In Short…

Written By: - Date published: 11:53 am, July 14th, 2018 - 49 comments
Categories: capitalism, disaster, Economy, Environment, global warming, science, sustainability - Tags: , ,

“What’s unusual is the hemispheric scale of the heatwave,” said Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. “It’s not just the magnitude in any one location but that high temperatures are being seen over such a large area.”

Is it time to stop allowing governments to talk about what half measures they might put in place by 2050 or whenever yet? Someone (McFlock?) made a comment under a post through the week, to the effect that, if ever he was ever in a position comparable to supporting Nazism by drawing up death camp train timetables, then having fallen so far, he’d welcome  someone shooting him.

Thing is, I think there are already far too many of us complicit to at least that degree when it comes to enabling and supporting the ideologies and practices that result in global warming; warming that the scientific community  categorised as “extremely dangerous” almost ten years ago.

The hatched line in the graph is the 2 degrees above pre-industrial temperature “guardrail” that was considered acceptable (by politicains and economists) in 2001. As shown, by 2009 and in light of better scientific understanding and more precise data, the red, indicative of “not good”, invades well below that supposed safe level of warming in the majority of categories represented.

Way I see it, supporting Nazism and all it would have resulted in, is small cheese when placed next to supporting current political and economic ideologies – what with the global warming they’re bringing about.

Maybe you disagree?

Or maybe, like some imaginary compiler of timetables back in ’42, you can successfully view your actions, habits and activities as a very small and insignificant cog in a conveniently unimaginable machine?

Or maybe (to keep on the fascist theme) you are like Arthur Koestler, who recounted something along the lines of, that although he knew the Spanish fascists were coming to get him and that he really had to take off through the night cold of the mountains immediately, he nevertheless couldn’t quite pull himself away from the comfort of the glass of brandy in is hand and roaring fire before him?

I confess to being bamboozled by an apparent mind set that would hold fast to political and economic orders that are wreaking unprecedented damage across the entirety of all the environments we need in order to live – especially when it’s often down to some nonsense about one day utilising them to afford a life that’s nothing like the one benig led today.

Because whatever the image of the “perfect” life many better off people strive to attain, it’s safe to say that what’s involved in the striving is what’s going to make that life utterly impossible. And if by the skin of your teeth, not impossible for you and your generation, then certainly for the generations coming up behind.

I don’t have a handy, pre-packaged solution to any of this beyond simply suggesting that we stop dead in our tracks so that things don’t get any worse; so that we create space where we can spend our time and energies working on solutions. As it is, it’s like we’re looking for a cure to alcohol poisoning while standing at the bar getting pissed. And we know well enough how that ends.

 

49 comments on “In Short… ”

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  1. One Two 1
    14 July 2018 at 12:24 pm

    Military and scientific establishments will continue with developing weapons and using them…

    They will continue experimenting in atmospheric layers…such as all those decades ago detonating hydrogen bombs…

    Who will put a stop to that?

  2. Draco T Bastard 2
    14 July 2018 at 1:06 pm

    IMO, people continue to support the way things are because they’ve been told throughout their lives that it’s the only way it can work. That we must have capitalism and it’s infinite growth that’s killing us.

    The thing that we need to realise as a society is that capitalism cannot be sustainable and that to give future generations a chance means that we must get rid of capitalism and become sustainable. An interesting news article yesterday:

    The report says while Southland is highly reliant on the environment and its natural resources, the increased pressure meant it was likely “Southland’s economy is becoming less sustainable over time”.

    Which is what the environmentalists have been saying since the 1950s and applies to almost all of our present society as it takes from the environment but doesn’t give back.

    • Robert Guyton 2.1
      14 July 2018 at 1:31 pm

      Draco – I was at the meeting where the findings you quote were presented. One of the big issues facing the region is sewerage and the ageing systems in towns and city; replacing those will cripple us financially and our population is an ageing one. The lead researcher talked about her amazement at discovering that there were still night-carts operating in Southland (Invercargill perhaps) as late as the 1950’s and how taken-aback she was; I asked, “why”? and genuinely wondered at the distaste we all seem to exhibit around our own “eliminations”, especially poo. It seems to me that the night-cart (or something like it) disposal of soil is the way forward, not the way back. With our modern perspectives and knowledge of health issues, surely we could design a process whereby our poo could be returned to the soil where it could benefit us all; my feeling is that we have come to despise material that originates from within our own bodies and that curing self-loathing is central to saving the whole joint; if we can’t come to terms with our internal processes and the results of those, we’ll never get our heads around the climate. Our rivers are polluted because our venous system is similarly flowing with degraded liquid, our city air is thick with grime because our lungs are gummed-up with all manner of sometimes-invisible crap, our brains are operating sub-optimally because we flood them with alcohol and sugar and on it goes. We have to look to the basics before we can substantially fix the outside world. Or something like that. My description here is a bit garbled; I have grandchildren playing around my feet 🙂

