Not
before time, Someone challenges Bill,fibbin' McKibben
Bill McKibben, Founder of 350.org on Climate Challenge, Host Karyn Strickler
Host
Karyn Strickler challenges Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, on
atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and his organizing techniques, this
week on Climate Challenge.
.
Here is an article I wrote on 350.org back in May, 2013
350.org and
Solving the crisis!!!
Do they not know the difference between a crisis and a predicament?
But, based on all the best evidence it clearly looks as if it's game's up for the climate.
The problem comes when these organisations start to use their power to form public opinion to send people to sleep.
No matter how bad things get it's just another 'wake-up call'
'Go out and demonstrate, change your light bulbs, fill out another petition - help to build a movement to finally persuade the politicians that they need to act'.
350.org and
near-term extinction
Seemorerocks
With
the news that concentrations of carbon have reached 400 ppm, a level
we haven't seen since homeo sapiens
has been walking this earth, it is time to address some of the people
that I have held in high regard.
These
include George Monbiot and Bill McKibben of 350.org.
James Hansen recently said that if the Canadian tar sands
were to be mined, it would be 'game over' for climate change.
Well
guess what? – tar sands are being mined.
One
of the latest reports (and each one keeps getting more dire than the
one before it) says that temperatures on the planet could increase by
4C by the year 2030. (For details on this go to Guy McPherson's
article HERE)
This
is simply not consistent with life as we know it – including human
life – let alone any sort of human civilisation.
That
is why there has been increasing talk of the possibility of near-term
human extinction.
Since
the news of the rapid changes in the Arctic (including a whole range
of positive feedbacks) has come out some of the responses of those
who have been in the spotlight over climate change for some time.
George
Monbiot is clearly grasping at straws to maintain civilisation as he
would like it. After becoming converted to nuclear power, and then
renouncing Peak Oil, he is now saying that 400 ppm is only of
'symbolic' importance, and what we have to do is get back
to 350 ppm.
Sorry
George, the horse has bolted, and the C02 that's in the atmosphere
will stay there for a long time (all the more so that the Amazon is becoming a carbon emitter rather than a carbon sink – something that
was predicted some years ago.(see also HERE)
What
is it about these people that they can't recognise that the dire
predictions they warned of, are coming to pass.
Instead,
every new disaster becomes yet another 'wake-up call'.
This
poster from 350.org is a clear example.
'The good news is that we are doing it'
"We're building a worldwide movement to solve the climate crisis'
"We're building a worldwide movement to solve the climate crisis'
Excuse me!
Do they not know the difference between a crisis and a predicament?
This is getting into the are of cognitive dissonance when people who were formerly at the forefront of getting the message out about climate change ignore the clear signs and are putting out the 'good news' (whatever that is).
I will be the first to admit that we have to acknowledge uncertainty.
We don't KNOW how events will transpire
Don't get me wrong - I'm not against actions such as demonstrating against the Keystone XL pipeline.
Resistance is to the prevailing paradigm is all that we have.
Resistance is to the prevailing paradigm is all that we have.
The problem comes when these organisations start to use their power to form public opinion to send people to sleep.
No matter how bad things get it's just another 'wake-up call'
'Go out and demonstrate, change your light bulbs, fill out another petition - help to build a movement to finally persuade the politicians that they need to act'.
Perhaps the secret is the building a worldwide movement bit?
Just a small amount of research has revealed that 350.org gets corporate funding, including from the Rockefeller Brothers.
There might perhaps be an inbuilt incentive to keep the message within 'acceptable bounds'.
Just a small amount of research has revealed that 350.org gets corporate funding, including from the Rockefeller Brothers.
There might perhaps be an inbuilt incentive to keep the message within 'acceptable bounds'.
Don't people need to be warned about what's coming? - economic, financial, social, and finally political collapse; the end of human, industrial civilisation (whether we want it or not), and finally - the possibility of near-term extinction.
I get the feeling about the Monbiots and the McKibbens that their ideas are still stuck in the 90's when we may have had a chance of turning things round.
What I admire in Guy McPherson is his intellectual independence: his outlook has not remained static but evolved in line with the evidence that is available - and that evidence has got more and more dire.
It is time, not to advocate for more political action, but to unblinkingly look reality in the eye, and to fully acknowledge both our own, and our species' mortality (let alone the wholesale destruction of other species and everything that they need to survive on this planet.
That would be a start.
As Mike Ruppert says - 'evolve or perish!'
The following would be fairly typical of a mainstream presentation of climate change by Bill McKibben - on Democracy Now! - with which I have also become disenchanted.
Watch and then make up your own mind.
The following would be fairly typical of a mainstream presentation of climate change by Bill McKibben - on Democracy Now! - with which I have also become disenchanted.
Watch and then make up your own mind.
That we need to continuously increase the food supply for human consumption in order to meet the needs of a growing population is a colossal misperception, bereft of a foundation in science.
ReplyDeleteHuman population dynamics is essentially similar to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species. How are we to do anything with regard to the global predicament spawned by skyrocketing human population numbers if we cannot widely share and consensually validate an adequate understanding, based upon the best available science, of why human numbers have been growing so rapidly? The science of human population dynamics has been a taboo topic for too long. I have come to believe that top rank scientists and other self-proclaimed experts are acting as deliberate defenders of current, conventional, preternatural thought and willful deniers of new scientific research regarding the human population. That you are willing to say something about what you see regarding human population dynamics takes intellectual honesty and uncommon courage.
We appear to live in a time in which humankind’s perception has fractured schizophrenogenically and clarity of vision has been lost; when incoherent minds determine what was real; a period of abject intellectual dishonesty and the absence of moral courage. Political convenience, economic expediency, specious demographics, ideological idiocy, social status quo, religious dogma, cultural prescription and incomprehensible greed rule the world, reign supreme, darken the surface of Earth and threaten future human well being and environmental health.
Individually and collectively, human beings cannot make a difference that makes a difference if we continue not to question the ubiquitously broadcasted delusions by the world leaders of my generation who are directing our youth down a ‘primrose path’ to surely precipitate the utter extirpation of global biodiversity, the irreversible degradation of Earth’s environs, the reckless dissipation of its limited resources and the destruction of life as we know it. The very thing our leaders claim to be protecting and preserving for children everywhere and coming generations.