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Technorati‘We Are Heading Towards an Abyss’
U.N. chief tells 150 governments that time running out on climate change
GENEVA - U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon told a meeting of some 150 governments on Thursday that time is running out for a new climate deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
![[UN chief Ban Ki-moon (2nd right) talks during a press conference in Longyearbyen, Norway, September 2. The world is accelerating towards a climate catastrophe, Ban has warned, urging rapid progress in talks to cut emissions and tackle global warming.
(AFP/Jacqueline Pietsch) ]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/bankimoon_abyss_climate.jpg "bankimoon_abyss_climate.jpg")
The Copenhagen talks in December are looming and little real negotiating time is left "to resolve some of the most complex issues," the U.N. secretary general told the World Climate Conference. "We need rapid progress."
Only limited progress in the climate talks has been made for the meeting to hammer out a new accord to replace the 1997 Kyoto Proto
Meanwhile, climate change is advancing.
"Our foot is stuck on the accelerator and we are heading towards an abyss," said Ban, warning that climate change could spell widespread economic disaster.
He noted that he had just visited the Arctic and was alarmed by what he saw.
"The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth," Ban said. "It may be ice-free by 2030."
Not only is the Arctic serving as a warning, the warming there is accelerating global climate change, he said.
"Instead of reflecting heat, the Arctic is absorbing it as the sea ice diminishes, thus speeding up global warming," Ban said. "Methane, trapped in permafrost and on the sea bed, is escaping into the atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide."
He said the increased melt from the Greenland ice-cap threatens to raise sea levels and alter the flow of the Gulf Stream, essential to keep Europe warm.
The climate conference in Geneva is aimed at providing ways for the world to cope with global warming that will occur because of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, regardless of what the Copenhagen meeting achieves.
78 Comments so far
Show AllI ran across a marvelous response to all this the other day.
"Earthships" - sustainable housing done by people around a guy named Michael Reynolds. Apparently they're quite functional without any outside water or power or with very little, and in many cases residents can grow all or most all of their own food on the premises.
Apparently people with health and initiative can build them themselves with plans for relatively little money, equipment, or training, largely out of cast-off items.
I do think I'd credit these folks with more guts and ingenuity than they claim for themselves.
Whatever else the dwellings are, they sure are gorgeous! They look comfortable, too. There's something amazing about viewing hothouse plants careening all through a living room while the ice and snow of a New Mexico winter cling to the window outside.
Some are remarkably reasonable in price, given their unique design and construction.
Gee, off the power grid, most food on premises, maybe even free from the bank, constructible with relatively little equipment or up-front costs.
Probably should have taken off the sweaters for the photo-op.
come on, that's a bad ass sweater.
http://www.globalonenessproject.org/videos/whatwoulditlooklike
I wonder if, just maybe, we are on the precipice of a great collective psycho-spiritual awakening, and the current planetary eco-crisis, energy-crisis, water-crisis, etc. are catalysts to help us all Wake Up?
It is best not to surrender to pessimism and cynicism. I remind myself of how little I know, how little WE know, about this life we are living.
I don't believe the answers will come from the UN, US or other governments. The way I see it, people need to envision and begin to live according to a new model: community living, growing food together, living simply and with relative self-sufficiency. Turn off your TVs, cancel the newspaper, and find a good country to live in (preferably non-fascist), and join with others who want to live in community. I realize many are not able to do this at present, due to karmic commitments. But the more that do it, the better able we will be to endure the coming times of economic/political/climatological instability.
I wish you all many blessings.
Is the only way we learn the hard way???
"U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon told a meeting of some 150 governments on Thursday that time is running out for a new climate deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions"
Shouldnt Ban Ki-moon address the U.S. instead of all the others combined ? Maybe he didnt want to offend his keepers.
Is it not interesting and miraculous how the presence or absence of multi-national money leads to either blindness (in its presence) or healing from same (in its absence)?
The same can be said for the philosophies of self-delusion known as Darwinism; scientific, social, and cultural.
Poet
‘We Are Heading Towards an Abyss’
Abyss? WHAT abyss? We don't see no stinking abyss!
