Spinoff & Stuffs vacant optimism, plastic bag ban/Carbon Neutral 2050/ETS greenwash & Julie Anne Genter’s righteous war analogy: Middle class climate crisis minimisation will be the new battlefront

Get the tissues, snowflakes are feeling down…

Kiwis suffering depression, anxiety and hopelessness because of climate change

A report released by the Royal Society in 2017 said climate change was “expected to have adverse mental health and community health effects” brought about by increased frequency of flooding, fires and infrastructure damage. 

…peeps are feeling sad and getting their blues on which is funny because if you think you are depressed by climate change right now, wait until the mass deaths start as methane feedback loops kick in and super charge the climate crisis to society ending levels of magnitude.

You haven’t seen anything yet, so save your emotional energy folks.

The sudden need to minimise the climate crisis because the truth is so paralysingly terrifying has got to be the most snowflake trigger free safe bullshit nonsense to date, because there literally is no safe spaces for snowflakes when it comes to a super heating planet.

Dear folks, we don’t have the fucking luxury to be depressed, the enormity of what we face collectively must forge a new reality. As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of a moon landing that showed how far we can technologically leap, as we commemorate the 80th year of the start of World War 2 and the defeat of fascism, as we plot how far we have come as a species we can not allow depression to rob us of the energy to generate survival from a crisis created by our own greed and pollution.

To perish from our own stupidity while poetic for humanity, is intellectually unacceptable.

While the current political spectrum can’t and won’t change fast enough to reform the economy, culture and society, that spectrum can be ripped apart at the ballot box, and once enough people dump the denial and seek to be survivors and not depressed possums stuck in the headlights, radical reform can be adopted.

But it is going to require organisation, an agreed radical manifesto and ruthless application of that manifesto once in power.

That change will only happen when enough people are angry and frightened, so minimising climate change into happy stories like the Stuff readers are calling for is the exact wrong direction to take.

I think Danyl Mclauchlan is the only reason to read The Spinoff but his most recent column minimising the climate crisis and claiming any attempt connecting it to criticism of  neoliberal capitalism is Machiavellian is the kind of middle class wishful thinking that is dangerous and is the new battlefront.

Just like middle class holistic mothers from the leafy suburbs bristle at vaccinations, this new manifestation of middle class hope mixing with the Millennial cultural demands of trigger free safe spaces demands happy happy fun times on the Climate Crisis rather than adult scrutiny and intellectual recognition that survival now demands immediate action.

The current Government’s environmental strides are baby steps made by a sleeping infant. The nonsense plastic bag ban, meaningless carbon neutral by 2050, pitiful Electric Car policies and the latest nothings to force Farmers to pay for their pollution in the ETS are all  virtue signalling greenwash that go no where, NO WHERE, in responding to this…

Analysis: Major update to ocean-heat record could shrink 1.5C carbon budget

The new version provides more accurate estimates of SSTs in the period during and after the second world war, as well as over the past decade. It suggests that the world’s oceans have warmed by around 0.1C more than previously thought since pre-industrial times.

…or this…

July on course to be hottest month ever, say climate scientists

Record temperatures across much of the world over the past two weeks could make July the hottest month ever measured on Earth, according to climate scientists.

The past fortnight has seen freak heat in the Canadian Arctic, crippling droughts in Chennai and Harare and forest fires that forced thousands of holidaymakers to abandon campsites in southern France and prompted the air force in Indonesia to fly cloud-busting missions in the hope of inducing rain.

If the trends of the first half of this month continue, it will beat the previous record from July 2017 by about 0.025C, according to calculations by Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford, and others.

This follows the warmest-ever June, which was confirmed this week by data from the US space agency Nasa, following Europe’s Copernicus satellite monitoring system.

…or this…

Greenland’s Superfast ‘Ice Slides’ Could Be Bad News for Climate Change

Greenland’s ice sheet is sliding way more than previously thought, according to a new study.

This means that the ice sheet can change faster in a warming climate, a group of researchers reported July 10 in the journal Science Advances.

…the only technological advance that might save us is super intelligence from AI which could control nano technology, but hoping on a benign AI that wishes to save us from our own mess seems almost religiously faith based at this stage.

Meanwhile our Prime Minister back-peddles…

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern won’t compare climate change to World War II

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says she wouldn’t compare to climate change to World War II – a comparison her Associate Transport Minister, Julie Anne Genter, made last week.

On Twitter last week, Genter declared climate change was “our generation’s WWII” while discussing the Government’s proposed ‘feebate’ scheme which would provide discounts on some low-emission, electric and fuel-efficient petrol-run vehicles.

…Genter is absolutely correct in comparing the climate crisis to our war on fascism as both were existential threats to our species. She’s totally wrong in thinking her tepid feebate for electric cars will help win that war though.

If we were to mix Genter’s analogy, she would declare that we are going to war with the Nazi’s and here are the vegan sleeping bags we’ve knitted out of hemp for you…

I mean, great we’ve got some vegan sleeping bags knitted out of hemp, but I think the defeat of the Nazi death machine might require something a tad more lethal than vegan sleeping bags knitted with hemp.

The NZ Greens have all the offensive capacity of resting moss.

The entire economy needs to be put on a war economy footing, radical reforms and investments are required and the entire country needs to be involved, because the facts of this climate crisis threat are staring us in the face now.

FACT: We face an existential threat to our species from catastrophic climate change which occurs because of our pollution and is happening far faster than most scientists had hoped for.

FACT: This catastrophic climate change can occur within decades fuelled by feedback loops built into the biosphere which will make vast parts of our planet uninhabitable to sophisticated civilisation.

FACT: We have waited too long to stop climate change, it is now becoming a run away event and only radical adaptation can be adopted to survive it.

FACT: Most of the political spectrum are corrupted to the vested interests of those doing the polluting and the current political establishment are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

FACT: As the climate deteriorates and gets worse citizens will panic and be forced to join civil disobedience like Extinction Rebellion and forcibly be arrested and force Governments to change as their judicial system becomes too blocked to function.

FACT: It only takes 3.5% of the population to force radical change.

OPINION: Only a revolutionary political movement with a focus on sustainability, a rejection of neoliberal economic growth models and a war footing economy focused on protecting what we have is the only way forward.

The denial of climate change and the quack science used to peddle it must be eradicated with the same zealotry we amputate cancer. Our politicians are too frightened of the corporate vested interests that profit from pollution so those politicians need replacing.

I can be smug about this because the external examples of the out of control climate crisis will become impossible to ignore no matter the trigger free safe space or commercially vested interest.

Fortress Aotearoa is a movement whose time will come.

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 exploiting international students & 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.
• All houses to have solar panels within a decade.
• UBI for all citizens
• 100% renewable energy for entire country, (including nuclear if necessary).
• Renewed look at GE
• 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

…Radical Eco Socialism is the only way forward for a country that is likely to be the last lifeboat. Our traditional tyranny of distance will end up becoming our last saviour.