Topic: More climate change protests in Central London

[greenman]

There is ample evidence to suggest that Greta Thurnberg is being propagated by powerful interests in order to provoke a program of massive emergency funding in green energy in order that these same interests can then make a killing investing in green energy which is a bad thing because they are part of the elite. If you think capitalism was bad before, wait until it finds a way to operate in precisely the same manner but with less detrimental effect to the environment. I hope you bought your shitting pants, because it's already begun, idiots.

Again I suspect if she is being pushed by such interests its because her message is simplistic and she's unlikely to be very critical, so if your looking for some public subsidy for your questionable "eco" business or just if you want to get a bit of political capital she could be useful and isn't likely to turn around and be critical of you compared to some older and more savy campaigner.

As I said look at what happened with the really large scale funding for something like the tidal lagoon, talked up for awhile then quietly torpedoed to very little media fuss. That's not the kind of green politics these interests are after, there after things carrying on much as they are but with a bit more public money going into their pockets to limited actual ecological gain.

[GMTV]

CaB can possibly reform in whichever EcoGulag camp a majority of participants end up in.

[phantom_power]

There is ample evidence to suggest that Greta Thurnberg is being propagated by powerful interests in order to provoke a program of massive emergency funding in green energy in order that these same interests can then make a killing investing in green energy which is a bad thing because they are part of the elite. If you think capitalism was bad before, wait until it finds a way to operate in precisely the same manner but with less detrimental effect to the environment. I hope you bought your shitting pants, because it's already begun, idiots.

If the net result is we save the planet then that is a hit I am willing to take. The idea of capitalism being bad is separate from the one of us fucking up the planet. They don't need to be conflated to complicate things and justify doing fuck all about either of them.

[Zetetic]

As I said look at what happened with the really large scale funding for something like the tidal lagoon, talked up for awhile then quietly torpedoed to very little media fuss. That's not the kind of green politics these interests are after,

I don't know why you think that megaprojects don't have appeal for those looking to profit. They're generally very difficult to accurately cost and impossible to cancel beyond a certain point (so you can overspend enormously, having transferred risk back to the public purse).

I (very broadly) think it's a shame that the Swansea Bay lagoon hasn't gone ahead. I also think it looks a lot like some people have profitted from the project already without actually having to produce anything. (There's a ton of effectively zero-cost cash to be made from exploratory work in these things.)

[Fambo Number Mive]

Police have now removed most of the protesters from the London Stock Exchange

[Gerald Fjord]

If the net result is we save the planet then that is a hit I am willing to take. The idea of capitalism being bad is separate from the one of us fucking up the planet. They don't need to be conflated to complicate things and justify doing fuck all about either of them.

Sorry, to clarify: I agree entirely with you and was taking the piss.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I don't know why you think that megaprojects don't have appeal for those looking to profit. They're generally very difficult to accurately cost and impossible to cancel beyond a certain point (so you can overspend enormously, having transferred risk back to the public purse).

I (very broadly) think it's a shame that the Swansea Bay lagoon hasn't gone ahead. I also think it looks a lot like some people have profitted from the project already without actually having to produce anything. (There's a ton of effectively zero-cost cash to be made from exploratory work in these things.)

It's because business and politics (basically intertwined) promote 'innovation' and 'entrepreneurship' over actual R&D.

[gout_pony]

Sounds like the same shit Patrick Moore (not that one) and his cranks have been peddling for years. The Patrick Moore who did his forestry/ecology undergrad and PhD when CO2 was about 200ppm, spent some time running Greenpeace then fucked off to be a corporate shill forever, and apparently he thinks he's an expert in atmospheric science now.

I've been enjoying this guy's writing lately as I am partial to a bit of we're all fucked already, face up to it!

https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2019/04/15/not-so-good-news/

He hasn't engaged with what Extinction Rebellion have been saying in our people's assemblies in the slightest but has just projected his own assumptions onto us. If you spend just 10 minutes watching or reading Rupert Read for example it should be very obvious he is calling for deep adaptation not merely mitigation. I mean, my personal favoured society would be something between Anarres and the Keth's in 'Always Coming Home'.

[Howj Begg]

Monbiot again. Anyone "worrying" about Greta Thunberg and XR being co-opted by big money and not agreeing with him here is clearly insincere and disingenuous:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/25/capitalism-economic-system-survival-earth

[Blumf]

Police have now removed most of the protesters from the London Stock Exchange

Something about the LSE being in solvent

[phantom_power]

Sorry, to clarify: I agree entirely with you and was taking the piss.

