Anyone paying attention will know that we are in a climate emergency but a much underestimated component of the great unraveling will be the geo-political response.
As habitat collapses we will see an up-tick in habitat wars as the imperialist nations fight over the last remaining projected habitat.
Professor Guy McPherson who will be touring NZ with me in November 2016 has for a long time hypothesised that NZ will be one of the last habitats on the planet making us a target of all and sundry.
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Personally I believe Wall St Banker John Key was sent back to NZ to prepare the way for the re-introduction of the US military to NZ’s waters, covered in a previous blog post: ‘The Multiple Threats from US Naval Fleets Return to NZ‘ here.
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Whilst climate change was a factor in the Syrian Conflict the main driver was the imperialist manipulation of the situation to bring about regime change. Nick’s guest obviously has a more benign opinion that mine with regard to the USA. ‘Exponential Interdependencies: Climate Change, International Security, and DMHA‘. He starts:
Question Everything. Prepare for the worst, it is coming. As he says: ‘Many things have changed since the initial gap analysis initiated at founding of the Center for Climate and Security in 2011. The concept of accelerating climate change has become more accepted as a threat multiplier in the defense and security space. Mega Droughts, food shocks, and horrific complex emergencies have affected the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. And a re-balancing in the Asia Pacific region has brought to light a nexus of emerging economic, population, security, and Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance (DHMA) issues.’ His post continues. Includes great podcast.
We are caught in a monkey trap and there is no way out. All the rest is spin. Brace for impact. A really thought-provoking article from Deep Green Resistance world. Starts as follows:
“Don’t talk to me about sustainability. You want to question my lifestyle, my impact, my ecological footprint? There is a monster standing over us, with a footprint so large it can trample a whole planet underfoot, without noticing or caring. This monster is Industrial Civilization. I refuse to sustain the monster. If the Earth is to live, the monster must die. This is a declaration of war.”
“What is it we are trying to sustain? A living planet, or industrial civilization? Because we can’t have both.”
“Somewhere along the way the environmental movement – based on a desire to protect the Earth, was largely eaten by the sustainability movement – based on a desire to maintain our comfortable lifestyles. When did this happen, and why? And how is it possible that no-one noticed? This is a fundamental shift in values, to go from compassion for all living beings and the land, to a selfish wish to feel good about our inherently destructive way of life.”
“The sustainability movement says that our capacity to endure is the responsibility of individuals, who must make lifestyle choices within the existing structures of civilization. To achieve a truly sustainable culture by this means is impossible. Industrial infrastructure is incompatible with a living planet. If life on Earth is to survive, the global political and economic structures need to be dismantled.”
More fantastic work from my brothers at Nature Bats Last on PRN.FM.
Professor McPherson will be coming to NZ in November, assuming the planes are still flying !!!! where we will be discussing Runaway Abrupt Climate Change and the coming habitat wars.
The military industrial complex will get the US President they choose. I cannot take the US Presidential Elections seriously whilst watching the charade unfold from the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean.
Sanders has never criticised the carpet bombing of Gaza, Clinton has blood dripping from every pore of her body and the idiotic rich kid Donald Trump with his hand on the nuclear button should leave everyone cold.
Question everything. The lastest episode of NBL which included a conversation with moral philosopher John McMurtry: ‘Most recently, he has focused his research on the value structure of economic theory and its consequences for global civil and environmental life.’
The wondrous migration of Monarch butterflies from Mexico to North America is collapsing due to the multitude of obstacles created by industrial civilisation and the mendacity of corporations creating toxins that make the traditional migration routes uninhabitable.
As our carbon addiction laces the atmosphere with green house gases that are making the biosphere uninhabitable we see the demise of our pollinators and the food that manages to grow has a lower nutritional value.
We are living and dying in the perfect storm of the 6th great extinction with humans at the helm of the runaway train.
I have been following the great climate blogger RobertScribbler for a number of years but we have clashed over his inability to accept our imminent extinction, it had me banned from commenting on his great Facebook Page.
Over the last few months my comrades and friends Michael Sliwa and Professor Guy McPherson have been running a series of call out shows on their radio show Nature Bats Last on prn.fm confronting the icons of the “Green Movement” like Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein and Katharine Hayhoe.
Ms Hayhoe is married to a Evangelical Christian and is presumably one herself. I suspect her belief in the Rapture has clouded her scientific certainty.
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There is a growing likely hood of a Blue Ocean Event this September in the Arctic.