      • Stuart Munro 2.1.1
        14 July 2018 at 2:51 pm

        It is really only in the superabundance of fresh water and thriving seas that contemporary sewers make much sense. If we designed for sustainability the watercloset would not be our choice. It’s hardly encouraging to find we’ve made little or no progress in our public decision making since Hugo’s time.

        Paris throws five millions a year into the sea. And this without metaphor. How, and in what manner? day and night. With what object? without any object. With what thought? without thinking of it. For what return? for nothing. By means of what organ? by means of its intestine. What is its intestine? its sewer . . . Science, after long experiment, now knows that the most fertilizing and the most effective of manures is that of man . . . A sewer is a mistake. (Les Miserables; Jean Valjean, Book II, ch 1)

        • Robert Guyton 2.1.1.1
          14 July 2018 at 5:02 pm

          That’s a great point, Stuart – a super abundance of water … we don’t have that anymore…

      • tc 2.1.2
        14 July 2018 at 3:31 pm

        Great points Robert.

        We’ve folks who refuse to use their own whanua’s composting toilets. It seems a physiological hurdle some can’t leap.

        • marty mars 2.1.2.1
          14 July 2018 at 4:40 pm

          It is interesting this one. I’ve used a composting toilet for 6 years. 3 different sorts. Most people are too proud? Up themselves? Dirt phobic? Not sure what, to use them. Sure on holiday for 2 weeks no problems. But they have to be emptied and that is shitty work no matter how fancy the system is. The other factor is simply volume – it doesn’t take many poos from a few people to fill a white bucket up – that has to go somewhere for a year and in cities with mega people? You know what happens.

          • Robert Guyton 2.1.2.1.1
            14 July 2018 at 5:00 pm

            Marty – big ups, as they say 🙂 for you owning your sh*t 🙂
            I’d say, anxious, most people are anxious about compost toilets, not knowing what might happen to their pile (will someone see it?? SMELL it!!!
            Funny, we are. Also, when you use a bucket, your contribution can be questioned: is it organic? Do you eat “synthetic” food (saveloys, salami…) which might upset the bacteria tasked with spinning your “straw” into gold!
            I can’t answer the city (shitty) problem; each human should “carry” their own manure; maybe that would have people moving to the country where there are billions of bacteria yearning to help us bear our load 🙂
            In any case, ever little bit helps – thanks, Marty, for owning yours.

          • Molly 2.1.2.1.2
            15 July 2018 at 7:45 am

            Good blog article on this topic, from the couple in the Waitakeres that have created a variety of homes and buildings on site, including cob, strawbale and tiny homes.

            Bucket toilets: Our Verdict (and Advice) after a year of using ours

            • Robert Guyton 2.1.2.1.2.1
              15 July 2018 at 8:08 am

              Molly – that’s a pretty good/fair article about bucket toilets. I recommend them from my own experience as a way to get to know your stuff and come to terms with being an animal that can manage its business well.

      • Poission 2.1.3
        14 July 2018 at 3:46 pm

        The lead researcher talked about her amazement at discovering that there were still night-carts operating in Southland (Invercargill perhaps) as late as the 1950

        The last horse drawn milk float in nz was 1984.

        https://www.nzherald.co.nz/hawkes-bay-today/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503462&objectid=11488492

      • Draco T Bastard 2.1.4
        14 July 2018 at 3:58 pm

        It seems to me that the night-cart (or something like it) disposal of soil is the way forward, not the way back. With our modern perspectives and knowledge of health issues, surely we could design a process whereby our poo could be returned to the soil where it could benefit us all;

        Replant nati8ve forests on the hills again, quick treatment of the sewage and then dump it on those trees. The forests finish the clean up and the fertiliser runs onto to the farms.

        Pollution limited and even possibly completely eliminated. Just a question of getting the planting and and dropping of sewage onto the trees right.

