Got a friend who’s been fighting to get the climate, social justice etc word out for 40 years, he’s still well angry and even more so now when he feels we are coming to the end of days and the worse case scenarios predicted 30 even 40 years ago are coming to a head.
But then again look at what he was up against, him and a lot of others. Lobbies using war games strategies to undermine scientific findings, elected leaders with wide pockets hand in hand with industries and their lobbies, the general public who either didn’t care or were too busy dealing with loads of other problems. Nowadays the lobbies are still there, the deep pocket elected ‘leaders’ too, the industries destroying more and more and making record breaking profits. And the general public faced with conspiracy theories, industry lobby lies and misdirections, a pandemic and now another economic crisis. It’s no wonder my mate is still angry after all these years, he’s been watching it all go downhill for decades, eyes wide open.
And today?
COP27 coming up, the word Permacrisis being declared word of the year, some paintings got splashed with foodstuffs and so on and so forth etc.
They are the things that get the media attention. COP27 is the 27th UN climate change conference. The 27th. ‘World leaders’ as they are known have met up 27 times to find agreements on how to stop the damage we are doing to the climate. 27 times, what the hell! And of course when we look on and see what difference their pledges and whatever make, well it’s basically none at all. Business as usual some fluffy eco-trimmings and a lot of soundbites.
The graph below is just Co2 and doesn’t include the other GHG’s.
What about global oil supply and demand?
Whoops
So after 27 COP’s starting with the Kyoto protocol in 1997 Co2 emissions and global gas and petrol supply have both increased, massively.
The COP events themselves cost a fortune each time. The Paris climate summit came in at around 170 million euros. But that’s ok as 20% of the funds needed came from Air France, Renault-Nissan, EDF, GDF Suez amongst other big GHG emitting businesses. The cost of the summit in terms of Co2 emissions is estimated at around 300,000 tonnes.
Whoops again.
Each COP chat-fest stimulates a media frenzy, protests, protocols, speeches and a lot of hot air which is frankly the last thing we need. So why do we continue to place such hope in a fundamentally corrupt and inefficient initiative? Because we are always hoping that someone somewhere is going to sort it all out for us like a Marvel ‘hero’ zooming in and saving the world. We’ve been trained to do this since we were kids and we keep on wallowing our way around this tired old treadmill, running to stay in the same place, at best.
And so 120 ‘world leaders’ with no formal training in climatology; ecology nor any of the environmental sciences are gathered together to find solutions to the world’s climatic, ecological and environmental crises.
And then of course there are the climate protesters around the COP27 compound, well meaning, motivated and intelligent people doing the exact opposite of what they need to do, COP after COP after COP. One day maybe, these people will realise that governments won’t listen, will act only to give the impression of action and are in the pockets of the various industries. Government are also weighed down by their own infrastructure, they are not the lightweight reactive efficient systems that we need. On the contrary their cumbersome weight makes them critically slow, in this race they are changing slower than the world’s glaciers.
The Unsung
Absent from the climate hysterical mainstream media are those people who have decided not to continue a futile fight with governments and the various industries. Instead they have committed themselves to sorting out their local community, making them zero waste, carbon negative, equitable, just and fair. They are busy setting up local food production systems, improving local housing, developing community resilience and just sorting their stuff out.
These people, these many many people, the unsung, have figured it out, when you have no control take control. This is what they have done and continue to do, rather than staying in an abusive situation they have changed it. These people are having a massive and unreported positive impact, building up social justice and so at the same time addressing the so called climate crisis. ‘So called’ because the changing climate is a symptom and NOT the cause, in the same way that greenhouse gases are the vector and not the cause. The cause is the systems which produce these gases and at the same time are responsible for widespread poverty, injustice and catastrophic health problems.
My friend is well set up now. He has a great local network, good food, good company and a resilient local community. He feels that he is well set up and has retired from environmental activism, which is a shame in a way but good for him. He watches the COP27 activities with a sense of humour, despite understanding the importance of reducing the impacts of climate change. But this is because he also understands that we must act where we can do the most good and where he can encourage rapid change, and it’s not at a governmental level, it’s back home.
.