It is not a crisis. You can object to deforestation of parts of the still vast Amazon, but to call it a 'crisis' is to give drama a disagreement about a political agenda that Bolsonaro has departed from, but which the 'international community' wants to sustain.
You can also object to Bolsonaro and still see that his promise was to put Brazil before the "community" of world leaders and their ambitions and preoccupations. They have turned a sovereign decision into a 'crisis' because he refuses to defer to them.
Again, to observe that this is the dynamic does not mean you have to agree with Bolsonaro or his policies that have allowed the clearing of forest. The point is that the international order took its reach for granted, and has been tested. More tests will follow.
Many are coming to the realisation that the "environment" has become the vehicle for this remote "community", which asserts itself over others, in developing and developed economies, in its own interests, against democratic control over economies and lives.
That agenda has been advanced by inventing 'crises' at ever stage of its development. Its acquisition of power has required the dramatisation of one 'crisis' after another, starting with the population and resources myths of the late 1960s.
Earlier this month, a US academic fantasised about using military power to prevent Brazil's government making its own decisions about the management of its land. foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/05/who…
He asked: "What should (or must) the international community do to prevent a misguided Brazilian president (or political leaders in other countries) from taking actions that could harm all of us?" ...
And "how far would the international community be willing to go in order to prevent, halt, or reverse actions that might cause immense and irreparable harm to the environment..."
He said "In effect, the international community would be subsidizing environmental protection on the part of those who happen to possess the means ..."
And "...it might also give some countries an incentive to adopt environmentally irresponsible policies, in the hope of obtaining economic payoffs from a concerned international community."
The term "international community" was used four times.
It is the "international community" which is on fire, and it is this which upsets those anointed ones who are part of it.
It is notable that it is Macron, who faces a domestic crisis -- yes, and *actual* crisis -- who asserts an environmental 'crisis' to sustain his place on the world stage, speaking to the "international community". What little domestic democratic legitimacy he has is fading.
The more the "international community" and its members assert the "environment" as the basis for international relations, the more we can be sure that the "international community" has detached from their domestic populations.
That is not climate scepticism. It does not say "burn the forests". It is to say that politics precedes claims about the environment, which needs to be understood before environmental problems can be understood.
Blowhards like Dawkins are no help in that understanding.
Unhinged, desperate, degenerate, hollow politics tries to reassert itself and reinvent itself through seemingly "environmental" imperatives.
Greens want the radical transformation of society & the total reorganisation of the economy, requiring the regulation of lifestyle, dismantling of democratic politics, deindustrialisation & degrowth...
But they think that people who disagree with them are driven by ideology.
Greens think that people who disagree with them should not be allowed on campuses, should not be free to publish or broadcast, should not be able to take part in politics...
Because they believe people who disagree with greens are the ones driven by extreme ideology.
Ideology is one hell of a powerful drug.
But it's not people who fail to worship Gaia who are its actual victims.
You don't see climate sceptics vandalising cultural artefacts.
The RCP's "green physician toolkit" is precisely the same patronising nonsense as the WHO's toolkit of the same name, discussed here a few months ago...
The two main ideas behind the toolkit are A) that doctors routinely make "unnecessary" decisions that have environmental impact, and that B) they should use their authority to advance an ideological agenda.
Currently, Britain's average electricity demand, not including peak demand, is equivalent to the average output of a wind farm with a footprint of 20,538KM^2.
But that is before we consider the electrification of everything -- transport, heating, and so on.
And then we need to store a vast amount of power, perhaps using hydrogen, for when there is no wind and no sunshine.
Misleading... "1.5GW of clean power" is only capacity. The capacity factor of solar PV in the UK is approximately 10%. So these installations that will occupy a vast area have a net capacity of 150MW. They will produce power at lunchtime, and mostly in the summer.
So whereas, for example, the new Hinkley Point C nuclear power station has a physical footprint of about 1 square km, to produce the same average output, a solar farm would need to have a footprint of 268 times larger.
And you'd still need backup for evening, night & winter.
That's a solar farm on a square area of land, 10 miles on each side, producing expensive energy, on land that is charging immense rents, not on demand, which needs matched capacity, displacing agriculture, amenity or wildlife.
Seven reasons to be cheerful, despite the inevitability of Thursday's results and the next government... A thread and an article. Link at end...
1. The Net Zero cat is out of the bag. Even the government and opposition are rolling back expensive and unworkable policies.
2. There are completely different public discussion about science and policy today, compared with the recent past. Terms like 'denier' now cut no ice, and politicians don't find it as easy to hid behind scientific authority, thanks to lockdowns.
3. European & global politics are incapable of supporting domestic unilateral climate policy such as the Climate Change Act. The rest of the world is not going to follow us, and there is less than zero chance of persuading emerging economies to join our Net Zero suicide.
Radical environmentalism is a way that narcissistic but entirely mediocre individuals can make themselves feel extremely important -- above society, its norms and laws.
It's time to make them the subject of discussion, not participants. They are specimens, not peers.