What don't you join Extinction Rebellion?

[BlodwynPig]

We need to stop making plastic.  It's arrogant for any of us to think we're so important that just to have one meal or one drink of water we're going to leave behind some pieces of plastic that are still going to be there in 1000 years.  We managed without it before, we can find a way of managing without it again.

And scientists should be working on some sort of bacteria that'll sort out the plastic we've got, I don't know...break it back down into it's separate elements or something.

There are plenty of scientists working on this. Some at my uni too.

[garbed_attic]

Since we already ingest a whole bunch of microplastics every year maybe we should all up our game on eating plastic ourselves

[Fambo Number Mive]

Footage from our "die-in" protest outside Suffolk County Council yesterday:
https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/extinction-rebellion-stages-dramatic-die-in-protest-at-suffolk-county-council-office-in-ipswich-1-6168771?

Overall I'm pleased with how it went - kids shouting 'Wake Up' is inevitably effective and though arguably manipulative I think forcing people to confronting the kind of future we're currently consigning our kids too is necessary and fair enough really. The aesthetics don't do a good job of countering accusations of middle-class whiteness though. I think there was only one, maybe two, non-white faces amongst us... but then again this *is* Suffolk. idk

Seems quite a good way of protesting it also creates good visuals which help get your message across in the media.

We need more goods to be delivered by rail to reduce.the amount of deliveries to retailers by road.

[garbed_attic]

For those of you with time, you might find it interesting to read (and perhaps locate bits you agree with and bits you find flaws) Rupert Reed's recent pamphlet on the future of XR as he proposes and envisions it:
http://rupertread.fastmail.co.uk/XR%20pamphlet%20%20%20%20%20%20Truth%20and%20its%20consequences.pdf

[Icehaven]

I received an order of about 70 DVDs for work recently, and as well as being made of plastic and in a plastic box, every single one of them was completely unnecessarily wrapped in plastic cellophane, and quite a few then also had an equally redundant cardboard sleeve around. Apart from it being a massive ball ache to unwrap 70 times, even not-particularly-environmentally friendly me found myself thinking how wasteful it was. At a time when we're trying to stop using plastic for purposes where it's actually useful, double wrapping DVDs (or video games, or books, or anything really) feels virtually like taking the piss.

[hamfist]

I - like many others - feel hypocritical when considering whether to join XR or not. I have children, have to travel by air for work, drive to the office due to lack of safe cycle routes from my village / very poor bus service.

I read this today : https://medium.com/@wtmsinclair/the-real-problem-of-hypocrisy-for-extinction-rebellion-4a6851dcdeb7 which helped a little, at least demonstrating to me other viewpoints on this (I assume) common feeling when wanting to do something.

[Voltan (Man of Steel)]

I received an order of about 70 DVDs for work recently, and as well as being made of plastic and in a plastic box, every single one of them was completely unnecessarily wrapped in plastic cellophane, and quite a few then also had an equally redundant cardboard sleeve around. Apart from it being a massive ball ache to unwrap 70 times, even not-particularly-environmentally friendly me found myself thinking how wasteful it was. At a time when we're trying to stop using plastic for purposes where it's actually useful, double wrapping DVDs (or video games, or books, or anything really) feels virtually like taking the piss.

A few years ago I ordered a powerlifting belt, not dissimilar to this one, from Amazon. It arrived - not coiled up or fastened as shown here, but fully straightened out - in a 1.5m-long cardboard box full of those polystyrene peanut things, presumably to prevent such a fragile item from shattering in transit. Madness.

[phes]

I - like many others - feel hypocritical when considering whether to join XR or not. I have children, have to travel by air for work, drive to the office due to lack of safe cycle routes from my village / very poor bus service.

I read this today : https://medium.com/@wtmsinclair/the-real-problem-of-hypocrisy-for-extinction-rebellion-4a6851dcdeb7 which helped a little, at least demonstrating to me other viewpoints on this (I assume) common feeling when wanting to do something.

People who argue hypocrisy are just boiling in their own piss because their ego won't let them accept that if they did want to fix a problem such as this on their own, they fucking couldn't anyway. This isn't how I'd have gone about it. The fact that they aren't even really trying and are picking banal, petty, disingenuous holes in XR tells you something about the part of the Skeptic-Alarmist climate spectrum they occupy

Edit: I think we're all a bit fucked anyway, though there's definitely not a consensus on that. My eyes are on whether XR can help our urban communities move on more quickly from vehicular decimation and become more connected on a human level

[Paulie Walnuts]

ah ok, now it makes sense

she is just a tool being used by the creepy far left who are happy to exploit a child with learning difficulties

despicable

[Icehaven]

Sideshow Bob's let himself...oh sorry we're not doing those anymore are we.

