Jeff Gibbs, the director of Planet of The Humans was the guest on the July episode of Nature Bats Last. The episode is embedded here:
“Statement from Director Jeff Gibbs On The Censorship Campaign Against “Planet of the Humans”
“This attempt to take down my film and prevent the public from seeing it is a blatant act of censorship by political critics of my movie. It is an attempted misuse of copyright law to shutdown a film that has opened a serious conversation about how parts of the environmental movement have gotten into bed with Wall Street and so-called “green capitalists.” There is absolutely no copyright violation in my film. This is just another attempt by the film’s opponents to subvert my right to free speech.”
“Opponents of my film, who do not like it’s critique of the failures of the environmental movement, have worked for weeks to have my film taken down and to block me from appearing on TV and on livestream. Their efforts to subvert free speech have failed, with nearly eight and a half million people already viewing the film on YouTube. These Trumpian tactics are shameful, and their aim to stifle free speech and prevent people from grappling with the uncomfortable truths exposed in this film is deeply disturbing.”
“PEN America, which was founded in 1922 and fights for the free speech of artists in the U.S. and around the world, came out strongly and denounced the initial attempt to censor this film, and we hope all champions of free expression condemn this act of censorship. We are working with YouTube to resolve this issue and have the film back up as soon as possible.”
Bill McKibben from 350.org featured in the documentary and has since written critically of the documentary. Jeff Gibbs response is embedded in the following link; Response to Bill McKibben regarding Planet of the Humans.
I have been sceptical of Bill McKibben since I attended and spoke on a panel at a climate change conference at Victoria University Wellington in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2006. McKibben was the keynote speaker who pretended to cry when talking about AGW. I was with a group of indigenous speakers from the South Pacific Islands, Kiribati and the Solomon Islands. They agreed with me that he lacked credibility.
I will also note that 350 ppm of carbon in the atmosphere was never safe. The target set and promulgated by 350.org was never safe, the 1.5C / 2C guardrail set by the IPCC was patently never safe.
The next episode of NBL will feature a conversation with Dr. Sid Smith, Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Hampden-Sydney College and General Secretary of the Green Party of Virginia. We will be discussing his presentation titled: How to Enjoy the End of the World.
The next episode will broadcast live on Tuesday afternoon at 3pm EST, the 4th of August in the United States. If you miss the broadcast, you can find shows in the archives at PRN.fm, the podbean, or at Stitcher, and feel free to rate us on iTunes.
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 
My retired biologist/teacher neighbor (formerly a commenter on NBL years ago and anti-Forest Service & timber industry local activist) watched this on NetFlicks and were blown away by it.
I canceled my memberships in the Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, NDRC etc years and years ago due to seeing them selling out to the corporations and big money greenwashing. It was all such a bad joke that I just couldn’t be that much of a hypocrite and live with myself. Nobody’s perfect and certainly not me but I’ll be damned if I’ll support such…corruption. PBS became the Putrid Bullshit System and NPR became National Petroleum Radio and I could go on ranting about all this because it pissed me off so much!
I want to watch Planet of the Humans (not because I’ll enjoy it) but don’t think my dial-up would download it all before it would disconnect. I just can’t watch anything but very short (10 minutes or less) vids and those alone take a couple of hours to get onto this computer. There is an automatic redial program with my dial-up service that disconnects in 5 hours or so. Interrupts all downloading that goes longer.
And since none of us are ‘visiting’ at this point excepting outside and masked & apart (we’re intelligent), I can’t go watch it at their house. Ah well, one of these days. And yes, censorship in the US is a WAY OF LIFE. Inverted totalitarianism neoliberal Capitalism that is breaking down into a bluntly obvious violently militaristic police state since the wealthy rulers and authoritarians in their employ are losing control of the myths that this society lives on as reality continues to trickle into the consciousness of more and more people. The more shit goes under the more people wake up, but then there are those that grasp ever more desperately to the dictatorship/Fascist model to ‘save’ them whether it’s with political parties or religious dogma. Mind rotting tripe and nearly impossible to circumvent with facts.
Big sigh. I’ve been publicly called a ‘misguided idealist from the 60s’ by an “I always vote Democrat’ self-proclaimed Progressive Liberal older than me surfer from my home beach but hell, I was a teenage surf rat going to antiwar protests with my Peace & Freedom Party activist stepmom then! So I guess I was a bit of an idealist but misguided? Most definitely not. I’ve had words with this writer on OBRag.org before. Butted heads! But the publisher publishes every word I write so I must be saying something right?
sealintheSelkirks
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Thanks Kevin
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
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Fantastic interview!
