What don't you join Extinction Rebellion?

[Gonzo]

Bye bye Amazon

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

If the deforestation of the Amazon is going to be as devastating as all that, shouldn't countries who have a hint of conscience about this be trying to stop them by force?

No point in trusting the timber industry will see sense by itself, as it contributes to so much of Brazil's financial success, and Bolsonaro is already doing everything he can to basically destroy the country's socio-environmental policies. There's no way they're going to be dissuaded any time soon by demonstrations or negotiating peacefully.

Why is the 'reasonable' response to sit back and just hope the light of reason will flood in at some point?

[Paul Calf]

It is not a golden age of liberal interventionism.

[Gonzo]

It is not a golden age of liberal interventionism.

Well, no, but the IPPC claims we're looking at total environmental and ecological disaster within less than two decades. With that at stake, and with such a short time to deal with the problem, I don't know why we should just wait and hope for a sufficient groundswell of opposition to gain power in a state whose President dismisses climate science as a 'Marxist plot' and where land activists are murdered.

[Twit 2]

Very few people give a fuck about any of this yet. I doubt many people are following Brazil's environmental policy at all, even at the level of reading 'Amazon to be bulldozed' headlines. "Oh is it, oh well back to Love Island." I often (perhaps unfairly) take my colleagues as barometers for all this. They're professionals with degrees and a fair amount of understanding and interest in the world. They have no real knowledge or deep concern about the environment beyond 'plastic bad'. I've had to stop mentioning it because I must sound like a bell-tolling looney. I still feel like it's only a very small proportion of the population who are prepared to think about this properly. We mustn't underestimate  how detached people are from the reality of the headlines. Even if they're reading them I don't think many people are dwelling on the real and immediate impact on their lives: they kinda accept the environment is fucked but think that it won't be them affected and not for a long while.

[garbed_attic]

Very few people give a fuck about any of this yet. I doubt many people are following Brazil's environmental policy at all, even at the level of reading 'Amazon to be bulldozed' headlines. "Oh is it, oh well back to Love Island." I often (perhaps unfairly) take my colleagues as barometers for all this. They're professionals with degrees and a fair amount of understanding and interest in the world. They have no real knowledge or deep concern about the environment beyond 'plastic bad'. I've had to stop mentioning it because I must sound like a bell-tolling looney. I still feel like it's only a very small proportion of the population who are prepared to think about this properly. We mustn't underestimate  how detached people are from the reality of the headlines. It seems people kinda accept the environment is fucked but that it won't be them affected and not for a long while.

I find it really hard to get my head around because on a local experiential level "nature" (not always a useful term) feels increasingly more fucked... like, we don't even seem to get proper seasons any more; I barely see butterflies compared to how many we'd get in the garden as a kid; less birdsong in the early morning etc. etc. etc. Esp. when heat waves are breaking levels almost year after years across the globe, I don't understand how so many people can say 'Meh... nothing's really changed'. One would have thought the older you are, the more obvious the changes would be... but both my parents just don't seem to say it and often reckon I'm just imagining things were different when I was younger... "in my day it used to snow around Christmas" etc.

[Twit 2]

I was visiting my parents recently and they were so ensconced in baby-booming privilege that I was sorely tempted to kill them into sacks which mushrooms could grow out of, like in that episode of Hannibal. Maybe my dad would care more about the environment when I've ripped his beard off his squelching composting face and turned it over as nesting to an appreciative bird.

[garbed_attic]

I love my baby boomer parents... but I have started to suspect that their decision to spend much of their retirement jetting off on holidays is just them doubling down on my not having any inheritance because not only will they have spent it all on fancy holidays, thanks to all their flights, there won't even be a habitable earth left for me to spend any remaining money upon!

Well, the joke's on you, parents - I think inheritance is morally wrong too!!!

[Ray Travez]

Very few people give a fuck about any of this yet. I doubt many people are following Brazil's environmental policy at all, even at the level of reading 'Amazon to be bulldozed' headlines. "Oh is it, oh well back to Love Island." I often (perhaps unfairly) take my colleagues as barometers for all this. They're professionals with degrees and a fair amount of understanding and interest in the world. They have no real knowledge or deep concern about the environment beyond 'plastic bad'. I've had to stop mentioning it because I must sound like a bell-tolling looney.

