3 reasons why civil disobedience will be needed at the Oil Conference this month

By
Martyn Bradbury
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18
1

climate-denial-photo
Greenpeace have called for a mass civil disobedience action against the Oil Conference at Sky City on the 21st of this Month.

Here are 3 reasons why every citizen concerned with climate change needs to attend and put themselves on the frontline between those who can see through the madness of free market pimps like the oil industry and those who would sacrifice tomorrow for a profit today.

1:  Our Hemisphere’s Temperature Just Reached a Terrifying Milestone

Since this post was originally published, the heat wave has continued. As of Thursday morning, it appears that average temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere have breached the 2 degrees Celsius above “normal” mark for the first time in recorded history, and likely the first time since human civilization began thousands of years ago.* That mark has long been held (somewhat arbitrarily) as the point above which climate change may begin to become “dangerous” to humanity. It’s now arrived—though very briefly—much more quickly than anticipated. This is a milestone moment for our species. Climate change deserves our greatest possible attention.

2: Greenland’s ice melt accelerating as surface darkens, raising sea levels

Greenland’s vast ice sheet is in the grip of a dramatic “feedback loop” where the surface has been getting darker and less reflective of the sun, helping accelerate the melting of ice and fuelling sea level rises, new research has found.

The snowy surface of Greenland started becoming significantly less reflective of solar radiation from around 1996, the analysis found, with the ice absorbing 2% more solar energy per decade from this point. At the same time, summer near-surface temperatures in Greenland have increased at a rate of around 0.74C per decade, causing the ice to melt.

This winnowing away of the ice, exacerbated by soot blown on to the ice from wildfires, means that Greenland’s ice is stuck in what is known as a “feedback loop” that will make it ever more vulnerable to warming global temperatures. The study predicts that the ice surface reflectivity, or albedo, will drop by 10% or more by the end of the century, which will trigger further melting.

3: The mercury doesn’t lie: We’ve hit a troubling climate change milestone

Thursday, while the nation debated the relative size of Republican genitalia, something truly awful happened. Across the northern hemisphere, the temperature, if only for a few hours, apparently crossed a line: it was more than two degrees Celsius above “normal” for the first time in recorded history and likely for the first time in the course of human civilization.

That’s important because the governments of the world have set two degrees Celsius as the must-not-cross red line that, theoretically, we’re doing all we can to avoid. And it’s important because most of the hemisphere has not really had a winter. They’ve been trucking snow into Anchorage for the start of the Iditarod; Arctic sea ice is at record low levels for the date; in New England doctors are already talking about the start of “allergy season.”
This bizarre glimpse of the future is only temporary. It will be years, one hopes, before we’re past the two degrees mark on a regular basis. But the future is clearly coming much faster than science had expected. February, taken as a whole, crushed all the old monthly temperature records, which had been set in … January. January crushed all the old monthly temperature records, which had been set in … December.

The fight back must start now. Bring everyone to Sky City on the 21st of this month.

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18 COMMENTS

  1. We are awaiting the next update to see whether the catastrophic unseasonal ice meltdown of the Arctic has continued (there is every reason to believe it has).

    2nd March 14.478 millionkm2
    3rd 14.468
    4th 14.427

    A loss of sea ice of 51,000km2 in two days at this time of the year, when the ice cover should be fairly constant, suggests ‘we’ will be in deep trouble later in the year.

    http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/

    Of course those who make their money out of oil could not care less about the future and are quite prepared to lie continuously to keep the pubic confused and keep the their game going for as long as possible.

    ‘Exxon was aware of climate change, as early as 1977, 11 years before it became a public issue, according to a recent investigation from InsideClimate News. This knowledge did not prevent the company (now ExxonMobil and the world’s largest oil and gas company) from spending decades refusing to publicly acknowledge climate change and even promoting climate misinformation—an approach many have likened to the lies spread by the tobacco industry regarding the health risks of smoking. Both industries were conscious that their products wouldn’t stay profitable once the world understood the risks, so much so that they used the same consultants to develop strategies on how to communicate with the public.’

