A new political movement: Let’s just be honest – real climate change will require a political, social & economic revolution

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I think we need to be honest with ourselves.

Real action on climate change will require a political, social & economic revolution.

Currently, the Greens & Labour seem to believe being carbon neutral in 32 years time is anything close to being a ‘solution’.

Currently policy makers, too frightened to accept the realities of climate change, still write policy within the neoliberal free market framework that is exacerbating the climate change catastrophe.

Currently one of the largest climate change gas emitters is running ‘Open Gate’ propaganda to try and pretend they aren’t the problem and are getting away with it.

Currently sweet fuck all is being done to prepare us for the adaptation we need to step up to deal with climate change.

The truth is that the vested interests that create the pollution and economic framework that is making climate change the catastrophe that it is will not do anything meaningful to disrupt their interests.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

Unfortunately, we have run out of time to allow incremental change. I have followed the IPCC reports on climate change since their first one and the thing that is striking is that the worst case scenario is fast becoming the only scenario. What most don’t appreciate about the IPCC is that they are an incredibly conservative group and still don’t include many of the feedback loops that will make climate change faster and far more damaging, so when they say we have 10 years left to make the adaption, we are in far more danger than that claim suggests…

UN Says Climate Genocide Is Coming. It’s Actually Worse Than That.
Just two years ago, amid global fanfare, the Paris climate accords were signed — initiating what seemed, for a brief moment, like the beginning of a planet-saving movement. But almost immediately, the international goal it established of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius began to seem, to many of the world’s most vulnerable, dramatically inadequate; the Marshall Islands’ representative gave it a blunter name, calling two degrees of warming “genocide.”

The alarming new report you may have read about this week from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — which examines just how much better 1.5 degrees of warming would be than 2 — echoes the charge. “Amplifies” may be the better term. Hundreds of millions of lives are at stake, the report declares, should the world warm more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, which it will do as soon as 2040, if current trends continue. Nearly all coral reefs would die out, wildfires and heat waves would sweep across the planet annually, and the interplay between drought and flooding and temperature would mean that the world’s food supply would become dramatically less secure. Avoiding that scale of suffering, the report says, requires such a thorough transformation of the world’s economy, agriculture, and culture that “there is no documented historical precedent.” The New York Times declared that the report showed a “strong risk” of climate crisis in the coming decades; in Grist, Eric Holthaus wrote that “civilization is at stake.”

If you are alarmed by those sentences, you should be — they are horrifying. But it is, actually, worse than that — considerably worse. That is because the new report’s worst-case scenario is, actually, a best case. In fact, it is a beyond-best-case scenario. What has been called a genocidal level of warming is already our inevitable future. The question is how much worse than that it will get.

…the truth is we are in far more danger than we acknowledge…

Earth’s resources consumed in ever greater destructive volumes
Humanity is devouring our planet’s resources in increasingly destructive volumes, according to a new study that reveals we have consumed a year’s worth of carbon, food, water, fibre, land and timber in a record 212 days.

As a result, the Earth Overshoot Day – which marks the point at which consumption exceeds the capacity of nature to regenerate – has moved forward two days to 1 August, the earliest date ever recorded.

To maintain our current appetite for resources, we would need the equivalent of 1.7 Earths, according to Global Footprint Network, an international research organisation that makes an annual assessment of how far humankind is falling into ecological debt.

…which leaves us with few options other than radical revolution…

The Earth is in a death spiral. It will take radical action to save us
It was a moment of the kind that changes lives. At a press conference held by climate activists Extinction Rebellion last week, two of us journalists pressed the organisers on whether their aims were realistic. They have called, for example, for UK carbon emissions to be reduced to net zero by 2025. Wouldn’t it be better, we asked, to pursue some intermediate aims?

A young woman called Lizia Woolf stepped forward. She hadn’t spoken before, but the passion, grief and fury of her response was utterly compelling. “What is it that you are asking me as a 20-year-old to face and to accept about my future and my life? … This is an emergency. We are facing extinction. When you ask questions like that, what is it you want me to feel?” We had no answer.

Softer aims might be politically realistic, but they are physically unrealistic. Only shifts commensurate with the scale of our existential crises have any prospect of averting them. Hopeless realism, tinkering at the edges of the problem, got us into this mess. It will not get us out.

Public figures talk and act as if environmental change will be linear and gradual. But the Earth’s systems are highly complex, and complex systems do not respond to pressure in linear ways. When these systems interact (because the world’s atmosphere, oceans, land surface and lifeforms do not sit placidly within the boxes that make study more convenient), their reactions to change become highly unpredictable. Small perturbations can ramify wildly. Tipping points are likely to remain invisible until we have passed them. We could see changes of state so abrupt and profound that no continuity can be safely assumed.

Only one of the many life support systems on which we depend – soils, aquifers, rainfall, ice, the pattern of winds and currents, pollinators, biological abundance and diversity – need fail for everything to slide. For example, when Arctic sea ice melts beyond a certain point, the positive feedbacks this triggers (such as darker water absorbing more heat, melting permafrost releasing methane, shifts in the polar vortex) could render runaway climate breakdown unstoppable. When the Younger Dryas period ended 11,600 years ago, temperatures rose 10C within a decade.

…so what is to be done?

 

Politics

Politically we need a radical Green Socialist Party. The Middle Class Woke Identity Politics vehicle we have with the current Green Party is a sad joke that alienates more than it recruits. While they bicker  about reclaiming the word ‘cunt’ and deciding which pronoun to use for Trans gender rights, the planet melts. Building every Millennial micro-aggression into a war crime doesn’t do a fucking thing to combat climate change.

