Guest essay by Eric Worrall
“Focus on systems, not yourself” – According to author Emma Marris, people who are stressed out about their personal carbon footprints need to understand it is not their fault.
How to Stop Freaking Out and Tackle Climate Change
Here’s a five-step plan to deal with the stress and become part of the solution.
By Emma Marris
Jan. 10, 2020Ms. Marris is the author of “Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World.”
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As an environmental writer, I’m often asked for guidance on coping with climate change. I have thoughts. Even better, I have a five-point plan to manage the psychological toll of living with climate change and to become part of the solution.
Step 1: Ditch the shame.
The first step is the key to all the rest. Yes, our daily lives are undoubtedly contributing to climate change. But that’s because the rich and powerful have constructed systems that make it nearly impossible to live lightly on the earth. Our economic systems require most adults to work, and many of us must commute to work in or to cities intentionally designed to favor the automobile. Unsustainable food, clothes and other goods remain cheaper than sustainable alternatives.
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Imagine dense but livable cities veined with public transit and leafy parks, infrastructure humming away to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, fake meat that tastes better than the real thing, species recovering and rewilding the world, the rivers silver with fish, the skies musical with flocking birds.…
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/opinion/sunday/how-to-help-climate-change.html
If you think this advice sounds familiar you are absolutely correct. Emma’s suggestion is very similar to the excuse Extinction Rebellion provided when challenged about the lifestyles of their celebrity anti-flying campaigners.
But Emma takes this reframing a step further – she describes a glorious future of high density cities teaming with wildlife, yet crisscrossed with public transport, which will somehow be possible if we learn to “live lightly on the Earth”.
In the real world, mixing high density public transport with teaming wildlife usually produces lots of roadkill.
Perhaps I am being too harsh. Emma isn’t actually offering an explanation for how her vision might be achieved. Emma has provided the vision; I guess it is now up to engineers and rich people to sort out the implementation details.
In buildings like this no doubt…
If we are not going to hunt, kill and eat animals, why do we need them at all?
“…..public transport causing roadkill…”
Perhaps the Greens would like to invent the personal tube transit system that they had in Futurama….?
I was thinking more along the lines of the tube monorail system in the domed cities of Logan’s Run. And, hey, bonus points for the Malthusians if they can implement the “life clocks”, also from Logan’s Run, that mandate your execution at 30 (or 21 in the novel).
The real shame is that Emma makes more than 97% of science graduates to have such visions.
Spot on! As soon as I saw the word ‘system’ I thought of that list of ‘celebrity’ hypocrites.
The author needs to accept that there is a huge chasm between reality and fanciful wishes. We all wish for a better world but as adults we learn to accept that we are all bound by certain inescapable realities.
“Imagine dense but livable cities veined with public transit and leafy parks, infrastructure humming away to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, fake meat that tastes better than the real thing, species recovering and rewilding the world, the rivers silver with fish, the skies musical with flocking birds.”
Instead imagine communities scattered across the land each with an independent electric grid powered by a neighborhood nuke. Between the communities farmland or well tended forest with little underbrush. Industries scattered about. Almost all who can work from a VR at home. They are at the office and their fellow employees are there. Many doctor’s visits by VR. There will be a place to work near every neighborhood. Living at peace with the whole world.
I’m not really sure either utopia can be built. It will take a lot of energy for energy *is* civilization.
Sounds like Garden Of Eden to me. However, I always thought that Garden Of Eden was a grass savanna with fruit trees and the occasional snake, not a high density city.
Oh my! Doesnt mean we are free from guilt if we eat vegan margarine?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aIG9ozEDPVg&list=PLw2Ktjq3BM9Nv7s-GFGRV9vYcD9qD2B7W
Funny that pic. I was just at Animal Kingdom at Disney world in Florida yesterday and rode the Avatar boat ride. Disappointing waste of a fast pass. The Yeti rollercoaster I rode later made up for it though. Three days, three kingdoms, and now a day of rest. Lucked out with the weather.
The NYT must be run by Greta, all fake news and clueless about the consequences of forced spending on stuff that does not work, to fight a problem that does not exist.
The young people have been educated by Left wing Zombie teachers and university professor.
They believe what they have been told and because have never experienced 19 percent mortgage rates or seen year after year of high employment.
They are clueless about GDP, industries and how the stuff they buy is made, how countries pay for stuff, international competition, what happens when countries fail because of borrowing to much, the point of budgets, and so on.
The Opinion piece writer repeats the party line.
The solution to CAGW is more laws and treaties and of course electing the right Zombie people.
From the article:
“My point is that the climate crisis is not going to be solved by personal sacrifice. It will be solved by electing the right people, passing the right laws, drafting the right regulations, signing the right treaties — and respecting those treaties already signed, particularly with indigenous nations. It will be solved by holding the companies and people who have made billions off our shared atmosphere to account
“They are clueless about ….. how the stuff they buy is made, ..”
This is the essential point. It explains (but does not excuse) their personal hypocrisy, and their ridiculous “remedies”.
“people who are stressed out about their personal carbon footprints need to understand it is not their fault. How to Stop Freaking Out and Tackle Climate Change Here’s a five-step plan to deal with the stress”
Except that when all is said and done you’re still one of those evil human beings, the essential element of planetary eco apocalypse.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/01/13/human-pollution-the-planet-is-doomed/
Check out Paul Beckwith on Youtube….he predicts that the arctic will be blue ocean by 2030….there are lots more chuckles and giggles and snickers from this “Professor”.
Beckwith is bonkers crazy, i have watched some of his stuff, a shame he sucks on the public tit.
