Posts by Steve Rowe
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Envirologue: Too Big to Fail – Why…, in reply to ,
Similarly the silence on the ongoing Fukushima disaster is beyond belief.
I think it's more the engineering that failed us in the first instance, not the science.
No offence but the people dying of cancer really don't care which bit of it failed.
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Envirologue: Too Big to Fail – Why…, in reply to ,
Tussock, do you have an ideological problem with nuclear power?
I have two, Chernobyl and Fukushima. It is incredible that the wildfires in the Chernobyl exclusion zone have not rated a single mention in our media. Similarly the silence on the ongoing Fukushima disaster is beyond belief. Fukushima is still dumping nuclear waste into the North Pacific over four years after the earthquake.
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Envirologue: Too Big to Fail – Why…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
There ARE limits!
I never said there wouldn't be sacrifices!
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Envirologue: Too Big to Fail – Why…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
That is the other lie, there is no evidence at all that anyone will have a drop in their standard of living. None! In fact, every initiative taken thus far has positive economic impacts and can be said to have improved the standard of living.
As Ozzie Zehner points out in Green Illusions we don't have a energy production problem we have a energy consumption problem. Even if electricity was free and had no environmental consequences, the production of all the stuff we want to plug in would have enormous consequences - as it does now.
So it depends on what is a good 'standard of living' and a fucked planet with vast amounts of the (mostly) redundant crap we fill our lives with isn't one in my opinion.
Does this mean people will be less happy? No. Why is it that places that objectively look poorer so often have high happiness - like Bhutan for instance? Because they look beyond the material.Anytime I see people crying over Auckland house prices I have to laugh - because for a deposit on an Auckland house you can buy a slice of paradise out on the regions of NZ. Not somewhere 'fashionable' and that somewhere probably doesn't have good coffee or an Audi dealership but you'll own it pretty quick and you'll be free. Live simply and consume less - you win and the planet wins.
I used to thrash myself in the city on the rat wheel hoping I would win Lotto. Now I am in the sticks and I don't owe the bankers a thing. I live simply and don't own much - it's just like winning Lotto.
There's no political solution to the ecological crisis because the false dream people are sold is so pervasive that Green Politics has to pretend it won't be ruined by caring for the environment.
The solution is to kick the dream to the curb, start living and be free.
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Hard News: Behind Baltimore, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Absolutely, the State is complicit in the destruction of African American poor urban communities. Then you get Fox News going into Baltimore and saying "oh look they are looting Liquor stores! They have no interest in protest they are just thugs!". It's like someone beating and abusing a dog and then blaming it when it viciously attacks someone. It is grotesque.
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Hard News: Behind Baltimore, in reply to Mike O'Connell,
the war on drugs is like 'the Holocaust in slow motion'.
It is quite clearly a Holocaust in slow motion - and some believe, and give evidence of, a deliberate policy of introducing drugs into poor communities to both profit the CIA and destabilise those communities. Of course with private prisons you need "customers" so what better pathway than the "war on drugs (war on the poor)".
Here is Mike Ruppert whistleblowing the CIA on this - he worked on it for much of his life and it is well worth looking into further.
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Hard News: Behind Baltimore, in reply to Katharine Moody,
How long before the US becomes a failed state, I wonder;
We are certainly seeing it unravel before our eyes. With the militarisation of the Police it is essentially at war with its citizens.
And journalists... https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=138&v=DVcoeI2YiF0
Some eloquent pushback to Geraldo from Fox News
Finally Jon Stewart's take
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Salmon farms have mass fish die off in the Sounds. Mussel factory has to close because of higher water temp...
Sardine fishery closed on the USA West coast...
Join the dots...
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Here is a nifty animation showing the temp increase over the last hundred or so years - not hard to see the trend http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-04-17/this-has-been-the-hottest-start-to-a-year-on-record
Anything the IPCC puts out is very conservative because it is reached by consensus. Also the data they rely on is around 5 to 7 years old because from collection to peer review it takes that long to get it out. The real situation is always ahead of the IPCC.
Factor in exponential change, feedback loops (as in the Arctic) and the situation looks (some feel is ) like runaway climate disruption...
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For anyone who thinks Solar or any other Green tech is the answer I recommend looking at Ozzie Zehner's book "Green Illusions". I know it is very appealing to think that we can have our current wasteful extravagant lifestyle and have a functioning "green" planet - it's bullshit - we can't. The only answer is to return to a more pre-industrial life - as humans have lived for tens of thousands of years. I am not naive enough to think for a minute people will do that of their own free will but I am not deluded enough to think that we can continue modern industrial life and survive beyond the next 50 years (at best) either.
http://www.greenillusions.org/
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/15588-power-shift-away-from-green-illusions#