I think that people have no idea of the timescale of planetary collapse, versus the timescale of a human life. People think a year is a long time, whereas in the life of a planet, that's a heartbeat. If you extrapolate using the death of Tommy Cooper as a comparison, from the time Cooper appears onstage, to the point where he collapses is just a few minutes- but in planetary terms, this period might consist of 1000 years. So when a scientist says that a disaster is happening now, people just look around and see nice weather and flowers in bloom- which in this metaphor, I suppose is the audience, blissfully unaware, laughing right up until the end. That's my take anyway. At some point people will realise, but it'll be too late- the air will be unbreathable, and the crops will no longer grow. Just like that.

[The Boston Crab]

Let's get tooled the fuck up and fight to the death.

[BlodwynPig]

I think that people have no idea of the timescale of planetary collapse, versus the timescale of a human life. People think a year is a long time, whereas in the life of a planet, that's a heartbeat. If you extrapolate using the death of Tommy Cooper as a comparison, from the time Cooper appears onstage, to the point where he collapses is just a few minutes- but in planetary terms, this period might consist of 1000 years. So when a scientist says that a disaster is happening now, people just look around and see nice weather and flowers in bloom- which in this metaphor, I suppose is the audience, blissfully unaware, laughing right up until the end. That's my take anyway. At some point people will realise, but it'll be too late- the air will be unbreathable, and the crops will no longer grow. Just like that.

Good post. That last sentence is more likely than not. We've disrupted the strange attractor.

[The Boston Crab]

"Love, I think the telly has gone on the blink...Oh, wait, the fridge isn't on, either. Must have been that hair dryer tripped the fuse box again...Huh...No. Not doing anything, love. The lights aren't working upstairs, either. I dunno...They must have turned off the power, probably doing some work...I'm sure it'll come back on soon..."

...

LOCK THE DOORS THEY'RE GETTING IN!!!

...

"Honestly, love, you should have seen it. I opened the guy's ribcage up like a kitchen cupboard!"

[king_tubby]

Not joining Extinction Rebellion in case people question my heterosexuality.

https://psmag.com/environment/how-gender-stereotypes-affect-pro-environment-behavior

[chrissiebrmc]

I often (perhaps unfairly) take my colleagues as barometers for all this. They're professionals with degrees and a fair amount of understanding and interest in the world. They have no real knowledge or deep concern about the environment beyond 'plastic bad'. I've had to stop mentioning it because I must sound like a bell-tolling looney.

Sadly, this is exactly my experience too :( 

[Blumf]

https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2019/08/06/by-margin-salt-lake/

Park City offers a free-fare transit system. So does Cache County. Now, a new poll shows that Salt Lake City residents want free-fare buses, too — by nearly a 3-1 margin.

Such support comes as some of the city's eight candidates for mayor have pushed various forms of the idea, including having the city fund free passes or seeking a state subsidy to make the entire Utah Transit Authority system fare-free.

"If we do that, we're talking about tremendous decline in air pollution and that is something that's not just a lot of blah, blah, blah promises," said former state Sen. Jim Dabakis, one of two mayoral candidates who have campaigned on the notion.

Been saying we should do this here for years. It's such an obvious easy score for pollution reduction and social/economic relief.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Climate change campaigners blocked one of the busiest roads in and out of Birmingham during rush hour.

Up to 40 protesters from Extinction Rebellion stopped traffic for seven minutes at a time on the A38 Bristol Street between 08:00 and 09:00 BST.

Disrupted motorists included a pregnant woman who was being driven by her partner to hospital to give birth.

West Midlands Police officers were in attendance. The force said no-one had been arrested...

Protester Eve Jones, 50, a teacher from Birmingham, apologised for the disruption.

"It's not in any way an attempt to target, inconvenience or blame ordinary people," she said.

"What we are here to do is force the government to pay attention to the issue of climate change and take urgent and decisive action."...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-49263916

Clearly blocking traffic during the rush hour is going to inconvenience ordinary people. Unfortunately the Government aren't going to care about commuters and someone about to give birth being delayed in Birmingham.

Calling for London Fashion Week to be cancelled sounds a much better idea. Fashion is a very wasteful industry and really aside from underwear and socks we should be trying to buy as much clothes as possible from charity shops.

[Paul Calf]

aside from underwear and socks we should be trying to buy as much clothes as possible from charity shops.

Ooh, 'ark at Lord Muck!

