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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The latest IPCC Climate change report is so depressing, greens are wondering on social media if they should just give up the struggle. But the Guardian offers a dangerous solution to the hopelessness and despair some of their readers may be experiencing.
Don’t despair: the climate fight is only over if you think it is
Rebecca Solnit
Sun 14 Oct 2018 18.10 AEDTAfter the panicky IPCC report on climate change, it’s easy for pessimism to set in – but that would be conceding defeat
In response to Monday’s release of the IPCC report on the climate crisis – which warned that “unprecedented” changes were needed if global warming increases 1.5C beyond the pre-industrial period – a standup comic I know posted this plaintive request on her Facebook: “Damn this latest report about climate change is just terrifying. People that know a lot about this stuff, is there anything to be potentially optimistic about? I think this week I feel even worse than Nov 2016 and I’m really trying to find some hope here.”
A bunch of her friends posted variations on “we’re doomed” and “it’s hopeless,” which perhaps made them feel that they were in charge of one thing in this overwhelming situation, the facts. They weren’t, of course. They were letting understandable grief at the news morph into an assumption that they know just how the future is going to turn out. They don’t.
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Taking action is the best way to live in conditions of crisis and violation, for your spirit and your conscience as well as for society. It’s entirely compatible with grief and horror; you can work to elect climate heroes while being sad. There are no guarantees – but just as Sakharov and Sharansky probably didn’t imagine that the Soviet Union would dissolve itself in the early 1990s, so we can anticipate that we don’t exactly know what will happen and how our actions will help shape the future.
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We also need to shut down production directly, with a just transition for workers in those sectors. Five countries – Belize, Ireland, New Zealand, France and Costa Rica – are already working on bans on new exploration and extraction, and the World Bank sent shockwaves around the world last December when it announced that after 2019 it would no longer finance oil and gas extraction.
Given that the clean energy comes with lots of jobs – and jobs that don’t give people black lung and don’t poison surrounding communities – there’s a lot of ancillary benefit. Fossil fuel is, even aside from the carbon it pumps into the atmosphere, literally poison, from the mercury that contaminates the air when coal is burned and the mountains of coal ash residue to the toxic emissions and water contamination of fracking and the sinister chemicals emitted by refineries to the smog from cars. “Giving up” is often how fossil fuel is talked about, as though it’s pure loss, but renouncing poison doesn’t have to be framed as sacrifice.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/14/climate-change-taking-action-rebecca-solnit
On one level the IPCC has overplayed their hand – their predictions of imminent doom are so ridiculous the IPCC are straining credibility with their claims, even amongst their believers. Jumping the shark with ever more ridiculous claims will eventually lead to the total downfall of the IPCC’s credibility.
But there is an inner core of fanatics – people who truly believe the world is about to end, unless they personally act to shut down fossil fuel production and consumption.
In my opinion these are the people who think it is acceptable to physically attack oil infrastructure, chase government figures out of restaurants and target political opponents in their homes. Until their belief system finally collapses, I believe this inner core of fanatics will become increasingly dangerous and violent in their pursuit of their impossible goal.
In my opinion outlets like the Guardian are fanning the flames of this dangerous fanaticism. Although the Guardian stops short of openly inciting violence, they are repeatedly promoting the message that the only relief committed greens will find from the pain and despair they are suffering is direct action.
inventor of “mansplaining”
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Who invented “wifesplaining”?
Mansplaining = word in edgewise.
Wifesplaining = you better listen.
A call to join the crusade against the evil enemies of the goddess Gaia to take us to the green promised lands. It will end like its great historic example: in blood, lots of it, and a massive hangover when it is clear that neither the goddess nor the promised land do exist.
‘…and jobs that don’t give people black lung and don’t poison surrounding communities.’ Interesting: So mining for raw material and the manufacturing of raw material into solar and wind power doesn’t have any health risk?
“Whoever is in command of the state of emergency ä is sovereign.”
somehow the Guardian believes he commands the state of emergency and therefore is the sovereign.
One day, the Guardian will have to answer to the real world.
The age of apocalyptic claptrap dressed up as science really began with Paul Ehrlich’s long falsified “Population Bomb” theory. By now, we should have been suffering from huge famines, resource shortages, runaway good prices, and worse for decades.
Ehrlich was flat out wrong on each and every one of his predictions.
That Ehrlich has never been publicly disavowed for his lucrative bs speaks volumes about the weakness of modern academia.
Hansen, of course, found a bigger and more lucrative claptrap in “global warming”.
Not a single prediction he made over 30 years she has come remotely true. And Hansen along with his loud mouthed self declared academics have told us we are only a few years away from doom the entire 30 years.
They have been proven completely wrong.
Hansen was even able to speak out on his delusional idea that Earth could become like Venus and not get laughed off the stage.
Once again academia betrayed us by silently endorsing the alarmists crap.
Yet here we are again with an alleged scientific organization making infantile cheap shabby scary stories that have sciencey words to pretend they are credible.
What utter disgusting hogwash that a world built by hard working rational men and women is bring destroyed by alarmist scammers pushing non-factual end of the world doom.
As they say, the picture is worth a thousand words.
It’s the next phase of Brexit…..and exit from reality.
Reagan proposed in 1983 a Soviet US combined effort , the Strategic Defense Initiative SDI. Andropov refused, starting the economic collapse which hit 5 months too late. Refusal to progress to new physical principles doomed the economy, which imploded. Sir Henry had a fit, cought by surprise by Reagan.
Problem is the next foot is now falling, the refusal of the West afterwards to progress to new physical principles, and a monumental crash is now immanent, Lehman being merely a dress rehearsal.
Progress or go extinct is the motto.
Communism hindered progress, but what is it in the West? Trump like Reagan is breaking the mold, cutting the Gordian knot. Who tied that damned knot?
If I was a psychologist and had alarmist patients, I would recommend a three step process.
1) Stop reading alarmist information cold turkey
2) Wait for one year
3) Read WUWT
I came across this in today’s Daily Mirror. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. This is the sort of crap we’re up against. The woman writing it left school and went straight into journalism. Enough said. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/explain-climate-change-donald-trump-13419302.amp
It’s not all bad – yesterday, the UK climate change minister was reporting to parliament on GB Green week (or something similar) and though reeling off sums of money “invested” that added up to £billions, she did make the astounding statement that the UK was coal-free for THREE WHOLE DAYS last July. Now that’s progress!