Don't worry cuz' you will -- just a matter of time.
Reincarnation is for me and so life after death is.That being said there are reasons that my ass is on this planet at this particular time and is climate change going to interfere with my mission here?Dying is a part of life and that is accepted by me but life here is like a chapter in a book and I want to read and finish the chapter naturally and without outside hinderence.Tony
Egotistical nihilist; you are an example of the self-professed walking dead, who today help usher in, without a murmur of concern, care or conscience, for all those not yet born or even reincarnated, a legacy of scornful neglect for our planet. The veil of tears you project, of a world not worthy of yours or others slightest attention, will in the end be reason enough for future generations, to dig up all ours remains and scatter them to the wind.
Ban said. "It may be ice-free by 2030."
Given corporate greed, Humanity has not a snowballs chance,,,
Too bad, it was a nice world while it lasted.
Whew, I wasn't sure which abyss he meant.
What's the sound of 150 government leaders yawning while checking their Swiss bank account totals on their iPhones?
ouch
There's no point in hysteria. We can't stop the world and get off at the organic vegetable farm and live forever on the endlessly sunny uplands of na-na land.
There are six billion people down here, and all of them want food, and most of them would like a Ferrari too. So what do we do?
Not much I'm afraid. Humanity is reactive. We will encounter disaster, and those few of us left (not me I'm afraid) may learn from our mistakes. More likely; we'll carry on as before, building, destroying, breeding and killing. It's what we do.
Was na-na land a suggestion?
If people want food, farming would seem a logical response. And land does not produce less because it's farmed organically. Granted, we can hardly limit ourselves to organic farming any time soon, seeing all the land already contaminated by methods in increase profit/investment, not production/acre.
I'll take any Ferraris you don't need, thanks. Like most people, I could hock it for something of value.
If history serves, some will learn more and others less, no? Most of us are only idiots part-time. Not all of us who breed also kill, or kill under identical circumstances. Not all who build destroy.
How and how much of each makes all kinds of differences, and the world changes because one does something, and it changes because one does not.
I'm sure you are right, but maybe with a little more food and a few less ferraris next time. If they get a next time.
My item about Ban Ki-moon being a hippie was meant as sarcasm against the science trashing right and Coulter -in case anybody misses the not at all deep tongue in cheek.
'The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything, save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift toward unparalled catastrophe'said Albert Einstein.
Good news: There is a way to get from where we are to where we need to be.
Bad news: It means everyone saying the same thing at the same time. " Freedom to farm."
Organic agriculture is the only, immediately globally available, affordable proportionate response to climate change. Carbon sequestration and monoterpene production are just two of the reasons to end Cannabis prohibition, but there are many more. Global warming & global broilng (increasing UV-B) need to be addressed in every possible way.
Cannabis is the only crop that produces food and fuel from the same harvest, sustainably. The argument against biofuels, (supposedly inducing food insecurity) is worse than wrong -- it's backwards. When Cannabis is added back into the equation the most nutritious seed on Earth will be available everywhere, inexpensively.
Time is the limiting factor in the equation of survival. Every spring planting season that passes without the benefits of Cannabis agriculture manufacture and trade is an opportunity that's lost forever.
Good news: Essential Civilian demand for Cannabis is provided for in Executive Order 12919. We have nothing to fear but the atmosphere itself.
Here's a glimpse into one possible future, if we choose peace instead of war.
http://www.youtube.com/projectpeace
No less than a criminal negligence lawsuit against the "drug war dinosaurs" is needed before next Spring. The only reason we can't grow industrial hemp in the United States is because law enforcement claims that they can't tell the difference between marijuana and industrial hemp. That's a self-serving lie that's crippling the most "Gaia-therapeutic" industry stream on the planet, at the bidding of the chemical industries and other symptoms of the economics of punishment.
If we achieve extinction, it will be because our generation lacks the courage to shift its values in the face of the coming synergistic collapse of spirit, environment, economics and social evolution. All are connected. All are dependent upon the integrity of the others. Our economic system has been detached from the spirituality of organic farming.
Cannabis is an essential rotational tool for organic agriculture. The 60+ cannabinoids protect the plant from myriad assaults and pest infestations, and can be used to protect other crops .