Thank you Kevin, Guy, Pauline and Jeff.
It is a difficult message to have… That everything about our manner of living is unsustainable.
I felt that this was very brave to make this film.
I’m deeply appreciative of your honesty and kindness.
Things are getting very ugly and are getting worse daily.
I hope we can find kindness and mitigate suffering.
Thank you for your courageous work!
Marie
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If Jeff Gibbs had made a documentary on the Belt & Road Initiative, would the reaction have been less negative?
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Excellent observation, the answer pretty obvious.
I’ve written before about the belt and road initiative
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Our interview with Jeff Gibbs has been put to images from the Arctic:
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Another wonderful edit from Tim Bob using the audio from this months episode of Nature Bats Last.
Radio with pictures.
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I think solar power is cool. It can provide electricity for remote situations that otherwise would not have the benefit. Vaccines can be kept cold, telephones in remote places, water pumping in arid places located off the grid, etc. With that said, I know it is unsustainable. “Solar” photovoltaics are are an electrical convenience powered by fossil fuel, period. Just recently, I tried to find a discussion about how solar cells are NOT MADE FROM SAND, but rather, quartz. I could not find anything, either on a google search, nor duckduckgo. Even Intel insists that their technology is made from sand. Someone else, I forget who, slyly said, “Photovoltaics are made from silicon, just like sand.” Haha! I have worked in the high tech industry for many years, areas of electronic fabrication, silicone ingot growing, and so forth, so I know the details, and I can most emphatically say that computer chips or photovoltaic cells are NOT MADE FROM SAND. Yet, it seems no one is willing to admit to this, and thus, I must conclude that the disconnect on this issue may only be attributed to one of cultural dogma & techno religious fantasy. I’m feeling something of what Galileo Galilei must have felt. I have no one to discuss my dismay with, so I thought I would leave my thoughts here. Good day.
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Welcome to our world. Frustrating isn’t it, pointing out the ‘Elephant in the room’ !
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Elephant? Oh hell no, Kevin, it’s freaking Godzilla looming over Tokyo ready to stomp us! I can see those giant clawed feet right over my head this very minute!!! Can’t you? It’s HONKING at me! AAAGGGGGHHHHH!
Hamlet: I’ve got solar after inheriting a little bit of cash from my auntie back at the start of this century, Kyocera 125 panels. It shows the ignorance of people thinking they are built by beach sand. Our world runs on science but few have a grasp of even the most basic knowledge. Scary!
I had a choice with just enough money to either buy a new truck or put in solar. Choosing worse (the industrial built-with-fossil-fuel then burning more for the life of the vehicle) or just bad (industrial built-with-fossil-fuel), I chose the latter because I still drive my 1980 Toyota Corona and 1993 Toyota x-cab 4×4. But the truck blew up last year and still isn’t running yet so I’m driving a 1995 Toyota 4Runner I picked up cheap. Afford an electric? Rich people toys unfortunately. But I drive 45 miles a week, more in winter, but with the solar at least I’m trying!
Welcome to the conversation. You can talk here on Kevin’s site, and dismay is an intelligent response. I’m kinda beyond that at this point, though…more along the lines of George Carlin’s massive irony mixed with the pessimism of Albert Einstein. But I still try to do something fun every day. You do the same, eh?
sealintheSelkirks
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I put up a BP275 solar panel to keep deer out of my garden (powering an electric fence). At 75w output, it can’t keep up with my 7w fencer when it get cloudy for a few days. It’s a dirty secret about photovoltaics; modest overcast drops power output 90%. Unless you live in the SW USA, pv is a nonstarter here. So, let’s all move to the desert, and use our panels to pump fossil water, fill our pools, and have a party.
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Yep, I know this having lived in these mountains for 16 years. When it snows, best have big batteries and unplug everything one can to get through until the next sunny day. Which of course almost never works out quite as well as one hoped! It may be a dirty secret but at least it’s better than filling the coffers of power companies, yes?
As for your last sentence, you must be thinking of Arizona and all those Covid-19 parties the younger generation are having. And dying from. Obviously that age group, regardless of the technology they are addicted to, haven’t learned much since the James Dean era of playing chicken with cars in the 1950s, eh? Maybe we should all move to the desert so we could grow freaking cotton in that state, too? Can’t be much left of the 300 million year old water sources left under the sand, and the Colorado doesn’t even make it to Mexico anymore, but hey the government will subsidize big corporations anyway and we all should get on board that train because, after all, if we don’t someone else will!!!
Growing cotton in 100’F+ desert sand. Just wow. Pretty crazy stuff, eh?
