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Well, I don't see why Stephenson says he's not an environmentalist, nor a radical, but otherwise--right on. Except he wants a tide of young people with little to lose to rise up, and it may be mostly that, but plenty of us greyer heads will, and should, be beside them.
Im a gray head and I would rise up in a heartbeat
Right fucking on. i'm so sick of not even being able to get anyone to stop and talk about WHAT THIS REALLY MEANS.
I'm happy to read an article that expresses my outrage over these kinds of Whitewashing. The Corporate State and it's Courtiers want you to only spend One Day on subjects like this. Any more and it could threaten their status quo.
Just as Cornel West said: "MLK wouldn't want a monument, he'd want a Revolution!" - so too are things like Ribbon Campaigns & Earth Day total BS! Their goal is to minimize overwhelming catastrophic issues into shallow One Day Observances and nothing more.
Furthermore, Noam Chomsky has pointed out that One Day Protests are little more than symbolic gestures, much less things like Earth Day and MLK Day. Massive ongoing General Strikes, Sit-ins, BDS, and to quote Chris Hedges: "Anything that fucks up the system" is our only hope.
"Hope has two beautiful daughters, Anger & Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to make sure they do not remain this way"
Like, apparently, a lot of people who post comments on Common Dreams, i'm not young...
Immediately following the first Earth Day in 1970, scientist Barry Commoner wrote "The Closing Circle" specifically in response to Earth Day. i read the book when i was 12 years old.
Commoner pointed out that celebration and protest would not actually address the extremely serious ecological crisis. He asserted that "regulation" would not effectively address the crisis. He stated that what we needed were laws, forbidding the economic and industrial practices that disrupt and destabilize ecosystems and the processes of life. And what we needed were movements that challenge the established systems and order of things, not symbolic protests or celebrations. Not that he found anything "wrong" with celebrating the ecology, or protesting bad practices, but that actual transformation does not arise from celebration or protest, but through exercising power and making actual changes.
And, in 1971, he included a chapter about fossil fuels, atmospheric carbon, and global warming. Because he was a scientist, looking at the basic chemical and physical properties of the atmosphere. The concept and reality are actually not controversial, but have been made so through the activities of "interested parties" in the energy sector, who exercise power in the political and social spheres.
So ultimately, as Frederick Douglass famously points out, the question remains: How do we exercise power?
Too big to fail already has all power locked up. Too big to fail OWNS our nation lock stock and barrel very much including the government. Maybe too big to fail fossil fuel firms can be persuaded to demand of Congress a carbon tax phased in to increase price of coal-fired electric 10% to start, another 10% each year up to 70%, revenue split between making up to both utilities and fossil fuel firms for prohibitive tariff effect of tax and financing leases of renewable energy and efficiency equipment to utilities with lease payments of 10% per year of amount financed divided into monthly installments used to buy fossil fuel replaced by the equipment as mineral rights. Short run, fossil fuel firms should do same as business as usual. Long run, lease payments will be somewhat more than fuel replaced. High price for consumers, but lesser evil than losing civilization to global warming.
Once enough fossil fuel is replaced by renewable energy to significantly reduce emissions, carbon tax must be joined by a tax on energy regardless of carbon footprint to force austerity and to raise revenue to finish buying both renewable energy equipment including replacement parts and replaced fossil fuel as mineral rights.
Spoken like a true member of the corporate, republican, greedy, Jerk
I am a Machiavellian. I agree with webwalk that the problem is how to deal with power and those who now wield it. I feel that even though I do not like the powers that be, their power must be respected enough to work either with or around their power rather than attempting to defeat it in head on war. Too big to fail corporations NEED MONEY to meet their sole and sacred obligation which is to maximize corporate profits. They do NOT need to earn that money by making such a mess of climate as to ruin farms and civilization. War is even more quickly destructive of farms and civilization than business as usual with fossil fuel firms. Our military leaders are right that replacing fossil fuel with renewable energy will do more for our national security than anything they can do with weapons. My guess is that BUYING cooperation from too big to fail fossil fuel firms with all the revenue from a carbon tax joined by an energy tax when the tax base of the carbon tax is exhausted is more likely to succeed in averting catastrophic climate change than fighting a war against them.
That's the question, what do we do? There is SO MUCH TO OVERCOME
Amen!!! Shut the whole damn thing down. Cut into their profits. Mario Savio was right.
Nothing. There is nothing to overcome. This is your life. It's the life of human civilizations. It's the life of everything that lives or will live.
If prayer gives you comfort, pray.
Total non co-operation. Begin in the cities because of the numbers/concentration of people: Rent strikes, do not buy anything but co-ordinate with activists in rural areas to bring in food; don't pay any of your bills and keep money in escrow accounts, don't use transportation other than bikes and walk; tie-up the court system and use it as a bully pulpit, fill the streets and jails if need be.
yea, he said it during his speech at the Green Party. He drops a couple F Bombs. It's great. Here is the link: The context for the quote begins at the 40:25 mark. and the exact quote is at the 42 minute mark. It's a response to raising the Minimum Wage. "I'm for anything that Fucks the System Up. And [if] raising the minimum wage fucks them up, great."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
It means that everything that was ever born dies or will die including our civilization. There is nothing radical about that or anything radical to be done about that. That's life.