How bad do things have to get before all solutions are considered? There are several time lags to consider, that are hardly mentioned.
Cannabis seed is nutritionally unique, complete and essential. The freedom to farm "every herb bearing seed" is the first test of religious freedom. If we reclaim the Constitution, then the First Amendment ought to be enough to rediscover our individual right to grow everything we need, in abundance.
www.cannabisvsclimatechange.com
projectpeace [at} yahoo {dot] com
projectpeace, hi.
You mention cannabis as food. I'm not well versed on that, but you don't mention marijuana's vast therapuetic, myriad medicinal uses, I'm versed on those! And they certainly augment the truths you elucidate. If every family in America grew a vital, healthy garden, chickens, vegetables, marijuana, fruit, cats, dogs and a goat-how empowering would that be? Cut dependency of big agrifood (oil), trucking (oil), and retailers (utilties).
But, God help us, some people smoke cannabis for Earthly Pleasure; forgetting the admonishings of Our lord to have No False Gods Before Him. Which is why I get high AFTER I pray.
Weed makes me wanna eat, but not eat my weed, though some do, usually as a confection.
There is HOPE. Lucitanian alluded to it. A Revolution in America. IF it happens before humanity's condition becomes terminal, and it will be close, a top-down redistribution of wealth in the US could create a country with the will and the sense to affect the direction of humankind as a whole.
HOPE is the dethroning of the power-elite in the US. We will be the 1st capitalist country to go this route-how soon will determine the fate of people the world over.
joe
The reason for 9-11 and the Patriot Act in US, 7-7 and anti-terror legislation in UK was most likely that the revolution is inevitable as the institutional systems continue to break down. But the breakdown is not restricted to America, its global, and those individuals and groups who already have learned to live and be happy on a hand to mouth basis in a least sophisticated and structured society, making least demands on their environmental resources will do best.
“And the meek shall inherit the earth”…?
Hello Lucitanian, although the breakdown is global, if Marx is right, Revolutions in the future, as in the past, will happen within national boundaries and subject to their specific economics.
An interesting confluence would be if the US had hers in a few decades, the 1st capitalist industrial state, as Mexico also in a few decades had hers, from a repressed agricultural, near fuedal economy to nascent capitalist industrial.
9-11 was an obvious inside job. Beautiful demolition work from an engineering standpoint. The Mossad and CIA and MI5 got wind of another weak plot aimed at The Towers, they thanked Allah, then proceeded to potentiate it exponentially instead of stopping it!
Although Israel has no qualms about unilaterally attacking anyone w/o notice to the US, a Pearl Harbor that would infuriate Americans to the point they'd back occupying Iran would be the ultimate Zionist-Neo dream. I fear a copy of a Sunburn, an SS-N-22 sinking a US carrier. Fired by Iran. Of Course.
Marx probably never imagined Banks running countries, and multi-national corporations having their own security militias, or able to call up the military forces of states to further their interests. But then again he should have seen it coming given the history of the likes of the Hudson Bay Co. or the East India Company which held powers beyond states.
And when I think of the Lisbon Treaty being accepted by Ireland, I can see plenty reason for pan national revolution in Europe as the dictatorship of Brussels bureaucrats takes hold, under a dying economy spanning Athens to Helsinki. In fact I remember truck drivers and fishermen blocking harbours and roads in 4 or 5 countries coordinating their demands for subsidies when fuel prices went through the roof.
As Webwalk wrote above, in many ways the boarders are being breached by migrants, the internet and ideas, spreading to leave no place remote. Anti war, Anti Nuclear, Anti WTO, Anti G8/G20 NWO, Demos and scathing critics in the free media of the internet following weakened governments that cling together for support.
So yes, perhaps there is always hope, and individuals do come together and organize for change. Viva la Revolución.
i do think it is significant that very shortly after the Seattle December 1999 WTO resistance that more-or-less effectively brought together in concerted action: students; greens; workers; the WTO representatives from the "Third World"; and myriad other activists for justice, to successfully block action by the WTO to expand and enforce their "free trade" agenda (along with other specific actions in other parts of the world and cross-border organizational activity to attempt to give coherent voice to the new movement, all in the context of imminent ecological and economic instability)... giving rise to hopes that a successful new cross-sectoral and worldwide movement against corporate hegemony and all forms of oppression might actually be gaining traction, including inside the USA... 9-11 and the "War on Terror" followed.