        As I say, the land can only support the people who live there. This is because the nutrients don’t leave the land as what happens with the present unsustainable methods of artificial fertilisers.

        • Robert Guyton 2.1.4.1
          14 July 2018 at 4:07 pm

          That’s a reasonable plan. What I’m trying to say though, is that until the time when each human regards their manure are a gift; something precious and worthy of admiration, we’ll keep mucking up the place with it. If we feel something our body has produced is revolting, we’ll never treat the world outside of our skin with real respect. The rivers aren’t the bloodstream of the land, they’re our/your bloodstream.

      • Pat 2.1.5
        15 July 2018 at 10:25 am

        If my memory serves Halswell, an outer suburb of Christchurch, still had the night cart service in the 1970s

  3. Dennis Frank 3
    14 July 2018 at 1:25 pm

    I’m sympathetic, but been there done that. When we began to write policy for the Greens the image of humanity as being in a train heading off a cliff was in our minds. I vaguely recall Jeanette Fitzsimons also fronting to the media with that metaphor years later in the nineties. But social psychology prevailed.

    When most people don’t see the big picture, the inertial effect of complacency creates stasis as cultural consequence. The left/right consensus was that economic growth was essential. Denial of the consequences was the norm. All that’s changed is that people are opening their minds to the reality of climate change, and economic growth stalled as a result of the gfc. The left/right ideological attachment to growth hasn’t gone, it’s just that neither dinosaur is lurching vigorously through the quagmire in accord with it anymore, they’re just wallowing, their pea-sized brains dimly processing the possibility that the world may have changed.

    We’re in transition to a sustainable global society, driven more by high-tech and green design-based innovation than inter-governmental decision-making. The speed of this transition will escalate due to consensus snow-balling in many countries. However the effects of global warming are just as likely to escalate and tipping points may be reached before collaboration becomes effective. Methane clathrates.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

    • Bill 3.1
      14 July 2018 at 3:34 pm

      We’re in transition to a sustainable global society, driven more by high-tech and green design-based innovation than inter-governmental decision-making. The speed of this transition will …

      Please correct me if I’m wrong, but that sounds awfully like “faith in the market” – y’know, the same market that has delivered us yet another 2 ppm atmospheric CO2 on top of last years 408ppm.

      There simply isn’t a high tech/green fix with an eye to 2 degrees, because time. We stop, or we don’t stop. That’s the simple choice confronting us; the decision we need to make.

      Our economic paradigm has us throwing billions of tonnes of CO2 into the environment every year (mostly) from burning fossil fuels, and every year we burn more fossil fuel than we did the year before.

      The amount of renewable energy sources that are getting up to speed, in terms of ‘rate of growth’, is high or even very high. But it’s swamped by even just the growth in fossil use. And when the grand total of renewables is positioned against total fossil use, it’s more or less indistinguishable from the x axis of any graph we might draw up for the sake of comparison.

      • Dennis Frank 3.1.1
        14 July 2018 at 5:55 pm

        You’re not wrong. I agree with most of what you wrote. I was just trying to present a more balanced view. Y’know how the eminent British philosopher Monty Python was advising us in the seventies to always look on the bright side of life? There’s an entire doomster subculture on the internet now that has a focus on the dark side. No wonder so many youngsters are committing suicide. Some folks simply cannot live without any positive option available. We need to provide them with some.

        • Bill 3.1.1.1
          14 July 2018 at 6:01 pm

          I’m all in favour of positive perspectives Dennis – just not in ones that are either baseless or unrealistic.

          • Dennis Frank 3.1.1.1.1
            14 July 2018 at 6:35 pm

            I agree with that too. I’ve had your bleak view of the situation since I first saw the writing on the wall in ’68 as a student, but I’ve trended away from that somewhat in recent years. The corporate shift is no longer just window-dressing; some corporations are seriously redesigning the way they operate to make themselves part of the solution.

            Wealthy individuals likewise are increasingly funding remedial initiatives. I’ve got a book called Ecobarons that documents that trend. I’ve been seeing good news green stories appearing in the media since the nineties when Ted Turner directed CNN to start churning them out as owner (due to Jane Fonda’s prompting, apparently). Could be too little too late, but let’s hope for the best.

            • Bill 3.1.1.1.1.1
              14 July 2018 at 7:07 pm

              I don’t perceive of my view as bleak, Dennis. The situation is what the situation is, and my approach is to embrace whatever realistic options there may be that I become aware of.

