The public wants a green future, but not one that disrupts their lives or puts their economic well-being at risk.
Wasn't it Patrick Henry who said, "Give me convenience, or give me death!" Oh, no, it was Jello Biafra. This is for you, Nemo:
Thanks man. After working in the empires sausage factory rebellion is sanity. I couldn't even count all the dead and that was under Obama. The amount that man could murder was epic. People want to go back to that? The tools of empire always come back home. My worry is most of you will be agreeing with me in 20 years. Those in power are rotted to the core and our hierarchies illegitimate. If they weren't how could we be facing extinction so some rich assholes could avoid minor inconvenience? Some put fixing climate change at a mere 300 billion. That is less than a 15% tip on what we spent on the War on Terror.
Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year
Nemo wrote: ↑Thu Jan 09, 2020 4:09 pm
The spread of stories about arson are being pushed by paid AI. You can probably guess who is behind them.
Pretty funny Nemo. The point is actually that when people set fires, purposefully and accidentally, as they did in Australia, Cali, and other fires, climate change takes a manageable fire and makes it much worse. ...
tkp67 wrote: ↑Mon Jan 06, 2020 1:51 pm
Climate change threads here have brought little interest regardless of context...
That is not true. Half the great vegetarian debate is devoted to the climate impacts of diet and agriculture.
Buddhism is our wheelhouse so it seems the most relevant vehicle and it does not exist outside of the rest of our lives unless of course we make this a choice.
Buddhadharma has never pretended to be a system of political governance. It is a system of personal values. We can operate from those values, but we cannot impose them on others.
To the first comment: It is contextual to designations and identifications. This can be unpacked quite a bit. Simply put asserting either one doesn't put focus on a "middle way" but rather reinforces dualistic thinking. In my mind the middle way considers all sentient beings. All individuals are sentient beings. It seems idealistic until it gets unpacked a bit. This correlates to the labeling of all corporations as oligarchies. It isn't reflective of our reality. It is a designation that is easier for the mind the rationalize. It does not seem to lend to a middle way.
To the second point you did not reference the content of the references I cited that state does indeed have a place in the "corporate" world. Curious did you read them?
Regards
Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year
Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2020 2:10 am
by Kim O'Hara
DharmaN00b wrote: ↑Sat Jan 11, 2020 12:49 pm
Some people don't want to know, Kim. Getting your attention keeps you is stasis, then the capacity is there to undermine your moral(e) resolve.
Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year
Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2020 11:17 pm
by Malcolm
tkp67 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 11, 2020 1:14 pm
To the first comment: It is contextual to designations and identifications. This can be unpacked quite a bit. Simply put asserting either one doesn't put focus on a "middle way" but rather reinforces dualistic thinking. In my mind the middle way considers all sentient beings. All individuals are sentient beings.
All sentient beings are composed of many parts, five aggregates, sense basis, etc. So there really are not individuals, apart from a convention used to designate a collection, like "corporation."
It is a designation that is easier for the mind the rationalize. It does not seem to lend to a middle way.
As Nagārjuna points out, emptiness, dependent designation, and middle way are all synonyms.
M
Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year
tkp67 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 11, 2020 1:14 pm
To the first comment: It is contextual to designations and identifications. This can be unpacked quite a bit. Simply put asserting either one doesn't put focus on a "middle way" but rather reinforces dualistic thinking. In my mind the middle way considers all sentient beings. All individuals are sentient beings.
All sentient beings are composed of many parts, five aggregates, sense basis, etc. So there really are not individuals, apart from a convention used to designate a collection, like "corporation."
It is a designation that is easier for the mind the rationalize. It does not seem to lend to a middle way.
As Nagārjuna points out, emptiness, dependent designation, and middle way are all synonyms.
M
Contextually however reality is such that a corporation does not equate to oligarchy and labels nor words alone can force humans to conform to a particular realm or achieve liberation. Compassion does.
Those aggregates are not permanent or fixed regardless of how we refer to them. In my experience (YMMV) assuming a person's (or the peoples who comprise a corporate entity) role as static because of perceived conditions and capacities is the surest way to reinforce them. Conversely to effect them in a manner consistent with dharma what works best is believing they have a "boundless" in regards to their own capacity to embrace consciousness.
Those articles I posted seemed to illustrate both corporate vehicle used for good and the view of corporations as profit focused as a limited narrative among other points.
This is not in disagreement with any other statements or the damage corporate corruption has caused. However, as I see it, humans using corporations to fulfill desires and obfuscate causation are the underlining blame. Humans need to take responsibility for evocation of desire including the propensity to manipulate truth so they can disguise cause for short lived self benefit.
Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year
Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 1:17 pm
by Nemo
Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year
Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 2:02 pm
by Vasana
Inaccurate meme is Inaccurate.
Surprised to see you fall victim to memetic warfare, Nemo. Memes like that tend to be devised by climate skeptics, conservatives, those on the right etc. Even if you are none of those, the proliferation of these memes only serves to obscure public opinion and diminish support of climate and ecological action.
A headline on the website of conservative columnist and radio show host Todd Starnes declared:
"The Australia Bushfires Have Nothing to Do With Climate Change; It Was Arson."
The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
Arson is involved — but to a much lesser extent than the claim suggests.
And in the view of numerous experts, climate change is certainly involved: It is making the fires more severe than they otherwise would be.
The fires have been exacting a toll for months. According to a BBC News report posted Jan. 7, the same day as the ToddStarnes.com article, the blazes had destroyed nearly 2,000 homes and killed 25 people and millions of animals since September.
Arson overstated
As for the cause, the website article claims "many of the fires were set by arsonists." The article cites a news story in The Australian that said that more than 180 people have been arrested since the start of the bushfire season and that Swinburne University professor James Ogloff said that about 50% of bushfires were "lit by firebugs."
The 180 figure is wrong.
New South Wales police reported on Jan. 6 that it has taken "legal action" against 183 people for bushfire-related offenses since Nov. 8. But that number includes 24 people charged with deliberately setting bushfires, 53 people cited for allegedly failing to comply with a total fire ban and 47 people cited for allegedly discarding a lighted cigarette or match on land. Not all of these people were arrested, as the Starnes article claims.
Moreover, bot and troll accounts are likely involved in a "disinformation campaign" exaggerating the role of arson in the fires, according to a social media analysis by a lecturer at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, The Guardian reported.
Climate change widely cited
Meanwhile, experts have been widely quoted saying climate change has made the fires worse. A sampling:
Associated Press: "Scientists, both those who study fire and those who study climate, say there’s no doubt man-made global warming has been a big part, but not the only part, of the fires" — with 2019 in Australia having been the hottest and driest on record. Stanford University environmental studies director Chris Field, who chaired an international scientific report on climate change and extreme events, said this is one of the worst, if not the worst, climate change extreme events he’s seen.
BBC News: "Australia has always experienced bushfires — it has a ‘fire season’ — but this year they are a lot worse than normal … The overwhelming scientific consensus is that rising levels of CO2 are warming the planet. And Australia has been getting hotter over recent decades and is expected to continue doing so." … Climate change is "not the cause of bushfires, but scientists have long warned that a hotter, drier climate would contribute to Australia's fires becoming more frequent and more intense."
USA Today: "Human-caused climate change is worsening the wildfires scorching Australia, experts say. Climate change is increasing bushfire risk in Australia ‘by lengthening the fire season, decreasing precipitation and increasing temperature,’ according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology."
Our ruling
A conservative website said: "The Australia bushfires have nothing to do with climate change; it was arson."
It is widely believed by experts that climate change has made the fires much worse than they otherwise would have been, while the role of arson in causing the fires has been widely overstated.
Though a handful of fires have been ignited by arsonists, authorities including the Victorian fire chief have confirmed that the majority of the largest blazes were ignited by dry lightning, not arson.
Dale Dominey-Howes, a professor of hazard and disaster risk sciences at the University of Sydney, told HuffPost there was a link between climate change and both the ignition and exacerbation of the wildfires.
“The majority of these bushfires have been generated by lightning strikes associated with weather and climate effects. Weather and climate are dominated by processes that are affected by climate change. So there is a link between climate change and the triggering or the starting of these fires,” Dominey-Howes said.
And even when a fire is ignited by human activity, climate still plays a major role in how much fuel is available for the fire and the conditions that worsen the blazes.
“And then they’ve been much worse because we’re in a particularly bad period of drought,” said Dominey-Howes. “Very dry, hot weather, all of which are the conditions that favor the spread of bushfires.”
Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year
Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 3:58 pm
by Malcolm
Vasana wrote: ↑Mon Jan 13, 2020 2:02 pm
Inaccurate meme is Inaccurate.
Surprised to see you fall victim to memetic warfare, Nemo.
I am pretty sure he was trying to make the reverse point, that blaming the Australia fires on arsonists distracts from the actual cause of the bushfires -- climate change. This is what he was talking about when he was going on about algorithms that push these views onto people.
Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year
Vasana wrote: ↑Mon Jan 13, 2020 2:02 pm
Inaccurate meme is Inaccurate.
Surprised to see you fall victim to memetic warfare, Nemo.
I am pretty sure he was trying to make the reverse point, that blaming the Australia fires on arsonists distracts from the actual cause of the bushfires -- climate change. This is what he was talking about when he was going on about algorithms that push these views onto people.