What few Green Party voters even recognise is that the current Green Party is built upon free market economics, so we need a new radical Green Socialism Party with one goal and one goal only – radical populist climate change adaption that utterly rejects neoliberalism.

The firs thing this new political movement needs is to lobby hard for a lower MMP threshold in the upcoming MMP referendum. MMP was supposed to be about growing political diversity, instead it has smoothed and suffocated our representation because the 5% threshold makes it impossible for fledgling political movements to gain state funding and build.

Secondly this new political movement needs a populist economic manifesto that rejects free market globalisation and neoliberalism, supports 5 year economic planning, invests in economic self sufficiency and seeks real independence and sovereignty by rejecting open door mass immigration, foreign sales of our water and foreign ownership of any NZ land. We need to rapidly increase our military budget and invest heavily in community self sufficiency. Under a rapidly warming world, mass climate change migration will become an obscene reality and New Zealand will be one of the few lifeboats left.

Thirdly, we need to entrench our own sovereignty with an upper house that is 50-50 Maori/Pakeha representation with a focus on retaining our independence against free trade hegemony and extend Parliamentary terms to 5 years so Government have an obligation to look long term instead of short term.

And finally,  this new political movement needs to be uncompromising in its insistence to face climate change on a war footing and refuse to allow the narrative to be dominated by any other issue.

 

Social

This fledgling political movement needs to be supported by an equally radical social movement that uses small cell groups to plan social action that targets climate change polluters in a way that goes well  beyond Greenpeace.

It also requires inter-community self sufficiency…

Overall NZ strategy for climate resilience, based upon extra-parliamentary initiatives.

Those elements should be brought together under a framework for “local action and resilience”. The following priorities or initial thoughts could be part of such framework:

• Formation of an ‘Alliance for NZ Climate Resilience’, with local members and groups from all strata of life, operating beyond party boundaries.
• Establishment of a ‘NZ Climate Resilience Trust Fund’ for pooling of resources to support local and rural initiatives for climate adaptation and resilience.
• Climate awareness and action programmes evolving through Community Radio Stations and Mobile IT media.
• Implementation of a ‘Rural Kiwi Development Strategy’ with focus on diversified agriculture, fisheries, forestry, small and medium enterprises with low emission standards, vocational training in appropriate and adaptive technologies, conservation and sustainable management of local natural resources (water, soil, flora, fauna, land, land- and seascapes).

…so Green Socialists can either decide on radical direct action or community resilience.

 

Economics

When just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions, and when Oil Corporations knew about and hide climate change as far back as the 1990s we must acknowledge that those who have created and fostered the economic model that has allowed for this damage must be the first to pay for the adaption funding.

Oil companies must be sued for the damage they have caused the way Tobacco was sued over cancer.

That money needs to help fund the adaption.

A total rejection of neoliberalism and free market globalisation will be at the root of any economic agenda focused on self sufficiency and 5 year plans as opposed to quarterly profit margins.

The simple truth is catastrophic climate change will decimate any sense of a free market and the current dogma and belief system that props up free market mythology will implode upon its own lies.

 

Conclusion

Climate change and its impacts are far more dangerous than currently acknowledged and only a radical populist response can unseat the vested corporate interests that create the current political and economic inertia. As more and more climate events occur at faster and faster rates, voters will turn on the current hegemony, the question is who will harvest that anger and fear, the Left or the Right?

70 COMMENTS

  1. The Right will harvest it while the ‘Not Actually Left’ keeps itself busy ignoring, kneecapping and undermining any of its leaders and members who actually dare suggest messing with the current Economic and Social, capitalist model, even though that is the only possible first step in any meaningful steps towards dealing with climate change.

    Hence the Guardians “populist chart’ that manages to ‘forget’ to include the leader of the biggest political party in western Europe..

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2018/nov/21/how-populist-are-you-quiz

    (i’d love to give a NZ example, but we don’t actually have any true progressives of any note)

      • I heard this great quote recently; “If the people will lead, the leaders will follow”.

        I’d say Jacinda is very likely to respond to a mass movement – the problem is that most people are still in the habit of looking to their leaders for solutions. We need to break that habit.

        The sooner a global movement forces the governments of the world onto the equivalent of a wartime command economy the sooner we can get on with solving this problem.

  2. The NZ Green Party is a fucking joke today!!!!!

    No-where are we hearing them fight to ‘save the world’ from climate change,’ by restoring rail to get that 90% freight now carried on trucks to only 6% running onnrail presently.

    Consider that trucks are using eight times the energy to move ‘each tonne each km’ around NZ.

    Those trucks shed black cancer causing tyre dust onto our roads and then the rain washes that cancer causing chemical substance of Tyre dust straight into our rivers, lakes and sea!!!!!

    https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/butadiene/healtheffects.html

    Then that black Tyre dust containing 1,3,butadiene/styrene (both cancer and nervous system damage causing chemicals) are carried by our water runoff systems after entering the sea are just being carried to the both ice-caps then the black dust just attract the heat from the sun to melt both polar ice caps at an alarming rate!!!!!!

    Then the sea level rises and will just wash those trucks and those roads into the sea.

    Trucks are then single biggest destroyer of our environment and future extreme weather systems.

    • They’ve become good little MPs where their focus is the same as all the rest – getting re-elected and paradoxically that’s why they won’t.

    • The joke is the public who are scared of what the greens are saying and vote for “peace of mind” following NACT bullshit.

      The more radical greens don’t make it in the polls.

      Only well planned radical change can have any effect on the dire outcome facing the present path.

      IPCC is as usual well behind current science as has been shown repeatedly.