              There are currently no realistic techno fixes. And if market signals could ever drive the depth of change that’s required, and that’s highly debatable, they certainly can’t deliver the required change in the time that’s available to us.

              I get a bit maddened at the simplicity and (thanks to our ideological fetters) apparent impossibility to act intelligently – because it really is as simple as not turning that ignition, not having that pilot light and not shoveling that coal.

              You want to offer “those youngsters who are committing suicide” something positive? Then what about the offer of an end to this narrow concept of life as a wage slave, consumer and spectator? What about the opportunity to create and experiment with new ways of living and of conceiving novel ways to organise our society?

              Something like that would have done it for me as a teen, trapped and tethered as I was by the brain dead prospects and expectations of society.

              It would be like giving the hippies and the punks and whatever other reasonable sub-culture of the 20thC a free run at the future. You think “youngsters” would turn that down? Turn down the world?

              • Dennis Frank …
                14 July 2018 at 7:59 pm

                Well I tried the simple rejection option early ’72 – went off to live on a commune. I discovered the downsides of that option. The recipe for an alternative economy that was in our cultural ambience in the seventies was steady-state instead of perpetual growth, plus Mondragon’s profit-sharing, along with the elimination of pollution. Still valid.

                To discover why the youngsters of the eighties failed to wrap their heads around it, you’d need to ask them. Probably it was due to parent & teachers etc telling them greenies are loons, and their peers telling them consumerism is good? Why would the youngsters today be any different? Perhaps the zeitgeist, but overcoming human nature is real hard.

                I agree that techno fixes are extremely unlikely to be able to roll back global warming even slightly now, and the atmospheric schemes the yanks are dreaming up are as likely to make things worse as better (law of unintended consequences). I agree that market signals can’t solve the problem even if corporations get turned around by changing consumer values. Despite all this, and the inevitability of the global situation getting worse in aggregate before improving – if indeed it does ever improve – human beings do have a track record of recovery from disaster. The most we can do as individuals is `be the change we want to see in the world’ & help make it happen.

                • Bill …
                  14 July 2018 at 8:43 pm

                  Interesting.

                  I also went down the “intentional communities” route, but in the 80’s through to the early 90’s.

                  Many were fairly abysmal affairs that shared the same characteristics that I’d say, almost guarantee a level of failure. (Individual ownership of properties and individualised income)

                  Too many were like alternative suburbias where the neighbours were neighbours simply because they thought they shared an ideological perspective (at least in NZ).

                  The community I found that actually worked had no individual ownership of houses, no “ideological glue” and, interestingly in light of the dynamics it fostered, no wage or individual income. That meant there was no psychological division or judgement with regards different types of work. Income from the business was simply business income that was then used to pay what needed payed and to purchase what needed purchased in a collective manner. There was almost no need for personal cash, but if I wanted to go to a gig in Sheffield or whatever, I’d simply take it from the petty cash box and record it in the notebook there.

                  That was in Thatchers Britain. There was, and as far as I’m aware, still is a fairly robust network or web of relationships with other intentional communities/collectives and co-operatives.

                  Worth saying, that in terms of energy consumption and general consumption…one car, one laundry, one kitchen etc for up to 20 people – and far more free time and personal space than any worker might enjoy today.

                  • Dennis Frank …
                    15 July 2018 at 8:56 am

                    Good to know you’ve got that practical experiential perspective, Bill. Google gave me this:

                    Greenaway, Ruth, Leith McMurray, and David Colyer, eds. Utopianz: a guide to intentional communities & communal living in Aotearoa New Zealand. Christchurch: STRAW Umbrella Trust, 2004.

                    Jones, Tim. A hard-won freedom: alternative communities in New Zealand. Auckland: Hodder & Stoughton, 1975.

                    Newton, John. The double rainbow: James K. Baxter, Ngāti Hau and the Jerusalem commune. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2009.

                    O’Regan, Pauline. A changing order. Wellington: Allen & Unwin, 1986.

                    Sargisson, Lucy, and Lyman Tower Sargent. Living in utopia: New Zealand’s intentional communities. Aldershot; Burlington: Ashgate, 2004.

