There is a new crisis (ecological crisis, one must specify) that phytoplankton are vanishing from the North Atlantic. This is serious, you know. But meanwhile, all of Climate Aware America is boiling mad at Joe Manchin because he blocked a law that wouldn't have done a nickel's
Conversation
2. worth of good.
Climate change and the whole overarching ecosystem catastrophe has one and only one cause: the value system of "developed" societies.
That's it. Our value system. Particularly our addiction to speed.
Physical speed. Kinetic energy fix. The sensation is addicting
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3. No society ever had an intrinsic need for motorcars. Yes, it is possible to design and build a car-dependent culture, and we have, but the cars came first. And nobody needed one.
But people wanted them.
People still do.
Electric cars! That'll fix it!
Nah.
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4. Electric cars are just more speed. Shoot it up. Cocaine or a mile a minute, there's not much difference.
Slow somebody down. Drive 5 mph under on a two-lane blacktop. They'll spend twelve dollars and fifty cents just to show you how much they disapprove of you in the passing.
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5. And they'll be sitting at the stop sign with a turn signal on when you get there.
It's speed.
America's Amish live without transportation speed and survive. More to the point, about half of all the people on Earth do, too.
We sneer at their poverty.
Value system.
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6. Our lust for physical speed and technotoys is, without reasonable dispute, destroying the entire habitable Earth.
We don't actually need any of them. We particularly don't need cars and airplanes.
These are real people. We should be begging them to
Replying to
7. teach us.
The only dispute I get that I can't fail to agree with is, "People won't."
In other words, "We value cars, airplanes, and televisions more than a habitable Earth. More than any species of animal or plant, more than any living ecosystem on Earth."
So say it.
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8. The only "solution" on the table, the only topic of discussion, the undefined #ClimateAction of every outraged tweet about fossil fuels, by which I mean "transition" to "clean energy" - if tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM they transitioned, all at once with no fossil fuel pulse to
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9. get there, if the laws of physics were as meaningless as Federal Law to a Republican, and we transitioned -
We wouldn't be ok. For instance, we'd still have to make cement, for concrete, and no "clean" means exists. But that's just one. At least a third of current fossil use
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10. Would continue because some processes require a real hot fire and nothing else will do it.
It's rarely mentioned, but I don't believe that there is a transition advocate out there who claims that transition to clean energy would satisfy all fossil energy demand.
That where
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11. our quasi-religious belief in technology and technologists comes into play. I get comments like, "Well, I'm an optimist. You can give up if you want," and 🤷 there is no evidence anywhere that these technological breakthroughs can or are about to happen. It's pure faith.
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12. Why do we have to go fast? Aside from, "to drive to the store that used to be down on the corner but now it's 18 miles away and belongs to a billionaire," why do we have to go fast?
Half the people in the world never do. They're just like us: they have happy days and sad days
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13. That's what I learned living out of a rucksack and an M-16 in the jungles of Vietnam - a good day is a good day, and a bad day is a bad day. And when you're having a good day you're happy. And happy is good enough.
Pissed off in traffic waving a 9mm isn't a damn bit better.
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14. We are killing the world to go fast.
It's really that simple. Our physical speeds and the speeds of our processes are intertwined in the high energy dance with which we are degrading literally every portion of the global ecosystem every minute of every day, for nothing but
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15. speed.
Without speed we couldn't have computers. What computers do is really simple processes incredibly fast. That's it.
So, if we are forced to choose between computers for us our drinking water for future generations, we'll take the computers.
Value system.
Speed.
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16. In Vietnam I saw people we called Montagnards, indigenous brown people of the mountains. They lived in grass houses up on poles out of the mosquitoes, and farmed the jungle in tiny patches of fruits and vegetables and nuclear peppers which we stole. They gathered deadfall
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17. From the ancient forest, deadfall which the forest had probably been providing for 1,000 years, until we sprayed Agent Orange on it, but -
They were a gracious and happy people. There was a pidgin language which sufficed, to hear tales, learn.
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18. What sort of colossal arrogance is the assumption that our "happy" is more valid, more worthwhile, somehow better than their "happy," which could have served them forever if we hadn't broken the ecosystem? What gives us the right?
This bullshit that we'll just "transition" -
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19. The cause, the sole and irreparable cause, of climate change and global ecosystem catastrophe, is the value system lived by the people of the world's developed societies. The G-7, basically. G-20. We don't have to live like this.
We just want to.
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PS re tweet 4: yes.
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