[Icehaven]

I find it really hard to get my head around because on a local experiential level "nature" (not always a useful term) feels increasingly more fucked... like, we don't even seem to get proper seasons any more; I barely see butterflies compared to how many we'd get in the garden as a kid; less birdsong in the early morning etc. etc. etc. Esp. when heat waves are breaking levels almost year after years across the globe, I don't understand how so many people can say 'Meh... nothing's really changed'. One would have thought the older you are, the more obvious the changes would be... but both my parents just don't seem to say it and often reckon I'm just imagining things were different when I was younger... "in my day it used to snow around Christmas" etc.

Boiling frogs innit. The climate changing over the last 30-40 years might be drastic in real terms but in terms of the average human lifespan it's quite gradual.

[zomgmouse]

Not sure if it's been covered in this thread but in our city centre here in Melbourne there's a load of concrete blocks that are meant to be anti-terrorism sort of things so cars don't swerve onto the footpath and some people have taken to painting/spraying them particularly with various slogans and messages and a couple of these have been taken over by Extinction Rebellion and they have sprayed them green and put their logo on but also written SS4C and I don't know what it really stands for but every time I see I can't help but think "Shit Shit 4 Cunts" which is a shame cause I do think it's a very worthwhile cause.

[garbed_attic]

I really love this quote from Rupert Reed's new book on an eco-philosophy of film:

One seeks to immunize oneself against the future by giving up hope for anything good; one seeks to protect oneself against other people by imagining that they think the worst of one; one seeks to protect oneself against hope for oneself by imagining oneself hopeless/useless/ evil. These stratagems are extraordinarily seductive; but they are also, in the end, disastrously self-defeating. One cannot actually become safe by retreating away from others / from hope. One seeks to immunize oneself against disappointment by pre-emptively disappointing oneself (and others); but this only ups the ante, and takes one on a journey deeper into the morbid life-world of melancholia. The desire to be immunized against hope, the desire for disaster to absolve us of responsibility and to protect us pre-emptively from disappointment, is the very same desire in politics

[BlodwynPig]

I see absolutely nothing wrong with the haunting melancholy of Bergerac

[garbed_attic]

I see absolutely nothing wrong with the haunting melancholy of Bergerac

You can be the exception Blodders because *you are* Thomas Liggotti and I claim my £10

[The Boston Crab]

Rupert Reed sounds like a total pussy. Fuckin reverse psychology fruit. Get ready to open some cunt's ribcage up like a kitchen cupboard or get trampled to death over the last remaining mouldy Turkish Delight. Fuckin third world dogshit eating pead.

[Sebastian Cobb]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-49263916

Clearly blocking traffic during the rush hour is going to inconvenience ordinary people. Unfortunately the Government aren't going to care about commuters and someone about to give birth being delayed in Birmingham.

Calling for London Fashion Week to be cancelled sounds a much better idea. Fashion is a very wasteful industry and really aside from underwear and socks we should be trying to buy as much clothes as possible from charity shops.

What pissed me off about that was that other people there said they knew fine it was going to disrupt commuters. More importantly, if they wanted to 'do good', they should've let the car driving the woman in labour out, even if it meant waving cars onto the road or massive traffic island.

[Paul Calf]

It's nice that we've reached the stage where a small group of inexperienced, unaccountable protesters triaging traffic priorities  somehow represents moral rectitude.

[Paul Calf]

I mean, if someone dies or is maimed or suffers brain damage as a result of this, who's responsible?

[chveik]

u ok hun?

classic conservative stance to be against any sort of civil unrest.

[Paul Calf]

u ok hun?

classic conservative stance to be against any sort of civil unrest.

Anything else, or just mud?

Just mud?

K.

[garbed_attic]

I mean, if someone dies or is maimed or suffers brain damage as a result of this, who's responsible?

Do you get as fired up about the 9,500-odd people die each year in London because of air pollution, say, than you are about a hypothetical death that hasn't actually happened? And, if not, why not?

[chveik]

Anything else, or just mud?

Just mud?

K.

"inexperienced, unaccountable protesters"

what did you mean by that exactly? it's not that far-fetched to think it sounds conservative. (I know you're not one, but you do have an odd stance when it comes to xr)

[garbed_attic]

In terms of what causes the majority of delays, it's too many cars for the roadway due to inadequate mass public transit and the normalisation of three cars in every driveway. Should train workers never go on strike due to the fact that it will inevitably inconvenience people, sometimes to a difficult or painful degree?