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March 29, 2024, 12:50:15 PM

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What don't you join Extinction Rebellion?

Started by garbed_attic, July 08, 2019, 04:50:31 PM

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object-lesson

Notice back there in this thread there's stuff about the Earth having been a paradise that humans have ruined, which is very odd talk when you look at nature raw and see most creatures in a state of anxiety and apprehension, lives painful and foreshortened, all the time looking out for other creatures out to kill them or to kill, evolution developing them strategies over millennia to help them do that. Idealised nature is just that.

Obviously humans are the worst animals in the things they do, but they're also the only ones who can imagine doing things differently.

garbed_attic

Quote from: object-lesson on August 02, 2019, 01:24:12 AM
see most creatures in a state of anxiety and apprehension

I see you've met me before... !

imitationleather

Last night I watched a three hour interview with David Icke and, among other things, I'm now convinced that Extinction Rebellion are wrong'uns. This is what I don't join.

garbed_attic

QuoteI used to ridicule Icke for years. Now I realise I was the stupid one.

2.4k likes

ah fuck

imitationleather


Icehaven

David Icke is by some considerable margin the most frequently requested non-fiction author in UK prison libraries. Make of that what you will.

imitationleather

Quote from: icehaven on August 02, 2019, 12:11:13 PM
David Icke is by some considerable margin the most frequently requested non-fiction author in UK prison libraries. Make of that what you will.

Surprises me a bit. I thought it'd be one of those hard man auto-biographies like the one Lenny McLean did or that book God wrote.

That said the interviewer in the David Icke video I watched did say he originally became aware of his work after being given a copy of his book about 9/11 while serving an eight-stretch for drug offences in Arizona. What I came away from watching the video is that if he reduced the amount he talks by about 70%, cutting out all the stuff about aliens and how the world is a spider's web of secretive organisations and all that, he'd be a bit like a decent poster on here. Would probably sell nowhere near as many books though. My missus (a total non-believer in what he says, she just went for the craic) went to see him do a talk once. I think she left after the six hour mark because there was no end in sight whatsoever.

gib

Quote from: imitationleather on August 02, 2019, 12:28:18 PM
Surprises me a bit. I thought it'd be one of those hard man auto-biographies like the one Lenny McLean did or that book God wrote.

Those are all by different authors though mate, do you see how this works?

imitationleather

Quote from: gib on August 02, 2019, 01:26:32 PM
Those are all by different authors though mate, do you see how this works?

If you spoke to me like that while we were on the same wing you would be getting boiling water with sugar in it to the face.

Icehaven

Yes Charles Bronson (the Tom Hardy one) is probably a close second, and Rhonda Byrne too, all that magical thinking gubbins.

object-lesson

Quote from: icehaven on August 02, 2019, 12:11:13 PM
David Icke is by some considerable margin the most frequently requested non-fiction author in UK prison libraries. Make of that what you will.

I wonder if that's partly because he writes books that are essentially thrillers but with the added thrill that you can think they're real, like Dan Brown but taken to another level. All the better to alleviate the boredom. Though Icke fans crop up in the strangest places it has to be said.

Surprised Charles Bronson is allowed. Prison censorship rules must have relaxed at some point, wouldn't have thought something like that would have been allowed thirty years ago.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: gout_pony on July 31, 2019, 08:41:09 PM
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?

Do you think we'll become less culturally impoverished if all we have to do of a night is sit in the freezing dark eating rationed gruel and waiting for day to come so we can use electric?

Say what you like about climate catastrophe, at least trying to survive it will be a case of living rather than merely existing; the authoritarian regime you paint is like having locked in syndrome where the only respite are the dreams you have are where you're able bodied but in work.

imitationleather

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on August 02, 2019, 03:36:58 PM
Do you think we'll become more culturally impoverished if all we have to do of a night is sit in the dark eating rationed gruel and waiting for day to come so we can use electric?

Under those conditions I imagine my girlfriend would put out a lot more so like yer Rees-Moggs and whatnot I'd be one of the few benefitting from environmental catastrophe.

Sebastian Cobb

In which case the envornment will suffer more from the result of everyone rutting in the dark just to pass the time.

I've not done the maths on per person co2 emissions for the electric consumed delivering videos to people via online streaming (some cloud providers, like Google are all renewable BTW) but I bet it's less than having lots of weans.

imitationleather

It's not a problem. We'd just do really horrific backstreet abortions like John Christie and those matriarchs who'd make sure all the women who dallied with the American soldiers during WW2 didn't produce illegitimate babies.

This is the sort of thing people voted Leave for, yeah?

chveik

"authoritarian regime". fucks sake, that's always been the neocon argument against any sort of change we should implement because of the environmental crisis.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: chveik on August 02, 2019, 04:20:39 PM
"authoritarian regime". fucks sake, that's always been the neocon argument against any sort of change we should implement because of the environmental crisis.

It's not really 'neocon' to consider banning electricity at night and rationing food authoritarian.

