Carnival.

Getty Image, taken from BBC News site.

       The closer it gets the more I despair, I am of course referring to Cop-26, or as I prefer to call it, Cop-out-26 Carnival. It is a carnival, a gigantic show, an illusion, those who think that something great will come out of this extravaganza are naive in the extreme and sadly missing the facts. As I stated in a previous blog, the largest oil and gas producing companies have plans to increase production, not to reduce production. Now the BBC has released leak documents that show that governments and large corporations are lobbying the UN to play down the need to move rapidly away from fossil fuels. Another stated strategy for tackling this climate disaster is for richer countries to pay more to poorer countries to help them develop green policies. The leaked documents also show that rich countries are now questioning that strategy.

       We are being told by the Mafia in the Kremlin in George Square that it will show case Glasgow. What will happen is we will have a massive lockdown in Glasgow, where the citizens will be restricted and banned from large swaths of their city and their daily lives disrupted. So it will be a case of showcasing our city without the people of the city. The media will have a frenzy of a party chasing after That massive entourage of the rich and powerful and their army of security, who are jetting across the planet to grab a spot of publicity at the carnival. They will spout sounds that they think the people will like to hear, and spout them without a shred of belief in what they are saying. They will do their best to grab centre stage and create the illusion that they are the greenest government on the planet. Then they will all go back to their opulent lives of greed and exploitation, and carry on as if nothing had happened.
        The planet is not going to be saved by the rich and powerful, who are doing very well from its destruction. They are not going to listen to your appeals for change, if it means jeopardising their wealth and privileges, they are not going to be moved by your petitions if it means curtailing their opulent lifestyles, and they are quite happy to let your march from A to B, as long as you do it to the their prescribed formula.
       It will take massive direct action by the people, an eruption of righteous anger right across the planet, the like of which we have never seen before. The price of quiet appealing and protest marches is the extinction of our species along with millions of others. There is not enough time to pontificate with the destroyers, the plunderers, the exploiters, the minutes are being counted down, your children and grand children are the ones we sacrifice if we continue our appealing to the powers that be.

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info   

Coal Merchant Boris.

 

          According to bumbling Boris, his government will be a government with a green agenda that will lead the world. Of course recent history has taught  us that Boris's words don't stand for much, and the reverse could be uttered just a few months later. So to say that he will lead Britain away from coal doesn't actually mean that, it just sounds good at the moment. His true credentials are now up for scrutiny, as Cumbria County Council has given permission for a new coal mine to be opened in their area. Obviously this doesn't equate with the words of the Boris brigade announcements. Robert Jenrick, Communities Secretary could of course have stymied this decision, but came up with the lame excuse that it was a local issue. As Communities Secretary I wonder what believes his job to be, perhaps some of his buddies have shares in coal, who knows, but it certainly blows a hole in the green credentials of the Boris brigade.

                                            The ravages of opencast coal mining

         Coal, no matter how they mine it, it is a disaster for the planet, open cast or deep mine, it pollutes the water table and destroys the environment, among other disaster, no matter how the consume it it is a disaster all life on the planet, from sea levels to the air we breathe. This decision must be opposed at all levels, the last thing we need in this climate crisis is another coal mine. The Cumbria Council's pathetic excuse for granting permission is the usual economist garbage, "that it will bring jobs to the area". By their logic we should spread covid19, as it will create more jobs in the NHS and care services. We truly live in an insane society, more coal will mean higher sea levels, more coastal towns and cities being threatened with flooding or disappearing, but the people of Cumbria will have a few more jobs. CO2 levels will increase speeding the planet to a human disaster, but the people of Cumbria will have a few more jobs. It seems that sanity has disappeared in that cloud of coal fumes, or is it greed for profit.

Visit ann arky's home at htpps://radicalglasgow.me.uk   

Tinsel.

        There is a pattern on a globe floating around in the milky way, and it is a macabre picture of poverty, destitution, wars, inequality, and injustice, the main species on that globe is engaged in a suicidal war with it's ecosystems. Some are forming groups and rebelling against this insane, self inflicted bloodfest, while those in power lash out with savagery at those who dare to break the pattern. I just sit in my wee bubble and despair, so turn and look the other way, and think of verse.

 Tinsel Cities.