      Corporate NZ is the enemy.

      http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50683.htm

      • John W;

        You might have chosen your propaganda piece a bit better.

        Note the comments show the world really has awoken.

        There is no doubt the call should be:

        STOP THE GEOENGINEERING.!!!

        See below.

        • Ian so much is written about Geo-engineering from respected peer reviewed reports to wildcat speculation by chem trail believers. There are many and varied aspects.

          Many developments contributing to the termination of this human habitat as we know it can be dealt with in detail one by one but in doing so the big picture is often lost.

          Argument over selected small details does little in helping a wider understanding of what is happening overall.

          The various aspects of change are largely interactive and little reporting on the overall trends has been seen since the 1972 Limits to Growth report by MIT. That report has been reviewed many times by scientific agencies and universities since, with the last one in 2014 by Melbourne university still showing that the LTG report trend are right on track. Human kind have done virtually nothing to mitigate the path of overshoot.

          Geo-engineering by itself has very little to do with the problem.

          The point of the post from ICH is that it covers briefly a wide range of stupidity and ignorance in human denial and greed.

          Growth of economies has produced many times the damage to the biosphere than any geo-engineering.

          Human population growth is the biggest killer of our environment. Only one country is addressing that – China.

          I certainly don’t see geo-engineering as being anything but destructive.

          But the chemtrail fraternity share a wild narrative based on speculation mainly and much shared but false information.

  3. Seems pretty obvious the correlation between temperature and CO2 levels has already been blown wide apart:
    https://environmentcounts.org/ec-perspective-accounting-for-800000-years-of-climate-change/
    Just looking at that graph, one would immediately posit that it is temperature that affects CO2 levels as opposed to the other way round, since there is clearly no correlation to be found whatsoever in the most recent data. Couple that with the fact that “scientists” actively doctored the very data used in just about every climate model to make their hypothesis “fit”, and you end up concluding this is one of the biggest scams in the history of science.
    http://notrickszone.com/2015/11/20/german-professor-examines-nasa-giss-temperature-datasets-finds-they-have-been-massively-altered/#sthash.ibiNW4TW.YCmTIUjt.dpbs
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/globalwarming/11395516/The-fiddling-with-temperature-data-is-the-biggest-science-scandal-ever.html
    http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/Monckton-Caught%20Green-Handed%20Climategate%20Scandal.pdf (everyone hates Monckton here, I get that, but this is all based on cold hard facts).
    I rate it slightly lower than the “fat is bad for your health” bullshit that is somehow still being promulgated by “scientists” and “doctors” (also based on falsified data BTW), because that advice has resulted in the actual deaths of hundreds of thousands and massively increased chronic health issues and associated health costs i.e. Type 2 Diabetes which can be entirely avoided with only minor changes to your diet. So much for the notion of believing “consensus” in the science community:
    https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2548255
    https://www.pharmaceutical-journal.com/20203046.article?clearcache=1&firstPass=false
    I’ll end with saying that we are more than likely about to enter a Grand Solar Minimum, which the last time had the Thames River completely freeze over:
    https://www.sott.net/article/400195-Professor-Valentina-Zharkova-explains-and-confirms-why-a-Super-Grand-Solar-Minimum-is-upon-us
    If that indeed occurs again, we will likely see billions starve – far worse than even the most pessimistic predictions of “climate change” doom and gloom. Oh, and increases in CO2 results in significant increased plant growth (which is also probably why historical concentrations 10x higher than we are now (i.e. ~4,000 ppm, somehow achieved without human influence!), never resulted in us becoming Venus):
    https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/effects-of-rising-atmospheric-concentrations-of-carbon-13254108
    The more I learn about this, the more it becomes clear we are being “indoctrinated” by utter nonsense, designed by the banks/governments as yet another cash cow to impoverish regular people so that “carbon credits” can be traded on the global financial markets for the benefit of the rich:
    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/profit-from-climate-change/

    • ‘Just looking at that graph, one would immediately posit that it is temperature that affects CO2 levels as opposed to the other way round,’

      Yes, that most certainly was the case until industrial humans desequestered so much of the carbon that nature had sequestered over hundreds of millions of years (in the forms of coal, oil and natural gas) that the carbon dioxide burden overwhelmed the natural systems that had provided climate stability for aeons (as per the 800,000-year period you refer to). Milankovitch cycles, referred in the article you have linked!!!

      For the umpteenth time, until humans severely disturbed the geochemical equilibrium, the average temperature of the Earth was governed by orbital factors, volcanism, weathering of rocks and ocean deposition; hence the fairly regular peaks and troughs in the graph.

      Just waiting for you to tell us that there was no extraordinary heatwave in Queensland recently, that temperature records we not broken (presumably because meteorologists are all caught up in the same scam), and there have not been unprecedented fires.

      http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2018/11/no-relief-for-queensland-bushfire.html

      I guess you will be able to maintain your stance of denial of reality for another two or three years, by which time atmospheric CO2 will be approaching 420 ppm -having risen faster in recent times than during any time in recorded Earth history (almost 100 ppm in just 60 years) .

    • NITRIUM;

      YES;

      Sad. So very, very sad.

      And of course you will only take notice of articles that have citations/references.

      https://www.globalresearch.ca/search?q=global+warming&x=15&y=11

      Look to other man made causes for extreme Climate Change.

      https://www.globalresearch.ca/search?q=geoengineering&x=17&y=7

      Double check:

      http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/  Dane Wigington
      https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/world-spraying/
      https://chemtrailsnorthnz.wordpress.com/  New Zealand

      Cheers.