                    That last one I read a few years ago, got it from the Ak library. Thought they did a good comprehensive overview. I did a generic design for intentional communities in ’98 (http://www.alternativeaotearoa.org/altcommunity.html). We heard that someone in Britain with plenty of money was spooked by the Y2K bug scenario & wanted to establish a refuge in Aotearoa. A group of us brain-stormed that for several months.

        • Robert Guyton 3.1.1.2
          14 July 2018 at 6:16 pm

          Dark. Mountain. Dennis.

  4. Pat 4
    14 July 2018 at 2:36 pm

    Like the bar prop we will continue until such time as we can no more….and I suspect that will be around the time that direct personal impacts are felt (which will vary in location and class)….not only is fossil fuel use immediately needed for supporting the existence of the worlds population, it is also critically needed for the control of that population (internal and external)….when the shit hits the whirly thing the reaction is predictable and grim….on a lighter note(i think), its a glorious sunny day (for mid july)

    • Bill 4.1
      14 July 2018 at 3:17 pm

      Aye. A bit of a ‘something or other’ to be sitting on the porch before (Dunedin) reflecting that “this is nice” at the same time as thinking “this is not fcking good”.

  5. bwaghorn 5
    14 July 2018 at 3:32 pm

    The problem is “stopping in our tracks”” will result in bringing alerts of suffering into the now ,Not leaving it in the future. What politician has the balls or even the ability to do that . Science is the only way out of this jam

    • Bill 5.1
      14 July 2018 at 3:39 pm

      Please explain or signpost this scientific escape route? We have about 20 years of doing no more than we do now in terms of emissions, before 2 degrees becomes an absolute impossibility.

      edit What politician has the balls or even the ability to…

      Would the idea back in 30s and 40s Germany be to wait for Nazi officials to “see the light”? If not, then why entertain that notion today?

      • bwaghorn 5.1.1
        14 July 2018 at 8:36 pm

        As yet I believe science hasn’t found a cure for our damage . But it might be there if we look hard enough . Leading scientists have often been proven wrong by the next generation.
        Look at how how much of your own species behaves and tell me honestly do you believe a massive change of behaviour is possible .

    • Robert Guyton 5.2
      14 July 2018 at 4:03 pm

      I don’t think we’ll (all) get out of this jam (we’re in the poo 🙂
      What’s left of us when the heat gets turned up to “high” will be shaped, not by science, as bwaghorn suggests, but by story; without a culture (culture is story, Imo) that accommodates what has happened and what we are, we’re screwed. It’s all about scale, self and community denial/delayed gratification and, at risk of firing up the anti-socialist/communist righties who sometimes hang out here looking for an argument, sharing and giving, not only with each other but with the other (non-human) beings. I do believe however, somehow, against the trends and for no particular reason other than my “heart” feeling, we (some) will make that change and when we do, * voice pregnant with meaning and mystery *, unimaginable changes will occur.

      • Bill 5.2.1
        14 July 2018 at 4:27 pm

        I don’t disagree with the sentiments or thoughts there.

        But sitting right beside culture, there’s the geography or global location dictating that billions of people in equatorial and tropical zones won’t get to create any further chapters in their collective story.

        And failure of citizens to act against the impending (some would have said predictable) extermination of mere millions several decades back is worthy of our continued scorn and judgement?

        • McFlock 5.2.1.1
          14 July 2018 at 4:38 pm

          Not scorn.
          But judgment.

          And judgment of ourselves who fail to learn from their example.

          Personally and collectively.

        • Robert Guyton 5.2.1.2
          14 July 2018 at 4:53 pm

          I dunno about that, Bill. I feel it’s more an issue from further back; the “recent” several-decades-back debacle doesn’t feel like equivalent to where we are now; I’m more drawn to what happened way back; Cain and Able, perhaps, Black Elk maybe; when one culture looked at another and said, “you’re mad! You’re going to kill the Golden Goose/Mother Earth, whoever… we were told loud and clear, over and over by all sorts of folk (Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen) but we knew we had the upper hand and could beat those drippy-poetic natives, so we did and here we are…

  6. McFlock 6
    14 July 2018 at 4:32 pm

    Present me would appreciate it, yup.
    There’s a couple of other parallels between CC and Nazism: those people who haven’t been thoroughly indoctrinated in the current fossil-fuel regime are basically powerless, with the extra factor that many people in charge are probably pretty confident they won’t see the consequences before they die. Moving from intergenerational theft to intergenerational arson and murder.