The myriad consequences include the methane clathrate discharges predicted by Natalia Shakova and Igor Semiletov from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Paul Beckwith from the University of Ottawa who blogs at PaulBeckwith.net and Professor Guy McPherson , GuyMcPherson.com from the University of Arizona who will be touring NZ with me in November 2016 and the stalling of the AMOC, commonly referred to as the Gulf Stream.
A little discussed consequence of such an event as the Gulf Stream stalling or stopping and the attendant climatic chaos that would unfold, as was predicted by Professsor James E Hansen, is the dawning on the global populace that we have irretrievably destabilised the planetary eco-system much sooner than previously expected.
The consequences of this could easily be the collapse of industrial civilisation and the outbreak of my long predicted Habitat Wars as the psychopaths who own us fight over the last remaining habitat.
Watch out NZ, the cross hairs will be on us.Especially with the eco-terrorist John Key at the helm of our sinking ship
Anyone who is awake has seen the raging forest fires in Alberta Canada incinerating everything in its path when we are 1.5C above the arbitrary 1870 baseline as we track to and beyond the IPCC worst case scenario of 6C.
The monetary cost of these invasions will mean nothing when the true significance sinks in.
I personally don’t believe that there will be either a human or a tree standing on this planet when we are above 4C.
Bare in mind that as habitat collapses as it patently is, habitat wars will rage for the remaining days we have left on our dying biosphere.
‘Our climate change emergency is gaining momentum at a non linear, exponential pace, with the massive bleaching event unfolding on the Great Barrier Reef and the extraordinary fires burning in Alberta which have precipitated the evacuation of 80,000 + people from Fort McMurray, two of the latest ” Canary’s in the coal mine”.
There are no shortage of indicators that we have entered the dangerous phase of the great unraveling of our biosphere, when we are at approximately 1.5 degrees c above baseline tracking to and beyond the IPCC worst case scenario of 6C which incidentally will be unsurvivable for most if not all complex life on this planet. So much for 2C being the safe limit.
In the link below, renowned climate scientist Michael E Mann, the co author of the Hockey Stick Theory discusses the fires and the bleaching event on the GBR in incredibly measure tones,which I have personally dived extensively over an 800 mile sail after crossing the Coral sea and sailing down the reef from north of Cairns to Brisbane. I detect no hint of an emergency
It takes about 15 years for a reef to recover from a bleaching event but it also requires the symptoms to abate first. The primary drivers of this latest and third bleaching event in the last 100 yrs, all of which have happened in the last 8 yrs is carbonate saturation and warming waters.
Much of the blame has been attributed to the recent record El Nino which has undoubtedly been a factor but the overall causation is a combination of circumstances that are not going away and are in fact increasing.
I don’t casually criticise a scientist of Michael Mann’s calibre but as a yacht skipper I always default to the precautionary principle which is to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
The tone of the delivery of this information in no way conveys a planetary emergency which we are patently witnessing unraveling before our very eyes.
Climate scientists tend to be specialists in their field which can involve a narrow depth of experience which leaves them unable to extrapolate the overall consequences of simple ( sic) ice melt and sea level rise.
Conservation biologist Professor Guy McPherson, who will be coming back to NZ again in November to discuss our predicament, who has been studying climate change for over three decades believes that the combination of rising temperatures driven by our crack like addiction to carbon is driving us to extinction alongside the other 150 to 200 species that are going extinct very day on our beleaguered planet.
Here is a recent podcast with Guy McPherson speaking about species extinction from the 21:40 minute mark here, ‘Rising Up With Sonali – May 4, 2016‘
Professor McPherson and myself believe we are in runaway abrupt climate change leading to near term human extinction in the not to distant future. Mike Mann doesn’t seem particularly worried.
As I wrote here on the Collapse Of The Oceanic Reef Systems, you can decide for yourselves whose right and prepare accordingly.
As Thom Hartman says: ‘Dr. Michael Mann, Earth System Science Center-Penn State University/Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change (2nd edition) joins Thom. The oceans are literally starving now. Plus the Fires in Canada – Is this a preview of what the future will look like if we don’t do something right now to stop climate change?‘ Further shared here, with video: ‘Dr. Michael Mann on Dying Oceans & Intense Fires‘.
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Many further thanks also to David Korn for his strategic vision and steady, ongoing technical support of both starting and helping me maintain my new website here.