      Peer reviewed
      https://www.activistpost.com/2017/07/chemtrails-exposed-coal-fly-ash-new-manhattan-project.html

      • I wonder how much of that “information” is generated by fossil fuel corporations? Y’know, Iain, the ones who stand to benefit materially if we continue to use oil, coal, and gas… Would you care to guess?

          • Essential view:

            “The Great Global Warming Swindle” – Full Documentary HD

            “Global warming has become a story of huge political significance; environmental activists using scare tactics to further their cause; scientists adding credence to secure billions of dollars in research money; politicians after headlines and a media happy to play along. No-one dares speak against it for risk of being unpopular, losing funds and jeopardizing careers.”

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYhCQv5tNsQ

            And Frank;

            The issue is Geoengineering, which is admitted.

            At a guess, the Military-Industrial Complex and Banksters would stand to benefit the most.

            Cheers.

            • That message by Iain above was brought to you courtest of Exxon Mobil, Dutch Shell, BP, et al.

              You wouldn’t have shares in fossil fuel companies, would you, Iain? Or is your concern for a highly-polluting industry a magnanimous gesture for hard-done-by corporations?

              • Frank divide and rule has always worked.

                Albeit big oil. religious dogma, political ideology, corrupt business, personal greed and fear, group narcissism based assumption of superiority or just lying bastards with hidden agendas: promulgation of fantasy has never been as widespread and easily done as now in the present age of web based communication and a captured MSM.

                Individuals grasp the threads that suit their preferred narrative or the one they have committed to.

                Not all people find it easy to change their perception once committed.
                For some its a slow grind as denial is modified in the face of community pressure.

                But that alone has little in common with critical thinking with ability to sort and test information.

                Useful beliefs may be the ones that reflect the greater reality when tested.

                There are many to choose from.

                Denial – one persons view.

                http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Denial.html

                Paul also has a view of personal adjustment which structures changing awareness.

                http://www.paulchefurka.ca/LadderOfAwareness.html

    • @ Nitrium … “we will likely see billions starve”…. only if we are fortunate to survive.
      Well the death of many is gonna make the owners of the Georgia Guidestones very happy indeed.

  4. Yes we are in a climate change emergency. I think Paul Beckwith probably coined this term about three years ago.

    But the problem is capitalism not climate change. Why?

    Because climate change is an effect and capitalism is the cause. Eco-socialists and Marxists have been calling for an end to capitalism for this reason for decades.

    If we are not doomsters then we must believe in stopping it before the point of extinction and that can only mean ending capitalism and building a democratic, sustainable global society over the next 20 years.

    But this won’t be done by appealing to ‘radicalism’ or ‘populism’ since these terms are too vague to rally the working majority from playing its revolutionary role in what is a class war. Working people who create the wealth that is then used to destroy them are the only agency of social revolution and they need pride in understanding and believing it.

    ‘Radicalism’ in the context of capitalism means ripping out the roots. So why not specify this as anti-capitalism or revolutionary socialism in clear opposition to the right-wing radical/national/populism that we seen spreading across the globe?

    If some people are hung up on the word socialism, why? It means different things to different people. But we can define its as revolutionary socialism and spell out how to get there.

    Radical/green/socialism is OK, except it is not OK if subordinated to parliamentary politics and the bourgeois state. Voting will not stop the climate emergency. Parliament is a fraud. And the sooner we spell this out the better the chances we have of winning.

    If we don’t spell it out now we waste precious time confusing people by holding out the illusion that we can still use the existing bosses state to end capitalism.

    It should be obvious that as the dual crisis of economic crash meets climate emergency the right will mobilise its state forces against the working majority.

    The state forces have always collaborated with fascist movements against the working majority. It misrepresents itself as in defence of ‘nation’ and ‘democracy’, even ‘socialism’ while building fascism.

    The youth who are the driving force of Extinction Rebellion, are being somewhat indulged by the state forces, but as soon as their direct action threatens bosses rule, linking up with existing workers movements, and anti-racist, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements, the fascist fist inside the ‘democratic’ glove will come out.

    The first step to revolutionary change is in our consciousness. We now, belatedly, have the majority that believes in the climate change emergency. We now need an anti-capitalist majority that believes that all of us can survive to build the new society if we act now!

    • I reckoned once that you’re an alright kind of guy eh Dave.

      On the 125th year of woman’s suffrage the problem I have with this capitalism business, is this woman’s business thing cramping my style.

      I mean Jacinda is believable. She’s a great politician and that makes her believable. It’s never been a better time to be a woman and I can’t help but think that all this identity crap is printing up because woman don’t really know what to do with there newly found power.

      No one but woman should preempt what talents woman wish to cultivate except to handle it in a mature, respectful, and professional manner.

      Woman who think marriage fits there career ambitions will follow the spirit of democracy. If they don’t, then revolution simply won’t happen.

      Jacinda is an exelent politician. I have no reason to believe that she will betray our expectations.

      Shame, can’t say they same about the average capitalist.

    • While capitalism has deserved blame to take on, it is hardly an objective comment you make. The USSR was per capita one of the worst polluters on the planet, so was East Germany under the SED rule. They used coal, oil and other fossil fuels, to maximise energy generation, to keep the people supplied, no care for the environment. If you dared protest, they would harass you or lock you up.

      This is not just a capitalist issue, it is a flawed humanity issue, where people just need energy, and they want it, no matter where it comes from. Whatever regime, the regime is condemned to provide the energy, to keep the people satisfied or quiet, it may be capitalist, communist or whatsoever, it does hardly matter in that regard.

