Alexandria and Greta can save the planet from global warming buuuuuuuuuuuuuut just in case they can’t…
I am a huge fanboy of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Greta Thunberg.
Both are intelligent women. Both have enormous courage. Both are right on the climate crisis.
Reading this extraordinary conversation between the two of them makes me believe in hope that we can truly change our ways and shift in time to counter the apocalypse that is global warming.
Buuuuuuuuuuuuuut just in case they can’t force our culture and economy to radically shift into adaptation mode, if the worst angels of our nature deny the threat then fear replaces hope as the motivating drivers, and if that becomes the only way to mobilise populism to ram through radical change, then so be it.
To survive climate change we must embark upon Fortress Aotearoa…
- Move away from intensive farming and look to become domestically self sustainable in terms of food.
- Immediately ban all water exports
- 5 year Parliamentary term.
- Upper and Lower House (Upper House 50-50 split between Māori & Pakeha that can hold up legislation if unhappy about Treaty issues)
- Massive investment into R&D from Government with the understanding research is to benefit NZ first before sold offshore.
- Large scale increase in Navy, Army & Airforce.
- Mass limiting of tourism numbers with increased tourist taxes.
- Only citizens can vote.
- Sustainable immigration and an end to exploitative migrant workers.
- Resettlement Programms for all pacific island neighbours.
- Increase refugee in take to 5000 per year
- Fully funded public services.
- Mass Green housing rebuild.
- 100% renewable energy for entire country.
- Massive tree planting across previous farming land.
- Wholesale re-write of state services act to end commercial values.
- Investment into basic pharmaceutical production.
- Financial transaction tax
- Wealth tax
- Multinational tax
- Inheritance tax
…and just to remind everyone how much faster the climate crisis is coming…
‘Precipitous’ fall in Antarctic sea ice since 2014 revealed
The vast expanse of sea ice around Antarctica has suffered a “precipitous” fall since 2014, satellite data shows, and fell at a faster rate than seen in the Arctic.
The plunge in the average annual extent means Antarctica lost as much sea ice in four years as the Arctic lost in 34 years. The cause of the sharp Antarctic losses is as yet unknown and only time will tell whether the ice recovers or continues to decline.
But researchers said it showed ice could disappear much more rapidly than previously thought. Unlike the melting of ice sheets on land, sea ice melting does not raise sea level. But losing bright white sea ice means the sun’s heat is instead absorbed by dark ocean waters, leading to a vicious circle of heating.
…and that the worst case scenarios are rapidly becoming the only scenarios…
Scientists shocked by Arctic permafrost thawing 70 years sooner than predicted
Permafrost at outposts in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted, an expedition has discovered, in the latest sign that the global climate crisis is accelerating even faster than scientists had feared.
A team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks said they were astounded by how quickly a succession of unusually hot summers had destabilised the upper layers of giant subterranean ice blocks that had been frozen solid for millennia.
“What we saw was amazing,” Vladimir Romanovsky, a professor of geophysics at the university, told Reuters. “It’s an indication that the climate is now warmer than at any time in the last 5,000 or more years.“
…this is your friendly weekly update that global warming has become a run away event that will destroy vast swathes of our civilisation and that our political spectrum can not radically shift the economy fast enough to adapt and protect us.
Enjoy your denial.
‘Football pitch’ of Amazon forest lost every minute
“Satellite images show a sharp increase in clearances of trees over the first half of this year, since Jair Bolsonaro became president of Brazil, the country that owns most of the Amazon region.
The most recent analysis suggests a staggering scale of losses over the past two months in particular, with about a hectare being cleared every minute on average.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48827490?ns_source=facebook&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ocid=socialflow_facebook&ns_mchannel=social&fbclid=IwAR2_YC-t4sT9XROwmeVt5Pix9FLlHXuMMg9LyvdlRTVDyDVVoq3cRKa9HdA
If humans are to survive then we have to start to talk about decreasing world population instead of making everything about growth and economics.
You can’t eat money. You also can’t breathe money either.
Very selfish world policies run by selfish, self serving government systems mean that some people can live lives full of luxury at the expense of not only others alive now, but subsequent generations who are going to be in peril.
Taxation is too little too late, as we actually need to have less people.
Since smaller families tends to be economically wealthier, have better equality and more education, it seems odd to me, why so many people are against discussing the idea!
World trade that encourages pollution and steals from the poor, on the other hand, is endlessly discussed by politicians.
Italy home of the pope, has one of the lowest birth rates and they are all Catholics!
Is it really such a sacrifice to try to have policies to encourage humans around the world to only have one or two children so that our population is stable and slowly declining to save the world and keep biodiversity alive?
I’m not thinking drastic measures just more world policy to encourage smaller families to all nations.
You are right , SaveNZ, in saying that we need to reduce population fast. Some time ago I suggested that we probably need to reduce populaion by about one third. No one thought that was a good ide but it shows the scale of the problem. We have about about 10 years to get the world population falling and the growth rate also falling. We wont get within cooee just by birth control methods. There simply isn’t time.
But how. You do not have the right or the authority to control that many nations. You’re talking about sovereign nations not toys. Y’know? We may aswell talk about suicide.
@Sam, Its human, animal and environmental suicide if we keep going with an expanding human population around the world.
The international community seem to have no issues negotiating international free trade agreements that are mostly negative for climate change and have many international tax agreements, but fail to actually bother to take into account long term human and environmental survival in their constant international meetings, like what’s going to happen to all the people being born?
For a start governments can stop talking about growth being good. It isn’t. Most of the countries that have the best standards of living are countries that have smaller populations.
Countries like the US might be rich but that comes at a price of huge inequality with significant amounts of the population not educated or even being able to afford healthcare for example or countries with large populations having extreme inequality and poverty.
