Why is hunger skyrocketing, when almost half of food produced is thrown into landfills and the stock market is soaring?
Why is it so hard to get healthcare for all, even during a pandemic, even when the policy is so popular? Why is healthcare still tied to employment? Certainly, industry profits and money in politics. But it's even deeper.
Those who control the capital seek to create scarcity - or rather, the illusion of scarcity, by artificially preventing access - so as to force the workers into what amounts to wage slavery and drive exponential growth, which is also destroying the Earth's living systems.
Basically, it's conform and work like mad, or else starve without healthcare.
It has been getting worse for decades, and shocks like this pandemic ratchet it even further. But it doesn't have to be this way.
I think coming out of this madness of never-ending exponential growth is essential to stopping climate and ecological breakdown. Indigenous peoples have long known another way. We take only what we need, with gratitude, and no more than what can regenerate.
And we share with each other, we share resources and wealth equitably. We help each other on this tiny beautiful spaceship.
We certainly don't have billionaires. A billionaire is a being deeply out of ecological balance. A billionaire is a Wendigo, always hungry, never sated, eating up everyone and everything until all is destroyed.
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We need a billion climate activists. No one can tell you how to be a climate activist; that's up to you to figure out. But here are a few suggestions.
First, find a local group of activists to join - or better yet, two or three. You need to find your people: people who share a similar set of goals as you, people you like and who are working toward something you believe in.
These activists will become your friends and co-conspirators. Logistically and emotionally, climate activism is too hard to do alone. You need support, and your voice will be more powerful when joined with your group.
Two basic concepts in climate I want the public to know:
1 Trend. If something gets worse every day, after some time it becomes unbearable and systems break.
2 Irreversibility. Humans can't "clean up" climate breakdown or ecosystem and biodiversity loss.
That we're on an escalator should be very obvious, but I still see articles on "navigating change" and the phrase "new normal" pop up enough that I'm not sure it is. Even prominent scientists until recently used the phrase "new normal," probably because it makes a good soundbite.
Until we stop the drivers of the escalator, it will keep taking us up into hotter and hotter temperatures, which are driving all the awful impacts we're seeing. The main driver is simple: extracting and burning fossil fuel. Animal agriculture is a major contributor (~15%) as well
Today's LA Times has two articles about the extreme heat this weekend, and neither so much as mentions climate change. But both came with beach photos (one in today's print edition only) similar to this.
We're very late in the climate emergency. Every article about a climate-related impact should: 1. mention climate change 2. address how climate influences this impact 3. address future projections of this impact
To not do so seems journalistically dishonest to me.
Why did you choose not to mention climate, let alone address how climate influences heat waves and how they will worsen in coming years and decades? Did you think it was irrelevant? Is it editorial policy?
I'm excited about the People's Convention in a few hours, and I'm honored to be speaking. I want to explain why I support creating a People's Party as we live through warp-speed climate and ecological breakdown. @4aPeoplesParty peoplesconvention.org
Let me start by saying I think it's crucial to vote Trump out. He's pushing us toward civil war. And building the climate justice movement through direct action would be nearly impossible under climate-denying fascist rule, a risk under a 2nd term of Trump. Vote your conscience.
The People's Party is no threat on Nov 3. We're going to do everything we can to build up the party, and be a force in 2022 and 2024, both by running candidates at all levels and by challenging the DNC from the left. But that doesn't affect Nov. 3. Vote your conscience.
I only need 50.2K more followers to get to 100K, let's go!
Seriously, do spread climate awareness every chance you get, folks, and mostly off of twitter. Twitter should be only the tip of your communications iceberg.
✅give talks in your community (library, rotary club, etc.)
✅speak to the media
✅organize your workplace
✅join groups like Sunrise and XR
✅protest
✅direct action
✅lawsuits (legal speech)
✅collaborate with storytellers
✅simply talk to people as you go about your day
✅etc
✅write (LTEs, articles, books)
✅make climate art, poetry, and music
✅organize climate cafes (grief/emotion meetings)
✅adjust your career more toward climate action
✅canvass for climate candidates up and down ballots
✅run for office yourself
✅get creative
✅take risks
✅etc
There's a huge gap between what climate scientists are willing to say privately and what we're willing to say publicly, in terms of how dire a situation we're in. Colleagues, integrity demands we close this gap.
Scientists aren't holding back on the science in our papers. Why would we? (IPCC summaries are another matter.) But in public it's "Here are some graphs" and the language is constrained. In private over beers it's "We're fucked."
Now I'm not a "doomer." I see a continuum of fucked-ness, and I think decades of inaction mean we're already fucked to some not-great degree, but we can prevent being even more fucked. We can always be more fucked by burning more fossil fuel, and less fucked by burning less.