The subservient and traitorous decision by the eco-terrorist New Zealand P.M. John Key to allow US military ships back into our waters threatens to destabilise an already unraveling marine food web with the deafening, blinding and murderous uptick in marine noise that will accompany the arrival of the most powerful and murderous military on the planet back into NZ waters, alongside the added threat that this poses considering the USA, terrorist Nation #1,is stalking Russia in Europe and China in the South China Sea.
The entire marine food web is unraveling as a result of anthropogenic global warming and the re-introduction of these vessels and the ecological sub-marine chaos they create can only put the 6th great extinction on steroids.
The most obvious victim of this flawed decision will be the endangered Hectors and Maui’s Dolphins but these are the charismatic species we relate to, there are millions of less photogenic species in terminal decline like the phyto-plankton that together with other marine species provide 70% of the planets oxygen.
Another omnicidal decision by the eco-terrorist in control of our nation at this crucial juncture of the 6th Great extinction.
You can follow more of Dahr Jamail’s work at Truthout, Paul Beckwith and Guy McPhersons parallel work at Nature Bats Last.
‘When it comes to getting its way with war-gaming in the Pacific Northwest, nobody is better at the concept of “distributed lethality” than the US Navy. In 2015, theNavy introduced this concept “that promised to add more fire power to all manner of Navy vessels and operate them in a way that would spread thin enemy defenses.” The Navy seems determined to move forward with planned military activities like increasing jet dogfighting, electromagnetic warfare training and other actions, regardless of how many animals it kills.‘ Article continues here: ‘Exclusive: Emails Reveal Navy’s Intent to Break Law, Threatening Endangered Wildlife‘.
I was asked to submit a story for a upcoming book about the life of Neil Finn which has been accepted.
The Finn brothers and I have been sailing together now for 36 yrs mostly just in spirit but a couple of times, at sea together. We grew up about 50 km’s from each other in central North Island communities, clan Finn in Te Awamutu, clan Hester in Matamata. Word was already spreading about “ Enz”, then Tim’s little brother joined the band and the legend grew. I first saw them play / perform at the Nambassa music festival at Waihi in January 1979 when I was 19, I’ve been seeing red ever since.
We were once at the Finn home in Parnel, Auckland doing some renovations and I was using a reciprocating saw, Neil liked the action and flexibility of the saw and asked if he could help, naturally I said sure. He starts attacking the wall we were demo’ing and was bouncing around on the end of the saw. I didn’t like what I ‘saw’ and took it from him saying “ I don’t need the wrath of a nation for being the guy who cut the fingers off our most beloved guitarist”, Neil wasn’t impressed but Sharon waltzed by laughing saying “Good idea”!
Remarkably that day we were all working and the radio started playing some of Neil’s music, we all started cheering and Sharon said what’s going on, I pointed out who was on the radio and she gave me that gorgeous cheeky grin and said “ didn’t notice” !!! lol, you have to admit, she’s made an excellent man of him and their obvious love for each other has given birth to some wonderful love songs and two extraordinary young men, carrying on the legacy.
In over 30 yrs of back packing and sailing to 50 + countries the music of Split Enz, Crowded house and Neil’s solo work have kept me company. In September 2000 I was sailing a yacht to Tonga and stopped at Minerva Reef which is 700mls north of NZ and 350mls south of Tonga. Whilst at the reef, the skipper of another yacht anchored there was attacked by a shark. Being a NZ Coastguard trained first aider, I drew the short straw to treat the victim whilst waiting for the NZ Navy ship Resolution to steam to our position to medevac the victim to Tonga.
We kept him alive for 30 hrs until the handover was complete and we sailed off from Minerva, towards a total lunar eclipse shattered from the experience. We steamed out through the entrance to the reef with “ Shark Attack “ blaring, classic Kiwi gallows humor.. Later that night the eclipse took place and we were lucky enough to have perfectly clear skies, cue “ Always take the weather with you”.
In August 2011 Neil’s tour manager called me and asked if I could organise a boat to get the band to the wharf in down town Auckland. It was suggested that we drop them all on Pier 3 leaving them a 200m walk on a public street to the Shed 7 entrance!! My reaction was you must be joking! Walk the two most famous Kiwi rock stars through a throng of euphoric, inebriated Kiwis enroute to the biggest event held in NZ for a decade, through an estimated 70,000 people?? My suggestion was that we use the adjoining NZ Customs wharf which would be behind security fences and would provide a safe and secure entrance to the gig.