In the city of tinsel and bright lights
midst the playthings of the rich
just beyond the champagne bubble
out of earshot of the butterfly people
in the dark shadows where no one looks
there you’ll find poverty and destitution
dance a macabre dance of survival.
In Mammon’s city of grand illusions
where rivers of wealth feed frivolity
in its twisting dark and musty lanes
where the light of hope seldom shines
an army of the living dead sweat and toil
polishing the tinsel, changing light bulbs
refilling the champagne bottles
nothing must stop the flow of frivolity
or the butterfly people will die.

A Dream deferred.

A dream deferred, where does it go?
Is it stored in some labyrinth of the mind,
does it fade and waste away,
gone, forgotten, lost,
or does it become a burden
that weighs heavier with the years,
a burden that breaks you,
poisons your thoughts with regret
like a fog clouding your mind
in that bitter taste
of what could have been. 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

I Despair.

         When we look around we can all see, poverty and deprivation, we are all aware of the corporate plundering of our planet and the ensuing bloody and violent wars to gain and/or to protect that plunder. We all have seen the evidence that the present economic system is destroying the planet and all life on the planet. We are all witness to the gross inequality, with a privileged few wallowing in obscene opulence, while a teardrop away the many struggle for a decent life, millions die from hunger, across the world, while millions of others find sleep in some dark doorway or back alley. Yet the many still turn up for work, politely go about their business and patiently put up with the advancing Armageddon. Why are we so forgiving, polite and patient? 

 

 

        Why is there no outrage on the streets, why is there no explosion of anger, why do we allow this system to continue to function, knowing full well the ending is death to life on our only home, planet Earth? Is it because we don't care about the future, or what happens to the next generation, our kids and grand-kids? Or is it that most are comatosed by their daily struggle to survive, or hypnotised into a zombie state of acceptance, submissiveness, consumerism, celebrity worship and envy, by an extremely sophisticated culture of subliminal control where reality comes in the form flashy images and fast moving emotional stimulating advertising and government propaganda? Our politeness must be put in abeyance, our patience must end, and our forgiveness withdrawn, and be replaced by our pent up righteous anger and blood red rage, driving our action, it is the only way we can ever hope to stop this dystopian vision becoming our worst nightmare reality. 

 

PROPHET OR DREAMER?

Am I a dreamer?
Ever dazzled by unrisen dawns,
always hearing the song of liberty
though freedom’s flag is torn.
I walk towards a world
no borders, kings or slaves;
history claims the warrior’s hand
peace the crown of bays.
I see the hungry feasting
midst the brotherhood of man;
all the children singing
the fear of famine gone.
I find the common man
hold his brother dear
create a world of social justice,
Elysian fields their sphere.
Freedom’s flag is torn,
quiet is liberty’s song
unrisen suns still to dawn;
prophet,

 Or dreamer born?

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Another Lie.

        Look at the image carefully, look closely at the names and the business empires that they are associated with and ask yourself, "Are these the people and bodies that we can trust to take care of the planet?". The very same group that has and is destroying the planet for nothing more than greed for profit. The same corporate bodies that are ever looking for new ways and means of increasing their wealth and power irrespective of the cost to planet and people.

        These are the groups that are tasked with creating "Protected Areas" and the "New Deal For Nature". Surely history tells us something, and the history of this gang of ruthless thugs are hardly likely to in any way jeopardise their flow of greed driven profits. The very fact that this bunch of robbing vandals are collected in one organisation should have us running to join protest groups across the planet. New Deal For Nature is just another one of those big fat lies dressed up in a green disguise, capitalists are not planet savers, they are planet destroyers.

The following is an extract from another interesting article in ACORN:

     Protecting the environment has surely got to be A Good Thing.
     Creating “protected areas” for nature in various parts of the world might therefore seem to be a positive move.
     However, when these areas are being promoted by the same capitalist system which brought nature to her knees in the first place, the alarm lights start flashing!
       Protected Areas” are in fact one aspect of the global capitalist scam being sold to us under the label of the ‘New Deal for Nature’.
     Because, in typical capitalist style, this scam has been wrapped up in shiny green packaging and promoted by the well-known WWF, the New Deal for Nature initially attracted little opposition.
      But in recent weeks, thanks to the truth-spreading efforts of the No Deal for Nature campaign and its supporters, support has been slipping away.
     The human rights charity Survival International has been doing a great job of blowing the whistle on what is nothing other than a new phase of industrial capitalist imperialism, aiming to displace indigenous peoples and further exploit Mother Nature for the profit of the usual tiny and greedy elite.
   Warns Survival director Stephen Corry: “The latest idea to be heavily promoted by big conservation NGOs is doubling the world’s so-called ‘Protected Areas’ (PAs) so that they cover thirty percent of the globe’s lands and oceans.
    “This is now their main rallying cry and response to two of the world’s biggest problems — climate chaos and loss of biodiversity.
     “It’s a marketing gimmick designed to funnel even more money to those who have for decades demonstrated their failure to mitigate either climate change or biodiversity loss.
    “Many PAs aren’t really protected at all. They include industrial exploitation — mining, logging, plantations, trophy hunting concessions, or extensive, usually high-end, tourist infrastructure.
      “The locals are thrown out as the land is grabbed by one or other industry, partnering with one or other big conservation NGO.
     “It’s a new colonialism, the world’s biggest land grab, supposedly ‘green’ and supposedly to save the world — a really big lie. As Odette, a Baka woman from Congo, says of such imposed conservation projects which don’t work, ‘We’ve had enough of this talk of ‘boundaries’ in the forest. The forest is ours’.”
     The alert is also being sounded via the World Rainforest Movement, notably in a statement entitled “Protected Areas feed corporate profiting and destruction”.

 Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Green Illusion.

       I like visiting Not Buying Anything site, I usually get some calmly delivered, topical, rational information, built on commonsense. Today I detect a little hint of frustration and anger in his words, that's great by me, we will never sort out this insanity we live in with smiles and polite dialogue alone.

      Could there be a better symbol of the futility of a mandatory car-based transportation system than the latest "big idea" out of the vehicle industrial complex? How desperate, or out of touch are they?
      Yes, here is their answer to the ongoing ecocide brought on partly by powerful interests limiting our transportation alternatives in order to sell more of their killer product.
     No, there will not be a resurgence of trains, or improved public transportation, or more bicycles, or staying home more often, or working closer to where you live. Or working from home permanently.
     Those are all bad, dumb ideas that will "wreck our economy", which by the way, is more important than the climate, and recently, even more important than people's lives.
      The manufactured for profit mandatory car culture will try to push the inevitable implementation of those ideas down the road another few decades, because the real solution is almost here.
     Yes, the real solution coming from the private mobility/ego-stroking industry is... wait for it...

- an electric Hummer!

       It will have a 1000 horsepower motor, and goes from 0 to stupid in 3 seconds.
      Buyers will be able to choose a one, two, or three motor unit, because you can't have too many motors on hand when you go to pick up your groceries, or the kids from school (if the kids ever go back to school).
      You can even take the roof panels off to "let the world in".
     "Look kids, it's the world!"
    The coal-stained air is stinging my eyes, daddy, please put the panels back on."
     Wow! The world is crumbling before our very eyes - but roof panels on an electric hummer! I'm forgetting about pollution and the pandemic already.
    But the best part is yet to come. This electrified hunk of wastefulness on steroids starts at "only" $70,000 dollars. A bargain!
       Who doesn't have 70 grand to throw around these days, speaking of waste?
       Where I live, that kind of money, if anyone actually had it, could buy a piece of land and old house. I guess one could live in the truck, but where would you put the garden?
     I wouldn't be surprised if a halo and green monks robe was included with each electric big truck purchase because the more you drive your new glorified shopping cart, the more you're saving the Earth.
     Because it's green!
    Like baby poop, except green baby poop isn't a sign that anything is wrong, and a hummer definitely is, electric or not.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Losing Battle.

     We have all sorts of theories on this pandemic, but we can be sure that human activity is causing dramatic changes in our planets ecosystem, the results of which we don't fully understand and can't possible predict accurately. What we can be sure of is that we are, by human greed and blind ideology, creating a world vastly different from the one we inhabit at present. Habitats and species disappear, new forms of bacteria and viruses emerge and we have no idea how they will affect us as a species.

      By the illusion of ever increasing growth, we are opening a Pandora's box of complexities, and few are in our favour. Covid19 could be just another new pattern emerging in natures fight for survival against human plundering and destruction of its delicate balance. What we can be very sure of is, in any battle of humans against nature, nature will prevail and the human species will fall. We work with nature as part of it, or we fall as a damaging parasite, sadly we may take millions of innocent species with us.  

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

This or--?