There's a difference between dying, as everything does, in the natural order of things, in a larger process of life that absorbs and continues - versus all dying at the same time through straightforwardly unnecessary and avoidable omnicidal activities.
The entire point is that we don't know how to make green energy in sufficient quantity to serve the needs of 7 billion people. Actually we don't don't even know how to make enough energy using all sources so that people don't die on a massive scale.
The world would have to return to a pre-industrial population of 1 billion and life would probably still suck. There is no science to do this now and we'd have to abandon finding any to help us.
Convince 6 billion people to commit suicide and we might have a shot.
We are going to have to figure out how to live in a warmer world. We should try to do the best we can to avoid wasting energy, develop better energy sources and deal with the consequences of human civilization.
There is nothing radical about that and it is being done.
No nuclear power. No fossil fuels. You go first. Nice knowing you.
I see that reading the comments, I am one of the minority in this group, a young person. Hold your shock, please. Not everybody in this generation is obsessed with the latest iPhone or celebrity. I realize that I'm growing up in a world that is creepily similar to that of one of my favorite novels, 1984. Big brother continues to watch, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, all while living conditions seem to be getting worse and worse. The thing that irks me though is how the government and news media treats these issues. There are major crises going on throughout the world and CNN runs a story about the White House Easter Egg hunt. It's despicable, it really is. These stories tell the truth, but who listens? A small, tiny community of "activists". And what do they say when they hear us? Like Wen said perfectly, "stop causing unrest, go back to your paltry celebrations & put the wool back over your eyes." I am realizing now more than I ever had, the meaning of "censorship". Like the classic Fahrenheit 451, the government is trying to spread these lies all while trying to cover up the truth. I'm sick of it. Being young, I sure as hell don't want to grow up in a world like this. It is incredibly frustrating, and a feeling of helplessness settles in, like lambs waiting for slaughter. That is all.
Dear Alex---
None of us greyhairs want to live in this soulless world, nor do we want to dump all its ills on the shoulders of your generation to solve, as it was dumped onto ours when we were your age. As long as I'm ambulatory, I will stand with you and all generations and confront, without violence but with all the will in my being, those who would destroy the only place humanity has to call home.
Don't feel hopeless. As a youngster you are our hope. I am glad you see the "fluff" for what it is. Share that with your friends.
Don't stand for the slaughter, stand against it. Everytime you see a lie in media point it out. That's your "job" as a human. We oldsters are doing it as well, but we're tired and our numbers are dwindling.
Share with your friends about the major issues in the world today on Facebook and the other sites you visit. It's not all cat memes. Make your presence mean something. Discuss issues don't just press like buttons.
Don't be afraid to say how you feel. I am following you. I hope to hear more from you. You're well spoken. I hope this isn't the only venting you have in you. Your first post on CD and you have 11 up votes..pretty marvelous. We don't give up votes easily here.
Alex, You are cosmic powered biology manifest as human blooming with cosmos, surfing Big Bang at life speed. Never forget. You are a sum of waves that began 14 billion years ago. Totalitarian control freaks always pose as democracy, yet the soul of democracy is to focus distributed intelligence and knowledge rather than control it. This is the information age and we are just now seeing first glimmers of Aquarian dawn. Our job now is to live as a mature specie and solve problems bigger than any individual or war mongering president can ever see. Help democracy evolve, consider a seven branch model, experiment, try anything you can think of to help earth heal along with human survival. Make it fun enough that our soldiers and police will come home and protect real democracy instead of immortal corporate monsters which feed off the human spirit and life itself.
War mongering presidents. War is such an obscene waste of people, resources and the environment, and it is nothing more than armed theft on a grand scale.
You're not the only young person feeling afraid for the future, as a 20 year old, I have been finding more and more people with similar ideas the more that I look for them. We need to branch out and connect to each other, strength is always fortified in numbers for better or worse. Talk to your friends about these issues, organize events in your community, bring groups of people to protests, we can do our part to disrupt business as usual, because that business is going to be our downfall. Have hope at the very least, the number of my friends I have seen who are turning their backs on the corporatocracy has been surprising, and with enough people on that track, we can create some surprises of our own for all the greyhairs out their trying to protect the status quo so their elite children can rule us they they are doing now. Resist!
What, this all sounds a little extreme, i mean swearing and carrying on so, you'd think the entire planet was at stake. And who allowed such extremist words be published? Surely we cant go around hearing this, it might scare people.
I'm beginning to think that the sleeping masses will never be "scared" by this most important of emergencies; they are more scared of the Devil Socialists wanting to take everything they own at metaphorical gunpoint. (And I always thought that was the job of the capitalist overlords with the blessing of the government.)
Frederick Douglass, Independence Day address, 1852.
Let's imagine he's referring to latino semi-slave field workers created after the Democratic Party Clinton administration and the fast track of NAFTA, or the rainbow colored slaves that will be created by democrat Obama if he rams through TPP on a fast track :
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty and unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade in solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy–a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of this Earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than the people of these United States at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotism of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival ...