But I’ve got 8 panels up, 3.5kW, and one of these days I might even get the other 8 that are still sitting in boxes in the shop mounted. Of course that’ll require more cash that I don’t have to do some fixing on the house but one can dream….
in other news my oldest friend just got hit by Hurricane Douglas on Windward Side of O’ahu last night. And I found out this morning that they dodged the bullet and still have their house… Sometimes I hear good news.
sealintheSelkirks
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Dr Mike Joy reiterating our point;
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Jeff Gibbs completely vindicated by a brilliant piece of investigative journalism from the Grayzone Project.
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I haven’t gotten to watch this yet. It seriously depressed my biologist neighbor and we’ve talked since I last posted on this topic, and it made him wonder what the point was of all those years because…he lost. The Hedge Fund and ‘Investment’ Timber firms have just butchered these mountains and that is accelerating from what I can see. There are huge gaps missing from the surrounding mountains, like having teeth knocked out but with a line of a few listless conifers standing in a row right across the tops of the ridgelines trying to hide the damage. Doesn’t work of course, because the first storm that comes through after they’ve clearcut it starts knocking down those silly trees.
When big ‘enviro’ started ‘partnering’ with corporations, the writing was on the wall and I noticed…
But it should be interesting to see what those toothless gaps on the ridges look like after the massive Canadian howling windstorm roared through here on Labor Day, two days ago. It was insane, Kevin, boggling, and so intense that I had to wear safety goggles outside trying to keep stuff from blowing away because I feared for my eyes being damaged. My mate in Hawai’i said this area made the national news. Again.
Hurricane force winds blasting in from the North & N/E, temps dropped from 35C to 8C, and Tuesday morning we had a hard frost! Fires everywhere, trees down everywhere, power out everywhere, shit just blew away. I found a plastic bag out back yesterday that was from a local store…in Alberta Canada!
We NEVER get storms from the north this time of years. Only during the winter do we see ‘Yukon Express’ cold dry powder snow blizzards (which we snowboarders love). This time it was just as dry but no moisture just the fury of wind. Perfect fire weather.
I came extremely close to being burned out Labor Day. The local firefighters have NO IDEA how my neighbors and I didn’t find ourselves under a firestorm from fires that started when a power line went down under a tree uphill & upwind 1/4 of a mile from me. The new owners of the property have clearcut it over the last 6 weeks, and of course what was left couldn’t withstand this storm. I had a call from the wife of the retired biologist freaking out because they could see the flames across the creek and the firefighters couldn’t get near it due to the live line snapping around sparking and arcing like a broken-backed snake, and ALL of the power crews were elsewhere already. Somewhere another tree went down and cut the power to this line or it is quite likely I would have gone up in a firestorm. Absolutely no time to get out, no warning, and with 50-90mph winds roaring through? It would have taken no more than a couple of minutes to blow through this property. No chance, dude, I would have burned as it would have run right over me. Loki was playing his tricks again…
Under smoke from fires to the west since. House is closed up to keep smoke out, wearing a mask when I go outside. The wind switched back to the normal w/sw flow after this thing roared through.
Planet of the humans isn’t going to really last much longer, is it?
sealintheSelkirks
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It’s only a matter of time before we all start getting incinerated as will our friends and neighbours. It will trigger a tsunami of grief.
“For whom the bell tolls”.
K
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350.org, corrupted from the outset
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Yeah, a lot of us kind of knew that already, didn’t we Kevin? Too much money corrupts just as quickly as power I guess, but then money = power, power = money seems to be the way of the last 9,000 years of empire building by our species…
_______Local Weather
Buried in smoke from the Oregon fires, and I mean buried. It looks like a mist or fog wafting through the trees out the window. Hazy at 30 yards, blurred. The sun is a fuzzy ball that has a horrible glare to it, but it is visible and not the orange/red I would have expected. Smoke smell is in this totally closed-up house, and I have 2 swamp cooler/floor fans, upstairs here in the office and down in the music room doorway facing the front room, both pulling air through the big wet filters. Helps some, at least to remove some of those small particulates.
I turned on a third out in the shop, too, where the girl plants are indoors since yesterday under the ceramic metal halide ‘blue light’ flowering hooded bulb. There isn’t enough light for them at this stage, the halide is better. From the mid-90s/35C to 75/24C today, Early yesterday afternoon I had to make my 2nd trip to Spokane since Feb to pick up another couple boxes of my book from the publisher. It wasn’t so smoky when I left at 11am up here in the mountains but I dropped into the gunk of the flats about 20 miles south. UGH. On the way back I couldn’t see the mountains, looked like LA on a bad day until I hit about the same place near Deer Park, but once I got back it wasn’t nearly as bad by comparison. The sky still had some light hazy blue to it, and I saw stars last night. The brightest only of course. Needless to say had the house closed up before I left, and I slept with the windows closed. I always leave one open even when it’s snowing, but not in this gunk.