Another thoughtful piece from Not Buying Anything:

      Humanity has some serious decisions to make right now. We should have made them 50 years ago, but we did not. Now we must, because our survival depends on it.
     Will we decide on preserving the Earth, our only life support system, or will we choose something else?

What it comes down to is,
      "You can have *this* or you can have a liveable planet. You can't have both".
With *this* being things like:

- unlimited travel
- personal motor vehicles (fossil fuel or electric)
- billionaires
- industrial food production
- unfettered human reproduction
- ruthless competition
- war/hate
- convenience
- monumental waste
- a disposable society

         I don't think it inaccurate to say that we can have a liveable Earth, or we can have those other things. As much as we have been deluding ourselves, we can't have both.
      American biologist E.O. Wilson said that "nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction."
       That is because nature is everything. In the end, nature represents our survival.
     What do all those other things represent?
     Which would you vote for?
     *This*, or a liveable planet?

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

Last Chance.

 

     We as a species have accepted a system that has bombed countries into oblivion, resulting in millions of deaths, millions fleeing their homes, and an army of maimed and injured. We have eliminated thousands of other species, probably millions, altered the climate to our own disadvantage, and screwed the entire planet. We have taken ourselves the the edge of a precipice and stand looking over the edge. Will we blindly carry on with our journey of self destruction and eliminate our own species, or will we halt and look at what we have done. This disastrous pandemic has offered us an opportunity to take stock of what we have done, where we are and where we could go. This is probably the last real opportunity that we will have to smash the rule book of the old destructive greed driven system and to write a new set of rules. Rules that unsure that we look after our home, the planet, we see to the needs of all our people and respect all life. We must write our past into the dustbin of history and label it as "Our Darkest Hour", and swear never to repeat these disasters.
       Should we return to that destructive greed driven normal of yesterday, we will have missed what is probably our last opportunity to try to put things right with our planet and the life it supports. Our history makes for dreadful reading, our future doesn't have to follow the same script. We would do well to remember, spaceship Earth has no escape capsule.

Grand Plans

In this world where we serve oblivion
with a blind pride and sure conviction
creating plans to land a man on Mars
grandiose schemes to conquer the stars
eyes on horizons ever further afield
believing, to us the universe will yield.
Yet here on Earth we fail to see
a chaotic world of human debris,
our magnificent results thus far
a planet dying from a human scar,
oblivious that our plans sublime
are mere litter scattered in space and time.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

It'll Be Fine!

 

       There is no doubt we are in a very new type of situation, and everybody has their own way of looking at this. Some with despair, some with fear, others with hope, I tend to lean towards the hope side. Though having reached my 86th birthday, sometimes that hope wears a wee bit thin, but it is still there.

      The following is from Madrid Cuarentena City N.2

Everything Will Be Fine.

       It’s the story of a man who falls from a 50-story building. To calm down as he falls into the void he keeps saying to himself:
So far so good.
So far so good.
So far so good…
      But it’s not the fall that matters, it’ s the landing. As in the metaphor of the French film “La haine”, we live in a world that has been condemned to disaster. The continued destruction of the ecosystems to extract raw materials, the systematic degradation of the earth’s crust by monocultures and agro-industry, the expulsion or annihilation of species, the transformation of the oceans in dunghills, the irreversible damage to the ozone layer… has had an exponential advance in recent years. They’ve put us on a path which is more than evident a transformation, for the worse, of life on earth.
     At the same time, we have generated societies that are annihilators of the different, of the enemies of risk and adventure.The perpetuation of hierarchies and authorities, slaves of an economic system that puts the flow of goods above everything else. Profit as the only ideology. In which the virtual imposes itself on reality. The simulation to the experience.
     In recent weeks, campaigns were launched in places like Italy and Spain asking children to draw rainbow posters with the message “everything will be fine” or “andrá tutto bene” and then hang them on the balconies or public buildings. Unfortunately, this illusory and innocent message implies complacency with all of the above, a yearning to return to a reality that is self-destructive for people and harmful to our environment.
     And all this has been accompanied by self-incrimination, considering individuals as guilty agents responsible for the transmission of a virus, when it is clear that diseases do not become pandemics because of the actions of a few people, for that a series of infrastructure conditions (such as overcrowding in large cities, for example), environmental conditions, movement conditions, etc. are needed, and of course they are and were given.
      We assume, then, the orders to stay at home for our own good and that of others, in a paternalistic and patriarchal tone. But when we are forbidden to go on the streets alone, or with the people we share a house with, are we responding to medical or public order criteria?
      Meanwhile, let’s clap on the balconies and hang signs… but maybe it won’t go well. It’s even possible that whatever we do won’t go well. The possibilities for the recovery of the planet are infinite, it is not so much that in this resurgence from the ashes we can continue to exist as a species. But we are not going to deny ourselves the pleasure of enjoying this journey, even if it is the last one. We are going to confront, fight, experiment, imagine… pointing out and hitting those responsible for this reality and moving away with our practices from its perpetuation.
      Another world is possible, said the classic leftist slogan, another end of the world is possible, is the slogan that we have no choice but to adopt, and we do so with passion. Muchxs without hope, but with the flame in the eyes when you are so close that you can look into the abyss.