The human capacity for self-deception is as deep and broad as the capacity for stupidity that Einstein made so famous.
Those other despotisms didn't have The Bomb.
;-})
Garrett, what a stinging, accurate indictment of what is left of this nation. Very well said...
I like this guy's radicalism, and I think he's probably right. We're screwed. The plutocrats of the world will never change their ways if asked politely. And they don't seem to really care that they're dooming a large majority of our species to a pretty unpleasant future -- and the large majority of other species to a non-existent future.
It is too late to prevent significant climate change. We're trapped in a methane-driven positive feedback, and we're probably looking at 4 degrees C warming in the next 90 years. That's catastrophic. Everyone reading this knows what the consequences are.
I'm totally demoralized about this, by the way. Like many people, I feel helpless to do anything that will make a difference. I have a young daughter. And I teach atmospheric science at a small university in northern New England, so at least I get to talk to students about this. I've also given many public talks on the subject. But it doesn't seem to make any difference. The rich and powerful are happy to let us talk about it, and then they're happy to ignore every word.
In the meantime, our mainstream media argues about a War on Christmas, or whether Obama is a socialist. They loudly accuse their ideological opponents of treason, or at least an insufficient level of patriotism. Wall Street thieves loot the public treasury, and we let them. Nero fiddles as Rome burns.
Oof.
Curious cuz of your proffession, what do you think of the chemtrails?
Are they really spraying harmful stuff or not?
I watch 6 planes spraying 4-5 x a week and I can smell the stuff they are spraying.
Hard to find the truth.
What do you think?
I've looked into it -- and haven't found much there. (I know this isn't the answer you wanted to hear.) I have friends who work for the National Weather Service in support positions for aviation at an FAA facility. Another friend (from my Unitarian Fellowship) once brought the "chemtrail" thing up with me -- such and such a time at such and such a place. I followed up on it with my NWS aviation friend. I asked him why there were so many jet trails over northern New Hampshire on that day. Turns out there was a much more mundane explanation. Simple contrails, and they were vectoring aircraft up and over an approaching cold front, rather than through it, on their way to the Midwest. This has been the pattern. Each time I've looked into it, I've found that there wasn't much to it, So, bottom line: This is a red herring. Contrails are a result of dumping cloud condensation nuclei and water vapor into a cold atmosphere at high altitude. There's some basic physics at work there that I understand fairly well -- I teach a course in atmospheric thermodynamics and am completing a textbook on the subject. Sorry if this isn't helpful but that's what I believe (based on evidence) to be true, websites not withstanding.
These are not contrails. These are miles long chemtrails and the planes are flying in random patterns outside any airport flight path.
You ask for information then completely deny its validity. Did you just want an argument or are you truly that deluded?
I can deny its validity because what I am seeing isn't what was explained.
They aren't altering flight paths because of the weather. We have one airport and those jets don't even leave contrails.
They fly back and forth across the whole area criss crossing the sky. I am not the only one seeing this happening.
Who asked you anyway? Seems you ate the one arguing.
See the comment below yours
Do your own research, then butt out.
Hey beaglebaily I'm with ya bud ,I watch chemtrails damn near every day. My brother in law does also. He has a huge amt of photos and so do I Gov't can use chemicals to move clouds make it rain Block the sun etc. They don't give a damn who they kill with their experiements. etc. You get the picture......Q
They are really working at it here in the Pacific Northwest! Every time we get a clear day, pretty soon the tick-tac-toe game in the sky begins and pretty soon, we are overcast again. Yesterday, we had a heavy overcast all day, then there were a couple of sunbreaks in the afternoon. Looking up through the holes there were...you guessed it...chemtrails and several planes at work.
The Plutocracy has stated that they need to rid the world of about six billion people who are using up their natural resources, and a half-billion serfs are more than enough to serve them.
Barring a nuclear war, how would you rid the world of six billion? Poison the aquifers? Poison the air? Introduce chemicals in nano particles, to be absorbed into the bodies of people and animals? Poison and acidify the sea? Develop GMO products with deadly side effects and little nutrition?
It is all going on, folks, right here on Planet Earth.
;-})
That is what is happening here too. Wake up to a sunny day then the planes criss cross the sky and it is cloudy. and these aren't the normal clouds either.
I wouldn't put it past them to be doing what you wrote.
the geoengineering website has some great articles and vids.
And on that site, one of the vids say they take the weathermen in a back room and tell them not to report on them.
Funny how our weather report will say sunny, yet most of those days are cloudy.
They need our rabid disgust! They need our condemnation and impolite, in your face demand for what is right.
I agree with the sentiment, but I'd express it differently. Unless we are ready to make EVERY day Earth Day, then we should abandon the concept altogether. Loving Mother Earth every April 22nd while exploiting her the rest of the year is way beyond hypocritical.
I had a similar reaction to this article, but what I was thinking was yes, let's make every day "Earth Day" (which for me is already the case) but instead of saying "fuck Earth Day", how about reclaiming/rebranding it as Earth First Day, dedicated to direct action and civil disobedience?
Earth day is just another marketing opportunity today.
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