Climate Change III - The Power of Chaos

[The Anti-Targ]

I guess activists want to be able to talk about any issues, but effective activists are the ones who stick to the topic that put them in the spotlight to start with.

I'm staying away from the Israel-Palestine threads, I've already said everything I can long before this latest escalation in the conflict flared up.

[Conflicting Thought]

4 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Not sure whether this belongs here, in one of hte Israel threads I avoid, or just International news.

With all the need of a global climate/enviromental movement, Greta Thunberg is atm busy wrecking her Fridays For Future.

If you were tasked with a beter way to discredit/destroy Firdays for Future, you'd be heard pressed to come up with better way then to give semi-informed speeches on Israel-Palestine. Or post on Twitter about it.

Somebody seriously needs to keep her away from microphones.

im piggybacking on this comment.

im now reading a ver good book The Divide by Jason Hickle where he talks (among other things) about ngos and charity "activism" and how they proppose solutions that dont actually change the deeper systemic problems that we have to deal with, adn actually serve to make it look like they are trying to solve things when they are just whitewashing.

and i read somewhere that fridays for future has some very shady backers, like very big oil commpanies and such, i havent researched it further tho.

[Rippounet]

12 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:

im now reading a ver good book The Divide by Jason Hickle where he talks (among other things) about ngos and charity "activism" and how they proppose solutions that dont actually change the deeper systemic problems that we have to deal with, and actually serve to make it look like they are trying to solve things when they are just whitewashing.

One of the core problems of the environmental crisis is that the longer we delay taking action, and the more radical that action needs to be (Andreas Malm calls this a "law of polarisation").
One of the side-effects of the law of polarisation is that action that was adequate yesterday becomes greenwashing tomorrow: what is being discussed today might have worked thirty or forty years ago, but today it is very often a form of whitewashing/greenwashing.

[Conflicting Thought]

9 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

One of the core problems of the environmental crisis is that the longer we delay taking action, and the more radical that action needs to be (Andreas Malm calls this a "law of polarisation").
One of the side-effects of the law of polarisation is that action that was adequate yesterday becomes greenwashing tomorrow: what is being discussed today might have worked thirty or forty years ago, but today it is very often a form of whitewashing/greenwashing.

 i do belive that ong activism, charity and all that where never going to work, that type of activism is to me capitalism with a human face, and very often counterproductive. to change the system you cant go half ways, and the enviromental crisis was always tied with systemic issues

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Well, Fridays For Future were more "aggressive" in their demands of what politics should do. So to accuse them of Greenwashing is not doing them justice in my book.

Reaction/response from the political system is woefully inadequate.

Check rups different scenarios by the French goverment a while back. It's basically Firdays For Future ringing the alarm bells, and politicians hitting the snooze button over and over again, hoping that when they finally wake up there'll be some miracle/technological solution.

[Luzifer's right hand]

The people who will change there stance on measures on climate change because of her commenting on the conflict in Israel are the same kind of people that claim that their dislike for traffic blocking protesters made them switch sides.

They were never on board anyway and just pretended at best.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Climate change will start driving land based disputes sooner rather than later, and we will be looking at numerous conflicts similar to Israel-Palestine. Knowing more about an issue is never a bad thing before providing opinions, but the two crises are not as far apart as all that.

[The Anti-Targ]

They are still mostly unrelated with climate change being the lump of coal on top of the massive steaming pile of shit that has built up over the last [insert any number as long as it's more than 60] years.

Anyway, the larger point being about land (and probably as importantly fresh water) conflicts increasing as global warming marches on, sadly, is possibly not going to reach a level of destabilisation in time for it to be a catalyst for action that leads to meaningful results. I'm increasingly thinking that this is going to be our bronze age collapse. The main difference being we saw it coming. 

[Toth]

Least surprising news of the day: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/twelve-billionaires-climate-emissions-jeff-bezos-bill-gates-elon-musk-carbon-divide?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

[The Anti-Targ]

Activist investors achieve squat in trying to get big oil to change course to non-emitting energy production

https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/20-11-2023/the-exxon-shareholder-revolt-made-worldwide-news-heres-what-happened-next

Interestingly from a New Zealand angle:

Quote

Many of the investors that had previously shunned oil and gas producers, particularly those failing to transition to renewable energy, piled back in, seeking a sugar hit from short term returns. In the year to September 2022, New Zealand KiwiSaver (retirement savings funds) and managed fund providers piled 80% more investment into those oil and gas companies that are increasing their production.

I probably shouldn't finger point to all retirement fund companies, but there's a certain irony that might be unique to New Zealand fund managers that claim "ethical" investing that they guarantee not to invest in nuclear energy, but might be throwing money into oil and gas to make their funds perform better.

I complained to my retirement fund provider about their non-investment in nuclear energy policy, i.e. I told them they should be investing in nuclear energy, or at least not exclude investing out of hand. They just replied with some meaningless platitudes about reviewing investments policies. I should check if they snuck into oil and gas. I'm guessing not since my fund has performed terribly in the last 3 years and did not see any kind of bounce from the Russia/Ukraine war oil price spike.