When I read what you said back of course you were. Duh. My post should be directed at Biggy instead then, who actually believes that shit

[Zetetic]

It's because business and politics (basically intertwined) promote 'innovation' and 'entrepreneurship' over actual R&D.

Possibly. I still don't see why, in practice, that would make megaprojects unattractive to extract cash from.

(Actually completing them to a high standard and achieving what was intended... that's a different issue.)

[Gerald Fjord]

Monbiot again. Anyone "worrying" about Greta Thunberg and XR being co-opted by big money and not agreeing with him here is clearly insincere and disingenuous:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/25/capitalism-economic-system-survival-earth

Monbiot? That shill has been in the pocket of Forest Green Rovers for years.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Possibly. I still don't see why, in practice, that would make megaprojects unattractive to extract cash from.

(Actually completing them to a high standard and achieving what was intended... that's a different issue.)

Because you need to pour money into the R&D hole to prove it's viable to get contracts to extract the money out of. Much easier to swoop in after someone has done that initial investment, buy or copy the IP and fuck it up that way.

[greenman]

I don't know why you think that megaprojects don't have appeal for those looking to profit. They're generally very difficult to accurately cost and impossible to cancel beyond a certain point (so you can overspend enormously, having transferred risk back to the public purse).

I (very broadly) think it's a shame that the Swansea Bay lagoon hasn't gone ahead. I also think it looks a lot like some people have profitted from the project already without actually having to produce anything. (There's a ton of effectively zero-cost cash to be made from exploratory work in these things.)

Green macro projects certainly have potential for profit as almost any kind of public spending on infrastructure does it they do also arguably upset the market, the kind of business interests that are profiting from the current status quo are perhaps not those who will profit from the shift they represent and indeed you arguably have more potential for such projects to remain more strongly in public ownership.

I'd also say that such macro projects are more likely to face scrutiny over were the money is going and how effective the result will be compared to a lot of smaller scale subsidy/tax breaks.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Monbiot again. Anyone "worrying" about Greta Thunberg and XR being co-opted by big money and not agreeing with him here is clearly insincere and disingenuous:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/25/capitalism-economic-system-survival-earth

I agree with him but we need to decide what we replace capitalism with. We don't want to end up replacing one turd with another different-shaped turd.

[GMTV]

I think probably a bigger concern about unilaterally pivoting away from 'globalism' is what that means for China, India, vast swathes of Africa and so on.

"Please reduce your environmental impact, and by the way we're trying to obliterate your economic development. Sorry about the aftermath of colonial exploitation."

Are we coupling this with no borders or a bigger wall? Where will the tantalum mines be?

(And, yes, yes, I say this as someone who has attempted to greatly restrict their consumer electronics consumption in the last 5+ years.)

I don't think the developing countries would be so keen to accept the exploitation of their resources in quite the same way as (euphemistically) last time. So it would have to be combined with us in the developed lands accepting massive reductions in living standards to sort of balance it out a bit.

Lovely stuff.

[Fambo Number Mive]

THe brunt of that would need to fall on most of the upper and middle classes. The lower middle classes and working classes are already struggling.

[Zetetic]

So it would have to be combined with us in the developed lands accepting massive reductions in living standards to sort of balance it out a bit.

Not sure that's going to be much consolation to anyone.

[BlodwynPig]

Music to the ears fo someone who wants to murder everyone over the age of 62, eh blods?

Its not murder. Its 2 years of paradise followed by state-assisted execution, all with your consent.

[squiggle]

I agree with him but we need to decide what we replace capitalism with. We don't want to end up replacing one turd with another different-shaped turd.

This is one of the many great sadnesses, coming to the realisation over the years that the hopes of socialism based on the idea of post-scarcity and nature as cornucopia  are now fatally undermined. It's long been recognised that the ideas of Marx or the other old radical thinkers weren't realisable under the conditions of their time, but for a while there was a belief that there was the technological basis for them to be made real, and for the release of human beings from the struggle with nature and each other.

I really don't know what kind of dramatically different world will materialize under conditions of ecological catastrophe. There is a certainly a danger of some kind of eco-fascism among other possibilities, and people are going to have to work very hard to avoid that.