Translated by Act For Freedom Now.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

"---The Madness Of Men."

         The following is an article from The Tyee, thanks Loam for the link. I print the article in full, as don't think there is a more pressing problem than the survival of our species. We live in an infinitely varied and precarious environment that depends on balance for its survival, we ride roughshod over that finely balanced structure at our peril. The situation described in detail in the article is an indictment of the economic system under which we live. We have developed a system of perpetual economic growth, aimed at profit, with no thought to sustainability or the needs of our people. As humans we seem to have virtually unlimited capacity for self-delusion, and a cavalier attitude to self destruction. The rapid depletion of the planet's finite resources, both living and material, is having, and will continue to have, a disastrous effect on that delicate balance of the ecosystems of our planet, that is all the life that depends on that planet. Sadly, I believe that we will not address these problems as long as we cling to the economic system that is responsible for this impending disaster, namely capitalism. Until we understand that problem, the other problems will only be exacerbated by that greed driven exploitative economic system of capitalism. We would do well to remember, spaceship Earth has no escape capsule.

 

 

          A curious thing about H. sapiens is that we are clever enough to document — in exquisite detail — various trends that portend the collapse of modern civilization, yet not nearly smart enough to extricate ourselves from our self-induced predicament.
       This was underscored once again in October when scientists reported that flying insect populations in Germany have declined by an alarming 75 per cent in the past three decades accompanied, in the past dozen years, by a 15 per cent drop in bird populations. Trends are similar in other parts of Europe where data are available. Even in Canada, everything from casual windshield “surveys” to formal scientific assessments show a drop in insect numbers. Meanwhile, domestic populations of many insect-eating birds are in freefall. Ontario has lost half its whip-poor-wills in the past 20 years; across the nation, such species as nighthawks, swallows, martins and fly-catchers are down by up to 75 per cent; Greater Vancouver’s barn and bank swallows have plummeted by 98 per cent since 1970. Heard much about these things in the mainstream news?
       Too bad. Biodiversity loss may turn out to be the sleeper issue of the century. It is caused by many individual but interacting factors — habitat loss, climate change, intensive pesticide use and various forms of industrial pollution, for example, suppress both insect and bird populations. But the overall driver is what an ecologist might call the “competitive displacement” of non-human life by the inexorable growth of the human enterprise.
        On a finite planet where millions of species share the same space and depend on the same finite products of photosynthesis, the continuous expansion of one species necessarily drives the contraction and extinction of others. (Politicians take note — there is always a conflict between human population/economic expansion and “protection of the environment.”)
       Remember the 40 to 60 million bison that used to roam the great plains of North America? They — along with the millions of deer, pronghorns, wolves and lesser beasts that once animated prairie ecosystems — have been “competitively displaced,” their habitats taken over by a much greater biomass of humans, cattle, pigs and sheep. And not just North Americans — Great Plains sunshine also supports millions of other people-with-livestock around world who depend, in part on North American grain, oil-seed, pulse and meat exports.
       Competitive displacement has been going on for a long time. Scientists estimate that at the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago, H. sapiens comprised less than one per cent of the total weight of mammals on the planet. (There were probably only two to four million people on Earth at the time.) Since then, humans have grown to represent 35 per cent of a much larger total biomass; toss in domestic pets and livestock, and human domination of the world’s mammalian biomass rises to 98.5 per cent!
      One needs look no further to explain why wildlife populations globally have plunged by nearly 60 per cent in the past half century. Wild tigers have been driven from 93 per cent of their historic range and are down to fewer than 4,000 individuals globally; the population of African elephants has imploded by as much as 95 per cent to only 500,000 today; poaching drove black rhino numbers from an already much reduced 70,000 in 1960 to only 2,500 individuals in the early 1990s. (With intense conservation effort, they have since rebounded to about 5,000). And those who still think Canada is still a mostly pristine and under-populated wilderness should think again — half the wildlife species regularly monitored in this country are in decline, with an average population drop of 83 per cent since 1970. Did I mention that B.C.’s southern resident killer whale population is down to only 76 animals? That’s in part because human fishers have displaced the orcas from their favoured food, Chinook salmon, even as we simultaneously displace the salmon from their spawning streams through hydro dams, pollution and urbanization.
        The story is similar for familiar species everywhere and likely worse for non-charismatic fauna. Scientists estimate that the “modern” species extinction rate is 1,000 to as much as 10,000 times the natural background rate. The global economy is busily converting living nature into human bodies and domestic livestock largely unnoticed by our increasingly urban populations. Urbanization distances people psychologically as well as spatially from the ecosystems that support them.