      • Marc, capitalism is a global system. Those countries that attempted to escape it into socialism were forced to do so as part of that global system, adopting the most advanced technology to rapidly develop to meet the needs of their impoverished populations. These all failed because the imperialist countries excluded them via sanctions and wars to basically starve them into submission. We need to take this into account in sharing the blame for global warming. That is why Marxists have always argued that a post-capitalist system has to replace capitalism globally. It cannot be done nationally, locally or in one’s backyard in isolation of the global economy without a retreat to pre-capitalism. Today we have both the incentive (threat of extinction) and the means (a globalised economy) to collaborate internationally to make the transition from a capitalist world to a post-capitalist world. None of this has anything to do with human nature, rather human material need for survival. Whether this need turns into greed or solidarity is a political/cultural question not a biological one, and this is what allows us to work for revolutionary change rather than wallow in despair.

        • Dave, much as I would like to see a revolution that terminates status quo arrangements and delivers justice and equity, the crux of the problem is not capitalism as such: capitalism is just an extreme economic arrangement within the framework of Industrial Civilisation, one which primarily serves the short term (in the grand scheme of things) interests of banks, corporations and opportunists, while providing enough benefits to the masses to keep them complacent (in the short term).

          Under a socialist, centrally-planned system, it would theoretically be possible to reduce fossil fuel use by a substantial amount but it would not be possible to eliminate fossil fuel use altogether. Unfortunately, more-or-less complete elimination of fossil fuels is what is required to prevent the natural systems [that maintained geochemical stability in pre-industrial times] being further destabilised. Humanity needs to stop adding 35-40 billion tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere and oceans every year.

          Any political system that attempts to maintain Industrial Civilisation is doomed to long-term failure, since IC cannot function with out fossil fuels (it is not possible to smelt steel on an industrial scale without coal (or coke derived from coal). Nor is it possible to make cement without adding CO2 to the atmosphere and oceans. That is basic chemistry. Reducing emissions may or may not slow down the rate of overheating (depending on whether climate-affecting feedbacks have already been triggered)

          Another elephant in the room that most like to ignore is the human population, which in my lifetime has risen from just over 2 billion to around 8 billion. There are now literally billions of people who are dependent on the continued use of fossil fuels for their food supply, and in very cold and very hot locations for the maintenance of body temperature.

          Theoretically the population of NZ could be fed if a permaculture-style crash programme were instituted prior to collapse.

          One of the biggest unknowns is the extent to which industrial pollution is masking (reducing) warming. According to emeritus professor Guy McPherson there will be a fairly immediate surge in global temperatures shortly after the sulphate and particulate pollution that is causing Global Dimming clears from the atmosphere. There are aspects to McPherson’s narrative that are rather dubious but there is nevertheless concern around loss of Global Dimming, since loss will certainly lead to greater temperature extremes.

          • Afewknowthetruth.

            Several fallacies there mate.

            1. Preexisting attempts to escape capitalism by means of rapid industrialisation happened well before man-made global warming was understood. They cannot apply today.

            2. You assume that post-capitalist societies must continue with carbon burning. The point is that if the working people are in charge they, not the capitalists or any other elite, will plan the economy sustainably in the interests of their survival.

            3. Production, transport and heating can be electrified by using renewable energy.

            4. Population is a dependent variable not and independent one. Remove capitalist energy waste and recalculate. Failing that some of us will starve.

            5. Global dimming is possible but so are asteroids colliding with the earth. No cause for doom and gloom. I have given up on Macpherson. I prefer Beckwith.

            None of this is unproblematic but that is what humans do – rise to challenges.

            Now can I go back to reading Kim Stanley Robinson?

            • ‘3. Production, transport and heating can be electrified by using renewable energy.’

              Easy to say, impossible to do, I’m afraid, Dave.

              Have a look at a machine some time and look at the cogs, the drive belts, the bearings, the control systems, etc. and then recognise that every component was made using fossil fuel energy.

              And then ask yourself what happens when a cog, a drive belt, a bearing or a control system fails (as they do). In an Industrial society the part is repaired or replaced. In a post-industrial society the machine will be abandoned.

              You blithely talk about electrified transport but what are tyres made of? What are roads made of? And how long do tyres last before needing replacement? How long do roads last before needing heavy-duty maintenance?

              What are railway tracks made of? What is rolling stock made of?

              It is all too easy to make blithe declarations on blogs about electrifying everything, but in reality every component of every machine has embeded fossil fuel energy.

              Even so-called renewables are in fact a subset of the global fossil fuel economy -from the mining of the minerals, to the manufacture, to the installation and maintenance- and most will fail within a few years of the globalised fossil fuel economy collapsing.

              If all that were not bad enough, societies are up against an enemy that never sleeps: entropy.

              Every concrete surface is subjected to CO2 weathering. Every item of steel is susceptible to rust. Bridges and pipes, lampposts, electrical switch gear, roofs of houses, commercial properties, government buildings, hospitals and schools….everything is subjected to weathering and corrosion, and it cracks or rusts or wears away. Right down bicycle tyres and tap washers.

              How do I replace the brake pads or the tyres of a bike in a post-oil society? How long after the last maintenance will the road surfaces still be useable?

              It is only the continuous input of fossil fuel energy and quite a lot of materials made from oil that keep present living arrangements from rapidly collapsing.

              The transition to a low energy society is going to be awfully painful, scary beyond belief, especially for those who cannot see it coming or what to bargain their way out of it.

              • This is poorly thought out. As the conclusion points out, the correlation is with poverty, not income inequality. While the latter may lead to the former, if everyone was poor abuse would be just as high.

                Thus Advanced Research…,

                Controlling for child poverty, demographic and economic control variables, and state-level variation in maltreatment rates, there’s a significant linear effect of inequality on child maltreatment rates (P < .0001. Meaning the difference between groups by chance is 1 in 1000).