Imagine this dumb Secretary General believing the world's scientists instead of Ann Coulter.
Then there's that weird name of his.
I had this Ban Ki-moon guy pegged right from the start.
Nothing but a hippie with epicanthic folds.
Exactly. He's just a globalist intent on one-world government, aided by liberal useful idiots. And I bet he doesn't homeschool either.
Trillions will be made by the rich on climate change. There will be no stopping it. Already in some boardroom somewhere, there's a group of real estate kingpins already carving-up the spoils. The shipping industry and the pentagon have already figured it out what they'll get out of it.
Look on the bright side. Once the Northwest Passage is open year round, the value of Arctic real estate should soar. As an added bonus, all those nasty polar bears will have been drowned or starved by then.
Methane.
Joe
Yea as the oceans rise and the coastlines continuously move inland, mega property developers will be able to sell beachfront properties, over, and over, and over...
While we all sit around and argue over who's at fault, emissions continue to rise and the climate change momentum is underway. The Hummer era has yet to show up- right now apparently we're just seeing the impacts of emissions from 30 years ago. We are so fxxx-ed, and our children are really fxxx-ed.
Sorry but the problem is not the cause or effect of the individual people but the conservative nature of giant institutions.
Even when a president is elected on a ticket of “Change”, in fact there is very little to nothing that he can affect, despite any honestly good intentions held. To become president requires the selling of the soul and a compromise of any ability to change, in deference to all the component parts of the institution that support the “supreme power”. The greater and more powerful the institution is the greater its momentum in a certain direction, and the greater the tendency for its parts to reinforce that direction rather than to “change”. The “people”, even at the top, are relatively smaller and weaker, more restricted and replaceable the bigger the institution gets. They are figureheads of the institution not drivers.
Nature does not compromise, yet corporations and governments talk about a “negotiated solution” based on their power to influence each other and frame “solutions” in economic terms relevant to their continuity, which is irrelevant to nature’s direction.
Unfortunately even in the comments here people see the solution in terms of violence against individuals rather than a resignation to the need for clear understanding of the inevitable break-up of any institutions that cannot adapt to the necessary changes, and the changes that will be forced upon us inevitably as individuals.
What I believe Ban Ki-moon and some others are saying, is that as far as governments and global institutions are concerned there is a “bad scenario” which they have to immediately adapt to or a “very bad scenario” a little later to which they will not be able to adapt. Even if the captains of these giants supper institutions, private and public, with all hands on deck turn their wheels to port, these great ships have such momentum that they will likely travel straight onto the rocks anyway and rip out there double bottoms before they can find safe passage. Yet they are still discussing what they might do, given the right incentives!
Turn the vessels or abandon the ships of state and industry and let them sink? Have the individuals with or without life vests and the small groups in life boats a chance at sea? Well Ban Ki-moon answers to governments that in turn answer to global corporations, so one can hardly imagine a rational, non-bias, and honest assessment to this question from them.
"Sorry but the problem is not the cause or effect of the individual people but the conservative nature of giant institutions."
Hi,
i appreciate much of what you write, but to say "the problem is not... the individual people but the... giant institutions" raises the question of where the institutions came from. People created them and operate, feed and maintain them.
Obviously the development of the "giant institutions" that dominate our society is a complex process spanning eons of human cultural and technological evolution, but it is problematic to attempt to draw a clear separation between "the individual people" and the "giant institutions" to assign responsibility for our ecological predicament strictly to the institutions.
We could go around and around with books worth of argumentation about this. Many people have very firm beliefs, with solid reasoning on various sides. i don't have a simple response, but i think it is important to face our ecological predicament with strong focus both on institutional accountability, and individual accountability.
