climate change is priority #1

[mellowtigger]

My priorities remain unchanged since 2019.  I believe that 2021 has moved many more people into alignment with the same priorities.  It's an increasingly popular opinion that we're sick of the failed action and that there is no moderate position on climate change any more.  Do you think I'm still fringe in this idea?  As evidence in my favor, even Scientific American is publicly stating so.

Journalism should reflect what science says: the climate emergency is here.
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/we-are-living-in-a-climate-emergency-and-were-going-to-say-so/

In just a few months of this year, we have already seen:

• Exxon lobbyist caught on video discussing the undermining of climate response.
• Failed power grid in Texas.
• Sinking buildings in Florida.
• Oil fire in the Gulf waters.
• Reservoirs running dry.
• Record-breaking global temperatures.
• Hundreds of deaths due to those high temperatures, just in the pacific northwest region, just in 1 heatwave event.
• A town burst into flame and was evacuated during that heatwave.
• Heat destroying infrastructure, like streets buckling and insulation melting, and even glass shattering.
  

Climate change planning includes infrastructure, which is so much more than just roads and bridges.  Infrastructure is water supply, food supply, and air quality.  Infrastructure is everything we will need to combat climate change, including whatever it takes to change human behaviors.  I agree with Extinction Rebellion.  We are leaving the world in very bad shape for the next generation.  It's in such bad shape that even people trying to retire will notice the difference.  Protest, now.  Change, now.

I'm on the verge of declaring myself solarpunk as well.

In Solarpunk we’ve pulled back just in time... We’re no longer overlords. We’re caretakers. We’re gardeners.
- http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-solarpunk-community-a-solarpunk-manifesto

We have to find a way to return every carbon atom released by fossil fuel extraction back to the ground (or other permanent reservoir).  If we relied on the entirety of Earth's oceans, forests, and prairies to do the job for us, it would literally take geologic timescales to succeed.  We have no time to wait.  Stop dallying.  We must end the extraction of fossil fuels.  Today.



This situation is not fine.  Stop obstructing (by vote, by money, by voice, by habits) the painful and expensive changes necessary to avert catastrophic climate change.  We're beyond the point where any of us can afford these pointless delays.  Stop arguing; stop cherry picking strategies.  Do everything to change.  Do it now.

Comments

[bitterlawngnome]

"Busrt into flame" is a bit ... hmm. The fire was likely sparked by trains running though the town - the residents have been fighting these fires on an ongoing basis for as long as anyone remembers, and the railways are supposed to keep the brush cleared away from the tracks but of course don't give a shit about anyone or anything other than their profits (viz: Corporation). This is particularly galling at this moment as a great many of the residents are First Nations and AS USUAL what they have been saying for decades has been totally ignored and then suddenly white people notice something and it's a BFD.

[mellowtigger]

A bit inflammatory? (Pun!) I'll keep it, though. There was a time when we knew that in certain conditions wildfires would spontaneously ignite with no human intention. Sparks from trains grinding against tracks, sun shining through an abandoned glass bottle, trees falling against power lines, etc. But we're approaching the point where simply being "summer" makes it always the right conditions for random ignitions with everything tinder dry already. Or, as happened in Canada, the excessive smoke from the fire produces extra lightning strikes that then create additional fires. The systems have already left their traditional norms. I'll keep the emotional verbiage for now, since the facts alone have not evoked change. :( Let people begin fearing that sun reflecting from house windows will ignite the dead grass outside their own home during "once a century" heatwaves. Nothing else has worked, and that scenario is increasingly plausible.

[bitterlawngnome]

It's not that it's emotional (surely if there was something one could allow oneself to be emotional about ...!) but that it lets the train corps off the hook. It didn't "burst into flame" spontaneously but it seems more and more likely it was burned down by cumulative negligence on the part of the railroads. Who will without a doubt walk away from this with a "but you can't prove that".