Onion suggests organisms demanding a change in leadership

From The Onion:

Pressure Mounting For Humans To Step Down As Head Of Failing Global Ecosystem

Sometimes the Onion really grabs onto something. Here's the key paragraph:

“Since taking control of the ecosystem, human beings have misallocated its resources and left many of its operations teetering on the brink of collapse,” said Tracy Eldridge, a spokesperson for organisms demanding a change in leadership, noting that humans have overseen massive cuts in species around the world and that thousands more are expected to be eliminated within the next year alone. “Such wastefulness has threatened the long-term viability of the planet’s habitat, but humans appear unable to formulate an actionable plan to keep it running smoothly.”

“If they stay in charge and continue making all the major strategic decisions for this ecosystem, I don’t see how it can last more than another few years,” she added.

Yes, of course the idea that "human beings" are guilty of "bad ecological leadership" is a funny one. It's the Onion, people, laugh. Is that what we've been doing?

Here's the serious version:


We're Losing the War on Climate Change

The author John D. Sutter looks pretty interesting. Definitely someone worth taking out to lunch. OK, this is your Cassiodorus column for Earth Day 2019.

We are losing this war on climate change (were we fighting one? Coulda fooled me!) because climate change is accelerating and nobody cares. This is the subtext of Sutter's piece, though he doesn't quite want to say it outright. It's hard to believe this idea that the fossil fuel industry is going to magically disappear all by itself, implied in books such as Dieter Helm's "Burn Out". There are also clathrates for harvesting, no? Remember, though, that Bud Ward doesn't want you to worry a lot about the clathrates.

There's an obvious corollary to the idea of doing something meaningful about climate change. The Saudi royal family has to be cut out of its claim to an inordinate share of the action. It's as simple as that. Much of the rest of those oil fields will have to stay in the ground indefinitely. As for all of the other oil fields, the governments can eventually depreciate them as assets and buy them out at one cent on the dollar. Yes, even Venezuela. Did they not realize this when Chavez was in power? Oh and I guess Guaidó is planning some major puppetry on May Day.

The "transition" which Bonneuil and Fressoz do not (in their BRILLIANT book) report as having happened historically will have to be engineered politically in an imagined future. And the imagined future will have to be ecotopia. We will have to be ecotopians. How is this going to happen? If the rich were serious they'd have to show the world how Richistan (where they live) can become ecotopia. This piece in the Washington Post, "Capitalism in crisis: U.S. billionaires worry about the survival of the system that made them rich," has a Reddit post about it. But I can't read the WaPo because they're trying to spare-change me like downtown Santa Cruz street-sleepers and I keep saying "no." Anyone else here want to report on the article?

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Cassiodorus's picture

please turn out the lights?

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"I'm starting to believe that they want Donald Trump to get elected." -- Compton Jay

snoopydawg's picture

over the animals and I assume the rest of the planet, but I doubt that he thought we would screw things up as badly as we have. You'd think that an all knowing Being would have seen how much we could do just that.

It's the animals that I'm most sad and angry about. Millions of species have gone extinct again during our watch. Their environments are contaminated beyond repair and will be getting worse unless somehow we stop doing the crap that we are. The wildlife in the oceans have plastic in their stomachs. But then so do we. It's in our lungs from the plastic pollution as well as in our drinking water along with other stuff. So I vote to put some one else in charge.

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

Cassiodorus's picture

@snoopydawg Scientists Recommend Having Earth Put Down

Anyway, about four years ago at the First International World-Ecology Conference in Binghamton, New York, the keynote speaker was Tony Weis. His topic was "history of large animals since 1960." Here are the basics: Animal husbandry is up eightfold. Wild animals have declined very steeply in numbers everywhere. All kinds of ecological and health risks are way up. The factory farms produce lots of pain and are big climate change forcers.

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"I'm starting to believe that they want Donald Trump to get elected." -- Compton Jay

Hawkfish's picture

@Cassiodorus

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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 environment to the edge, I guess it's only fair if it pushes back.

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Hawkfish's picture

One thing I never see brought up in our conversations about Iran/China/sanctions is the thought that maybe putting sand in the gears of the oil markets is a Good Thing.

Not that I think the Cheeto has that in mind - he just wants to be able to sell recent US surpluses at a monopolistic markup.

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

Hawkfish's picture

With friends like this, who needs enemies...

Last Thursday, a multi-billion-dollar transportation package emerged from the Washington State Senate Transportation Committee as three bills: Senate Bills 5970, 5971, and 5972. In addition to the biggest element of the plan — the introduction of a “carbon pollution fee” — Senate Bill 5971 also includes a hefty increase in the annual registration fee for electric vehicles like the Tesla Model 3, Chevy Bolt EV, and Nissan Leaf.
...
We reached out to the bill’s primary sponsor, State Senator Steve Hobbs (D-44), chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee. Here’s how he explains his reasoning for more than doubling EV fees:

There’s a couple of reasons I decided to raise the EV fee to help pay for this plan. First, I tried to diversify the sources of revenue in this plan. I don’t think it’s fair to overly rely on one source of revenue. Second, the fact of the matter is that people who can afford electric vehicles are able to afford to pay a little more in fees. That’s a fact. I don’t want to disincentive people from buying electric vehicles, but I also don’t want to tax people who can’t afford it.

Or as one of my co-workers put it: "Gasoline & diesel for the 99%!"

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

lotlizard's picture

@Hawkfish

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