Tonight is going to be dark and murky no doubt. And going outside in it is why I always have had a box of N95 masks on the tool room shelf, fire season. I didn’t have a clue I was going to need them for a damned new disease Pandemic though historically that was always a possibility!
Ya know something? I bet the directors of Big Enviro are safely ensconced in their expensive homes with their air conditioners running full tilt. Nice work if you can get it, eh? Pays well, lots of flattering ego boosting…and you can afford the high electricity bills! That is, until the grid goes brownout or completely down.
LINK: LA County records highest-ever temperature
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/06/weather/california-record-temperature/index.html
_________
Holy shit, 121’F in Woodland Hills. 50’C, Kevin! But then I realized a long time ago by looking at topo maps that I grew up on the northern west coast of the Sonoran Desert!
Ya know something? I think I dated a wealthy hottie white chick from Woodland Hills once who wanted a surfer boyfriend on a tourist vacation to my San Diego beach… A full-on Valley Girl who, if I remember correctly, actually did talk in a ‘Valley Speak’ dialect like in Hollywood movies! Pretty weird and honestly I had a hard time trying to follow her train of thought…
sealintheSelkirks
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Here’s the wonderful article mentioned above by Michael Moore, written by Max Blummenthal at the Grayzone;
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Another great critique of the attacks on the Planet Of The Humans from the ever reliable investigative journalist Max Blumental from the Grayzone. Great that Max linked the coup against Evo Morales to lithium and child labour in mining it, it truly was “The Lithium Coup”. “We will coup whoever we want”, Elon Musk
Wherever Rockefeller Foundation money goes we should all be suspicious. 350.org has been financed by them from the beginning, we’ve all been played by the same corporations that have ground the living planet into dust.
350 was co-opted long ago, the same is happening to Extinction Rebellion now, controlling the narrative and the activists is the new colonialism as we circle the drain.
Professor Guy McPherson and I had the pleasure and honour of interviewing POTH director Jeff Gibbs on the documentary and subsequent to that Max Blumental wrote the single best critique of the film and it’s detractors, which I have posted in the comments section of my blog post on the interview.
I attended and spoke at climate change conference at Victoria University in Wellington and McKibben was the keynote speaker. He pretended to cry. Myself and the indigenous speakers I was with all thought he was faking it.
We’ve all been sucked in by this scam, don’t take it personally.
In this feckless culture most people prefer a convenient lie to an inconvenient truth.
The bottom line is this set of living arrangements is unsustainable, face it and face the consequences, they are here now despite the 10 to 30 year lag or even more between emissions and their full effects manifesting .
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How timely. This posted a couple of days ago:
Humans May Have Passed the ‘Point of No Return’ in Climate Crisis, Says Study—But That Doesn’t Mean All Hope Is Lost
In order to roll back catastrophic carbon emissions, humans must “start developing the technologies for large-scale removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere,” says one of the study’s lead authors.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/12/humans-may-have-passed-point-no-return-climate-crisis-says-study-doesnt-mean-all
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So don’t despair, technology WILL save us all. All our scientists (those people nobody listens to) have to do is…completely invent a totally new technology that sucks the freaking carbon out of the air (while leaving the 02 for us to breathe) and re-freezes the Arctic at the same time. No problem for these great US extremely underfunded scientists (that nobody listens to) while Smoking Joe Biden continues to build pipelines like Obama and frack the planet like Hillary Clinton.
Anybody?
sealintheSelkirks
And people won’t even wear fucking masks in a worldwide Pandemic in this country. So can anyone give me some odds on how likely this is going to be?
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And the plot thickens with the corporate fossil fuel assholes are about to shove a whore from climate dystopia central down the USA throat in the form of another right wing nut job un-Supreme Court judge who’s a member of a fringe Catholic cult that falls on the floor to babble gibberish while having seizures, and who thoroughly supports oil & coal and all corporations over people and the environment. Whose daddy was a lawyer for Shell Oil… Oh my fucking hell, Kevin. Thunberg got this right:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/15/greta-thunberg-rebukes-amy-coney-barrett-over-her-anti-science-views-climate-change
We can see the obvious fracturing of the Empire going on, the complete takeover by the wealthy Leisure Class that own everything including both faces of the One Party state and the bownshirt gangs they have mobilized. This country suffered a coup in 2000 by the rightwing psychos on the unSupreme Court in 2000, an obvious ‘soft’ coup since no shots were fired just legalese, and Barrett was one of the lawyers that headed to Florida to stop the State-mandated recount of Wbush vs Gore (thereby breaking the law!). In three independent recounts afterwards…Gore won in all of them.