It has been a complex iterative process, in which humans develop tools and systems to meet human needs and desires (including selfish and confused desires), and then our systems and technologies shape our experience and our consciousness. Institutions like the military or the corporation did not just come from nowhere, but emerged from this process of human cultural evolution, and to effectively address the power these institutions have over our lives, over our society, and in our world, it is important to keep in mind that humans developed these institutions out of our humanity.
These are difficult themes to discuss. i do not seek to JUSTIFY our predicament - neither to JUSTIFY what institutions do, or their effects on our lives, our consciousness and our culture - nor to JUSTIFY what individuals do.
But just as the argument is made on the one hand (let me caricature) that humans are an evil blight that the Cosmos will be better off rid of...
The argument is made on the other hand (again to caricature) that individuals are mere puppets of evil institutions that control our society.
These themes take many forms throughout history. Are humans inherently good, but deformed by social institutions that warp our lives and minds toward violence and depravity? Are humans "blank slates" that can be shaped to any consciousness or behavior by the influences of society? Are humans inherently selfish greedy monsters only held in check by the restraints of religion, the family, and the threat of imprisonment? Are humans created in the perfect image of the Divine, but "fallen" under the influence of evil and doomed to lives of suffering and death? Is the evolutionary process (of life, and of culture and consciousness) driven by random chance or by some purposeful intent?
It may seem abstruse to bring up such questions that have always challenged human consciousness, in the context of facing climate disruption and the use of carbon compounds in our energy and transportation technologies. But such questions are embedded in our responses to climate disruption. What is driving our behavior? Who's to blame? Where do we best focus our attention and our effort?
i believe that the sources of our behavior are deeply rooted in our humanity, AND deeply rooted in our institutions. i believe we need to focus intensely on individual behavior and accountability, AND we need to focus intensely on institutional behavior and accountability.
And i believe that maintaining BOTH these focuses, in our minds and in our lives and in our conversations with each other, is key.
Thank you for your obviously considered response and I do not disagree.
You write “it is problematic to attempt to draw a clear separation between "the individual people" and the "giant institutions" to assign responsibility for our ecological predicament strictly to the institutions.”
Of course you are right but the institutions have autonomy all of their own and effectively mould the people to protect the institutions’ interests and continuity above the individuals….
But given the present circumstance, if the institutions do not react appropriately, eventually they too will become dysfunctional (some might say they already are), collapse, disappear and we will be left with people and smaller groups building new adapted institutions, attempting to survive anarchy and progress into a new civilization.
As long as institutions can stay in tact by reacting apparently appropriately they can dominantly influence the actions of the individuals.
I don’t see this as a question of good and evil but more action and reaction, group think Vs. individual knowledge and awareness, nature and the consequences of our actions or non action individually and/or institutionally. Institutions are only able to react slowly while the individuals though less powerful can adapt more quickly.
“Are humans inherently good,.. "blank slates" etc….?” Yes, all of those and far more all at the same time. It’s the variety that makes for progress and schizophrenia but basically despite us having to repeat history several times in a trial and error method there does seem to be a general direction towards not making the same mistakes again which caused us pain the last time if we can help it; a kind of Pavlovian civilization, that points us towards being “better humans” eventually in some slow evolutionary sense.
“Where do we best focus our attention and our effort?”
Institutions must make the necessary changes or be torn down and rebuilt. Most institutions are presently deluding the individuals inside and outside their organizations to avoid necessary change. As the attempt fails and the penny drops with individuals things change. (War on Terror, 9-11, financial crisis, economic collapse, take your pick)
Thank you again for helping me to hone in on this concept in my own mind with your comments.
Here is an example of a life boat:
Muhammad Yunus: Financial Meltdown Is Chance to Build More Inclusive System
Grameen shows poorest of poor can be creditworthy
by Ambika Ahuja
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/09/03-5
We just need to stop. Stop burning coal, stop driving, stop, stop stop. Maybe then we can save ourselves from creating a climate that we cannot live in.
But of course, such a great percentage of humanity (especially in the U.S.) - do not even know what we have created at this point. They are oblivious. They think that inventions and "other people will take care of it all".
