny percentage of "the creators of this reality" it strikes me as a very Adam Curtisy history from above approach, compared to what Gibney is doing, which is in the tradition of the Howe/Strauss theory of generations and so rather more bottom-up.

I think the breakdown of the post-war Keynesian consensus needs to be understood in terms of the workings of late capitalism - socially, economically and culturally - rather than some pseudoscientific pop sociology crap about 'generational archetypes' beloved of Steve Bannon. Do you really believe that stuff?

garbed_attic

Quote from: manticore on December 23, 2018, 11:59:38 PM
I think the breakdown of the post-war Keynesian consensus needs to be understood in terms of the workings of late capitalism - socially, economically and culturally - rather than some pseudoscientific pop sociology crap about 'generational archetypes' beloved of Steve Bannon. Do you really believe that stuff?

Not in any rigorous sense - I think generations within a given country are broadly going to be influenced by the social conditions under which they grow up. For instance, having 80% of kids growing up with television vs. a tiny percentage of kids of the previous generation would be one of thousands of factors that'd influence a generation.

Also, writing "a generation of narcissists generated by neoliberalism" you're making exactly one of the common-place criticisms of us Millennials that you're decrying Gibney for making against Boomers. The media has been filled for coming up to a decade with think pieces about why Millenials are a uniquely selfish and awful generation, but in general we lean more towards beliefs in community as funded by high rates of taxation than previous generations and have far higher rates of vegetarianism and veganism than previous.

When you belong to the first generation for decades to be all but barred from buying your own property, to have been educated under a New Labour government that insisted that if you studied hard and went to university you'd end up in gainful employment, only to find yourself stuck for years in minimum wage being regularly abused by people older and richer than yourself, being told by parents that there is nothing wrong with the environment, that things are just the same as they ever were, when within your own lifetime (I'm 31) the number of animals in the wild is at 1/3rd of what it was when you were born...





Considering how much the Boomer generation railed against the generation that fought WWII and secured the welfare state (though this is not going to be so true of younger Boomers like yourself, which I think suggests that the demographic grouping is rather too broad) I think it's understandable that there is a lot of Millennial resentment against Boomers after years and years of being constantly told that all our problems are our own fault for being "a generation of narcissists generated by neoliberalism".

Paul Calf

you do realised that this continued insistence on ignoring the entire generation between Boomers and Millenials is going to bite both generations really hard at some point in the next couple of decades?

garbed_attic

Quote from: Paul Calf on December 24, 2018, 12:26:31 PM
you do realised that this continued insistence on ignoring the entire generation between Boomers and Millenials is going to bite both generations really hard at some point in the next couple of decades?

I mean, they gave us the 1990s indie comix boom!

garbed_attic

Anyway, manticore, you're clearly doing more than most vis. a vis. Extinction Rebellion! In my heart of hearts I do believe #notallboomers

And, in fairness, when I read about or watch famous Youtubers and the various Youtuber abuse scandals, I feel rather less keen on being a Millennial...

I might turn to Myers-Briggs instead and rest comfortable in the knowledge that we INFPers have never caused no political or global strife no time.








gib

Quote from: manticore on December 23, 2018, 08:42:33 PMOne last note, I am not a Baby Boomer. I am a Millennial, and I think this is the rantings of a wealthy person trying to spread the blame onto everyone instead of those like himself.

Quote from: manticore on December 23, 2018, 11:59:38 PMI was a late boomer and hardly anyone I knew voted for Thatcher, we fucking hated the lot of them.

Bit confusing.

garbed_attic

Quote from: gib on December 24, 2018, 01:59:58 PM
Bit confusing.

Manicore's long post was a review from Goodreads by a Millennial, whereas he himself is a Boomer (I think!)

manticore

Quote from: gout_pony on December 24, 2018, 02:19:57 PM
QuoteBit confusing.
Manicore's long post was a review from Goodreads by a Millennial, whereas he himself is a Boomer (I think!)

Yes sorry, I should have put quotation marks around that review. (I was born in 1962, which apparently makes me a late 'boomer' according to most people, though 'Generation X' according to others, puke, I've never watched MTV in my life.)

The review is from here:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30841993-a-generation-of-sociopaths

garbed_attic

Anyway, I am happy to settle that there are a lot of rum humans in both generations and both are probably pretty narcissistic, as is generally the human condition under late capitalism. Merry Christmas!

manticore

Quote from: gout_pony on December 24, 2018, 12:04:56 PM




Yes, older people tend to be more conservative, and have been since before the 'boomers'. It isn't distinctive to 'boomers'. The previous generation were just as conservative:

"It's also a mistake to treat such a loose group as "the oldest voters" as a single unit. Research from Pew Research Center has found that baby boomers (those age 50 to 68) are less likely to identify with the label Republican than the uncomfortably titled silent generation (who are age 69 to 86)."

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2016/sep/23/older-americans-vote-republican-fact-check-election-2016

"The graph below shows the pattern of Conservative support by age-group for five elections from the last 50 years, based on data from the British Election Study. Older people are always more likely to support the Conservatives. For example, when I voted for the first time in the 1997 election, only 23% of people my age (20) voted Conservative. In contrast, 42% of people my grandmother's age (80) supported the Conservatives. These age-based patterns of political support have been remarkably constant over the post-war period."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/03/do-we-become-more-conservative-with-age-young-old-politics

Kind of a mixed picture:



----------------------

Merry Christmas to you too gout_pony!

garbed_attic

Thanks! Let's hope we can get more people involved in climate change related activism across the coming year!

manticore

Humbug! The BBC writes back:

"Dear Mr xxxxxxxx

Thank you for contacting us regarding our recent News coverage. We note that you feel that there has been insufficient coverage on the issue of climate change.

