I didn’t write the title to this article but it sums up the tone and direction of the conversation perfectly when considering the attack the living planet is under!
I was interviewed recently by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume for his website and then the article was subsequently published on Counter Punch.
The audio version of this discussion is embedded here;
Sonnenblume: There’s very little awareness of the United State’s imperial status within the United States.
Hester: Yes, it’s extraordinary for us anti-imperialists on the outside, looking in. It’s incredible. But one of the points I make all the time about imperialism is that you can’t be an environmentalist and not be anti-imperialist because the US Pentagon is the single largest consumer of fossil fuels on the planet, so the carbon footprint of the US military machine is enormous. And then there’s the massive carbon footprint of all the nations responding to it in kind and warming up. So the warmongering on the planet is probably the single largest individual contributor to climate change.
Interested in more? Click here to go to the article on the Counter Punch Website
Previously on this blog, I have interviewed Professor Paul Ehrlich about the collapse of the flying insect population in Germany. The latest information from Europe is that the same is now unfolding in France and no doubt across the continent.
I lived in France in the late 80’s and when staying in a lock keepers house on a disused canal in the country side, whilst sitting around reading, I noticed there was neither birdsong, birds nor insects. I asked Auvray Fabrice my host why and he pointed to the vast fields of rape seed and mono cropping around us and he casually mentioned it was all bathed in herbicides and pesticides and he had watched all the birds and insects disappear. That was 30 years ago!! The situation is now infinitely worse and deteriorating quickly.
In Professor Paul Ehrlich’s interview on my radio show “Nature Bats Last” on PRN.FM I questioned Paul about his latest paper titled; “Biological Annihilation via the ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction”, we discussed the collapse of the flying insect populations in neighbouring Germany. So now I know it’s happening in both these countries!
We are in an undeclared planetary emergency and no one, not one government on the planet is doing anything except tinkering around the fringes while Rome burns. We are left leaderless in the perfect storm with just a few scientists like Dr Mike Joy from Aotearoa New Zealand, Professor Guy McPherson, Paul Beckwith and Sam Carana raising the alarm.
Below is an article from the conservative Guardian documenting the insect population collapse in France. Everywhere I look collapse is unfolding;
‘Catastrophe’ as France’s bird population collapses due to pesticides.
I'm an anti-imperialist, environmental activist and blue ocean sailor, who is passionate about the earth and all it's inhabitants without favour. Brace for imminent impact as we bare witness to the non-linear unraveling of the biosphere and habitability disappearing for most if not all complex life on the only habitable planet we know of. To quote President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’. Folks we have lost the Arctic.
Kevin Hester 
Yes, there are many striking indications that a live earth is in serious trouble, but the lack of insects is piercing. In my youth, living in RCAF camps in Northern Canada, insects (mosquitoes, blackflies, deerflies, etc) were 30% of my whole youthful concern. To notice here in Canada’s ‘Lotus Land’ that there are only rare insects underlines the small fact on a paragraph being written sometime soon, about these times.
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Kevin,
that was an excellent interview with Kollibri Sonnenblume (Nom de guerre-Hummingbird Sunflower?). It highlights our predicament in a nutshell.
There was a recent article in The Tyee by Andrew Nikiforuk about the curse of energy efficiency, where he argues that, the more ‘efficient’ our technology, the more resources we consume in a downward spiral of catastrophe. In the closing paragraphs, which I think relate very closely to what you discussed, he had this to say;
“But if we were to admit that our problems were spiritual and political in nature and bedeviled by population and affluence, then we would endorse reductions in energy consumption and the inequalities that feed such appetites.
Politicians fear such change. No politician alive at the moment has proposed changing the ruinous and efficiently convenient way we live. No one is saying we could be happier consuming much less energy and owning fewer energy slaves — even though that’s what the evidence clearly suggests. No political party claims that sacrifice and courage will get us to a leaner tomorrow. No political party has advocated that the rich drive less, fly less, live in smaller homes or own less shit…
..refusal to acknowledge the truth leaves the world but two options for change: collapse or revolution.”
At the very most what we (globally) are doing can only be described as ‘window dressing’. Your courage and that of a few others, stands as censure and remonstrance of the dominant culture destroying the living planet.