I’m sure Barrett fell down on the floor after that to jerk and drool and blabber in gurgling baby-talk she was so thrilled about the outcome because it was all her god’s will to always put in worse and worse neoliberal Fascists… The direction has been obvious since Reagan was put in, hasn’t it? All US presidents are right wing corporate and the un-Supreme Court has always been on the side of the wealthy that rule. And History as taught to the peasants never teach reality, just myth and fiction and blatant lies that support the status quo. And are taught to revile and shun those that question the party line. And the world continues to devolve into a cesspool and most never even notice being, of course, too distracted by the bullshit to pay attention.
I keep asking people who talk stupid shit about all the wars the US has started in the last 20 years just how many Afghani were in the planes that hit the World Trade Center. How many Iraqi? How many Syrians? How many Libyans? How many Somalis? How many Venezuelans? How many Cubans? How many Chinese? How many Russians? You’d be surprised at the answers I get…or maybe not as I’m sure you don’t have much doubt as to the stupidity of the so-called ‘citizens’ of this country…the vast majority really are just ‘consumers’ not critically-thinking cognitive beings.
Pretty soon it won’t be Planet of the Humans. Pretty soon it’ll be Dead Planet by the Humans.
We can no longer afford to wait as climate changes, economic systems malfunction, and enflamed social divisiveness bear down on humanity with unprecedented, irreversible consequences.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/10/13/desideratum-heading-prospects-dark-and-tumultuous-future
sealintheSelkirks
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Some great work from Michael Dowd analysing POTH and surrounding issues.
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How timely. This posted a couple of days ago:
Humans May Have Passed the ‘Point of No Return’ in Climate Crisis, Says Study—But That Doesn’t Mean All Hope Is Lost
In order to roll back catastrophic carbon emissions, humans must “start developing the technologies for large-scale removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere,” says one of the study’s lead authors.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/12/humans-may-have-passed-point-no-return-climate-crisis-says-study-doesnt-mean-all
______
So don’t despair, technology WILL save us all. All our scientists (those people nobody listens to) have to do is…completely invent a totally new technology that sucks the freaking carbon out of the air (while leaving the 02 for us to breathe) and re-freezes the Arctic at the same time. No problem for these great US extremely underfunded scientists (that nobody listens to) while Smoking Joe Biden continues to build pipelines like Obama and frack the planet like Hillary Clinton.
Anybody?
sealintheSelkirks
And people won’t even wear fucking masks in a worldwide Pandemic in this country. So can anyone give me some odds on how likely this is going to be?
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The debate continues with Michael Moore
https://anchor.fm/rumble-with-michael-moore/episodes/Ep–140-Action-Is-the-Antidote-To-Despair-feat–Planet-of-the-Humans-Filmmakers-Jeff-Gibbs–Ozzie-Zehner-emjuvv?fbclid=IwAR11aGkE0IyCc_bxI9KO8bgQifAfa9Wd3WMNwcR7TLgBUGeKvWuuuMY66R8
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More hard truths about solar power. I spoke at the Deep Green Bush School once and one of the kids said to me “Solar panels are mining too you know”.
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A simply brilliant round up of the predicament dispelling the nonsense that so called renewables are part of the solution when in fact they are part of the problem.
Professor Tim Garrett of the University of Utah proved that industrial civilisation is a heat engine irrespective of how it is powered. Sustaining the unsustainable is patently impossible.
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Well that was rather disturbing, Kevin. Or should I scream HOLY SHIT and go gibbering into a closet and hide?
Not something we are unaware of…it’s more a matter of when not if and we’ve known that for quite a while. Have you read the arctic_news.blogspot.com post by Glickson on my b-day anniversary 22Dec? Sheesh, I’m glad my computer was still down that day but of course I just had to go back and see what’s I’ve missed in real information.
Am I a pessimist or an optimist? Great answer by Greta Thunberg: neither, I’m a realist. Shake the walls down, girl, but it’s far too late though we keep trying, eh Kevin?
The latest there posted four days ago pretty much says we’re heading to be the new Venus. Wouldn’t it be interesting to actually get a camera down on the surface only to find the wreckage of an earlier technological species in this solar system that did exactly what we’re doing?