We know they won't stop. Every one thinks they need to go to the mall, stay in fashion. I was listening to a CEO or something, of a famous jean company. He was going on about how and why the company's jean are green. Ha!!! I'll bet there are enough jeans in this world to fit everyone here more than once. What the hell...
- and I still do not understand how electric cars are going to save us. Won't that add to the electricity load over all? That sounds like a great solution... Let's burn more coal so we can drive electric cars...
theinitiate says:
"We just need to stop. Stop burning coal, stop driving, stop, stop stop. Maybe then we can save ourselves from creating a climate that we cannot live in."
absolutely, and we must do so together, and with preparation...
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...we're going to need lots of locally available food, so let's get those gardens growing...
we're going to need to share housing, so we'll need to dispense with the current model of 'success': that of the independent, money-minded career pursuer...success must come to mean able to coexist with all living things, exchanging only what is needed for mutual survival...
we're going to have to cease industrial activity, chemical alteration of the planet, and electrical use...to dismantle current infrastructure and clean up toxins and waste...to replenish the natural world to the best of our ability, given the potentially irreversible changes we've already initiated...
we are going to have to become wise, elegant, humane animals...philosophically centered on planetary health and very different, more spontaneous, sexual and loving, human interaction...
there will be conflict, so we'll have to band together...hopefully, many of those who would be on the side of the status quo will abandon their roles and join those attempting to live the new way...drones will probably not...start thinking about how you could arrange your life to fit in with such a plan by September 22, 2012...
we have to start making major changes, and soon, and together, and globally...
If everyone would just lay down their weapons and abandon their hate there would be no more war. If we could all just get along....walk away from modern consumerism and get back to the garden.....oh, no water where you are?.....top soil depleted and poisoned? Forests ravaged by insects and fire? Farmlands inundated? Roving bands
of anarchists threatening to rape your women and take your food? Holy conflagration, Batman! We are first going to have to have a real spiritual awakening, an epiphany as a species before any healing can occur. We will have to take the inner journey sooner or later. It is perhaps what all this apparent drama
is leading us to. Small steps....do the next right thing. Get in touch with your Mother, the Earth. Plant some seeds. Nurture them to maturity. Reap the fruits. That is the rhythem, the cycle of life. With your hands in the soil and the wind and sun and rain on your back, rejoin the human race.
Forget the power elites. Focus on the people. They want public transport. If it is free the private auto and sprawl can be reversed.
http://freepublictransit.org
Expect the corporate financed astroturf lobbyists whom ginned the various lies & obese mobs of the on-going health care mess to brand Ban Ki-moon with a multitude of inaccurate invectives once the time has come for the Oil business' turn to save their "right" to make obscene profits while the rest of us suffer from their depredations.
Somehow I think his words are going to fall on deaf ears. Like always the rich and powerful who control everything will not listen because their greed will blind them. I don't hold out much hope for future generations.
Plenty of wingnuts think Climate Science is a big "socialist" conspiracy (of scientists and politicians, I suppose) meant to increase the power of Governments, increase taxation, and keep them from making their proper profits.
It would be nice to see these people die off from their own stupidity, but unfortunately my children need the same planet that they misunderstand.
Nature is Cruel - to save my descendants, we have to save these morons as well.
Nature is neither cruel nor fair nor nice nor angry nor anything else. Left alone it balances life to fit circumstance. We didn't leave it alone. We forgot we were part of it. We are being forcibly reminded.
As for the morons, they threaten all life on the planet. We are in the critical stage now. Die or live. As someone says somewhere in some damn fool religious book, if someone is coming to kill you, get up early and kill him first. The morons are outliers: in nature they would be killed or abandoned to die. In nature the officers and board of Exxon would be killed, as would people like Inhofe and the other petro-shills in Congress and other organizations. If civilization is to survive, these people need to be pushed out of the way. Morality has become a death-dealing luxury.
Hmmm. Depending on one's definition of morality, that may be just a bit too broad. Certain elements of moral elightenment, even including some enlightened self-interest, may have a valid place in shaping human activities.