    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/

    Needless to say, John Key and his cronies couldn’t care less about the fate of the general populace or even their own children’s futures, as they do all they can to exacerbate the planetary meltdown via promotion of economic growth, promotion of tourism, promotion of corporatized sport, promotion of consumerism, promotion of the use of concrete, promotion of road transport etc.

    The crash of the absurd narratives of corporations and governments into the wall of reality will be the most spectacular political event in all of history.

    That will be of little consolation to those of us who have been warning about the dire consequences of continuation of business-as-usual for decades, of course, and knowing what is coming, I feel sorry for anyone under the age of 60.

  2. Yes we have just spent two months out at the beach and everyone is saying the weather is changing and the foreshore is eroding away with large swells at even the usual time of the yearn so there is nothing better than witnessing the changes occurring right in our beaches so climate change deniers why don’t you came see for yourself?

  3. ‘Highest-ever daily average CO2 at MLO: 406.46 ppm on March 2, 2016 (NOAA)’

    However, that ‘highest ever’ will undoubtedly be exceeded soon, since the season peak of atmospheric CO2 occurs towards the end of May, and May values are usually 3ppm higher than early March values.

    We will be looking at atmospheric CO2 in the range 408ppm to 410ppm 12 weeks from now.

    https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/wp-content/plugins/sio-bluemoon/graphs/mlo_two_years.png

    Apart from exacerbating the overheating, excess atmospheric CO2 from burning fossil fuels causes acidification of the oceans and brings forward ‘Ocean Apocalypse’.

    A must-see lecture for anyone who has not yet watched it:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zMN3dTvrwY

    And then there’s sea level rise: “Only 1 metre of sea level rise is dependent on wishful thinking, which is absurd.” -Dr Jeremy Jackson,

  5. Non – violent civil disobedience is a very good thing when fighting for what is right and good for all people and all endangered wild life.
    These moron climate change deniers are pure uneducated idiots. They swim in denial / greed and count their shares and dividends with their beloved petro-oil corporations.
    Someone has to stand up for all the white polar bears and other critters and sea life who are being negatively impacted by mans and these multi-national corporations addiction to oil. They are regularly murdering those environmental activists who lead the movements against pollution and devastation – Berta Cacares just last week.
    They have murdered 991 of them from 2002 – 2014 :

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/06/murdered-honduran-activist-berta-caceres-buried-as-others-vows-to-continue-fight

    Thanks Martyn and TDB for your ongoing support of and focus on the real issues that the rest of the asleep and owned media refuse to look at.

  6. I am reading Derrick Jensen’s book Endgame volume 1 The Problem Of Civilization.

    He explains it all, it is civilization that is the problem, climate change is the just one symptom, deforestation, defishing the sea, toxic rivers, toxic soil, plastic, indigenous people slaughtered or made slaves for empire… death, death and more death….

    “Unquestioned assumptions are the real authorities of any culture”.

    I don’t see hardly anyone questioning the system, that has us all slaves. Animals and nature stamped with dollar signs, whole old growth forests taken forever by the death machine for a short term profit. The oceans are dying, does anyone really care? Doesn’t look or sound like it in the media. Will anyone even remember what has been lost if they don’t really care about it? Our system in totally insane and hardly anyone is noticing. Like a dystopian fucking nightmare, we can’t survive this.

    “Civilization originates in conquest abroad and repression at home”. Stanley Diamond

    • Derrick Jensen also says, amongst other things:

      Premise One: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization.

      Premise Six: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.

      Premise Seven: The longer we wait for civilization to crash—or the longer we wait before we ourselves bring it down—the messier will be the crash, and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during it, and for those who come after.

      http://www.derrickjensen.org/work/endgame/endgame-premises-english/

    • You have hit the nail on the head Kate. I tried a little experiment on myself….I’m not too young and i live at the top of a large hill.

