Recently I am beginning to understand why people become so frustrated when need for action is denied, that they self-immolate.
With the increasing recognition of the effects of global warming being voiced in the media, it is clear that the world collectively is not doing enough to slow the process down, let alone reverse it. I have a constant feeling of impending doom as disaster after disaster is happening, all round the world.
Cyclone Idai, which affected south-east Africa very recently, has been dubbed the worst disaster to occur in the southern hemisphere, and the countries worst affected are not wealthy and will struggle to restore life to normal.
The irony is that every time viable suggestions are made for action which could be taken to avert disastrous temperature increases and the consequent catastrophic weather events, the immediate response is that the economic cost of the suggested measures make it inappropriate to proceed.
Has anyone bothered to add up the costs accruing from the increasing numbers of major disasters – hurricanes, cyclones, wild fires, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, etc – which have occurred in the last decade or two? To reduce the bill, some funds have been withheld, as, for example, in Puerto Rico, which is only regarded as part of the USA when it suits the White House!
And if it were not enough to have ‘natural’ disasters occurring with increasing frequency, (let’s forget for a moment that consensus now accepts that it is human beings use of fossil fuels which has disturbed the balance of nature), we also have a rising flood of crimes against humanity in terms of events such as the Christchurch massacre and the attempt by ISIS to set up a caliphate, based on a warped interpretation of the Qur’an.
Why do people feel it so necessary to not only dislike others because of their culture or religion but feel it is appropriate to actually hate them enough to kill them?
Talking with friends recently, there was general agreement that, increasingly in recent years, unpleasant language is used in public to an extent that was never publicly acceptable a generation or two ago. So many people just do not care if they offend others, in fact scorn anyone who criticises rude or unpleasant behaviour towards strangers.
Lack of respect for others (not to mention lack of respect for the environment and for biodiversity), plus lack of empathy for those in need, highlights the hypocrisy of many who claim to believe in Christianity or be guided by some religious moral code.
Also lurking in the background is the extent to which acquisition of wealth, synonymous with power, has become a religion for global corporations, creating monopolies which effectively dictate to governments. And among those for whom making money is paramount are the arms manufacturers, who make sure that those fighting have all the latest mod cons!
One of the first essentials for life is clean water. We are not managing it very well. Here in Australia we have practically destroyed the vitally important Murray/Darling system and all round the world, water is being polluted by fracking.
Another essential is clean air, and the health costs associated with a lack of this commodity are staggering.
Perhaps we need the world to be wiped out, because mankind has become the destroyer of all.
At the present rate of progress, those dreaming of colonising some planet not too far, far away will run out of time while the earth burns and crumbles!
We do not deserve to survive if we can allow our populations to be reduced to fighting each other for no good reason, while we fail to ensure that life can be viable as well as enjoyable!
I keep trying to be optimistic, but it becomes a losing battle when not enough people care enough to ensure that necessary action is taken in time!
The School Strike 4 Climate showed the way to tell the government to act. Now we all need to be out there!
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Sir, I’ve been reading this website Geoengineering Watch org for years and see similar skies over Western Downs, Qld. not as bad as elsewhere with the spraying but certainly notice the Haarp clouds, indicating man-made heating of the ionesphere. These issues are world wide as one can see from the site’s comments section where people post from Ireland, UK, Germany, etc.
The people who care are the ones who do not stand to make a killing out of the exploitation of the earth’s resources.
The cost of clean up is someone else’s responsibility, not those who are making squillions out of gouging and plundering. It does have a nice flow on effect for budgets however because it gets added to the GDP figures – hell some people even argue it’s good for an economy!
Arms sales brought in US$1.7 trillion in 2017 – you can see why our LNP government wants to get on board with that!
In terms of civility – all we’ve ever had is veneer I think, quite often held in check with religious underpinnings, though scratch the surface and it’s always been a different story – at least that’s my perspective from living in Australia through the 60s 70s and 80s where we were the closest we’ve ever been to destroying the planet in an afternoon.
As people have walked away from religion in their droves, their humanity is still in place but it is hard to express it when their hearts are full of fear and they feel powerless to make meaningful change in the world or even that they might be expected to!
In 1972 as a 13 year old, I sat in a social studies lesson and was taught that for the first time in the history of humanity, the cult of the individual was beginning to take shape and that this would change everything.
The biggest difference I feel is people’s access to knowledge of what’s going on. Knowledge in some respects is just another person’s perspective, massaged figures and the like, yet since the 60s we’ve been able to bring war and destruction into our own loungerooms and that’s pretty uncomfortable for most of us.
What to do while bobbing up and down in a sea of consumerism?
Governments must be held accountable for their inaction as well as their bad actions.
As with the asbestos and tobacco industries, fossil fuel industries, the mainstream media, and their political lackeys have known for decades that Anthropogenic Global Warming presented an unfolding exponential cascade of catastrophe. Greed, willful ignorance, procrastination and the corruption of due process have ensured that irreversible global processes have been set in train. We now must face the Sixth Great Extinction. Civilisations are crumbling, uncounted billions of people, plants and animals face unnecessary suffering and death.
Ecocide is a crime against humanity. In America citizens are suing their government for neglecting its most fundamental duty to maintain a liveable environment. It’s time Australians did the same.
Frances,
To better educate yourself on the majorative factors affecting biospheric climate, I suggest reading more from sites linked to peer reviewed science, rather than fixating on ‘citizen journalism’ blogs promoting obscure conspiracy theories.
The effect of cumulative greenhouse gases (CO2, methane and NOs) in trapping radiant heat has been theoretically understood for over a century, and laboratory proven for over half a century, and their ever-increasing (human driven) accumulation in our atmosphere is scientifically indisputable.