        The human band-wagon may really have started rolling 10 millennia ago but the past two centuries of exponential growth greatly have accelerated the pace of change. It took all of human history — let’s say 200,000 years — for our population to reach one billion in the early 1800s, but only 200 years, 1/1000th as much time, to hit today’s 7.6 billion! Meanwhile, material demand on the planet has ballooned even more — global GDP has increased by over 100-fold since 1800; average per capita incomes by a factor of 13. (rising to 25-fold in the richest countries). Consumption has exploded accordingly — half the fossil fuels and many other resources ever used by humans have been consumed in just the past 40 years. (See graphs in: Steffen, W et al. 2015. The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration. The Anthropocene Review, Volume: 2 Issue: 1, page(s): 81-98.)
        Why does any of this matter, even to those who don’t really give a damn about nature per se? Apart from the moral stain associated with extinguishing thousands of other life-forms, there are purely selfish reasons to be concerned. For example, depending on climate zone, 78 per cent to 94 per cent of flowering plants, including many human food species, are pollinated by insects, birds and even bats. (Bats — also in trouble in many places — are the major or exclusive pollinators of 500 species in at least 67 families of plants.) As much as 35 per cent of the world’s crop production is more or less dependent on animal pollination, which ensures or increases the production of 87 leading food crops worldwide.
       But there is a deeper reason to fear the depletion and depopulation of nature. Absent life, planet earth is just an inconsequential wet rock with a poisonous atmosphere revolving pointlessly around an ordinary star on the outer fringes of an undistinguished galaxy. It is life itself, beginning with countless species of microbes, that gradually created the “environment” suitable for life on Earth as we know it. Biological processes are responsible for the life-friendly chemical balance of the oceans; photosynthetic bacteria and green plants have stocked and maintain Earth’s atmosphere with the oxygen necessary for the evolution of animals; the same photosynthesis gradually extracted billions of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere, storing it in chalk, limestone and fossil fuel deposits, so that Earth’s average temperature (currently about 15 C) has remained for geological ages in the narrow range that makes water-based life possible, even as the sun has been warming (i.e. stable climate is partially a biological phenomenon.); countless species of bacteria, fungi and a veritable menagerie of micro-fauna continuously regenerate the soils that grow our food. (Unfortunately, depletion-by-agriculture is even faster — by some accounts we have only just over a half-century’s worth of arable soils left).
       In short, H. sapiens depends utterly on a rich diversity of life-forms to provide various life-support functions essential to the existence and continued survival of human civilization. With an unprecedented human-induced great global die-off well under way, what are the chances the functional integrity of the ecosphere will survive the next doubling of material consumption that everyone expects before mid-century?
       Here’s the thing: climate change is not the only shadow darkening humanity’s doorstep. While you wouldn’t know it from the mainstream media, biodiversity loss arguably poses an equivalent existential threat to civilized existence. While we’re at it, let’s toss soil/landscape degradation, potential food or energy shortages and other resource limits into the mix. And if you think we’ll probably be able to “handle” four out of five such environmental problems, it doesn’t matter. The relevant version of Liebig’s Law states that any complex system dependent on several essential inputs can be taken down by that single factor in least supply (and we haven’t yet touched upon the additional risks posed by the geopolitical turmoil that would inevitably follow ecological destabilization). read more
       Which raises questions of more than mere academic interest. Why are we not collectively terrified or at least alarmed? If our best science suggests we are en route to systems collapse, why are collapse — and collapse avoidance — not the primary subjects of international political discourse? Why is the world community not engaged in vigorous debate of available initiatives and trans-national institutional mechanisms that could help restore equilibrium to the relationship between humans and the rest of nature?
      There are many policy options, from simple full-cost pricing and consumption taxes; through population initiatives and comprehensive planning for a steady-state economy; to general education for voluntary (and beneficial) lifestyle changes, all of which would enhance global society’s prospects for long-term survival. Unique human qualities, from high intelligence (e.g., reasoning from the evidence), through the capacity to plan ahead to moral consciousness, may well be equal to the task but lie dormant — there is little hint of political willingness to acknowledge the problem let alone elaborate genuine solutions (which the Paris climate accord is not).
         Bottom line? The world seems in denial of looming disaster; the “C” word remains unvoiced. Governments everywhere dismissed the 1992 scientists’ Warning to Humanity that “...a great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided” and will similarly ignore the scientists’ “second notice." (Published on Nov. 13, this warning states that most negative trends identified 25 years earlier “are getting far worse.”) Despite cascading evidence and detailed analysis to the contrary, the world community trumpets “growth-is-us” as its contemporary holy grail. Even the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals are fixed on economic expansion as the only hammer for every problematic nail. Meanwhile, greenhouse gases reach to at an all-time high, marine dead-zones proliferate, tropical forests fall and extinctions accelerate.
        Just what is going on here? The full explanation of this potentially fatal human enigma is no doubt complicated, but Herman Melville summed it up well enough in Moby Dick: “There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.”

