People often ask what I mean by system change re: the climate and ecological crisis. It is very simple. I mean a full shift to a truly sustainable society/economy. This means changing more or less every convention of our modern society.
Sustainable means what it says. A society and economy in balance with the ecological carrying capacity of the Earth. Essentially that means no unsustainable trends, where our impact on the natural systems of the world is growing.
You see, in ecological terms, if there is a component, where it's impact on natural systems is constantly growing. Eventually it will have catastrophic effects, impacting also on the component driving it i.e. human society.
Lots of natural components have growing impacts. Let's say an exploding population of rodents. But this is eventually counteracted, by a sudden fall in the population of that rodent. Often, it produces a cycle or rise and fall.
Humans appear to have got out of this cycle and effect, by using innovation to get around what would cause that contraction in that growth. For instance, the use of fertilisers and pesticides.
But this is at the cost of destroying other ecosystem components and biodiversity, which in a long loop, will eventually have serious impacts on us, that we can't innovate our way out of.
There is no simple recipe for creating a sustainable society economy. However, if we don't want our population, our civilization, our society and economy to crash, it is essential.
"‘You’re barred!’: Labour’s battle with pubs promises a new year headache"
Either Keir Starmer is the most politically inept person to become PM, or he's a mole, placed in the Labour Party, to destroy it, and is pursuing some sort of hidden agenda.
It is mind-boggling how much policy, and decisions Keir Starmer has made, which play right into the hands of Reform and the Tories, and make Labour unpopular. This is plain political stupidity. There's no rhyme or reason to his decisions.
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Every time I point this out, I'm told it's Morgan McSweeney, and he's behind all this. I'm not bothered if McSweeney writes out a script every day for Starmer to follow, because the buck stops with Starmer.
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I made this post, in response to a mindless post by Elon Musk, claiming that 80% of under 18 year olds in Belgium, were foreigners, to aid his far right, racist agenda. I was attacked by his sycophants, all misrepresenting what I said and why.
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My point was very simple. The right wing populists, white supremacists, centred in the US, are spreading their white replacement conspiracy theories and whipping up hatred of "foreigners", with no irony, that they are all descended from immigrants.
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Even in the UK, the white English nationalists, totally miss the irony, that their claimed pure ethnicity, is derived from Anglo-Saxon boat people immigrants, that swamped the Celts inhabiting Britain.
This is a very good summary, of the threat to our food security, posed by the climate crisis, with a few ecological caveats I need to explain. However, it supports all my threads about this.
The big caveat from an ecological perspective is this. Most of these projections, are based on average yields, which is a standard academic approach. However, we need to acquaint ourselves with the law of the ecological minimum, or the limiting factor.
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Whilst this is often called Leibig's law or the law of the minimum, dating from agricultural science in the 19th Century. However, I don't want to get into the academic history of this concept, but rather I want to explain what it means for us in practice.
I'm somewhat baffled about the strategy of not only Donald Trump, but the populist right in general, and billionaires. They have taken in people, by making false promises and claims, which will soon be revealed for the lies they are. Climate change denial is a good example.
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Climate change is real and happening, the scientific evidence proves it. Yes, if you got a big platform, and a lot of money, you can get away with dishonestly, denying that climate change is happening, because of 2 factors.
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These 2 factors are:
1) There is variability in weather from year to year, which can temporarily mask a changing climate.
2) The changes in climate, are quite subtle at the moment, and won't be noticed by those not paying much attention. But soon they will be noticeable.
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'There is a growing risk that Russia could attack the UK, and the nation's "sons and daughters" need to be ready to fight, the head of Britain's armed forces has said.'
Our leadership, has a clear case of brain rot, I mean they are totally unhinged. The idea of fighting a war with Russia, is totally insane.
The insanity of this rhetoric, is that Russia has a massive stockpile of nuclear weapons, so if Europe were to fight some sort of war with Russia, there would be a very high probability of it going nuclear, and mutually assured destruction of both Europe and Russia.
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I used to have some sort of respect for the military, even though I am very anti-war, just seeing them as practical people. But if they are only slightly serious about the rhetoric, the military are coming out with, these are dangerously irrational people.
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It's now clear what lay behind the Liverpool FC parade tragedy. It was nothing but a case of road rage, and over-entitlement, by a narcissistic driver, who thinks everything is about them.
I write this as a lifelong cyclist, who has long experienced this aggressive and threatening behaviour.
A minority of drivers, turn into an over-entitled monster, when they get behind the wheel of a car, acting aggressively to other road users. God forbid if you get in their way, or slow their journey by even a second. They use their car as a weapon, with which to intimidate others.
I repeat, this is a small, but significant minority.
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This man stopped the public learning what lay behind this tragedy, by making out he had a defence, was going to plead not guilty, and had panicked because he was threatened, until his late guilty plea.
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