      First up I decided not to have a second car….it was then I realized a lot of “conveniences” became hard. Sticking with it I walked to work and back…tried cycling but the wind and hill were far too nasty. Aha, public transport. Yes I use it but the convenience and freedom of happy motoring is hard to dismiss.

      If you don’t drive you become very aware of who is…our street gets full up with yummy mummies who park, take the kids to the creche, then bus to corporate jobs and do the reverse in the evening, I suspect that the yummy daddies drive directly to corporate nirvana in their cars. How would they cope if it was done on foot or with one vehicle?

      Watch any current activity and see the oil: drugs, packaging, transport, heating…..try to cut any of these out of our personal lives….it is bloody near impossible. We are the problem, we consume. We agree to consume, we are conditioned to consume, we cant back out now we are so far in. I have come to the conclusion that the problem goes away with the oil. We are a suicide species hooked upon our own immediate gratification.

    • Is it ok if they cycle? Or take public transport, a bus or a train (ideally electric but we don’t control that)? Or drive there in an electric car? What about a segway?

      Can they ride in on a horse or a mule? Can they swim across the harbour from the North Shore? Or just take a ferry, or a sail across in a wind-powered boat? Speaking of wind power, can they paraglide down from the Waitakere Ranges if the wind favours them?

      Is a petrol or diesel powered car ok if they run it on ethanol or vege oil? What if they can pool in a fossil fuel driven car, is that an acceptable compromise between means and ends?

      Oil industry panderers insist on a false choice between business-as-usual and going everywhere on foot. As the above examples off the top of my head demonstrate, with a little creativity, we can come up with a wide range of alternatives to oil for transport, and for everything else we use it for. Renewable energy sources are out there, and many great technologies already exist in principles for harnessing them. The challenge is to bring them from the experimental periphery to the mainstream, when powerful entrenches interests are doing everything they can (including supplying Andy his key messages) to slow that inevitable transition down.

      • “Is it ok if they cycle?”

        As long as the bike requires no lubrication, and has no steel components that require coking coal to smelt it.

        You can’t use horses either, because they emit “carbon pollution” that is covered under the ETS.

        Even your beloved “renewable energy” requires significant fossil fuel input during its manufacture and delivery.

  8. Merchants of Doubt is a great film that outlines how the science has been clouded by dubious “PR” firms.

    http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/index.html

    Unfortunately the thirty or so years they have lost us due to “debating” settled science is the thirty years we needed to actually prevent warming that is now baked in. They have literally cost millions of people and animals their lives. It will rank as one of the greatest crimes against humanity ever.

  11. We have relatives with us on holiday from Baltimore US right now and looking at their weather forecast, can see they are, for a couple of days this week experiencing over there 27 C which they say is unheard of for their time of year when it should be late winter and still very cold. Not long ago they were in the midst of a massive blizzard – odd weather indeed.

  12. We wont get progress on decent enviroment law untill we have a Labour-Green coalition
    We can lead the world on this as we did being nuclear free
    We have technolgy on electric transport lets use it accross the board its a no brainer
    The oceans have become the worlds dumping ground and we cant underestimate the damage we are doing to this special enviroment we depend on
    If we have to have this relentless drive for profit why cant it be sustainable profit ?
    We are killing our enviroment and ourselves slowly but surely

  13. Where are all the climate change deniers now? You know, the paid shills for the oil industry, the uninformed fools who declared that CO2 was a harmless gas -yes, that includes you, burn-more-coal Chris de Freitas of Auckland University- the people who absolutely insisted the Earth was cooling (despite the evidence to the contrary) and insisted we were entering an ice age.

    They have all fallen very silent, it seems, now that they have done irreparable damage to the prospects of the next generation.

    ‘The Lower 48 states had its warmest winter in 121 years of record-keeping, NOAA announced this morning.

    Temperatures averaged over the country between December and February were nearly five degrees above the 20th-century average. Every state but two were warmer than normal and all six New England states set winter records.’

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/03/08/americas-year-without-a-winter-the-2015-2016-season-was-the-warmest-on-record/

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