Scientists all around the world were arrested for taking climate action last week, including many climate scientists. The media barely reported it. This should be deeply, deeply concerning. (above was a quote from the end of #DontLookUp)
We won't stop. Earth breakdown will only get worse and worse, horrifyingly, until we end the fossil fuel industry and end enclosure capitalism, and transition to a system that puts the Earth and people first.
If you are able, you can also donate to the Climate Ad Project which made this video. We need a full-time staff member to be sustainable. So far every video we've made has been entirely on a volunteer basis and it has been a major bottleneck. climateadproject.org/donate/
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I've long said we're at risk of losing essentially everything due to global heating - all of modern life, much of life on Earth, billions of human lives, our super habitable planet. More and more climate scientists are coming to see this. Please start listening
Elected and corporate "leaders" continue to prioritize their personal power and wealth at the cost of irreversible loss of essentially everything, even as this irreversible loss comes more and more into focus. I see this as literally a form of insanity theguardian.com/environment/ar…
I love this: “The world’s response to date is reprehensible – we live in an age of fools.” I also often refer to the rich and powerful as fools, because as their actions demonstrate they absolutely are. Capitalism tends to elevate the worst among us into the seats of power
Dear journalists of the world: We are at risk of losing basically everything. This - what we're experiencing now - is how that process unfolds. The more fossil fuels we burn, the further in that process we go.
You MUST begin to tell 5 critical truths. Civilization depends on it.
When you report on climate-related disasters, make the following connections very clear. They are all true, and critical parts of your story anyway. To leave them out is poor journalism:
1. Global heating played a role (describe role). Even this is still often omitted!
2. Global heating is caused by burning fossil fuels
3. This impact and others will continue to get worse as more fossil fuels are burned. (You can describe the projections as to how much worse)
4. The impact is effectively irreversible, how hot it gets is how hot it stays
Reminder that oil corporations have known since the 1970s that they were irreversibly destroying Spaceship Earth. They could have chosen to be part of the solution, transitioning to becoming energy corporations and ending fossil fuels. Instead, they chose to lie and block action
They are still doing so today. Right now. The people involved deserve to be in prison, and the corporations need to lose their social license to exist.
This was and is a CHOICE that some very awful humans have and are making. Reporters need to stop using the passive voice. It's not that the planet "is heating up." It's that these awful people chose to lead us all into fossil fueled hell on Earth, just to get a little more money
A few personal notes:
I was just at a NASA team meeting for 3 days in DC. The scientific findings are so fucked up. Experts on tropical rainforests told me privately that they think the Amazon has already passed its tipping point. Let that sink in. The world needs to know
When I am at these scientific meetings, where basically every talk and poster is about precisely how Earth is rapidly breaking down, I just want to scream. I stood up and asked a question about this in front of everyone, though maybe too politely
I am on a night train from DC to Jesup, Georgia where I will have a much-needed 10-day silent vipassana meditation course. I try to make it to one of these once a year. I started in 2003.
I'm on a train to DC to help blockade the White House Correspondents' Dinner tonight. Why? Because President Biden has been making the climate crisis worse by expanding fossil fuels, and the news media continues to fail us by downplaying climate urgency and giving leaders a pass
Biden and his team have been going directly against clear, consensus scientific guidance: no new fossil fuel projects! But Biden has been approving carbon bomb after carbon bomb and as a climate scientist I cannot stay silent about these disastrous and deadly decisions
It's time to switch into climate emergency mode and pivot rapidly away from fossil fuels. But Biden steadfastly refuses to declare a climate emergency and instead continues accelerating fossil fuel expansion, locking us irrevocably into a much hotter future. It's crazy
In December, Rose Abramoff and I jumped up on a stage at the AGU Earth science conference in Chicago, where we were presenting our work, with a banner that said "Out of the lab and into the streets." We did this out of love. Rose was fired, I am still under ethics investigation
However, the AGU recently concluded their own independent ethics investigation, with their ethics committee unanimously deciding to (1) restore our scientific abstracts into the conference program (which they had withdrawn); (2) take no further action.
I really want to stress that Rose and I acted 100% out of love and in a principled way. The action wasn't perfect - I doubt any action can be - and you don't have to agree with it, but that was the intention behind it. We are doing our best, trying to save as much as possible