Thank you T. C. Clark. The old “hello this is paul beckwith? I think that’s who I am and it is my naptime” guy who looks even more bored than his listeners. Another whopper of this kind and maybe the bigger whopper is Peter Wadhams who does arctic sea ice and also ocean acidification and also appears bored with himself. Here he is trying to scare the shit out of us with ocean acidification and trying to stay awake. (Scroll down please until you see his bored but smiling face)
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/12/14/ocean-acidification-2019/
Emma writes:
“Our economic systems require most adults to work…”
and then;
“Imagine dense but livable cities veined with public transit and leafy parks…”
So… if being required to work is strongly implied to be ‘bad’, who is going to build and/or pay for all these dense but livable cities?
I am also curious to know if she believes the ‘Rich and Powerful’ deserved being openly mocked at the Golden Globes, or if she believes that some Rich and Powerful are more equal than others.
Slightly OT, but my InstaG feed for my local bookshop – moderated by some well meaning but sadly woke uni student types – has informed me that they now have for sale “This Is Not A Drill – An Extinction Rebellion Handbook”.
While I am sure it contains some lovely advice on where to buy not only the best glues, but also the best after care skin creams, one was also mildly of the impression that XR basically blamed the free market for, well, everything.
So, that does raise the question as to why they are selling this book and not offering it as a free paperless download.
Reminds me of the annual knees-up held at our local horse racing track at Morphettville in Adelaide and you see all the posters around beforehand advertising it for psychics mediums and assorted fortune teller types and you wonder why they bother.
ssshhh the bookies wives need their pin money!
City slickers are easily stressed out by nature-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/tv-reporter-falls-for-on-air-prank-and-wears-full-body-armour-to-hold-koala-after-being-told-it-is-vicious-animal-with-poisonous-fangs/ar-BBYV2ZH
He he – there actually is some danger, even when you are holding a trained zoo animal which has had most of the aggression beaten out of it. Everything in Australia does its best to kill you.
It’s not that bad, mostly snakes. No grizzly, no cougar, no wolf. I stay clear of the water unless I can see the bottom. It’s red belly black snakes I don’t like, when an adult red-belly-black puts on its display all flattened out and hissing like a compressor you quickly grasp why the belly is such a fierce shade of red. There’s no confusion what that means.
It means the photos are lovely but we’ll just watch reruns of Bondi Vet. From here.
LOL !!
I’m convinced that all the best alarmists must be Catholic – they do guilt better than any other religion. Starting at kindergarten they force-feed guilt into the younguns and by the time they reach maturity they are primed for roles as activists righting every wrong in our society. The best example I can give anyone is the Pope – the climate change guru in chief.
No, it’s because the needy and spoiled DEMAND and CONSUME the comforts that the rich and powerful created to appease them.
… cities intentionally designed, once again, to favor the demand and consumer habits that cannot happen on the massive scale required, without the automobile.
Using an ill informed idea of “sustainable” as a way to sanctify certain consumptive behaviors above practical behaviors accommodated by the best market-driven technology is irrational, arrogantly presumptive, and ignorant of the realities that enable civilization, as we know it, to operate.
Well they haven’t explained to us how Pol Pot’s ideas worked out or even President Xi’s at present.
The only dense, livable, city I have lived in was Honk Kong. 40+ storey apartment blocks, with shopping and transit services at the bottom. I prefer something with a bit of a garden. Emma can have her dense city. I will take a bet that she doesn’t live in a city as she describes or anything remotely like it. I bet she lives in a nice part of New York, close to central park would be my guess.
“Emma Marris is an environmental writer and an Institute Fellow at the UCLA…”
In my experience “fellows” get lots of money for doing very little.
“In my experience “fellows” get lots of money for doing very little.”
That might explain her belief that there exists an economic system under which most people don’t have to work.
According to the internet, she lives in Klamath Falls, Oregon, which of course is nothing like a a dense city (population circa 22,000).
And she grew up in Seattle, Wa. which had a population of around 500k at the time. So she moved from a more densely populated city to a much less densely populated one. No wonder she wants to “Ditch the shame” – because she’s a huge hypocrite.
And this is why I drink wine.
Emma is just another Liberal idiot who thinks electricity comes from a wall plug-outlet and our food comes from a grocery store.
“cities teaming with wildlife”
There’s a scary thought. I wonder how that negotiation proceeds?
In Australia we use bug bombs when it gets out of hand.
“Our economic systems require most adults to work”
Really? REALLY???
Has anyone come up with an economic system where most people don’t have to work?
This world, not some paper fantasy world.
Careful with your choice of words, “most people” includes children (too young to work), elderly (retired and/or too old to work), and disabled (unable to work) I think we can easily find a few places in the world where the unemployment rate (of working age people) is high enough that when you add in children, elderly and disabled you end up with a majority of the people not working. Those seriously aren’t the places you would want to be living in.
More to your intended point, everywhere with a functional economy has the majority of their able bodied work-age adults working. Anywhere where this isn’t the case, doesn’t have a functional economy and as such would be least able to afford the utopia that article writer imagines.
“cities intentionally designed to favor the automobile”
Like most leftists, she has cause and effect reversed.
Cities are designed to support automobiles because that is the transportation system that people chose. Despite the drug induced fantasies of your average leftist, nobody forced people to move to the suburbs and drive cars to work.
On the other hand, leftists are all about forcing people to live the lifestyle that the leftist wants them to live.
NYT nurtures their inner bigot: sanctimonious hypocrite.
As for mixing wildlife and public transit, or for that matter other transit that is common in cities: In the parts of the Philadelphia metro area where there is wildlife and cars and transit other than cars such as trains, buses, subways and bikes, it’s mainly cars that are killing wildlife (and people). Some of the trains are underground or elevated, with little wildlife in their way. One public transit vehicle moves as many people as several cars in a given amount of time, so public transit decreases the number of vehicles interacting with wildlife even when the vehicles are on the street.