I thought of writing a sci-fi book based on that, with a twist of course, that popped into my head when I read it yesterday. But I’m working on the NorCal 3-day outdoor concert scene book at the moment…first things first I guess. More and more people are ordering Massacre Sites, Kevin. I’m kind of surprised since it isn’t on Amazon, ya know?
Read a book years ago, 2006 or something, that was titled 6 Degrees or something like that. Can’t remember the author but it was conjecture and now we’re seeing the current science getting closer and closer to that. Gives me chills some days.
This markbrimble piece just made me breathe deep and blow it out in a big sigh. This ride is going to continue to be less and less fun. Did you know about that hurricane in the Philippines that was sustained OVER 300mph? Holy fuck, talk about a Category 7…
sealintheSelkirks
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Our colleague and scholar Mark Brimblecombe has put this comprehensive piece of work together exposing this unpalatable truth.
It’s a ‘piece de resistance’ imho
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That wasn’t a fun read but then I wasn’t expecting it to be.
Like what the ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ Democratic Neoliberal/corporate conservative wealthy who say they installed Biden to ‘save’ Democracy (VERY unlikely given the asswipe’s decades-long political record, eh?), all we seem to be able to do is…watch it all collapse? Well, some of us because it seems most are trying to NOT pay attention or are too busy scrabbling around trying to find something to eat every day. Or hiding from murderous soldiers, killer storms, deadly droughts, flashing floods, economic collapse, and then there’s always this ongoing mutating Pandemic sweeping the world. Four new strains now, two from England, one Brazilian, and now the South African one is confirmed on the US East Coast. So much to pay attention to and hey, what’s on TV and look I have new ‘likes’ on FaceBlech to read!
So easy to keep distracted. I’m nearly through Edward Snowden’s Permanent Record book, and distraction/control is exactly what it’s all about. Keep the power and wealth rolling in, keep the Status Quo and Class War in equilibrium…
We certainly are unable to stop the downward spiral without outside help from a more intelligent species that survived their childhood to get off their own planet, eh? We won’t without it, that’s too damned obvious. And given our incredibly violent history against our own species that ‘look’ or ‘think’ a tiny bit different, can you imagine the insanity that would flare up like a solar storm against any species that showed up and offered to help? Not just the insanely powerful emotional shock that would rebound through all the ‘religions’ we’ve invented that have slaughtered each other remorselessly over tiny differences in theology, either! Who among the wealthy powerful will be willing to give up their power and wealth to actually change their entire outlook and work for the good of the species (and all other Earthlings)?
Not likely. Some idiot in charge of nuclear weapons would immediately declare war by claiming that they’re invading us because our diseased and degraded puny planet is such a unique pearl in the Universe (a nonsense unknowable concept) that these beings traveled light years to steal it from us.
The hubris of our species knows no bounds I’m afraid, and if I was a member of that species I honestly would be questioning just how intelligent it would be to let these violent primates out of their cage… Wouldn’t you? We lock people up for far less crimes…
Big sigh.
Read my book yet?
sealintheSelkirks
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Did I actually read the same article twice because you posted it twice in 12 days? And I commented twice? Damn, we must be getting old, Kevin! I thought the information seemed awfully damned familiar; like I had read it before!! Oops.
But two weeks later to read it again with all the more current reading I’ve done since? After catching up on what I missed on arctic__news.blogspot for over a month? Oh yeah, it’s makes even more of an impact because so much else bolster the conclusion.
I’ve got an article that came as an exclusive from ‘counterpunch+’ for members that I’m going to post here as the link is only temporary. They ceased publishing their magazine so this is is bonus to us that support them.
I apologize for posting the entire thing but it’s kind of an amazing article. And I haven’t ever posted it before! Ahahaha. Just had to say that! Snicker, snort, hee hee…
And it’s still raining in these mountains.
sealintheSelkirks
Doughnut Economics Boots Capitalism Out
(NOTE: A schematic of the doughnut economy was here)
The rapid rise of Covid-19 has spawned a renaissance in socio-economic thinking about the best way to face the future, as mayors of cities throughout the world search for answers in the face of declining revenues while society demands more urgent help.
Eureka! Amsterdam, the Venice of the North, discovers doughnut economics. With a click of fingers, it abandons the major tenets of the neoliberal brand of capitalism’s insatiable thirst for growth to infinity at any and all costs. This city where capitalism spawned via the Dutch East India Company first issuing shares in 1602 has turned agnostic on 400 years of embedded capitalism.
