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G20: Nature Doesn't Do Bailouts
Climate Camp in the City allows us to come together and learn about the problems of global warming, so we can take action
There is a broad consensus across the political spectrum that we need to reduce carbon emissions. We finally agreed on this basic first step. Now, if we could only get past the next big hurdle soon enough, we might just have a chance of stopping the current trajectory: business as usual, which is driving full steam ahead into climate disaster. While the need to reduce emissions is accepted in mainstream opinion, we still lack the momentum and the political will to take action and make the necessary changes.
Part of this inability to act is caused by the fact that our economic system is based on infinite growth yet reliant on a planet with finite resources. We are hitting the geophysical limits of the earth's ability to provide us with stable conditions. The economic system drives climate change because it is dependent on using huge amounts of energy from the burning of fossil fuels. Green products cannot solve our problems due to fundamental problems with the system itself. This economic model is unsustainable and will collapse. And while financial collapse is painful, ecological collapse is terminal.
Action on climate change is also delayed because of an ideological commitment to solving every problem through the market. The financial crisis demonstrates how markets are subject to corruption and speculation that creates instability for the system as a whole. Meanwhile, this faith in markets has lead to the perverse policy of carbon trading as a means of dealing with climate change. Carbon trading has not only failed to reduce net emissions, but has given polluting industry the ability to make enormous profits from selling these emissions' "rights". Traders speculate on future price of the "right" to put emission in our atmosphere. Carbon trading is yet another financial bubble waiting to pop over our heads - but nature doesn't do bailouts. Furthermore, carbon trading is a distraction from real solutions to climate change, which will leave fossil fuels in the ground. We won't reduce emissions by trading in theoretical savings; we will reduce emissions by not emitting.
If those with political and economic power were serious about climate change they would be planning for energy descent. We would be exploring options for dramatically lowering our energy use and building the capacity for communities to thrive in a post-fossil-fuel era. There are credible strategies to make this happen, but they get virtually no political or financial support. Both grassroots efforts such as transition towns and larger-scale measures such as wind farms are thwarted by a lack of political will to move forward in a systemic manner.
We need to learn from the financial crisis. I am involved with Climate Camp because we create space to investigate possibilities for structural change on the level that could plausibly reduce emissions enough to get us out of this crisis. I am going to Climate Camp in the City on 1 April because I want to demonstrate that the solution lies in people coming together, learning about the problems, and taking action.
We know what we needs to be done: no new runways, no new coal-fired power stations, a real deal in Copenhagen: so let's start to make it happen. I am going to the 24-hour "flash-camp" to take part in the workshops, attend the ceilidh and have some fun with a committed group of people. The stakes could not be higher: we need to delegitimise political and economic systems that are destroying the climate, and build a movement that can offer something better.
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14 Comments so far
Show AllFine little article. Go, gal, that's great.
"...our economic system is based on infinite growth yet reliant on a planet with finite resources."
That's the sad truth. All we need to know.
Before I comment on climate change here, I find the title really has a lot to do with the environment, habitat, and eco-systems, and NATURE for sure doesn't do bailouts on those. As long as we keep cramming more and more people on this planet and with the now evil economic systems in play, then you and I may very well be looking at what is going to be the next disaster to hit the planet. There is a study group that has done research on this for several decades now and it has determined that what has been taken from the planet to provide those outstanding returns for the financial quacks of the world has now passed the limits of being able to retain those fantastic levels of growth. In actuality, what they consider growth is distruction as the massive consumption that the developed countries use from those natural resources cannot be replaced by the planet, be it plant, animal or minerals at about a 20% deficit. And the only thing that is actually growing now are all those sinks(where pollution and wastes are congregating) and all that is creating or bringing ever faster, disaster at both ends, the source and the dump.
So as the changing climate keeps making havoc around the globe, it isn't the only problem we will have to contend with.
I really liked this article and want to know why it isn't on the front page of every newspaper in the world?
Because so many people are so damn human centered and supremacist in thinking(the Zirin article being just one example, paraphrasing: "it was like we were dogs, or something that is nothing." Imagine if someone wanted to highlight injustices done to the chinese by saying: "it was like we were gays, something worthless.").
Because the root cause--human belief in its own importance-isnt seriously examined, you cant easily get at the heart of something like climate change.
And its probably not enough because humans are self destructive.
They take Nature for granted.
Disease is bad, but war is ok because humans are making the decision.
Even when Nature gives a road map, like the fact that fruits and vegetables are the colour of the rainbow and meat is the colour of something else, humans still dont get it.
And even for solutions, curbing human behaviour is the last resort.
They prefer to try finding the answer the hard way-through research.
Always assumed that the only and bets way to solve a problem created by human action is to find a new countering action. Not inaction.
All the industries we have that pollute come from action. A factory farm isnt easy to make. It takes effort to make something as destructive as that.
Some people try to say stopping meat eating is like trying to avoid stepping on an ant. But meat eating takes a huge amount of effort.
And gardening is easier than ranching.
So Nature does do bail outs in a sense--its just that humans, as the stupidest species on the planet, reject them.
..."financial collapse is painful, ecological collapse is terminal."
Every credible source, from NGM to IPCC to Hansen to Wilson/Drury/Chapman, warns us that climate doesn't 'change' so much as it "breaks".
