Thread by @homemadeguitars

A couple of recent "Nobody will do this" replies pretty much brought me to a halt on climate tweets.
I'm pretty sure I've noticed something real, something few others have noticed. I'm not saying I'm special, or smart, but I have noticed this thing, about how life is made of C,

2. Carbon, and we've killed off almost all the life and the air is all full of carbon.
And we need to get rid of the carbon.
And the way we could approach that is by a two step process in which we immediately reduce our energy throughput / consumption / use / demand, and do life.

3. We take the same intelligence, the same cleverness, the same curiousity and creativity, and apply it to enhancing and restoring complex ecosystems worldwide. Every plant that grows, every animal that eats it, every microbe and every giant Sequoia, is made largely of carbon.

4. Put my friends tell me nobody will do that.
Over and over.
And eventually it's like, "OK, die, I'm sorry."

5. I have at least three woman friends who have paid somebody to cut their breasts off, because they liked that idea better then the idea of dying of breast cancer. You might say nobody would do that, but if they believe it's necessary, people do things.

6. What we have here is a society where nobody believes that changing our lifestyle for the slower is necessary.
Everyone believes that we can fix this with technology.
When I say "everybody" I mean, the general population, the public belies. Climate change us real, we have all

7. the technology we need to fix it, we just have to transition to it.
Two thirds of the above statement are false.
We don't have the technology. We know how to make *some* of the technology, but we have not yet made it.
The rest we don't know how to make and we never will.

8. The machine that removes excess carbon from the atmosphere is green, and brown, and invisible to the human eye, and bright colors. It grows in the water, on the soil, and in the air.
It is made out of carbon.
It is almost all, currently, physically dead. It no longer exists.

9. But it can be made to exist, with absolutely no emissions of CO2 beyond breathing.
Breathing humans. Breathing animals.
But at the root, we would have to change our value system.
We would not have to change "human nature."
Human societies have existed without high speed.

10. Human societies exist right now today who do not use high energy technology. We refer to them as "poor."
If we quit taking our machines and our money and hauling off their natural resources they'd be a lot less poor, and wouldn't have to speed up at all for it.

11. It is not an accident that nobody in developed societies thinks they have to slow down, happily believes they can just buy electric cars and all the magic will happen and the ecosystem won't die out from under us, but that's not real. It's science fiction as public policy.

12. The theory is, we can't talk about it because people won't do it. The reality is, people won't do it because everyone from the President to the Pope tells them they don't have to. And nobody calls BS.
I call BS.
They are increasing emissions today. It's vaporware.

13. Every single publicly advocated action you can find at COP26 or the BBB or *anywhere* requires increasing emissions today.
To do it at global scale requires global scale increases of fossil fuel use.
IT'S ALL WE HAVE TO MAKE THINGS WITH.
We can't get away with it.

14. We've got to quit talking about giving things up. We've got to quit talking about sacrificing. It's not a sacrifice. It's better. It's better for our health, physical and mental.
A localized, global, walking pace economy would not support instant global pandemics. Opposites.

15. We're the sickest people in world history. Don't point to average age at death, I don't give a fuck. Look at all the morbidly obese people in powered chairs because they can't carry their weight.
Our toxic technology did that to them. Food technology, transportation technolog

16. Look at type 2 diabetes. Never before.
Humans. Evolved. To. Walk.
The reason we have hands, thumbs, is because we stood up on our hind legs and walked.
Our butts are for walking.
Our legs. Our feet. It all pumps blood, not just our hearts. We're supposed to walk everywhere.

17. I've read at least two serious articles recently about how interaction with nature has measurable mental health benefits.
I can tell you for sure. I am brain damaged, and I am diagnosed with mental illness. I need to go outside and do things like other people need medicine.

18. I believe a case could be made that modern Americans are about as miserable, overall, as medieval serfs at least. They murder one another at a blinding clip, strangers. Road rage is a thing, every day in every major city.
We are the first people in world history to have rage

19. rage as we go about our business.
"Oh, people would never give this up..."
Y'all have been subjected to the biggest con in the history of humankind.
We are not "other". We are Earth, walking. Finding our home again is not sacrifice.