Conspiracy theories like ‘Haarp heating’ are, I suspect, just a convenient red herring put out by the manufacturers of climate denialism, and eagerly swallowed by people eager to minimalise any feelings of personal responsibility for their own contributions to the dire predicament we are currently facing.
Much easier to spuriously blame sinister external forces than own up to the evident reality that our own collective addiction to the joys of destructive and wasteful habits is what is killing our homeworld.
Ps, Want to know another quick way to heat up a planet?
Cut down all the trees that shade the soil and absorb solar heat through the process of photosynthesis.
Such is, unfortunately, a process whose increased continuance the voters of NSW have just electorally endorsed.
I agree with all you have said RJ. Sadly, it seems, the voters of New South Wales, our most populous state, seem to have concluded that racism is ok, that land clearing is ok, that the continued sale of state-owned assets is ok, that the waste of money on rebuilding a sports stadium, the problems of which could have been rectified much more cheaply, is ok and that neglect of the Bush in favour of the increasingly disfunctional city is also acceptable. I fear it bodes Ill for the forthcoming federal election. There is so much bad stuff happening in the world today that it is easy to be overwhelmed by a feeling of powerlessness, perhaps especially as the ageing process reduces the available time for action.
In the wake of the NSW mess, I can concur with most of the sentiments Rosemary expresses.
Honestly, where were their brains?
paul walter,
In the days leading up to the state election, the local paper carried a couple of stories about scientific findings regarding toxicity levels in a local saltwater lake, which had rendered it officially deemed unfit for both swimming and fishing.
This body of water not only had grossly elevated levels of nutrients, but also toxically high accumulations of farm chemicals (specifically insecticides and fungicides), which was, to many locals, completely unsurprising given the recent explosive expansion of chemical-intensive (and largely ‘self-regulated’) blueberry farms both within and around the catchment area of the lake.
Despite this, yesterday the local electorate, in it’s collective wisdom, chose to vote in the new candidate proffered by brand Nationals, who also happens to be the chairman of a blueberry consortium.
Self-immolation seems like an increasingly attractive option.
Corvus, they have refined it to an art form in NSW.
Do they rub their faces with cheese-graters for kicks?
Xr17 – homebase
so far the humans are too busy blaming each other to realise that soon we will have converted their water to acid and their atmosphere to methane: perfect for our colonisation project
thankfully they are too busy aiding us in their natural destruction to realise our involvement
Xr17 – over
You ask: “Has anyone bothered to add up the costs accruing from the increasing numbers of major disasters – hurricanes, cyclones, wild fires, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, etc – which have occurred in the last decade or two? ”
Governments tells us things like “that the economic cost of the suggested measures make it inappropriate to proceed.” Yes, why do they not instead talk about the costs of increasing natural disasters?
Here is what was published on Feb 21, 2019 about Greta Thunberg:
This morning, Swedish young climate activist Greta Thunberg, 16, has once again given a rousing speech on the climate crisis to defend schoolchildren who went on strike last week.
The teenager opened a European Commission event in front of President Jean-Claude Juncker where she told politicians to stop ‘sweeping their mess under the carpet for our generation to clean up’.
Greta, from Sweden, defended the hundreds of thousands of children who took part in global school strikes saying: ‘If you say we are wasting valuable lesson time, let me remind you, our political leaders have wasted decades through denial and inaction and since our time is running out we have started to take action.’
You can watch her speech via this link:
Immediately after the event, Greta Thunberg was invited to a press conference. This video has her statements at the press conference.
The EU has just taken ExxonMobil to task for not attending a meeting where the EU wanted to investigate ExxonMobil’s conflict of interest. There has been conflict alleged about ExxonMobil not taking any notice of the scientists working for the corporation in the 1970s, and the information the corporation was peddling. Scientists working for ExxonMobil in the 1970s stated that fossil fuels have an impact on climate, management did not disclose this information in advertorials in the New York Times. Elsewhere there are allegations that ExxonMobil funded denier groups to undermine the science therir own scientists had produced.
It could be that lobbyists for ExxonMobil may not be given access to EU officials as a result. ExxonMobil’s excuse for not showing up at the meeting was legal action happening to them in the USA.
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f
Australia obtains no tax from ExxonMobil, it being seen as the worst offender in Australia. ExxonMobil obtains billions of dollars of profits from Australia. Should a major corporation such as ExxonMobil lose a Court case through science created decades ago it takes the wind out of the sails of denier groups, and politicians.
But, we certainly have little time to act, even the quite conservative IPCC has given us 12 years to make very concerted efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, they are spiking over 412 ppm at present. Ice cores suggest that abrupt climate change can happen within a decade. Our politicians are more interested in political donations from fossil fuel corporations, than the safety of citizens it would seem.
Mid States in the US have just been hit hard by flooding causing huge damage to farms and US military base.
http://www.ecowatch.com/exxonmobil-banned-eu-parliament-2632446727.html
http://grist.org/article/climate-change-nebraska-flooding-is-overwhelming-our-crappy-water-infrastructure/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=beacon
The election leaflet of Coalition/Nationals for our enclave in the NSW election was entirely about local issues and promises of more money for this and that, eg $250 for seniors if the local National won. I decided to speak to some of these poll volunteers . They were entirely 19thc: fixated on localism and on money. They were affable but unquestioning. When I mentioned the cyclones up north they did not respond. They seemed to think I was strange for not being swayed by bribes, I mean, monetary promises. No global issues at all. Despair, despair.