The hour glass to watch is the Greenland ice sheet---it's max was 3000m thick, 2700m was laid down since the last climate break 110,000 years ago. Our GHGs are 50% above any historical level and rising. When the sea rises enough to make a lot of soggy shore and the sun changes that to water vapor, and the vapor supercharges the storms that re-position the water to the poles and mid-latitudes as ice and snow, the system that could have, but didn't respond, will be gone.
Regretably, the "system" is doing the only thing it can---concentrate wealth---because the people who benefit from it think they will be able to make it through by owning everything. So, when you and the 1,435,798 folks behind you wander up to their gated community and are told to go away...
Nature doesn't do bailouts - it does however do mass extinctions.
And quite frankly, that is where we are heading.
Perhaps, that's as it should be.
When people discuss climate problems, every seemingly related issue is touched. Climate has to do with the environment, biological habitats and eco-systems. It is connected to pollution, industrial growth, and profit. People are concerned, dynamic and acting. Systems stifle legislation, sustainability and living quality.
And then we have the benefactors of this turmoil.
A new class of profiteer has emerged, either in it for pure profit (and a whole ‘industry’ is emerging) or for political benefit. The new system, where a huge, very diversified group tries to make a profit from ‘producers’ is called CARBON TRADING. At last, the banksters, bullshititians and cronies have found another very comfy commodity to exploit and freeload from and keep the rest of the population in struggling occupation: CARBON DEBT.
NOT Carbon Credits which will be traded, but Carbon Debits.
Remember that the core of our morose system is DEBT itself (see the first half of Zeitgeist Addendum http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7065205277695921912 ). Carbon Credits are Debt For The Masses.
The scams get more and more elaborate, the truth gets more and more fragmented and skewed.
Climate Change is happening, but don’t believe all the political and corporate media hype. Causalities and climate science with integrity point away from CO emissions as the cause of Climate Change: http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=4&Itemid=32
Population growth, pollution, deforestation, agricultural soil destruction and destruction of ecological systems will make human future hell.
However, Carbon emissions bear unlikely causality to Climate Change. Carbon ‘Credit’ Trading will do nothing to better the planet but will be a feast for systemic parasites like banksters, polititians, corporates and polluters. It’s the Scam Of The Century.
"...our economic system is based on infinite growth yet reliant on a planet with finite resources."
Or decision-making is based on finite wisdom yet exploited by infinite profiteering.
Causalities of Climate Change: http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=4&Itemid=32
Here is a link, you will have to copy & paste it to the address bar, that is about as up todate on the dynamics of the ice age cycles that are the current BOSS of our climate.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ctl/clisci100ka.html
I know the government lies to us 24/7 but this what other researches have determined also. Check out the slide shows where indicated.
Funny how articles like this one draw so few comments, even here on CD.
Maybe it's because the topic isn't perceived as being important?
>>>NorthWind wrote: Funny how articles like this one draw so few comments, even here on CD.
Not sure about others, but I don't comment as much on the topic of climate change (or potential climate disruption) lately, as I couldn't decide if the deniers were paid shills or pathetic brainwashed souls. Occasionally I point out that one cannot be serious about addressing this crisis without looking at the role of meat production. Google "Livestock's Long Shadow" please.
People mostly talk about transportation - but a whole lot of activities may have to be let go - in my opinion, they include the so-called leisure and entertainment activities that consume a great deal of energy and resources (fossil fuel, electricity, water) to maintain - these include golf, artificial ice and snow for skating, hockey and skiing, even football (the American version) - after all, these activities were not mainstream about a 100-years ago - so there's nothing sacred about them. The kind of development that Dubai is pursuing (golf courses, indoor ski resorts and so on - in a desert) is nothing short of criminal. Now Asian countries are trying to attract tourists by advertising cheap golf, when many of the countries have severe water shortages. But the elite in every country can get away with anything and the poor can go to hell.
Talking of the elite, recently I read a small book called "How The Rich Are Destroying the Earth" by Hervé Kempf (a French journalist) - he makes the point that unless the rich are made to change their ways, there is little hope - because he makes the case that sooner or later, their extravagant indulgences find a way to "trickle down" to the classes below. I see that in the case of leisure activities (driving around in RV, owning a fishing boat and dragging it around during vacation, golf, etc.) and in food (regular meat consumption) - these were available only to the aristocrats in the past, but now almost anyone can "enjoy" them. Of course, we didn't all suddenly become super-efficient and super-productive to deserve all this - we just found ways to plunder the earth's resources more efficiently. While the average Joe can feel excited about having these new-found goodies, the rich and the super-rich have moved on to owning their own airplanes and yachts. And now there are companies developing technologies that will allow "space tourism". Does anyone think of what all this will do in terms of resource usage and what it will do the climate? How vain and vulgar it is to pursue such "business ideas" when so much is at stake? So, unless the rich and the super-rich change their ways, not much is going to change. And I don't think those folks have time to read comments here on CD.
AMERICANS ARE TOO COWARDLY TO PROTEST.
Europeans show us how REAL human beings act.
I actually think we're not going to do the mitigation thing until it gets biblical on us. About then it will be too late but thats where it is.
Look up an article titled: 'Game Over on Global Warming' published a few years ago. Methane releases in Siberia and Canada in the next few years will put the planet over the top.
Humans: the only self extincting species.
Maybe this is why we can't find signals from other intelligent life forms. They bloom and drown in their poisons.