While I don’t agree with the methods used for China’s one child policy, it took the country out of poverty and they are now a superpower, so having population controls tend to make a poor country richer for a start and more educated too!
Simple things like giving money for families that have under 2 children and taxing more than 2 children could work… gentle policies that reward smaller families.
Technology is going to take a lot of labouring jobs so what is going to happen with so many people who do not have jobs?
Already happening around the world!
Or in the case of NZ we have grown mostly low wage jobs like cafes and fast food, but still can’t get anything done and have some of the most expensive costs in the world to build a road for example.
In NZ scams around labour and importing it in for profit has taken over so the actual work itself getting done, is no longer a priority, in fact efficiency in NZ now, is less profitable than bringing in as many warm bodies as possible to be billed, while getting not much done and done poorly and nobody can get any skilled labour anymore.
China bit the bullet in controlling their population.
Having less kids is not suicide. Uncontrolled population growth is suicide.
Yknow I had this argument with McTrash (Y’know McFlock) only he wanted to chemically castrate male adolescents by brainwashing them. I shit you not. McTrash is an absolute nutter. Completely lost it he has. Promise me you won’t be like McTrash.
Y’know I can not imagine for the life of me a state offical coming into one of my children’s homes to discuss with them the moralising virtues in sickly sweet tones of the importance of population and birth controls. Before, Y’know coercion and brainwashing takes over. My private property is far more important to me than that. And I am simply thankful a majority would agree more with me than watching my family tree just disappear.
‘Football pitch’ of Amazon forest lost every minute
“Satellite images show a sharp increase in clearances of trees over the first half of this year, since Jair Bolsonaro became president of Brazil, the country that owns most of the Amazon region.
The most recent analysis suggests a staggering scale of losses over the past two months in particular, with about a hectare being cleared every minute on average.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48827490?ns_source=facebook&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ocid=socialflow_facebook&ns_mchannel=social&fbclid=IwAR2_YC-t4sT9XROwmeVt5Pix9FLlHXuMMg9LyvdlRTVDyDVVoq3cRKa9HdA
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will be aided by the same political publicity machine that worked for Hilary Clinton. Does that tell you something? Tulsi Gabbard is much more like the real deal but gets no media attention. Does that tell you something else? Greta Thunberg is the real deal and hopefully will keep her spirit and objectivity long enough to begin a political career if she can stand it. Those who have seen her speeches can tell how she struggles to accept that people cannot deal with the obvious.
I struggle to accept that people cannot deal with the obvious.
Unbelievable. At no. 5 you have
Large scale increase in Navy, Army & Airforce.
And how much bigger would that be and can I ask what for. You do realise that just abolishing the US army etc would Remove a large chunk of co2 emissions? So a government looking for green credentials looks at your list and goes hmmm where shall I start. I know lets buy more war toys!! Seems thats become the green thing to do!!. You really got to wonder about people on the left these days. Dont worry about people any more I mean its a climate emergency just build me an army so we can go to war on climate change. I think the war part here was supposed to be descriptive and not taken literally but I guess the military industrial complex can’t afford to let any opportunity slip. Must be thats what the submarine hunting airplanes are for. If I’d only realised it was for a climate emergency and not the war on terror I wouldn’t have been so upset. I mean no one told me that submarines were such a problem for the climate
Comrade.
Have you seen the foreign trawler fleets operating in the Tasman Sea? Have you seen the damage Hurricane’s will generate from a hotter wetter environment? What happens when social break down occurs in Pacific Nations?
I simply don’t believe we can pretend that the level of carnage climate change will generate is something that can be dealt with by simply volunteer or NGOs, the State must have the military force to project emergency resources within the Pacific and we must be able to respond to greater poaching of fish stocks.
When disaster strikes domestically the ability to fly in and out of many places will matter.
I think it is optimistic in the extreme to deny the desperate need to ramp up the military spending budget.
Greta and AOC are not going to stop climate change by themselves.
So far they are putting their hopes in existing governments and regimes being converted to rapid reforms.
These will all be too little and too late.
Climate change is racing ahead of even the best scientists.
The solution always comes back to who will stop climate change and how?
Because it is the capitalocene we are living in, capitalism has to go, and now.
The only way to do that is to have a socialist revolution.
To have a revolution we have to convince people of the futility of reforming capitalism.
That means that those most vulnerable to climate change, workers, minorities, migrants, displaced people, the whole of humanity abandoned and genocided by capitalism have to see the necessity to unite, organise and overthrow the big corporates and their state machines.
This will not happen spontaneously.
Even the most determined and heroic revolutions from below will be defeated unless there unity and organisation.
And that requires a clear sighted leadership with a program for change that is debated and tested in the numerous struggles already taking place.
That program can be labelled revolutionary ecosocialism for those who have violent kneejerk reflexes to words like “Marxism” or “Communism”.
https://situationsvacant.blog/2019/06/16/is-greta-thunberg-a-sock-puppet-for-green-capitalism/
We are not the only animals on the planet, but make daily decision to wipe out species for money and harmful product production .
Melissa Price approved uranium mine knowing it could lead to extinction of 12 species
Exclusive: former environment minister rejected department advice and approved Yeelirrie mine day before election called
“The former environment minister Melissa Price acknowledged that approval of a uranium mine in Western Australia could lead to the extinction of up to 12 native species but went ahead with the decision anyway.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/04/melissa-price-approved-uranium-mine-knowing-it-could-lead-to-extinction-of-12-species?CMP=soc_567&fbclid=IwAR0sh2CqG1knINiID0uKu2g5pv0QhjVHGkw-ov7rE6rasgCo1Zt5oUqAQ-8