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 

This System Of Human Suicide.

       There are many reasons to strive for the destruction of capitalism, its exploitation of people, its ever widening gap between rich and poor, the fact that poverty and deprivation are its by-products, the fact that the wealth created always flows up to the few at the expense of the many, its endless wars and the resultant death and misery. Then there is its drive for ever increasing growth and its plundering of the earth's resources to feed the insatiable corporate greed, and many more reason can easily be found. However, at the top of the list of indictments against the capitalist system must be it is destruction of the natural environment. This avoidable destruction is responsible for the extinction of countless species on the planet, this in turn will lead to the inevitable extinction of our own species, the human. Why persist with a system that we know, if it continues, we lose the essential diversity of the planet which will obviously see the demise of our own species.

       There are alternatives, it is possible to create a system built on sustainability, mutual aid and co-operation, we have enough resources at present to see to the needs of all our people. All we need is the will to start to put in place the building blocks for such a system at grass roots level, while destroying the foundations of this present system of human suicide. However, time is running out, we are reaching the point of now or never.

This from Not Buying Anything:

      “Our planet is now in the midst of its sixth mass extinction of plants and animals — the sixth wave of extinctions in the past half-billion years. We’re currently experiencing the worst spate of species die-offs since the loss of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.  

      Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural “background” rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate we’re now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate, with literally dozens going extinct every day.”

Source: The Extinction Crisis, Center for Biological Diversity, biologicaldiversity.org

       Without insects and other land-based arthropods, EO Wilson, the renowned Harvard entomologist, estimates that humanity would last all of a few months.
        Even if this were the only problem facing us (it isn't), it would be enough to prompt some serious questions about where civilization is headed, and then consider some serious solutions, like radically changing the way we do everything.
      You can't separate the way we live from the challenges we face, like Insectageddon. There are better ways of doing things that respect all life on Earth, and if we are to save ourselves, we will need to adopt them, and soon.
       First insecticide, then ecocide, then humanicide. As they go, so go we.

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

Time For That Grand Plan.

       Today, because of the economic system that dominates our planet, we seem to stumble from one disaster to another, from one crisis to the next. Our lords and masters' only concern is maintaining their power, their corporate buddies only concern is the next end of year balance sheet, all else is pushed aside. The planet and all its life forms, including us, are sacrificed to these ends. With this sort of prevailing thought, where does that leave our kids and grand kids? Are we prepared to allow this to continue, knowing that we are on a road to total destruction, that could be avoided, how long will we sit and watch vandals destroy our home?

Our long term plan is like our short term plan, only longer.

As usual some food for thought from Not Buying Anything:

         Humanity should think about developing a plan longer than the next election cycle. We don't need 5 year plans, we need 5,000 year plans. Preferably two of them.
          A solid 10,000 year plan would go a long way toward figuring out where we want to go with this petri dish known as Earth. I love the idea of thinking ahead 7 generations, but how about extending that to 500? Supposedly we are the smartest creatures on Earth (and the known Universe according to some), so we should be able to get our big brains together and do this thing.
        In order to reduce the chance of repeating the thousands of years of blind bumbling that we have been experiencing so far, we should come up with an overall plan for humans (and everything else) on our shared petri-planet home. Surely, considering the importance of my proposal, we can get some consensus towards a set of common goals and outcomes.
       Like survival at first, looking at our increasingly grim short term prospects.
       Then we can proceed from there and start planning for things like ridding the environment of human-created radiation produced during our misguided experiment with nuclear energy. That alone is a project that will take thousands of years. We should have one of those already, shouldn't we?
       Next in The Big Plan we can look out over the next few hundred years. Where do we see ourselves as a species? What do we want to achieve in this time? I for one would like to see something more substantial than the planet's first trillionare.
       A lot can happen in one year, let alone a hundred or a thousand. We should have a plan to help direct where we are going. Many of us can imagine a better world, and if we can imagine it, we can achieve it. We can put it in the plan.
      As an ex-teacher I know the importance and the challenges of planning. It will take a different way of thinking to extend our imaginations past the next election, or our own brief existence. But we do care about our kids, don't we? And their kids? And theirs? And so on all the way up the line?
      We have already had many thousands of years to get this thing right, and it feels like we aren't quite there yet. Let's get The Big Plan started.
     How do you see humanity developing over 10,000 years? The glorious possibilities are endless.

      Of course if we are to embark on that 10,000 year plan, the first step must be to completely get rid of capitalism, in all its destructive and ugly forms.

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

A Radio Active Ocean!!

        It seems odd that the UK is pushing ahead with its nuclear energy plans when other countries are moving away from that source of energy. We are still reeling from the Fukushima disaster, which to this day is still pouring radio-active waste into the Pacific, with no end in sight. Of course what drives these decisions is never the welfare of the people, but corporate greed and state power. The facts about nuclear power are that we can't fully estimate the cost of construction, we have no idea of the cost of, or a proper method of, decommissioning, we can't give any guarantee that we will be able to use that piece of land again. Even on economics, it doesn't make much sense. On this basis it seems irrational to pursue that path, but pursue it our lords and masters will, unless we do something about changing the system. 