Noonling

banning electricity at night seems a bit off, but a little rationing in the face of a crisis... Was rationing during WW2 authoritarian?

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Noonling on August 03, 2019, 12:24:48 PM
banning electricity at night seems a bit off, but a little rationing in the face of a crisis... Was rationing during WW2 authoritarian?

Yes? You know 'authoritarian' and 'necessary' aren't mutually exclusive?

Whether or not you think it was necessary is a different matter. It was also due to actual limited supply (rather than enforced, or artificial supply) and had a massive black market, something that would presumably be much more prevalent during peacetime and with many opportunities for smuggling because in these modern times instead of making stuff we freight it in from China and Europe.

Captain Z

Still, good news that Amazon's disappearing. Cynically, I didn't believe that boycott a few weeks ago would have any impact.

Blumf

It's also a pretty dumb idea as electricity usage at night is low anyway. So you'd just be pissing people off, having to faff about with the numerous exceptions, and wasting free power from renewable sources.

A better suggestion would just be to ramp up carbon neutral generation. Would make a much bigger difference, especially during the daytime, where it matters.

Here's a question: is it preferable to create local environmental damage to reduce carbon output, or delay low carbon generation projects to protect local areas?

There's various examples; NIMBYs against wind farms, the Seven Estuary tidal project, solar panel production's toxic waste, new rail lines cutting through countryside.

You can argue the details of individual projects (e.g. HS2 is likely a load of bollocks) but it looks like we have to make tough choices and prioritise environmental issues against each other.

Fambo Number Mive

I think blanket plans to turn off electricity at night or during the day would alienate so many people it wouldn't work. We need to look at waste from industry (such as making all supermarkets have closed door fridges and making it illegal for office blocks to have more than a handful of lights on when no one is in there, just enough so the cleaners can see). Also, what about reducing the number of unnecessary electric gadgets?

How much potential is there to expand onshore and offshore wind energy?

object-lesson

Quote from: Noonling on August 03, 2019, 12:24:48 PM
banning electricity at night seems a bit off, but a little rationing in the face of a crisis... Was rationing during WW2 authoritarian?

Of course Britain in WWII did become an authoritarian state, to some degree inevitably in the circumstances. Any edict handed down by the state is going to get mixed up with authoritarianism, and the administration of rationing in WWII was no exception. As everyone knows it was very class-discriminatory in practice too. (At a tangent also I hadn't thought until I saw Foyle's War about all the pets that were killed, millions, mostly because there was no food ration for them understandably, but it's still horrible. And it was also official advice.)

I think authoritarian state-enforced environmentalism by the dominant classes is a very likely outcome in the next few decades, and something to be thought about and guarded against. And the poorest countries may well be left to rot except to the extent that the developed world needs them, something which Extinction Rebellion needs to address.

chveik

it's very unlikely, the "dominant classes" don't seem to give a shit about the environment.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Fambo Number Mive on August 03, 2019, 01:59:42 PM
I think blanket plans to turn off electricity at night or during the day would alienate so many people it wouldn't work. We need to look at waste from industry (such as making all supermarkets have closed door fridges and making it illegal for office blocks to have more than a handful of lights on when no one is in there, just enough so the cleaners can see). Also, what about reducing the number of unnecessary electric gadgets?

How much potential is there to expand onshore and offshore wind energy?



Loads of offices do that anyway, because funnily enough, businesses have worked out electric isn't free. I've sat in offices with sensor lights where there's just 4 lights on above your desk, really bleak.

Offshore wind is a good shout but onshore is mediocre, what we need are tidal lagoons. Not only can they run with the tide but they can also use gravity or potential to store energy. I used to write code for trading on gas storage facilities, and it was all traded in kwh, I always felt we missed a trick not going into it.

Electricity bans, as already mentioned, would fuck up refrigeration and cause illness due to spoilage or cost more due to people not storing food. Presumably they'd just rub sticks together in the dark to cook their ration of pulses.

Fambo Number Mive

I've gone past a lot of office blocks in Central London on the bus where they've left all the lights on at 10pm.

Sebastian Cobb

They could be cheap, and have left them on, because they won't buy sensors, could also be theft provention. but that also suggests they don't have a proper BMS, which in London sounds unlikely.

What I find quite pointless is that some skyers in Glasgow have have illuminated eaves. Not much in the grand scheme of things but a bit pointless, unless they're for the pilots flying into paisley, in which case I'll rescind that.

object-lesson

Quote from: chveik on August 03, 2019, 02:38:37 PM
it's very unlikely, the "dominant classes" don't seem to give a shit about the environment.

They will when it's inescapable, they act under force of compulsion and will do anything to maintain their precarious position. Gated communities, you haven't seen the half of it yet. A compelled eco-State is as likely to be fascist as anything else.


chveik


garbed_attic

Well I guess this thread has helped me realise that even if I think out and out libertarian survivalist should be avoided even if through the necessity of state planning, decades of cultural individualism and cold war apocalypse films have led many to consider this the only viable future. I just hope that most guys are far crappier with guns irl
than they are on their Xbox