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Thanks as always Kevin for your concerns for the most beautiful planet in the Universe. My only caveat being with Beckwith and his statement that we must geo-engineer the oceans with gmos and toxic particles. What?! Murder the oceans to save it and the Earth? Did i mis-read or mis interpret Beckwith?
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Paul Beckwith is an advocate for geo-engineering our way out of this nightmare. He has the best of intentions but for me it is an example of the “Thin end of the wedge” analogy. The PTB will throw everything at this predicament, probably making it worse. It’s an aspect of the “Great Unraveling” that I’m dreading.
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Mourning Kevin. Just watched the interview, so to speak, with Guy on New Zealand’s AM Show (NewsHub). If anything (other than those actually, physically, destroying the planet–most), a more pathetic example of the distance between my soul and the interviewers, who are obviously drowning in denial, could not be found (oops…forgot, someone’s president–NOT MINE!). Quite the hatchet job. For me, it comes down to trusting exemplar examples such as Guy McPherson or absolutely pathetic no nothing idiots, such as the trio of cretins hosting this worthless drivel. Guy was composing himself beyond my ability to do so if i were in his position.
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“What to Do at the End of the World” !!!! Wow..we’ve finally reached the end of the line, this time, Kevin. Where do you go from that? You’ve been on this blog since only Oct. 2014…not very long….so it shouldn’t be much of a leap for you to realise it’s really time to just stop your nonsense and close your blog.
Here’s a little introductory bit of science….
https://sciblogs.co.nz/guestwork/2017/07/19/inaction-climate-change-risks-leaving-future-generations-530-trillion-debt/#comment-262396
A lot of reading, here…..
https://sciblogs.co.nz/griffins-gadgets/2017/07/12/climate-sceptic-end-chris-de-freitas-dies/#comment-261280
Take special note of this comment and link…
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2016/09/13040/#comment-582401
If you have followed the science…it’s summarily encompassed in this comment…
And here’s an interesting conversation , Kevin…
https://localbodies-bsprout.blogspot.co.nz/2018/01/climate-change-just-got-personal.html
So it’s time to realise you’re travelling with loons, Kevin…(unless you’re already one). The loons are defined in this comment….
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2018/01/on-climate-nightmares-daft-sea-level-predictions-and-reason/#comment-1543500
Apart from that, at least you have my respect by walking the walk, maintaining a sort of semi self sufficient lifestyle.
Cheers, and enjoy the reading,
Mack.
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thank you kevin for your great work! I fear like many others our time will be shorter as we can think…
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Hi Kevin. First, know that i appreciate all you’re trying to do to assist our Earth. Thank you. That said: have you viewed the latest episode of The Keiser Report, #1209 with Carl Denninger as guest interviewee? i highly suggest you do. The more i find out about facefarce, et al, the more i realize that i can have nothing to do with those who even display its icon. FB IS unethical. Since i’ve warned of FB since its inception, even i was a fool as to just how low such humans would go to obtain personal data, etc. [Perhaps even on your site] It ‘appears’ you use FB, or at least support it since its symbol comes up on your site (as well as Guy’s). Are you going to unload FB? If not, unfortunately, i’m outta here and wherever the FB symbol appears…probably every site i’ve been visiting. Won’t be extremely difficult as i’ve been opting out daily from 90% of computer use via the inbrednet (my term for one species only talking with itself). Soon, i can say, like Tricky Dick Nixon remarked, paraphrased: “The Inbrednet won’t have me to kick around any longer.” Thanks again, r
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How Did the End of the World Become Old News?
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/07/climate-change-wildfires-heatwave-media-old-news-end-of-the-world.html?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=s3&utm_campaign=sharebutton-b
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“…The question is not so much how bad things really are, but who is claiming they are not. What kind of life does the so-called ‘optimist’ lead? What kind of pleasures and comforts does she enjoy, and what does she depend on for them? The foundational reality behind all assessments of ‘how bad things are,’ particularly by w.e.i.r.d.oes of the modern world — although equally the ancient Greeks and Romans, who had no idea of the true extent of the horror their comfortable lives were based on — has not changed since Joseph Conrad’s immortal pronouncement:
‘Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.’
http://expressiveegg.org/2016/08/27/end-of-the-world/
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Talking about the imminent collapse becoming more common by the day.
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