Wikipedia:

      Hinkley Point C nuclear power station (HPC) is a project to construct a 3,200 MWe nuclear power station with two EPR reactors in Somerset, England.[4] The proposed site is one of eight announced by the British government in 2010,[5] and in November 2012 a nuclear site licence was granted.[6] On 28 July 2016 the EDF board approved the project,[7] and on 15 September 2016 the UK government approved the project with some safeguards for the investment.[8] The plant, which has a projected lifetime of sixty years, has an estimated construction cost of £18 billion, or £24.5 billion including financing costs.[1] The National Audit Office estimates the additional cost to consumers under the "strike price" will be £29.7 billion.[9]

 On Fukushima:

       The 7.4 magnitude quake hit on Tuesday, just off the coast of Fukushima, which was also the site of the 2011 9.0 scale earthquake.
The Japan Meteorological Agency have said that this new quake was actually an aftershock from the previous one, and have warned that further aftershocks could follow.
       The 2011 quake was catastrophic in it’s destruction, killing 15,891 people, with a further 2,584 missing. It destroyed countless homes and ruined people’s livelihoods.
       The fear that these quakes will cause a huge problem in the nuclear power sector is very real. About 30% of all Japan’s power comes from nuclear power stations, many of which are located on the coast where the earthquakes tend to strike.
       The 2011 earthquake catastrophically damaged 3 of 6 nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi facility, the extent of the fallout from this has never been fully identified.
       One repercussion of this has been the pollution of radioactive waste into the sea. It is thought that hundreds of tons of radioactive waste has been pumped into the sea every day ever since. The nuclear waste has penetrated the Japanese food chain and has been detected in food over 200 miles away.
       In 2015 Akira Ono the chief of the Fukushima power station said that there was no known way of decommissioning the power station and stopping the waste leakage.
      Officials have claimed that while there is a definite leakage, they say it is not doing any actual harm to the environment, but the stats claim another story.
        American scientists have been studying what is effectively the ‘death’ of the pacific, where marine life is dying off at an alarming rate. Krill, one of the key players in the sea-life food chain has been found washed up in vast numbers, and bodies of seals and sea lions are repeatedly washed up on shores.
        USA Today ran a story of starfish being washed up that had seemingly turned to ‘mush’, the reason to which they said left them ‘baffled’. It has also been reported that a staggering 98% of the sea floor is covered with dead sea life.
        It’s time people woke up to the reality of what is happening. In our lifetime we have already seen so many species become extinct on land, and now humans are destroying the sea, too.

Germany:

      Within days of the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, large anti-nuclear protests occurred in Germany. Protests continued and, on 29 May 2011, Merkel's government announced that it would close all of its nuclear power plants by 2022.[5][6] Eight of the seventeen operating reactors in Germany were permanently shut down following Fukushima.

      In September 2011, German engineering giant Siemens announced a complete withdrawal from the nuclear industry, as a response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster.[8][9]

America:

 -------however the Energy Policy Act of 2005 was passed in 2005 which aimed to jump start the nuclear industry through financial loan-guarantees for expansion and re-outfitting of nuclear plants. The success of this legislation is still undetermined, since all 17 companies that applied for funding are still in the planning phases on their 26 proposed building applications. Some of the proposed sites have even scrapped their building plans, and many think the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

further dampen the success of expansion of nuclear energy in the United States.

Italy:

      However, following the 2011 Japanese nuclear accidents, the Italian government put a one-year moratorium on plans to revive nuclear power.[3] On 11—12 June 2011, Italian voters passed a referendum to cancel plans for new reactors. Over 94% of the electorate voted in favor of the construction ban, with 55% of the eligible voters participating, making the vote binding.[4]

And Australia, the world's third largest producer of uranium, has no nuclear power plants.

Australia currently has no nuclear facilities generating electricity. Australia has 33% of the world's uranium deposits and is the world's third largest producer of uranium after Kazakhstan and Canada.

  

Mutual Aid Or Extinction

       That cornerstone of anarchism, mutual aid, a very natural attitude in humans, hindered, thwarted, stifled and denied under the rules of capitalism.  However, it is also necessary for us to solve the problems that humanity face today, and in all probability, our only chance of survival. Capitalism creates poverty for the many, widens inequality and rapes the planet in search for resources to exploit for profit for the few. Mutual aid benefits all who participate and wider afield. If we continue with capitalism, we will continue with the injustice, inequality, poverty and an ever increasing myriad of wars and other "crises", the end product being a ravished environment and a high possibility of species extinction. It seems such a simple choice, it is odd that we don't grasp it with both hands and enthusiasm. Capitalism must go, it must be seen as humanity's darkest hour, it must be destroyed and written into the history books as a precautionary lesson for future generations. We are capable of helping one and other, we enjoy doing so, we have the ability and the resources, we are capable of creating that society where the foundations are mutual aid, co-operation, free association, sustainability, seeing to the needs of all our people, and the environment we depend on for survival.

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