In the face of a virus that has turned the world to a state of reflection of how to best cope, new ideas bring new hope. After all, the virus has exposed the utter fragility, vast inequity, and incongruity of the engulfing neoliberal machine as conceived under the auspices of Reaganism/Thatcherism over four decades ago. Nowadays, its results are aptly summarized by the universally accepted epithet “The One Percent.”
Meanwhile, Covid-19 has exposed the radical cockeyed dynamics of infinite growth at any and all costs with profits of billions, and even trillions, atop lopsided pyramids of a sick and hungry forlorn bourgeoisie, analogous to late 18th century France when thousands of aristocrats, holding onto their heads, fled the streets of Paris.
Suddenly, out of the blue, doughnut economics to the rescue, as it levels the playing field, dismantling the wobbly pyramid of growth at any and all costs in favor of learning how to “thrive” rather than grow, and grow, and grow a lot more until ecosystems that support life crumble.
The doughnut economy, in contrast to capitalism, takes its cue from nature. Trees grow to maturity and then thrive for years. Trees do not grow to the top of the sky. Similarly, doughnut economics respects the ecological ceiling by focusing on a reduction of ecological overshoot. It’s a new pathway to a better way of life that blends with nature. At first blush, the Great Doughnut is so appealing that 25% of the world’s economy already has it under consideration as a good substitute for capitalism’s commodification of nature.
Today in central Amsterdam a shopper at a local grocery will find new price tags on potatoes, including 6c extra per kilo for the carbon footprint, 5c extra for the toil farming takes on the ecosystem, and 4c extra as fair pay for workers. It’s the “True-Price Initiative” creating awareness amongst buyers of true ecological costs of products essential to the city’s official adoption, as of April 2020, of doughnut economics.
An all-important aspect of doughnut economics is attention to the needs of all citizens by building a strong interconnected social foundation. For example, with the onset of Covid-19, the city realized that thousands of residents did not have access to PCs needed to connect with society during a lockdown. Instead of dialing up a manufacturer to buy new PCs, the city collected old and broken laptops from residents, hired a company to refurbish, and distributed computers to needy citizens. That’s a prime example of the Great Doughnut at work.
British economist Kate Raworth outlined the theory of doughnut economics in a 2012 paper followed by her 2017 book, Doughnut Economics (Chelsea Green Publishing). It defies traditional economics that she studied at the University of Oxford by focusing on a doughnut symbol of planetary boundaries and social boundaries that define safe and just space for humanity, along with healthy ecosystems, or to put it another way, living harmoniously with nature as opposed to neoliberalism’s indifference and overuse.
According to Ms. Raworth, 20th century economic thinking is not equipped to deal with the 21st century reality of a planet on the edge of climate breakdown. Therefore, her theory establishes a “sweet spot” where citizens have everything needed for a good life while respecting the environmental ceiling, avoiding ecological overshoot, like excessive freshwater withdrawals, chemical pollution, and loss of biological diversity to mention only a few.
The doughnut economy is displayed in a visual circular schematic with a green inner circle, which represents a “regenerative and distributive economy that is a safe and just space for humanity” surrounding a list of items that, when in shortfall, need to enter the green doughnut’s “social foundation,” like housing, energy, water, health, income & work, etc. At the outer edge of the doughnut, an “ecological ceiling” lists “ecological overshoots” that threaten the social fabric.
As the world turns, with today’s universality of entrenched capitalism, people in rich countries are living in an ecological overshoot while people in poor countries fall below the social foundation. Thus, both rich and poor are living outside of the regenerative and distributive economy found in the green inner circle of the Great Doughnut.
Amsterdam is working to bring its 872,000 residents into the sweet spot for a good quality of life without putting pressure on the planet beyond nature’s normal rate of sustainability. It’s the Amsterdam Doughnut Coalition as established by 400 locals and orgs within an intertwined network that runs programs at grassroots levels. Thus, the economy sprouts up from ground level rather than dictated from above in lofty boardrooms.
Of more than passing interest, doughnut economics is spreading throughout the world. Copenhagen’s city council is following in Amsterdam’s footsteps. Brussels is following and a city in New Zealand named Dunedin, as well as Nanaimo, British Columbia and Portland, Oregon preparing to roll out their own versions of the doughnut economy. Austin, Texas has the Great Doughnut under consideration.
A sizeable portion (25%) of the world’s economy is already studying what Raworth recognized while studying at Oxford about old school economic supply/demand, efficiency, rationality, and infinite GDP growth but missing a key ingredient known as the web of life. Economists refer to the ecological web of life as an “externality.” Is it really an externality? Such labeling removes the prime source of life from consideration in the fabric of economic development.