[Paulie Walnuts]

who is that cunt anyway, I assume from some band I'm too old to want to understand

[canadagoose]

who is that cunt anyway, I assume from some band I'm too old to want to understand

1) Matty Healy of The 1975
2) Asperger's isn't a learning difficulty

HTH

[Twit 2]

Bye bye Amazon

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/amazonian-rainforest-near-unrecoverable-tipping-point

[BlodwynPig]

Bye bye Amazon

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/amazonian-rainforest-near-unrecoverable-tipping-point

Bye bye Arctic

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-49125391

HELLO Boris Johnson!!!! YAY

[Chollis]

Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon has surged above three football fields a minute

I always find stats like this amazing.
Hasn't this been the case for decades(?)
How is there anything left!?

It must have been really really fucking big!

[Blumf]

Some good news, but with a cunt thrown in:

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/jul/11/kenya-first-coal-plant-construction-paused-climate-victory

Kenya has been urged to halt construction of the country's first ever coal-powered plant near the coastal town of Lamu, until an assessment is made of its environmental and cultural impact, in the latest setback to the $2bn project (£1.6bn).

Plans for the 981MW station, backed by a Chinese-led consortium, are in limbo after Kenyan judges revoked the environmental licence at the end of June.

Great, a lot of places like this are in a perfect position to develop their energy infrastructure around renewables + storage, no need for carbon emitting systems.

But...

The US ambassador to Kenya, Kyle McCarter, has been widely criticised by activists for wading into the debate to argue that coal is environmentally sound, that the plant would boost the country's economy and that a critical analysis of the project by a US thinktank amounted to the work of "highly paid protesters".

"Coal is the cleanest, least costly option," the Trump-appointed former Republican senator in Illinois wrote on Twitter, ahead of the ruling on the 26 June. He also cited his experience with coal in his home state as evidence that fossil fuel would work well in Kenya.

Wait, shouldn't you be against Chinese investment in Africa?

[bgmnts]

Amazon is the big one right? If that goes, it all goes tits up?

[weekender]

To answer the OP's question, I don't know what Extinction Rebellion is and can't be arsed reading to find out what it is.

Same applies to Incels, Millennials, Generation X, Generation Y, Generation Z, Generation AA (battery fan consortium?), what the BT in LGBT actually means, the pros and cons of Brexit, whether Little Mix is a snack food worth investigating, other acronyms IDK, what is the lowest a fish has ever been, how many active helium balloons are in existence right now, what's on the news etc.

Above my pay grade, innit fam?

[greenman]

People who argue hypocrisy are just boiling in their own piss because their ego won't let them accept that if they did want to fix a problem such as this on their own, they fucking couldn't anyway. This isn't how I'd have gone about it. The fact that they aren't even really trying and are picking banal, petty, disingenuous holes in XR tells you something about the part of the Skeptic-Alarmist climate spectrum they occupy

Edit: I think we're all a bit fucked anyway, though there's definitely not a consensus on that. My eyes are on whether XR can help our urban communities move on more quickly from vehicular decimation and become more connected on a human level

Honestly though I think the movement in itself is clearly focused on effecting public policy and you could argue part of that is recognising that individual attempts to address the issue have limited ability to effect real change both due to scale and because they exist in a system that's not geared towards it.

[phes]

Yes that's exactly what it is

[garbed_attic]

Not been signing so many petitions lately, but this seems eminently sensible to me as an ex-supermarket employee even though I know the Tories would baulk at making it law...

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/261092

[Sebastian Cobb]

As said, by far the most common points - your point came up a lot less.

I mean, if I were in power, I'd implement:

- Rationing of flights (including for business purposes)
- Only one car allowed per family; petrol restrictions and taxation; investment in public transport
- Quick scaling back and eventual closure of meat and dairy industries
- Far less new building schemes; definitely no third runway
- Closure of oil, gas and coal stations... personally I don't think we can afford to decommission all nuclear power plants, however scary their existence is with rising sea levels and climate catastrophe
- Rationing of electricity usage. For most households, no electricity at night
- Lots of other stuff that the vast majority of people would never vote for

Will you chalk people killing themselves out of boredom as a net win for the environment?

[garbed_attic]

Will you chalk people killing themselves out of boredom as a net win for the environment?

I think that's more an indictment of how culturally and communally impoverished we've become than anything else.

