Thread by @homemadeguitars

It's easy to fall into thinking what you're against. Easy for me. Judging by what I hear, easy for a lot of people.
Even what we're for is often being against some specific destruction. Whales. Sharks. Pipelines. Mines. Desecration.
It's easier to explain, too.

2. "See, they shouldn't bulldoze this mountain pass and extract lithium from it because the sage grouse needs it."
That is correct.
But if not this mountain pass, which one?
If not this forest, this stream, this prairie, which one?

3. The logic of our system of life and living, to its very foundation, says we have to bulldoze this mountain pass, because we have to have electric cars to fight climate change, and we need the lithium.
We need the wood.
We need the oil. It's way the hell up there and we need it

4. down here where we all drive.
And if you want to get your head torn off and defecated into, suggest that we all quit driving.
Electric cars are Necessary! Do you want to go on burning Fossil Fuel?
False choice.
We don't have to burn any.

5. Fully local services are able to provide 100% resource availability to human societies and did for six thousand years.
Pretty much up until I was born. End of WWII.
American agriculture was animal powered up to and through World War II. You could still buy a brand new

6. McCormick Dearing #9 horse drawn hay mower up through 1952. I was 5.
I wasn't aware of any of this, you understand, it's just a reference for me.
If you look at the real charts of ecosystem collapse / climate change / climate drift, it really took off after World War II.

7. We had the prototype of air war in WWI, but nothing like II. The first really viable passenger plane was the DC3, and that was just before II. Then we turned that into the C47 and built like 30 zillion of them in WII. I flew in one of them 20 years later in Vietnam.

8. When I was little, airliners were still rarities. When one flew over the kids would all crane their necks and watch til it was gone.
The Connie. The Constellation. 4 props, *big* airplanes.
Then jets.

9. We invented plastic. Everybody was Wow! You can Throw It Away! Never needs washing! Melmac plates that wouldn't break when your klutz kid dropped them.
Unfortunately, it also put plastic in your klutz kid's blood, but nobody knew that yet.

10. We've killed, by a not too extreme estimate, some 75% or more of all the wildlife on Earth in my lifetime.
Over 50% since my 25th birthday.
We built almost *all* these concrete highways in my lifetime.
In order, specifically, to increase our average speed.

11. I do not believe there is any empirical measure by which the average American's life has become any safer, any more rewarding, any healthier, or any more pleasant and enjoyable as a result of all this speed.
GDP is *useless*.
Life expectancy is not meaningful.

12. Open heart surgery is a rite of passage out of middle age for American males. I'll grant you it keeps them alive. There is more to life than average age at death.

13. Whatever it is you're trying to save, from the bees to the butterflies to the republic, the system that is attacking it is attacking all of it.
It's a thousand headed monster. You cut off one, two grow back.
Its blood is speed and high energy. We had to pave evwy to go fast.

14. We had to put virtually all this carbon into the air to go fast.
The entire agreed upon solution is, find new magic technology to power our speed.
We killed half, three quarters, more, of all the wildlife, IN MY LIFETIME, for the express purpose of going fast.
Yes, just that.

15. Our speed is reflected in everything. If we couldn't ship stuff FAST it would never occur to anybody to catch Salmon in the US, fly them to China to process, then fly them back here to sell.
I know all about the sneaky trade deals and the ripoff artists.
Speed makes possible.

16. We have it in our power to slow down.
A sensible government - all world governments - would do it, but high energy, high speed, large scale technology is wildly profitable for a few.
When I was a kid in stodgy old 35 mph America, employed families had houses. Black ones too.

17. Now a woman can have a full time job and live with two kids in a decrepit minivan.
This is *not* an improvement.
And it's killing the world. We can't live here without it.
And this group is saving the monarch, that one the sage. This one this forest, that one that stream.

18. When I write what I write people get all defensive. Better the devil you know.
We can do better.
Net zero isn't even *almost* good enough. Tear up all the highways and airports and plant stuff. Photosynthesis.
Act like the number one priority was minimizing the damage,

19. Instead of enabling Jeff Bezos to...
You know. Riding his big rocket powered dick.
It's late. G'nite.