              • Here’s a glass half-full approach to the technological fix to climate change.

                Still driven by the market but clearly lacking the political will to implement in time – assuming we have the time.

                Voting for those who have the will is the key.
                Are they the existing capitalist regimes and the capitalist parties, or must it be the will of the working people who can both fund and force the adoption of new technology, and do it now?

                I think the latter.

                https://medium.com/future-crunch/homo-electric-and-the-trillion-dollar-time-trial-9ae2e4fb23ee

                • Details like the economy as somewhat misleading.

                  Land ownership has to be communal.

                  Population numbers and energy harvesting all have to reduce drastically.
                  They will anyway but intelligent planning and education towards action is a slim change of managing chaos.

                  The “economy” is more of the same and that is how we got into this mess.
                  Capitalism is a cancer.

  5. “…the question is who will harvest that anger and fear, the Left or the Right?”

    Neither.
    The banks will.
    The Banks exist within a realm where they lurk, invisible and all-powerful and can only suspected of their existence by their actions, not by their earthly shape or form. They will win what ever the conflict is that is undertaken by which ever side. The Banksters are the 21st century version of a Vampire Catholic Church monster on a meth binge.
    Any revolution must start with the perverse abstraction that is the banking ‘industry’.
    That’s what I reckon anyway.

    This is awesome.
    Steven Fry/Catholic Church.
    https://youtu.be/0cIAf7cM0Zw

    And a nice wee read re Citibank. As an example of what I mean. And you read ‘The Wine Box Inquiry’, right? “Look it up!”
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citibank

    • Country boy, the solution for farmers is to nationalise the banks. This would leave farmers with their equity in the value of their earned improvements as leaseholders, and pass the unearned value into public hands. It would be a net benefit for most farmers as they would have their accumulated family labour recognised, have access to state bank interest-free loans, and be out of the clutches of the parasitic banks’ foreclosures. Of course this would be part of a planned, sustainable and equitable economy that can cope with the disruption of climate change, and help ensure our survival.

  6. And yet not one single fucking word about taking steps to understand,secure and protect our farmers. Not only from the murderous banksters who’re the pricks who put cows on our fresh water reserves for the Chinese dollar on their backs but from a corrupt MSM who feeds lies of hate and revilement to our farmers from you/us city people while planting a profound ignorance in Farmers which is encouraged to flourish to $-control and to $-parasitise our world-first food growers and we’re going to need them like never before.
    The biggest fear I have when the shit starts raining down on the fan is that we must eat, cloth and shelter ourselves in that immediacy. But then we just live longer to die more miserably I suppose.
    Is that not right @ Chloe Swarbrick?
    But hey! Don’t worry friends and farmers!
    Big Jizz baked a cake.
    https://www.trademe.co.nz/home-living/food-beverage/cakes-biscuits-crackers/listing-1845949900.htm
    My mind is boggling. I checked in the mirror. My mind has gone full boggle.
    I just had a guy with a clip board and wearing a fluro orange vest at the door! He was asking for my full-boggle-mind permit. He spotted me from down the street! Apparently, I have to pay an annual fee of a $-million, swear allegiance to the BNZ, eat a kitten while tugging a pony tail and allow a mass penis-fondle for science before I can go full-boggle. Too late, I said and slammed the door on his ball-less ball bag.
    A tornado came by on its way to a kindergarten and swept him up into a forest fire so I’m ok. Don’t worry. I’m ok.

  7. Some of those who will inherit this overpopulated, overheated world, with its insane culture of consumption at any cost, are starting to wake up to what is being done to them and are have expressed their dissent.

    Meanwhile, officialdom promotes business-as-usual.

    ‘Climate change strike: thousands of school students protest across Australia
    ‘Strike 4 Climate Action’ brings thousands of students together in defiance of prime minister’s warning’

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/30/climate-change-strike-thousands-of-students-to-join-national-protest

  8. Jez Martyn, so much thinking and writing and you go and strangle your baby at birth by giving it that name!
    Have you no comprehension of how the words “radical, socialist and green” go down here in rural N.Z.? Like a cup of cold sick,is how.
    Forget the fact that a third of the country probably agrees with Nutrium? And even if it wasn’t already too late, which it is; you have to SELL this concept.
    Unless you want to try the old “Nationalise the lot and shoot anyone who objects” route.
    I’m not saying you’re wrong or that it couldn’t be done but you’d have to make LAND REFORM a major factor and you don’t even try to appeal to those of us who currently have title to 90 per cent of the farmable land.
    I own a tiny portion of this country, less than ten acres, that I would happily share with aware, considerate individuals who were prepared to stay at home and grow food, but such individuals are as rare as hens teeth.
    I built my first “tiny home” house truck in 1975, and councils are still hassling the modern version of my owner built home. And the herb STILL ain’t legal!
    It’s not going to happen Martyn, most humans are clueless morons. We’re going away. And soon.

    • Thank you for you thoughts comrade. The reality is a radical change is needed and that the environment around us will change so rapidly that the solutions offered by green socialism will be the ones that answer the challenge. People won’t care what its called when the planet starts melting down.

  9. WOW, Martyn, you speak the truth, thank you, it is overdue that a leading blogger tells us what it really looks like, where we are at.

    “Politically we need a radical Green Socialist Party. The Middle Class Woke Identity Politics vehicle we have with the current Green Party is a sad joke that alienates more than it recruits. While they bicker about reclaiming the word ‘cunt’ and deciding which pronoun to use for Trans gender rights, the planet melts. Building every Millennial micro-aggression into a war crime doesn’t do a fucking thing to combat climate change.”