Also, if countries *don't* take such drastic steps, what do you think is going to happen with the climate going forward over the next few decades?

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

Not sure about ER, but I'm continually shocked by the fact that those with the most to lose from climate change are invariably those doing the least about it. All the people I know with kids own cars, holiday, are allergic to public transport. And yet all the singletons I know with scarcely anything to get up for in the morning are all for separating their card from their plastic, taking the bus everywhere, overtly shopping with a reusable hessian bag. I understand that having kids limits your choices/corners you into a position of continuous compromise, but it really is something that baffles my brain.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

I think that's more an indictment of how culturally and communally impoverished we've become than anything else.

Also, if countries *don't* take such drastic steps, what do you think is going to happen with the climate going forward over the next few decades?

Fuck all.

[Twit 2]

Not sure about ER, but I'm continually shocked by the fact that those with the most to lose from climate change are invariably those doing the least about it. All the people I know with kids own cars, holiday, are allergic to public transport. And yet all the singletons I know with scarcely anything to get up for in the morning are all for separating their card from their plastic, taking the bus everywhere, overtly shopping with a reusable hessian bag. I understand that having kids limits your choices/corners you into a position of continuous compromise, but it really is something that baffles my brain.

Human nature + overpopulation = extinction. Repeat this formula to yourself, make it a mantra, an anthem. Then you won't be baffled.

[Paul Calf]

Not sure about ER, but I'm continually shocked by the fact that those with the most to lose from climate change are invariably those doing the least about it. All the people I know with kids own cars, holiday, are allergic to public transport. And yet all the singletons I know with scarcely anything to get up for in the morning are all for separating their card from their plastic, taking the bus everywhere, overtly shopping with a reusable hessian bag. I understand that having kids limits your choices/corners you into a position of continuous compromise, but it really is something that baffles my brain.

If you'd ever travelled with one or more toddlers on a British train (after paying the eye watering prices and trekking to the nearest station) or even worse, the bus, you'd better understand reluctance to give up the car.

[GMTV]

Not sure about ER, but I'm continually shocked by the fact that those with the most to lose from climate change are invariably those doing the least about it. All the people I know with kids own cars, holiday, are allergic to public transport. And yet all the singletons I know with scarcely anything to get up for in the morning are all for separating their card from their plastic, taking the bus everywhere, overtly shopping with a reusable hessian bag. I understand that having kids limits your choices/corners you into a position of continuous compromise, but it really is something that baffles my brain.

The first people you describe there have the most to lose. Also they probably don't want to imagine their future generation swept away in a big flood or summat.

The younger generations have missed out on the upward trajectory of free market capitalism and progress now that its levelled off and possibly declining, and I think subconsciously this is a good way of railing against that and trying to attack the status quo.

[Huxleys Babkins]

"Allergic to public transport" is such a sneery way of putting it. I had a business trip to go on last week. Really wanted to take the train so I could catch up on some reading rather than drive a near-four hour round trip. There was even a shuttle bus from the station to the venue. Perfect. Except it would have cost £80 as it was peak time vs. £30 in the car.

To top it all off, I walked past the shuttle bus stop and saw a big notice that the service was no longer running, so I'd have needed to get a taxi to and from the station, bringing the total cost to ~£100. Try making that expenses claim when your boss knows you could have done it for less than half that.

The irony is that I didn't even bother to learn to drive until I was 26. I was perfectly happy with taking buses and walking. And then they reduced the frequency of the buses and changed the routes to the point where I was walking for twenty minutes in the pouring rain to get to the bus stop for the one bus an hour to get me into town that would often be cancelled if they had a shortage of buses on more profitable routes.

There are a huge number of practical reasons why people literally cannot take public transport; The privatisation and de-funding of buses and trains outside of major routes making services impossibly expensive and infrequent, new build estates built on out-of-town brownfield sites with no bus links, people's homes, jobs and their kids' schools being in totally different locations, to name but a few.

Successive governments have forced people off of public transport and into their cars via short-sighted transport, housing, business and social strategy. It's not peoples' fault that the system is so broken.

[garbed_attic]

Successive governments have forced people off of public transport and into their cars via short-sighted transport, housing, business and social strategy. It's not peoples' fault that the system is so broken.

Well indeed... and thus the necessarily for admittedly sometimes irritating activist pressure groups! Like, I'd much rather governments had made sane and sensible long-sighted decisions about this back before I was born when global warming was first a concern. One of Greta Thunberg's main points is that there simply isn't time for her generation to grow to the age of political policy makers and then make the changes needed.