Raworth’s theory does not provide for specific policies that must be adopted. That is up to stakeholders to decide on a local basis. In fact, setting benchmarks is the initial step to building a doughnut economy. As for Amsterdam, the city combines doughnut’s goals within a circular economy that reduces, reuses, and recycles materials of consumer goods, building materials, and food products.
In Amsterdam “Policies aim to protect the environment and natural resources, reduce social exclusion and guarantee good living standards for all. Van Doorninck, the deputy mayor, says the doughnut was a revelation. ‘I was brought up in Thatcher times, in Reagan times, with the idea that there’s no alternative to our economic model,’ she says. ‘Reading the doughnut was like, Eureka! There is an alternative! Economics is a social science, not a natural one. It’s invented by people, and it can be changed by people.” (Source: Clara Nugent, Amsterdam Is Embracing a Radical New Economic Theory to Help Save the Environment, Could It Also Replace Capitalism? Time, January 22, 2021)
Of special interest, C40: A Mayors Agenda for a Green and Just Recovery intending to deliver an equitable and sustainable recovery from Covid-19. C40 consists of 96 cities around the world representing 25% of the global economy; it’s a network of megacities. Significantly, C40 has asked Raworth to report on the progress of its doughnut members Amsterdam, Philadelphia, and Portland.
The Great Doughnut overtaking neoliberal capitalism is much more than a simple story. It’s working! It’s brilliant! Yet, the designation doughnut has a peculiar ring that foretells a name change, but maybe not. It’s kinda cute.
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.
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Tim Watkins put’s ‘renewables’ to the sword:
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2021/02/04/the-other-side-of-the-story/?fbclid=IwAR2NKhkGTIqUaQNNvIO-GGVg_GCR9qDjixx6f0phUq9BXK911oAhcxq7J-g
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When are you going to stop putting up articles that decimate the prevailing theme of optimism that permeates the corporate world’s media outlets? I mean, where’s the pictures of all those cute posing doggies? Or the always-beloved little kitty pictures doing idiotic things? And lest we forget our species, how about some of the look-at-the-amazing-baby pictures that make people go oooooh and ahhhh with the memories (about nasty diapers and sleepless nights?) and forget the reality of…reality. Oops.
You could post beautiful seascape photos of tiny bubbles in the water column…oh wait you already DO post tiny bubble pictures but of freaking methane under what’s left of the Arctic Ice Cap…my bad! No wait, that’s bad!
I just loved reading the first paragraph of this article. So THAT’S where all the damn logging trucks around here are taking the disappearing forests! Now US forests are biofuels for English power plants. How lovely! Would you like a crumpet with your tea?
That’s like calling dead human bodies just some fresh meat for the spaghetti. After all, isn’t meat a Biofuel being consumed to keep our ‘heat engines’ going? Since we’re cannibalizing our planet I thought of that analogy for some reason. Twisted, I know!
So I’m seeing logging trucks on the highways because we’ve got NO SNOW on the surrounding mountains excepting the very top, just the peaks. Valley floors are dirt, ridgelines are green conifers and rock faces and dirt, and I heard the woman at the bank drive-up yesterday exclaim how great it was to be so warm this time of year…and I asked her where the water was going to come from since without snowpack we don’t recharge the aquifers that flows out of her tap. She looked a little stricken at my comment and did the ‘well, yeah, I know…but…’ I guess not having to wear a coat is better than a healthy ecosystem and somewhat stabile climate? Hmmmm…
Had a dusting last night, melted completely off by 11am. It should be 23’F/-5C around here every day. That’s the average temp for the first week of February. It’s 40’F again today and the sun is beating in the south-facing window on my arm quite warmly. A longsleeve is just fine for outside, don’t need a winter coat. The snowpack, and I use that term disparagingly, around this property is crusty slippery icy crap where it hasn’t melted away to dirt and mud, and the conifers have huge rings of dirt around them that are starting to interconnect even under the canopy out of direct sunlight. The pack isn’t ankle high where there is snow, and that’s hard and crusty. Not much of a winter here. Again.
Waiting for the cute baby pictures, Kevin! I can’t wait to start oohhhing and ahhhing. AHAhahahahahahah
sealintheSelkirks
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This is an excellent critique of the documentary
https://steadystate.org/planet-of-the-humans-puts-sacred-cows-out-to-pasture/?fbclid=IwAR2nSonGViIvt0AC_Qgren7afxsCBSCAnXM1eYaMEqgofjjmJ1V3XVo-6g0
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