[IheartIheartTesla]

I read somewhere that China has issued permits for a LOT of new coal plants, because of numerous factors - Ukraine war and natural gas supply, droughts leading to lowering of water levels and hydro-based electricity, and lastly I'm guessing building as many plants as they can before not making any more (as a hedge). Not good news, and once again, geopolitics will screw this world over.

[horangi]

On 11/20/2023 at 4:16 AM, Toth said:

Least surprising news of the day: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/twelve-billionaires-climate-emissions-jeff-bezos-bill-gates-elon-musk-carbon-divide?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I do feel these articles tend to use the luxury yachts and private airplanes as a bit of a red herring when they are lumped in with the investments and as a result shield the users of the companies' products.  The article notes about halfway in that the CO2 produced by all that flashy stuff is dwarfed by the companies that they own.  I use Amazon Prime delivery nearly every day, how convenient would it be to credit Bezos for all the CO2 produced by his company's cargo airplanes and delivery vans. 

[Conflicting Thought]

i came across this book https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51043120-the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg i havent read it but i think maybe i should, i´ve been reading more and more about this ngos that supposodly are trying to "save" the world but are actually nothing more than greenwashing and maybe even worse than that. maybe it is cynical but if it is true its important to know this stuff cuz capitalist will do everything to maintaing power and control of the narrative. if it is true that the biggest "donors" of greta are the WEF and ngos like Population Matters then i think its reasonable to be skepticall of initatives like this that turn out to be nothing more than a lie.

[Luzifer's right hand]

That the COP28 is held in Dubai just demonstrates what a farce those conferences are.

I'm sure some lucrative fossil fuel deals will be made.

 

[kissdbyfire]

Awesome. /s

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67508331

The briefings show the UAE also prepared talking points on commercial opportunities for its state renewable energy company, Masdar, ahead of meetings with 20 countries, including the UK, United States, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil, China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kenya.

[The Anti-Targ]

An interesting video on the future of fossil hydrocarbon mining and use. There doesn't seem to be much thinking going into transitioning away from all the non-combusting uses of fossil HCs. This video suggests we won't / shouldn't need to. But it also criticises the industry for trying to use our reliance on non-combustion current uses to prevent moves to end the combustion uses.

I haven't watched a lot of videos on this channel but the ones of watched seem to be reasonably in line with my environmental and scientific perspectives.

 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Usually not into posting/sharing cartoons (except maybe Squire in the football thread). But that one I found so on point.

[Spockydog]

This is why you don't give the presidency of Cop28 to a bunch of fucking bobbleheaded petrocunts.

Cop28 president says there is ‘no science’ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels

Quote

 

The president of Cop28, Sultan Al Jaber, has claimed there is “no science” indicating that a phase-out of fossil fuels is needed to restrict global heating to 1.5C, the Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting can reveal.

Al Jaber also said a phase-out of fossil fuels would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves”.

The comments were “incredibly concerning” and “verging on climate denial”, scientists said, and they were at odds with the position of the UN secretary general, António Guterres.

Al Jaber made the comments in ill-tempered responses to questions from Mary Robinson, the chair of the Elders group and a former UN special envoy for climate change, during a live online event on 21 November. As well as running Cop28 in Dubai, Al Jaber is also the chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ state oil company, Adnoc, which many observers see as a serious conflict of interest.

 

 

[Rippounet]

He's exaggerating, but what he's really trying to say is that you can't phase-out fossil fuels without degrowth.

Which is accurate, because there is no such thing as "sustainable development." That was a spin, as is now being pointed out by a lot of very smart people. Development was never sustainable, and for it to be means changing the definition of "development."

The hard truth is that the Western model of development required fossil fuels, and that Western countries have no alternatives to propose to developing nations - aren't exactly trying.

So as long as the West doesn't get its shit together, faces its responsabilities, proposes to actually help developing countries (not just a few hundred million here and there), in a new approach to pretty much everything, human societies as we know them are in peril.

[The Anti-Targ]

There is a conflation of two issues though: whether the science says a phase out of fossil fuels is necessary to achieve </= 1.5^oC warming; whether sustainable development as currently understood can happen alongside a phase out of fossil fuels.

If part of degrowth means lowering the average kW of energy consumed per person then that is basically an assertion that there are no substantial replacements energy generation currently using fossil fuel. I don't believe that's been objectively shown to be true. It is true, IMO, if certain energy options (i.e. nuclear) are taken of the table and people want the bulk of energy to come from hydro, wind, solar and geothermal.

Other elements of degrowth may be necessary, but resigning the world to energy degrowth because people refuse to use all energy options available to us is harmful and bad policy. It may be that all non-fossil fuel energy options currently available won't be enough to replace fossil fuels AND provide for increased per person energy availability globally. But we should use all options available, in order to minimise or eliminate fossil fuel use in as short a time as possible.

Edited December 9, 2023 by The Anti-Targ