We were told that because it was a secure customs area, access was impossible and we would have to use Pier 3 and make the most of it. The tour manager looked at me with a quizzical look and I replied, “ Sweet, on that basis, I quit. I’m not signing up for the role of the guy who Didn’t get the Finn Brothers to the biggest gig in NZ for a decade”. There was a stunned silence followed by me suggesting they contact the Minister of Customs.
The power of rugby and rock n roll prevailed and we were granted access via the customs wharf with the surreal experience of us all having to bring passports to gain entry into the gig!!!!! I kid you not, HMNZ Customs officers cleared us off the boat after a two mile sail from Westhaven Marina! Kiwi rock royalty? Incidentally there turned out to be between 100,000 and 200,000 people waiting for us, the sailors prudence paid off. Another Finn brothers gig climaxed with the beginning of the competition and NZ defeating Tonga 41-10. Team Finn 1 Her Majesty’s customs nil.
In 2009 Jeff Tweedy, Glenn Kotche, John Stirratt and Pat Sansone of Wilco, Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall, and some other friends of Neil’s put the Seven Worlds Collide team back together and while they were here Neil rang me and mentioned that some of the ‘musos’ and family were keen to get out on the water for a sail.
I cajoled my friends Martin Gillman and Cedric Allan into providing the good ship “Woolly Jumper” for what turned out to be a blast around the harbour. We all met at Westhaven Marina on a blustery 25 knt, gusting 30 knts day. I said to Neil “ It will be a wild ride but the boat is 50ft, has done a Sydney to Hobart and she is up for it if you are?” Neil pointed at the boat and said weigh anchor.
We headed out into the wonderful Hauraki Gulf with the boat on her ear, gunnels in the water, Seven Worlds Collide out on the rail as shown in the attached photo. We ‘hurtled’ around the harbour with everyone having a spell on the wheel, lots of fun was had by all and they were all returned to the marina early in the evening wind – blown but elated. As they disembarked, they all looked like they had been through a washing machine and were now supposed to head to the studio to record. The last thing I said to Neil as they departed in the minivan was “ Sorry mate, I didn’t mean to wear them all out”. Cue laconic grin and the ‘Finnsters’ wink.
I heard from the studio 5 hrs later that they were all ‘going off’, elated by their day on the water, the rest is history .
Last year the NZ government in its infinite lack of wisdom, decided to start deep sea drilling for oil off the coast of NZ even though we all know that we must leave 80% of the existing fossil fuel that has already been discovered in the ground and methane hydrate deposits have been discovered off our coast, methane being 50 to 100 times worse than carbon and was the driver of the Permian extinction, they obviously have an extinction wish that will soon be granted to us all and most other species on the planet .
I was involved with Greenpeace and we organised a protest on the beach at Piha where Sharon and Neil have a ‘bach’, (holiday home) . We had our “ banners on the beach” action and after, I called into the house for a beer and lunch, when Sharon heard what we had been doing she must have let Neil know in New York where he was playing, because when I returned home, I found a post on my Facebook ‘wall’ from an American friend Jeanette Eastman, who has been involved with Neil and his bands ‘fan club’ for many years.
Neil had tweeted his thanks for us getting out on the beaches to stop this lunacy, the amazing power of social media. I have been campaigning against deep sea drilling alongside another of Sharon and Neil’s friends Lucy Lawless, aka “Zena, Warrior Princes” , warrior all right, two years ago she was arrested climbing onto an oil drilling ship in Taranaki and to our amazement arrived at Sharon and Neil’s 20th wedding anniversary 8 months pregnant in a bikini, with her husband Rob Tappert dressed as a cardinal!
The spirit of protest that won N.Z. women the vote first in the world, that made us the first country in the world to declare ourselves “ Nuclear free” continues with the help of these two ecologists as we enter what both the World Wildlife Fund and National Geographic are now calling the 6th great extinction ( 150 to 200 species go extinct now every day).
Two months ago I received a call from Elroy, Sharon and Neil’s son, Liam was getting married and a ‘stag do’ was arranged on the same boat used for the Rugby World Cup, who said ‘History Never Repeats’?
I’ll sign off with “ Always take the Weather with you”.
Kevin Hester is currently living on Rakino Island, a small island in the Hauraki Gulf near Auckland, New Zealand, monitoring the unravelling of the biosphere and volunteering at the Rakino Island Nursery is currently developing a proposal to create a marine reserve near by. The Island has no grid tied electricity or reticulated water. I catch my own water from the roof and generate my electricity from the ample solar radiation on the island.
My Submission to the Ministry of the Environment
Kevin Hester, Dropping Anchor in an Exponential World
Kevin Hester 