To allow us to reply promptly to your concerns, and to ensure we use our Licence fee resources as efficiently as possible, we're sending this response to everyone. We're sorry that for this reason we can't reply personally to you on each point which has been made.

We have extensively covered findings from the IPCC report published in October, and have reported on the key developments from the UN climate talks that have recently taken place in Poland. In addition, over the last month we have reported on a range of wider climate change stories including new NASA data on the melting of Antarctic ice; a report on a reduction in electricity consumption in British homes and a study on the impact of rising global temperatures on summer heatwaves in the UK. We also published a new online calculator to help people understand the carbon footprint of their diet:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46459714

To read our latest News on the issue of climate change you may be interested in the following link:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cmj34zmwm1zt/climate-change


The BBC has a proud record of leading the way in sustainability in the media industry and we've set out further action including cutting energy use further, eradicating single use plastic and minimising the impact of necessary travel. In the last Charter period, we reduced our carbon footprint by a third. People can also see the clear impact programmes like Blue Planet II and Dynasties have had on public debate about the impact of humankind on the planet.

We can assure you that the BBC is committed to providing fair and impartial coverage of the latest News stories to our audience, and climate change is an issue that the BBC takes very seriously.

Thanks again for taking the time to get in touch.

Kind Regards

BBC Complaints Team
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints"

--------------------------------------------

All self-justification, not a word about how they might be doing things better in the future. Barely addresses any of the points presented in the email.

I gather from the BBC World Service and to a lesser extent from the news website that there has been some improvement in climate change/ecological coverage in the last three months or so, but for example why the hell hasn't there been a major documentary series on climate change or species extinction in a prominent position in their TV schedules?

All I can see is an Attenborough/Humble documentary in 2007 and a  three part series on BBC2 in 2009, which is just pathetic.

At least there's this (though worth reading the comments below):

https://www.carbonbrief.org/exclusive-bbc-one-show-first-primetime-film-climate-change-since-2007


Zetetic

Quote from: manticore on December 24, 2018, 05:13:49 PM
Kind of a mixed picture:

Another, rough, way to look at the same data:


(Produced by assuming '25 years old' for the 'Under 30 year olds', and then '35 years old', '45 years old' etc. for the subsequent groups up to '75 years old', and then rounding down. It's not a great approach given the way the GE years fall. Probably possible to do it better from the actual BES data.)

To quote some more from that Guardian article:

Quote
By taking the average of seven different groups of several thousand people each over time – covering most periods between general elections since the 1960s – we found that the maximum possible ageing effect averages out at a 0.38% increase in Conservative voters per year. The minimum possible ageing effect was only somewhat lower, at 0.32% per year.

This may not sound like a massive effect, but over the course of a lifetime these increments do add up

Zetetic

What above also needs is some context of 'identification with' other parties, I guess.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

It helps to be conscious as well that these are not phenomena but tendencies, which can be shaped, suppressed, or accentuated by actions within our power to take.

Aside that, I always feel the "dying out Tories/leavers" thing is an unwarrantedly smug bit of received opinion given it neither factors in our ageing population nor that people do generally veer towards economic status quo + social conservatism as they age. Lots of voters have since died but lots of previous Remainers will have been convinced by Leave. It simply isn't plausible to assume that people have maintained a constant stance throughout their life.

If the 2016 vote had taken place in say, 2022 and for the sake of the experiment we bring the 2016 political situation with us to that year, statistically there would have been a greater vote for Leave, as there would be more not fewer Leavers/Tories to have developed.

What matters is winning the arguments in the here and now, convincing people who are not your natural allies, not peering at subsets like some museum freaks and hoping they all die.

Zetetic

#238
Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on January 05, 2019, 10:00:17 AM
Aside that, I always feel the "dying out Tories/leavers" thing is an unwarrantedly smug bit of received opinion given it neither factors in our ageing population nor that people do generally veer towards economic status quo + social conservatism as they age.

This is exactly what the article that manticore linked to looks at, and my post attempts to do the same.

There clearly are generational reductions in 'identification with the Conservative party' - far fewer 20-30 year olds identified with the Conservative party in 2010 than did in 1987, and fewer did in 1987 than 1964.

There is also a ageing effect - although this has to be understood in the context of general and widespread reductions in identification with the Conservative party, most obviously between '87 and '97. (Which touches on your point about many people being open to change in response to our actions, even if we can observe a population-level ageing effect.)

(But, also, as I say there's an issue with looking at this 'identification with' question and not putting it in context with other parties or considering how it actually relates to voting behaviour. You might well float between UKIP and the Tories in your votes without identifying with either.)

Zetetic

The most interesting thing, I think, in the chart that I posted is probably the '1940' and '1950' cohorts bouncing so much from '87 to '97 to '10. A fair number enamoured with Blair- and Cameron-style presentation?

But I'm not entirely convinced that's a real effect (and not exaggerated by sampling-luck and my cruddy method).