Not Buying Anything - Still Legal!

         Consumerism is the drug that keeps this insane system going, consumerism is the idiotic process whereby we suck the planet dry, just to fatten the parasites that control the self destruct system under which we live.
        One of the many sites I enjoy visiting is "Not Buying Anything", when I visit it, it is like opening a window in a smoke filled room, you suddenly get a breath of fresh air.
       This latest piece is just another such, breath of fresh air.

"This isn't about your stealing anything. It's about your not buying anything."

        The system makes it very difficult to not buy anything, but it is still legal. They can't actually force us to be consumers.        Capitalist interests have pretty much wrapped it all up - you have to pay for everything. Some cities have even made it illegal to sleep outdoors, meaning you are going to have to pay someone to get off the street. What if you can't afford what they are asking?       Pay to sleep. Pay to eat. Pay to drink water. Pay to move. Pay to stand here. Pay to park there. They are always making it easier to buy and pay for things. Pay up, be imprisoned, or die. Pay more while you make less. Sick and tired, you try to break free.       Harvesting rainwater is illegal. Governments use satellite imagery to find, and tax, your backyard garden. Building codes make it impossible to build your own tiny home. When you are down to living in your car, you find it is illegal to sleep in your parked vehicle in many locations.       However, resistance is not futile. People in hyper-consumer systems have lived successfully without money all together. It is a full time job to resist so actively. The payoff is not being complicit in the sickness that is making our planet terminally ill.        Consumerism, and the ecocide that it is causing, is what should be illegal. It is clearly immoral to try to kill Mother Nature, and this heinous violent crime has billions of victims. Perhaps this crowded planet should have new laws concerning taking more than ones fair share of Earth's gifts.      Imagine if security staff thanked you for not buying anything on your way out of the store.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Food For Thought!!

      Most rational people agree that we humans have had a tremendous impact on our home, the planet on which we live. Most would also agree, that impact has done tremendous damage, and the damage is on going. At what point is the damage non-repairable? 

From Not Buying Anything:

      What if scientists are right and the planet's systems really are under threat of collapse, or are already in a state of collapse? What if humans were the major cause of that?

      Based on an evaluation of more than 1,000 previous studies, a new meta-review by an international group of 18 scientists suggests the Earth is perilously close to a tipping point where resource consumption, ecosystem degradation, climate change, biodiversity loss and population growth will trigger massive changes in the biosphere. 

- From: Scientists Tip 2025 for Possible Planetary Collapse

How would one live if this were true?

     Would we continue with the economic system that is the root cause of all this damage, and continue to devour ourselves into extinction, or would we start to dismantle this system and structure our communities and society in a sustainable fashion, creating a system of co-operation rather than competition, seeing to our needs, and not the self-centred desires of the greedy? At what point will we make that decision? Now, or when it is already too late?

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk