Optimist Wannabee Climate Action

238-800x600 c99 essat vox 10.jpgThe latest reports are in, and yes, Virginia, we are indeed in deep doodoo.

We have known bits of that for some time. And now confirmed is what we have been seeing with our own eyes: climate change effects have accelerated and the end surely is nigh.

Some gave up on the work years ago, some did after the latest reports, some are now being encouraged by the Trump administation to give up now.

Where to now?

Some would say that now is not the time to give up. But so much depends on governments and oligarchs who outright oppose or are glacially responsive to changing the status quo, if at all.

First thing this morning I read a post on FB from New Energy Economy, who with WildEarth Guardians and others have taken on PNM, the for profit electric utility in New Mexico. The grassroots groups have been a huge pain in the @ss for PNM, who went for years making money hand over fist paying obscene ceo salaries at the expense of the health and well being of New Mexicans: going to public hearings, suing, testifying at the public utility committee. Some progress has been made but of course PNM is fighting back.

Aside from that, they have been involving native communities in fight for sustainable energy and jobs, clean air and water.

New Energy Economy has also been working to solarize communities. The post this morning was the celebration for the latest completed project:

Over a 25-year period the solar electric system at the Centro de Amistad senior center will:

Save $115,000 in electricity costs

Eliminate 882,702 lbs of CO2 emissions

Avoid 367,793 lbs of coal from being burned

Save 353,081 gallons of water

Nice, but nowhere near enough:

Where do we stand, what are efforts being made, what shows promise, what is doomed to fail?

Questions many are asking that still want a different future than the one we are clearly headed toward.

I am sharing this Vox list as a look at what has been and is being tried around the planet. Not in any way saying I support these efforts. They do represent a summary in one place, a look at where humans are just now imo.

Some I had never heard of.

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divineorder's picture

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

Lookout's picture

@divineorder

I prefer millions, but if I am alone in doing my little bit....so be it. One by one...

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

divineorder's picture

@Lookout really holds, do we?

Science might provide us with a 'best' guess, but we have to choose.

Every moment is a new moment, a chance to make a decision of what to do with the time we have left.

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smiley7's picture

@divineorder @divineorder

Forgive my not being in the thick, educating our neighbors and closing coal mines, but i very much appreciate each word written in hopes of saving the beauty. Great strides brought great and positive results for a while and now behind the eightball, the president sits, feeling oh so secure in religious support making mockery of all that is dear ...

Cheers for singing out; somehow, in touching ways, this essay rhymes with my unease, can't get comfortable with so many challenges and marvelous answers awaiting.

Edit: i rewrote the eightball sentence several times before saving and still am not satisfied with what i'm trying to say ... is:

"we been at this challenge for a long time, progress was made and progress is waiting for a good pool player to jump the eightball and pocket deniers and their money in the way."

Thanks again.

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divineorder's picture

@smiley7 given current reality. Thanks for the comment and the music.

From the article quoted below:

Don't despair: the climate fight is only over if you think it is
Rebecca Solnit

After the panicky IPCC report on climate change, it’s easy for pessimism to set in – but that would be conceding defeat

SNIP

The histories of change that have made me hopeful are often about small groups that seem at the outset unrealistic in their ambition. Whether they were taking on slavery in antebellum USA or human rights in the Soviet bloc, these movements grew exponentially and changed consciousness and then toppled institutions or regimes. We also don’t know what technological breakthroughs, large-scale social changes, or catastrophic ecological feedback loops will shape the next 20 years. Knowing that we don’t know isn’t grounds for confidence, but it is fuel against despair, which is a form of certainty. This future is as uncertain as it’s ever been.
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Read more

There have been countless encouraging developments in the global climate movement. The movement was small, fragmented, mild a dozen years ago, and the climate recommendations then were mostly polite, with too much change-your-lightbulbs focus on personal virtue. But personal virtue only matters if it scales up (and even individual acts depend on collective decisions – I have, for example, 100% renewable electricity at home because other citizens pushed our amoral power company to evolve, and it’s more feasible for me to ride a bike because there are now bike lanes all over my city).

The movement that has taken on pipelines and fuel trains, refineries and shipping terminals, fracking and mountaintop removal, divestment and finance, policy and law, and sometimes won is evidence of what can happen in 12 years. Some of what were regarded as climate activists’ wild ideas and unreasonable demands are now policy and conventional common sense. There are so many transformative projects under way from local work to transition off fossil fuels, to the effort to stop pipelines (with some major victories, including the one to stop the Trans-Mountain pipeline, which won in court in late August), to the lawsuit against the US government on behalf of 21 young people, charging it with violating their rights and the public trust. The trial begins on 29 October in Eugene, Oregon.

SNIP

There's more, worth a complete read imo.

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smiley7's picture

@divineorder
i'm not easy about not participating, investigating and writing articles; miss my journalism ... missing my voice in print or missing something, the battle upon is us and i'm consumed beyond the front lines; tied up and frustrated and uneasy.

This, in front of our eyes, the feeling of the skin, abnormal seasons-- trees lost here--not changing colors? not yet, anyways, way off normal in my lifetime.

Or is it the underlying dismal politic causing restlessness? Don't know, but something clicked reading your work and i sit very happy in tonight's compliation of hope. Cheers.

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mhagle's picture

Politicians, Corporations, and the Very Rich are to blame and ironically the only ones who can save us. Yes, the rest of us will need to do our part, but the radical big actions required are all beyond us little guys. And maybe beyond them.

It seems to me like we need to start screaming this message. Or just put it everywhere. On a personal level, I don't believe in shaming other human beings. But it seems like these need shaming. I don't know if there is a loving gentle way to get the point across. Ideas?

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

divineorder's picture

@mhagle

https://dailynlp.com/pattern-interrupt/

A pattern interrupt involves breaking an individual’s habitual thought or behavioral pattern so as to shake it up.

Sometimes, an existing pattern of behavior will have a particularly “deep groove” and will be solidly conditioned in someone’s system. This can create surprising resistance and interference to the change process.

Instead of tackling this resistance head on, you can use a pattern interrupt to “swipe the legs” of the resistance.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

divineorder's picture

@divineorder

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mhagle's picture

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

mhagle's picture

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

divineorder's picture

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

mhagle's picture

@divineorder

Dyslexia strikes again . . .

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

mhagle's picture

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

divineorder's picture

@mhagle @mhagle of things, and though I love having access to such useful mini computer it really frustrates me from time to time.

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snoopydawg's picture

"Where do we stand, what are efforts being made, what shows promise, what is doomed to fail?"

As this shows millions of us want to stop climate change from getting worse and are willing to do whatever it takes. But we also need to find a way to stop the wars. The organizations that are involved in stopping CC should join with the ones that are trying to stop the wars because until military stop burning a trillion gallons of it a year the planet is going to continue warming. Plus there's all the pollution that comes from bombing the Middle East into oblivion.

You'd think that being told that we have 12 years before the point of no return would get people to take it seriously. But people have been slammed with propaganda against it since the oil companies saw this coming and it's hard to make them see this. Instead what do we get? The Arctic is ice free for the first time ever. Yippee! Ships can sail through it saving time.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

divineorder's picture

The organizations that are involved in stopping CC should join with the ones that are trying to stop the wars because until military stop burning a trillion gallons of it a year the planet is going to continue warming. Plus there's all the pollution that comes from bombing the Middle East into oblivion.

CodePink adopted the divest strategy of the cc movement recently.

It's a big ask, though, for many. Some are obviously fearful of taking on TPTB and the MIC.

But millions are stepping up. Look how many put their lives on the line at Standing Rock.

Time will tell.

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Azazello's picture

@divineorder
Stopping these insane wars is a two-fer.
Is that Big Sur in the photo ?

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

divineorder's picture

@Azazello Coast adjacent to Julia Pfeiffer SP. April, 2018.

You probably saw this awhile back?

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/1/23/16918280/trump-mili...

By and large, US military leadership understands that climate change is happening and is keen to understand the impending impacts on readiness. (See this 2016 report from the National Intelligence Council for more.)

Beyond damage from climate impacts, the military is also increasingly hampered by its reliance on fossil fuel supply lines, the greatest point of vulnerability in Iraq and Afghanistan. I once wrote a story for Outside magazine about the Marines’ (then-)new Expeditionary Energy Office, meant to make increasingly power-hungry forward deployments more independent of fuel convoys through, e.g., field-packable solar panels.
Marines and sailors of India Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, and their Afghan national army counterparts, pose in front of a solar array at Patrol Base Sparks, in Sangin District.
Marines and sailors of India Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, and their Afghan national army counterparts pose in front of a solar array at Patrol Base Sparks, in Sangin District, Afghanistan. DVIDS

Speaking of Mattis, here’s an excerpt from that piece:

The tactical need to reduce reliance on fossil fuels is not new to the Pentagon. In 2003, at the outset of the second Iraq war, General James Mattis commanded the 1st Marine Division during the initial drive to Baghdad. He found himself repeatedly outrunning his own fuel resupply lines, forcing him to slow down to remain fully powered. In a post-combat report that has since become a touchstone for military analysts, he called on the Department of Defense to “unleash us from the tether of fuel.”

Mattis’s plea served to highlight the extraordinary costs of fuel to the military in Afghanistan and Iraq—in dollars and lives. By some estimates, fully 70 percent of the convoys crisscrossing the theater of war are involved in “liquid logistics,” the delivery of fuel and water. In Afghanistan, fuel reaches the front lines via tankers and planes that cross the ocean, trucks from Tajikistan or Russia, and (sometimes) helicopters from forward bases. By the time it gets there, the fully burdened cost can reach anywhere from $30 to an astounding $400 per gallon. Then there are the casualties: one for every 24 fuel convoys, according to a 2009 report by the Army Environmental Policy Institute.

Point being, concern about climate change (and reducing reliance on fossil fuels) has been percolating through US military leadership for well over a decade. Programs are underway; the bureaucratic machinery is in gear.

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Azazello's picture

@divineorder
Yes. We were through there on a recent trip.

I made a pilgrimage to the Henry Miller Library.

I wish more progressives would make the connection between the perpetual war and the environment. If you're an environmentalist you must be an anti-war activist also.
The two issues are intertwined.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

divineorder's picture

@Azazello in my view is because the connection was being made.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

Mark from Queens's picture

@Azazello @Azazello
Had so much fun with with all the Miller Library people who were in town for this great Miller celebration week in Brooklyn in May of 2013:

The Big Sur Brooklyn Bridge
Celebrating the Henry Miller Memorial Library in the heart of Williamsburg

Went to the opening night at the City Reliquary where the exhibition was housed, which was literally around the corner from Miller's childhood home. From there it was a blur of a week-long party, Miller conversation with the curators of the Library and authors and various motorcycle expeditions to Miller spots all over the city.

Amazingly then found myself in the inner circle all week. Every night there was something interesting and entertaining; we had dinner, saw films, drank beer, they came to see me play, went to see improv theater, then took me to see Philip Glass on the final night.

I really need to get in touch again with Magnus, who I last saw at a rooftop sendoff party in Bklyn (the caretaker of Allen Ginsberg's estate was there too). Great warm-hearted and inviting folks. I felt a great affinity for them. Am still occasionally in touch with James Decker, who put together the excellent volumes "Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal."

I really have to get there.

Did you meet Magnus while you were there?

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

Azazello's picture

@Mark from Queens
I just went, signed the book, paid my respects.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

snoopydawg's picture

@divineorder

especially the ones that build our jets. 22 f/22's are missing from Tyndall AF base because of Michael.

IMG_2668.JPG

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divineorder's picture

@snoopydawg

Under the Trump admin they cannot take into account climate. Wonder why? More money to be made rebuilding!

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snoopydawg's picture

@divineorder

acknowledged that climate change was a bigger threat to the country than terrorism. Okay. Then what were they going to do about it? I thought some plans were in the works back then?

Another great article on climate change. This is pretty brutal, but probably very true. Resources are running low and we know that the sociopaths that be won't want to share them with us.

Why Catastrophic Climate Change is Probably Inevitable Now

It strikes me that the planet’s fate is now probably sealed. We have just a decade in which to control climate change — or goodbye, an unknown level of catastrophic, inescapable, runaway warming is inevitable. The reality is: we’re probably not going to make it. It’s highly dubious at this juncture that humanity is going to win the fight against climate change.

Yet that is for a very unexpected — yet perfectly predictable — reason: the sudden explosion in global fascism — which in turn is a consequence of capitalism having failed as a model of global order. If, when, Brazil elects a neo-fascist who plans to raze and sell off the Amazon — the world’s lungs — then how do you suppose the fight against warming will be won? It will be set back by decades — decades…we don’t have. America’s newest Supreme Court justice is already striking down environmental laws — in his first few days in office — but he will be on the bench for life…beside a President who hasn’t just decimated the EPA, but stacked it with the kind of delusional simpletons who think global warming is a hoax. Again, the world is set by back by decades…it doesn’t have. Do you see my point yet? Let me make it razor sharp.

My friends, catastrophic climate change is not a problem for fascists — it is a solution. History’s most perfect, lethal, and efficient one means of genocide, ever, period. Who needs to build a camp or a gas chamber when the flood and hurricane will do the dirty work for free? Please don’t mistake this for conspiracism: climate change accords perfectly with the foundational fascist belief that only the strong should survive, and the weak — the dirty, the impure, the foul — should perish. That is why neo-fascists do not lift a finger to stop climate change — but do everything they can to in fact accelerate it, and prevent every effort to reverse or mitigate it.

Yeah. Can't find anything to disagree with here. The question is are we going to let them just wipe out anyone who they feel is inferior to them or will this be the issue that gets to fight back? It will be an uphill battle, but what's the alternative?

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divineorder's picture

@snoopydawg

Then what were they going to do about it? I thought some plans were in the works back then?

But Trump admin has put the stops to them.

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snoopydawg's picture

@divineorder

into effect until after he left office. He passed a lot of legislation on his way out the door not while he was in office. Not just the environmental ones, but some of his others.

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divineorder's picture

@snoopydawg

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

divineorder's picture

@snoopydawg

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

divineorder's picture

@snoopydawg

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

snoopydawg's picture

@divineorder

they couldn't be flown out because they were broken. The f-22's have a history of problems and only 49% of them are able to be flown. Let's hope that congress decides that we don't need to replace them since it's too much money for a bad plane. But then they are sticking with the f-35's aren't they? I read that they still can't go into combat without an escort. Kinda weird that hangers in Florida and other coastal areas aren't built to withstand hurricanes.

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Lookout's picture

...causative and reactionary. Much of the war machine is focused on continued extraction. The banks depend on it!

I'm about to buy an electric bike...working toward an electric car after my old enough to vote vehicles bite the dust and their wheels fall off.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

divineorder's picture

@Lookout for charging at the condos where we live. Went instead with a pedal assist e= bike.

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ggersh's picture

@divineorder https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/10/new-study-highlights-collapse-of...

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

magiamma's picture

It is possible to have a sea change. More and more people are aware. We have seen several in our lifetimes. Who would have thought gays would be able to marry and women become powerful. Keep talking. Keep pulling back the curtain. Smile

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Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation

Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

If we really wanted to change the course of history and save humanity, a handful of targeted assassinations would be far more effective at this point than the same old endless march/protest/write/sign/donate toil.

I don't need to name them. We all know who they are. They have names, addresses, fragile human bodies, and families. I'm sick of millions of small donors having to feebly counter fewer billionaires than it would take to fit on a Greyhound bus, when the world is so full of lethal weapons that could accomplish more for an infinitesimal fraction of the price - and who needs loud, tricky, traceable firearms when the world's so full of poison, blades, bludgeons, booby-traps, heavy machinery, tall buildings, dangerous animals, fire hazards, English beef, ropes, wrenches, candlesticks, open manholes, archaic weapons that would send the Internet into an all-consuming fungasm if they were actually used to kill someone important...there's something for everyone, really!

This is what happens when we reach such super-extreme plutocracy: Violence, so long as it's targeted intelligently, doesn't just become a viable answer...it may be the best - or even ONLY - answer. It's like removing a blood clot.

This is what the antifa cabals should be up to if they're serious about saving the world - they're wasting their own precious time and potential punching out street-skinheads who are as powerless and miserable as the rest of us.

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Hawkfish's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat

Just subvert their security forces. They are already paranoid about that. And for good reason: Just because they bring about the collapse of civilization doesn’t mean that they still have skills for the ensuing chaos.

If we can demonstrate that soon enough, they will act to prevent disaster simply out of self preservation.

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@Hawkfish

When the middle-managing muscleheads get the idea that THEY can rule by what I've come to term "kratocracy", that's when you get your Gilgameshes, your Tokugawas, your Jacksons, your Wilhelms...and, of course, your Hitlers.

I've ALWAYS been big on transhumanism, even before I was familiar with the word, for reasons that go to the core of everything I am - but it and capitalism don't mix. I don't like how that article of yours takes things I definitely sympathize with (all this masturbatory fawning over "the Human Condition" sickens me, when I see it as a condition of the sort in urgent need of a cure) and melds them with things I find anathema. Sure, there are some rich pretenders giving it a bad name (as wannabes always ruin everything that catches their fancy if not somehow stopped), but that article seems to be presenting it...well, it's a bit like conflating Muslims with Al-Qaeda/pagan reconstructionism with "Volkish"/violent video games with the Columbine dudes/homosexuality with Ancient Sparta/autism with Ayn Rand, that kind of thing, to audiences with no other context for or concept of such things. That's very bad.

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!