Enlightened self-interest would seem, in the circumstances, to dictate getting these people out of the way. If evidence-based argument won't do the trick, and apparently it will not, given what I've seen, then large sticks are in order. We are close to, or at, that point where conventional morality dictates we die because of the morons mentioned earlier, or we get rid of the morons and salvage civilization on some acceptable level. Being nice to James Inhofe and the other petro-whores falls under conventional morality. Survival morality dictates kicking them out of the sinking lifeboat.
(Secretly, I would probably enjoy kicking Inhofe under any circumstances, just for the sheer pleasure of kicking a complete moron. But don't tell anyone...)
Isn’t it interesting that Americans and Western Europeans find it unfathomably abominable that a Muslim would strap on a few kilos of explosives and projectiles and blow himself and everyone around him to hell because he believes that such horror and the fear it causes will serve a purpose to dissuade infidel westerners and their collaborators from invading, occupying and polluting his country, ethically, morally and physically?
Yet the same westerners will, blithely and with little resolve or self criticism, continue down a path which will inevitably lead to killing himself and, not only the people immediately around him/her, but possibly billions, and causing immense suffering to all mankind as well as eradicate thousands of other living species, possibly causing a mass extinction phenomena, and all this not for any high and noble cause, not for freedom and self determination, not in the name of a deity, or out of blind faith but simply out of greed, ignorance, and the laziness to take responsibility for the problem by changing priorities and life styles.
Yes, true terrorism begins in Tokyo, London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Washington, and Tel Aviv etc.. But most of the people, who use the power of their institutions for making greater wealth, even if they wanted to, cannot re-write the programmes by which they or their institutions function. Like those giant banks and insurance companies, the institutions are too big to fail, to big to even turn around, and too big to stop killing us all in the process.
Perhaps in a tortuous comparative way it becomes easier to understand the terrible and simplistic act of the suicide bomber in face of these institutions taking over his world by force and in the name of “civilization” and “progress”.
Never before has a peoples' revolution been so needed nor have the corporate and government institutions been so well girded and prepared to protect themselves against the direly necessary changes demanded!
*S*P*L*E*N*D*I*D*L*Y* said!
We see desperate people willing to die for the sake of their families and friends being called 'cowards' by arseholes willing to end all life on Earth rather than give up their upholstered lives of big cars, jet travel, imported foods, and sweatshop labor.
Yes, all very well taken!
Industrialism and the imperialism that it fosters are weapons of mass destruction.
Can we just blame the elites themselves instead of blaming the weapons they happen to be wielding against the people on a given day? I'm afraid if you ban one type of weapon, the elites will simply switch to another type.
Sioux Rose
LUCITANIAN: Powerful post!
Sioux Rose
deleted/double posting.
It is time to quote the big book:
New Testament, "Apocalupsis" (Greek name of this part of the Bible meaning 'unconcealment', or 'revelation'): 11, verse 18:
"And the peoples were in uproar,
and Your wrath came,
and the time has come for the dead to be sorted [or: judged];
for Your servants, the prophets, and for the saints and those who fear Your name, small and great alike, to be rewarded;
and the time has come to destroy those who destroy the earth."
**************
The phrasing of the citation is drawn from and based on the following sources:
"The New Jerusalem Bible" (Garden City: Doubleday), p. 2040,
and
Eberhard and Erwin Nestle, and Barbara and Kurt Aland, et alii, "Greek-English New Testament" (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft), p. 654.
"...the time has come to destroy those who destroy the earth."
Yes, but you neglect to quote the preface to this passage three verses prior which states:
“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ; and He will reign forever and ever.” – Apocalupsis 11:15
This is significant because it shows that the passage is not concerned primarily with preserving the earth, which Apocalupsis 21:1 says will pass away (no matter what the kingdom of the world tries to do to prevent it). Rather, the passage is concerned with the kingdom of the world—as conceived by the United Nations and other globalist aspirants—finally becoming indentured to the kingdom of Christ, who appears with great power and glory from Heaven above, not from earth below. The message is clear: this present earth has nothing to do with the final destiny or salvation of humanity.
This is not to say that we should not be good stewards of the earth. We should. But this blog tends to have its priorities inverted. We worry too much about earth, and not at all about Heaven. We need to get this right side up.