    I absolutely agree, we have endless identity politics, we forget the greater picture and challenge, that will affect us ALL, no matter what sexual orientation, what sensitivities we may have, whether Father Christmas should also impersonate Mother Christmas.

    We live in INSANE times, as people have lost touch with reality, and sadly the internet is not helping, it assists people to escape into their own little chat rooms and spaces, ignoring others.

    I grew up in the country, on a farm, I learned from a very early age the important relationship we as humans and also animals have with Mother Nature. I learned how interconnected things are, how damned dependent we are on nature and its blessings.

    With increased urbanisation most people have lost touch with nature, they do not even understand the basics, although many believe they do, but they do not.

    We are destroying the environment that created and enabled us at unprecedented speed, we are polluting, wasting and exploiting at irresponsible levels, and most behave, as if there is no reason to worry about tomorrow.

    Every day I see the consumerist idiots go to the malls and supermarkets, drive there in their nice SUVs and other vehicles, they continue to buy products wrapped in endless plastics, but they make the minor ‘sacrifice’ to no longer use one way plastic bags, a mere symbolic gesture, only with moderate effect.

    They drive, use petrol and diesel, work in jobs and businesses totally reliant on fossil fuel use, and even fertilise their gardens and farms with synthetic or artificially produced fertiliser, to make things grow.

    The growth mantra has not changed, that is economic growth, also based on population growth, tourism growth, and so forth. Nothing much is really sustainable.

    We have bean counter and hypocrite James Shaw lead the Greens, together with a former activist more concerned about the C word. We have incompetence, hypocrisy, dishonesty and selling out all over the show, it is a total disgrace, but people carry on as usual also, they do NOT want to hear the truth, and rather keep racing towards the abyss of self destruction, as they do not want to make any sacrifices.

    Humanity is heading for self destruction, I want to jump off the train to there, but that is a risk also, I will die one way or another.

    To really change things we need environmental and climate change warriors, guerilla fighters, who will sabotage the status quo and establishment, sadly there will NOT be any change that is without force or upset or violence, that is how I see it.

  10. When the Paris Agreement was signed, I was very cynical, I am proved right now, but that is no reason to celebrate. Humanity lives in total delusion, heading for self destruction.

  11. The conclusion made in this blog are very much based upon global and local reality, as much as can be said at this point in time.

    Most probably, climatic changes drive life, nature to a path of selective annihilation; given some room for deviations and unforeseen events.

    Coupled with parallel socioeconomic developments, the appearance of the precariat as a new class in the industrialized countries, and the rapidly evolving “race to the bottom” by the entire remaining working class structure (including small and medium landholders working their own patch), a perfect storm is in the brewing.

    Exploitation of nature and natural resources goes hand-in-hand with exploitation of humanity and human creativity. And so does the preposterous amassing of capital and hoarding of assets under the increasing control of a few.

    Two sides of the same coin. Environmental destruction and social injustice stem from a single source: a world where making profit is the highest goal.

    The NZ Green Party in parliament cannot be responsive to these developments alone, it will show to be impossible.

    There is indeed highest time for new organizational structures that are able take up the challenges. Embedded in rational analysis of the political economy and geared toward building up the direct adaptation skill in a local circular economy.

    Transformational change: one mission (systematic resilience) – two objectives (socioeconomic alteration, local and rural adaptation) – a great variety of fitting measures and actions – carried ahead by even a larger variety of ‘agents of change’.

    Especially active in exposed locations, with vulnerable groups, and throughout rural New Zealand.

    For a constructive move: concepts, approaches, technologies, innovation, experience, knowledge are available globally to an extent that most Kiwis do not anticipate yet.

    Let’s remove the barriers. We can do this.

    Kaleidoscope 1.

    “Drawing upon the wisdom of the ages.”

    Reference: http://ecosocialisthorizons.com/ecosocialism/

    Kaleidoscope 2.

    Ten Years After:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGztOzu8-2w

  12. The 32 year thing is pure NZ First and Labour. The Greens would do what needs to be done if over 50% voted for them. Anyone who expects anything different just had not one clue about how things work. If it was up to National it would be 52 years (then do nothing anyway).

    • Would that be the peak of extraction of oil by conventional means? (around 2007)

      Or would that be the peak of extraction via desperation measures that consume vast amounts of energy and resources and mess up the environment at an ever-faster pace (tar sands, deep offshore drilling, short-lived fracking, pumping sea water into wells to force oil out, conversion of food into fuel etc).

      • If it was so desperate how come the price is so low?

        The Permian Basin can profitably produce oil at $30 per barrel and can do so for many decades to come. Further north in the USA there are reserves as yet untapped.

        This is a problem for Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia because each needs about $90 per barrel to prop up their despotic regimes. At current prices Putin can’t even sustain the national pension system.

        • How much CO2 would be released into the atmosphere if the contents of the Permian Basin was extracted and burned, Andrew? I hope you realise that adding that much carbon dioxide into our atmosphere will have dire consequences.

          ““Climate change exacerbates the risks we already face,” said Katharine Hayhoe, who directs the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. “Every additional gigaton of carbon that we produce as a global society carries with it a very real cost.”

          Oil — and natural gas, which comes up with it in the Permian — releases carbon dioxide when burned. On top of that, methane — an even more potent greenhouse gas — leaks from wells, pipelines and other parts of the supply chain.” https://www.texastribune.org/2018/10/11/west-texas-becomes-worlds-extraction-colony-oil-gas-exports-surge/

          How does it feel to be a lemming marching toward the cliff edge?

  13. Martyn, you wrote: ‘only a radical populist response can unseat the vested corporate interests that create the current political and economic inertia.’