[Twit 2]

Yep. So many hopeful views of the future seem to forget that humans are stupid, selfish, murderous pricks. We have millennia of recorded history that shows what human nature can do at its worst. Nice people and actions exist too, but are frequently drowned out by the horror, and I think it takes a level of optimism that borders on the absurdly naive to look at the current state of the world, reflect on the future and go, ‘Yeah, I think it’ll be alright’. Nah, doubt it. I don’t take any pleasure in that view, in fact it’s a daily cause of existential worry for me, but I would rather look at the world as it is than as I wish it to be. In Herzog’s words: ‘the poet must not avert his eyes’.*

*Not claiming to be a poet, I just tend to find the meaningful/beautiful things more profound, knowing they are floating in a swamp.

[squiggle]

That's the thing about post-scarcity though, that it would allow the darker aspect of humans brought out by the struggle to survive to fade and the co-operative mutualistic side to predominate, call me a hippie I don't care. If that dream is gone, nobody knows yet what kinds of social organisation will emerge out of the mess. I mean haven't got any kids and I'll be dead before it gets drastically bad, but it all still bothers me a lot for some reason.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Sorry for being dense but when you say post-scarcity, are you talking about a period of abundance or... when scarcity has happened?

[squiggle]

Sorry for being dense but when you say post-scarcity, are you talking about a period of abundance or... when scarcity has happened?

I mean the idea prefigured in the Grundrisse that humanity has developed the technological capacity that with significant modification would be the basis for a socialism that would be free from endless labour and the imperative for self-preservation and perpetual struggle with necessity. Yes, as you say abundance, and freedom from want.

For many of the post-war socialist and anarchist thinkers that was the great new contradiction of capitalism - that it had created the possibility for a different kind of society but its relations of production artificially perpetuated unnecessary human suffering.

I know a few people like Novara still hold on to the idea of post-scarcity, but to be honest I haven't looked closely enough into what they have to say.

[gout_pony]

I mean haven't got any kids and I'll be dead before it gets drastically bad, but it all still bothers me a lot for some reason.

Gail Bradbrook, one of/ the main XR founder, seems to reckon we could be extinct within the next few years... which certainly puts lie to the idea that XR are too fluffy and optimistic!

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/kzm8e9/we-asked-extinction-rebellion-what-comes-next

[squiggle]

Gail Bradbrook, one of/ the main XR founder, seems to reckon we could be extinct within the next few years... which certainly puts lie to the idea that XR are too fluffy and optimistic!

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/kzm8e9/we-asked-extinction-rebellion-what-comes-next

Gail Bradbrook is given to irresponsible declarations and hippy crankiness, perfect material for people who want to discredit the whole movement. But credit to her for helping to start things off.

[Twit 2]

Yeah, ‘a few years’ is a bit much, and I say that as card-carrying, sandwich-board-wearing, bell-tolling catastrophist.

Stewart Lee:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/28/why-greta-thunberg-is-now-my-go-to-girl

[gout_pony]

Yeah, ‘a few years’ is a bit much, and I say that as card-carrying, sandwich-board-wearing, bell-tolling catastrophist.

Stewart Lee:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/28/why-greta-thunberg-is-now-my-go-to-girl

That said, this far more measured centrist by Harvard prof James Anderson is hardly poles apart...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2018/01/15/carbon-pollution-has-shoved-the-climate-backward-at-least-12-million-years-harvard-scientist-says/#47bc9816963e

I'm finding it increasingly hard to relate to anyone who doesn't feel deep sadness and horror daily around this... I don't even have kids, but even thinking about the fate in store for the toddlers of friends and relatives is enough, let alone the sheer amount of death and suffering that has already unfolded just to line the pockets of a tiny tiny tiny section of humanity. Remember, if fossil fuel companies hadn't put millions into hiding and discrediting their own research back in the 1980s, we could have decardbonised by just a percentage or two year after year and saved humanity and most of the world's creatures from extinction. Hitler and Stalin have nothing on that.

[BlodwynPig]

Yeah, ‘a few years’ is a bit much, and I say that as card-carrying, sandwich-board-wearing, bell-tolling catastrophist.

Stewart Lee:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/28/why-greta-thunberg-is-now-my-go-to-girl

Will give In the Mouth of Madness another watch tonight, great film.