Check out Michael Crichton on Charlie Rose on this issue here:
http://www.sillyconvalley.net/crichtonglobalwarming.html
Rob,
Heaven is the lazy person's excuse for a life poorly lived. It also gives the laggard an easy out.
P.S. I couldn't give a rat's patootie what Michael Crighton says.
I did not neglect to quote the passage you cited; I was simply interested in the one I cited.
A couple more things, if I may:
1) It is not my intention to get involved in biblical exegesis. Generally, that does not interest me, and it does not for a number of reasons. The most important of these reasons is the hermeneutical fact that most utterances in the Bible, and their relations to each other, are semantically underdetermined. The cash value of that remark is that the Bible necessarily gives rise to a conflict of interpretations, and, with some groups of people, as we know, the conflict does not remain confined to interpretations, but it turns into repression, censorship, persecution, incarceration, and physical violence.
2) I live on Earth, and as far as I am concerned that is my only dwelling, and there won't another one after that.
3) As for the word 'heaven', it offers little solace to this soul. (Something to ponder: how does one verify statements about heaven?)
Thanks for the hard-hitting, practical measures to deal with the catastrophe. "Don't worry", that's the ticket. Well, sure...um, eh...of course...(cough) we have to be good stewards of the earth, ahem. But heaven beckons. Onward to heaven!
Personally, I've long thought spending eternity on a cloud somewhere, playing a harp, without a care in the world, would drive me completely bonkers after a few hours.
On the other hand, a peaceful coexistence with all living things on this planet, while able to enjoy all the natural beauty it has to offer, seems infinitely more appealing.
The Capitalist system thrust upon the World by the U.S. is the noose around humanities neck, as we stand poised ready to leap into oblivion.
I for one apologise to one and all for my part in this suicide begging way of life.
I was a child, in England during WWII, even then at a young age I saw the utter madness resident in mankind.
"So long it's bin good to know yah"
Oh! by the way.The EARTH will do just fine. It wont die. Only those who need this environment will. So we don't need to save the earth, just our own sorry arses.
The non-living parts of the earth were never alive, so of course thay will never die. But, there are credible scenarios where all but the most simple life forms do get wiped out. It nearly happened during the P-Tr extinction event about 245my ago
if only the simple forms of life get wiped out humankind still has a chance.
huh? did you get that backwards or am i not getting the joke?
Good one.Tony
Globalized competitive "free enterprise" is a wonderful thing. The race to the abyss between the war-based and petro-based industries should provide some very interesting endgame spectaculars as the former defends "freedom and democracy" against the rising sea levels of the latter. That's assuming, of course, that another major asteroid or comet doesn't arrive first with even more spectacular results.
At my age, I'm rapidly reaching the conclusion that humanity's lifespan shouldn't and probably won't exceed my own by many decades in any case. The planet itself will survive for another few billion years and the cockroaches may eventually witness the rise of a dominant mammalian species with slightly more common sense and foresight -- or not.
The USA "shouldn't and probably won't" exceed your lifespan or mine for more than a few decades, but I prefer not to condemn the rest of humanity to such a hopeless future. There are some good people out there and some healthy patterns they are trying to establish. I am not yet willing to give up on humanity, though I gave up on the USA a long time ago.
Fair enough, although there would appear to be some serious doubt that the U.S. and its primary Middle East partner, with its "Samson Option", will permit the rest of humanity to outlive their own demise.
I agree. That is my great worry. I do believe that if those nations did not exist, the human race would have a very good chance to see the year 2100. But with them, the odds are not nearly as good.
I wonder what the cockroaches will think of the Mona Lisa. Probably they'll find it a tasty tidbit.
Good imagery.
Joe
It doesn't matter hpw many countries decide that it's time to fight global climate change as long as Wall Street is running the US government and the US military.
Greed is absolutely blind.
q
So, don't depend on national governments. They are too easily controlled by the fossil-fuel industry. Go local. Join the movement for free public transit.
http://freepublictransit.org
Greed is absolutely blind...
...and has NO CONSCIENCE.
Gluttony is not so bad though, so long as you don't overdo it.
of course, if you don't overdo it it's not called gluttony. It's called eating.