    The pro-corporate, pro-consumption conditioning that the populace of NZ has been subjected to over the past four decades has been extraordinarily successful. Unsustainable policies and unsustainable practices, founded on the squandering of energy and resources and ignoring the consequences, have become ingrained in the minds of the majority, and are integral components of the political-economic system …what I have previously referred to as living in the ‘Age of Entitlement’ (even as we live through the ‘Age of Consequences’).

    Thus, officialdom, charged with maintaining business-as-usual, ignores or supresses fundamental truth. Even in the face of the prospect of entire suburbs going under, the official response is to think in terms of sea walls and pumps.

    And in most cases there is no money in truth for the commercial sector, so the fabrications and lies continue.

    On the climate front, inappropriate or fantastical schemes based on untried or non-existent technologies continue to be promoted, even as everything that matters continues to be made rapidly worse.

    Sadly, it seems we will have to wait for further failure of the economic-political system, and a few large local environmental catastrophes the system is incapable of dealing with before radical change comes.

    Nevertheless, keep up the good work of highlighting the various ongoing failures of the system, as it degrades the environment and slowly progresses towards the point of implosion. And pity the children who will inherit the shocking mess created by their parents and grandparents over recent decades.

    By the way, I see the Arctic ice cover is nothing like what it ‘should be’, a sure indicator of planetary meltdown:

    http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

  14. Climate change alarmists in twenty years time when the sea hasn’t drowned us all will have to come up with another cause!

  15. Another 52 comments. Yep, a revolution , from the fat-bellied.

    It’s upside down for what is required. Prob’ly the Right will superintend our end. We’ll be in camps on account of brainless galoots. And our fireless gastrics.

  16. Vital, a shouting social-democratic govt. Otherwise, no otherwise.

    I expect we are as curious personally as all of the 30s lot (as Orwell called them out) We just have more doubts than them and our inhumanly certain opponents. Bruce stuttering his way to a victory for Auckland.

    • Its New Zealand, retail is posting profits already. The economies going good, the festive season has come early. But I can think of places worse. For example, Earth under the rule of Trump. America controlled their black slaves through pain and thought nothing of working their human slaves to death by the thousands, using agony to force them to continue to work no matter how exhausted or injured they were until they physically couldn’t move anymore. Or for something similar, there’s living under the control of those financial parasites that controlled their human victims by manipulation.

      And from what I’ve heard Brazil is going to go through an horrific period.

      We may live in a period of great ignorance, just don’t expect it to last for ever.

  17. Sounds like Comrade Bradbury has been reading my mini Patriotic Revolutionary Front manifesto from about 5 year ago. You missed out “national” in your political party suggestion.

    Radical green (national) socialist would garner much more support.

    Why are all you closet revolutionaries so afraid of a little patriotism, especially when our country is largely owned & operated by foreign powers, corporate’s & money.

    Funnily enough our current government is alliance of such forces. NZ first; a patriotic party, but in name only. The greens; also in name only. Labour; a socialist party, definitely in name only. Unfortunately the one thing they all have in common is their love for all forms of liberalism & the frigging liberal rules based globalisation agenda. The one ingredient that’s missing though is radicalism, I’ll grant you this.

    Another point; liberals are liberals regardless of whether they’re right or left leaning. They are the fucking estblishemnt & the problem. Why don’t all you cyber space warriors get this.

    Another point; do turkeys vote for xmas, no, so only a few closet revolutionaries will vote for such a party (remember you lot are a very exclusive little echo chamber club).

    Another point; people don’t vote for revolutions they take place in blood soaked streets & buildings where people get killed & maimed for life. Not for middle class wankers with lots to loose or the feint hearted.

    Another point; the conditions are not yet ripe here for the radicalism you & I envisage, when they are, like right now in France & many other places, the shit will hit the fan. I’m with the commentator Castro on this one, it will be civil war, but probably with racial overtones thrown in good measure. Are you prepared for it?

    • Ready for revolution? Any one who has to say “prepare for it,” isn’t.

      Parliament has suffered not from a lack of revolutionaries but rather from the National Party, which has moved far more to the right than the Lanour has moved to left and given outsized power to a bunch of crazy folks in government departments (No surprises legislation).

      The last time Labour had power (1999-2008), they passed substantial legislation. They are a functional governing party.

      But, then the National Party took control of parliament in 2008 and within 7 months they managed to borrow $20-$50 billion dollars with out a hope of paying it back in there term, New Zealands credit rating got downgraded because of their insanity. And it’s only been downhill for them from there.

      • Nothing I hate more than straight laced, know all serial trolls. Go find something useful to do with your obsessive compulsive disorder.

      • Sam don’t go twisting my words to suit your own petty little egotistical mission. Don’t give a shite about meaningless facts & figures. You’re a nasty sniping little person who hides away behind the safety of his keyboard. I suspect radical real world action would terrify you as it would destroy your cosy little bubble world.

        • Thing that I like is when normies catch feelings and reasons then lash out. Cause then I don’t have to be nice. Did your mommy whack you on the head that hard you can’t think straight?

          Revolutionary leader, no way.

            • Iti Te kopu, Nui Te korero.

              Normal people often focus on what they can see when they’re way over there head.

              When drawing support from a minority pool of support there’s no guarantee a minority party will be able to produce sustained charismatic leadership so recruiting, training and hiring and firing need to be robust as.

              People are way to smart to be lead by a mommies boy. Finding true leadership should be just a bonus.

              • Lol again. Step out & step up oh mighty key board warrior as we, the downtrodden & great unwashed are crying out for a leader of your undoubted stature. Gloves off. Lech mich am arsch und hau ab du ewiger wixer.

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