Oh now I see, thanks. Sorry Nemo, I hadn't been following the recent posts.
Bots, filter bubbles, algorithms, vested interests and the general way in which misinfo spreads online. All very big obstacles for gaining wider public support.
Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year
Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 5:51 pm
by Queequeg
The discussion seems to have run its course. Locked except by request with good cause.
UPDATE: opened on request.
Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year
Posted: Fri Jan 24, 2020 6:17 am
by Kim O'Hara
Great has just addressed the rich and powerful at Davos -
Act as if You Loved Your Children Above All Else': Greta Thunberg Demands Davos Elite Immediately Halt All Fossil Fuel Investments
Climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the world's elite face-to-face at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday where she called on leaders to end their abhorrent and irrefutable failures on the climate emergency and demanded participants "from all the companies, banks, institutions, and governments" in attendance to immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, end fossil fuel subsidies, and divest from all fossil fuels.
"We don't want these things done in 2050, 2030, or even 2021. We want this done now." ...
Speaking shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump also spoke at the annual summit, hosted by the World Economic Forum, Thunberg rejected the false solutions and half-measures that elected leaders continue to offer even as they allow emissions to increase, new drilling projects to begin, and prove how unserious they are in the face of the looming and existential crisis.
"We don't need to 'lower emissions'—our emissions have to stop," she said, "if we are to have chance to stay below the 1.5°C target" set forth in the Paris climate agreement.
"And until we have the technologies that at scale can put our emissions to minus, then we must forget about 'net zero.' We need real zero," Thunberg said. "Because distant 'net zero' targets will mean nothing if we just continue to ignore the carbon dioxide budget that applies for today not distant future dates. If high emissions continue like now even for a few years that remaining will be completely used up."
Thunberg is far from alone her demand for a total halt to the financial sector's support of the fossil fuel industry. Earlier this January, as Common Dreams reported, a coalition of nearly two dozen groups in the United States launched a major new campaign, Stop the Money Pipeline, that aims to "end the financing of climate destruction" by demanding major banks and financial institutions end investments in coal, oil, and gas. ...
Thunberg reminded the Davos crowd that the youth climate movement is not interested in the partisan bickering of national politics. "From a sustainability perspective, the right, the left, as well as the center—have all failed. No political ideology or economic structure has been able to tackle the climate and environmental emergency and create a 'cohesive and sustainable' world," she said. "Because that world, in case you haven't noticed, is currently on fire." ...
Her urgency is palpable and, IMO, entirely justified: the window of opportunity to achieve the Paris targets is closing very quickly, as in getting emissions to zero in less than ten years. That's a huge task by any reckoning - mostly because we started so late - but failure locks Greta's generation into adult lives of constant crisis.
That may sound a bit melodramatic, but "constant crisis" is a fair description of Australia's climate-driven disasters recently - bushfires, dust-storms, intense thunderstorms with golf-ball-size hail, and flash floods.
All with 1 degree of global warming, and all just in my own country.
Kim
Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year
Posted: Fri Jan 24, 2020 1:28 pm
by Vasana
Props to Greta as usual.
I wonder how the events in Australia have swayed public opinion on climate and ecological crisis.
Meme related to earlier discussion on population.
Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year
That may sound a bit melodramatic, but "constant crisis" is a fair description of Australia's climate-driven disasters recently - bushfires, dust-storms, intense thunderstorms with golf-ball-size hail, and flash floods.
All with 1 degree of global warming, and all just in my own country.
Kim
Judging by some of the information over at the engaged site (Bushfire topic) the fires have potentially created a feedback loop. The extra carbon from the fires accelerates the warming which leads to more fire which leads to more heat etc.
I was also shocked to see some of the posts in the climate change discussion, but maybe I shouldn't be surprised. I just didn't expect that from...
Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year
That may sound a bit melodramatic, but "constant crisis" is a fair description of Australia's climate-driven disasters recently - bushfires, dust-storms, intense thunderstorms with golf-ball-size hail, and flash floods.
All with 1 degree of global warming, and all just in my own country.
Kim
Judging by some of the information over at the engaged site (Bushfire topic) the fires have potentially created a feedback loop. The extra carbon from the fires accelerates the warming which leads to more fire which leads to more heat etc. ...
You're right.
There's a similar feedback loop in the Arctic: ice loss means more heat absorption (dark water absorbs more that white ice) and means more ice loss. That has been happening for years. Ours is (we hope!) a one-off event.
Kim
Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year
ROFL man that the Naomi astroturf thing is so goofy I would've thought it was Onion article or something. Sometimes truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year