    Maybe rational humanism will win and drastically change course and through real weight behind carbon reduction tech (I think we’re well past the point of avoiding accelerated change simply by clean living and lentils). But maybe we’ll all get dragged down the fascist hole, and answer the Fermi paradox.

  7. Pat 7
    14 July 2018 at 6:16 pm

    a thought experiment…
    Consider that NZ is fortuitously placed to reduce its emissions given its low population density, power generation resources and relative abundance of water and that a rough lifestyle equivalent would probably equate to that of the 1950s and then ask yourself what chance for any political party that ran on such a platform (remember the Greens with a ‘sustainable growth’ platform struggled to reach the threshold)?

    Now how would the rest of the OECD countries (for we are the problem) cope with the same political question?

    • Bill 7.1
      14 July 2018 at 7:21 pm

      I really don’t understand this idea that dropping energy use (that’s most of what we need to do) entails some kind of “step back”. The past is gone, and (thank fuck) won’t ever be coming back.

      Granted, if the future is left for politicians to shape, then given they are so sunk in ideology and, lets face it, not the most imaginative of specimens, we’ll get a variation on what we see today – and abject failure. That may resemble some past decade, insofar as all we will have is a fraught riddled, disintegrating present with all the fear that may accompany a collective sense of loss – as opposed to a dynamic future of endless unfolding possibilities.

      So why leave the future to politicians and the institutions that have brought us to this pass in the first place? Seriously. What chance if we do that?

      • Pat 7.1.1
        14 July 2018 at 7:27 pm

        The idea wasnt to infer a negative , other than the electoral reaction but to demonstrate that here at least we could be carbon neutral with a perfectly adequate lifestyle…the 50s were referenced for several reasons , amongst them a low level of private vehicle ownership, air travel being unusual and expensive, tourism mainly internal and resource use predominantly local (or at least national)

      • Pat 7.1.2
        14 July 2018 at 9:05 pm

        Think it important to recognise that while politicians and institutions have certainly had a large role to play in where we find ourselves the reality is that for the past 2 decades the information has been increasingly available and yet how many radical political parties/organisations have been formed and supported to change our path?…. the failure is every bit as much joe publics….we get the leaders we deserve/desire.

        • Bill 7.1.2.1
          14 July 2018 at 9:18 pm

          Yeah, but political parties aren’t the vehicles we should be looking to use. They all suffer capture, be that Labour Parties of the past, or Green Parties of today.

          And any organisations formed will also tend to be “pre-captured” by dint of their organisational structures (traditional and legislatively bound).

          The break we need is very deep…a shift in paradigms. “New” leaders or what not will not cut it. That kind of shit won’t even come close.

  8. greywarshark 8
    14 July 2018 at 6:22 pm

    People’s ideas as indicated by a dial have a stuck needle at the end of 20th century and believe that a stroll into the heightened climate change situation is the satisfactory way to go. They can be heard demanding that their seaside properties be protected by Council. They are probably still trying to buy coastal lots to subdivide for an expected good profit and protesting Council decisions that prevent such madness. They probably are still saying that Greens are irresponsible and unrealistic.

  9. greywarshark 9
    14 July 2018 at 7:13 pm

    I note that it seems very difficult to get those with some agency to consider the problems either objectively or subjectively. Middle class people get concerned about the green environment, lower class people get concerned about surviving and the policies of their exclusion. The young are left to fend for themselves, the disadvantaged are blamed for their anti-social responses, the senior and aged are allowed to think it is all right for them to retire and not put anything into society to help the younger. They are encouraged to think that they should be earners into their later years which limits opportunities for the strata below them.

    The old and very ill are prevented by authoritarian figures from making personal, rational decisions as to when to die, but are bombarded with triumphant discoveries about how to live longer. Science continues to find ways that advance robotics and artificial intelligence which we are both fascinated and repelled by.

    We seem to be like a hynotised rabbit in the glaring lights of our technology that everybody must embrace. Few can claim total ignorance because they lack information. We just want to know what is convenient for us to know and scorn everything else. Some don’t want to be sullied by thinking of sad things. It is wrong to be depressed and angry.

    We have watched a concerted project drawing on volunteers to save the Thai group from the cave. I think we need some world projects drawn up by non-government agencies and everyone choose something that they are going to devote much of the family’s time to. It will have to be government-light and grassroots driven as the strata of society with hyper-rich at the top and the leaders of each sector cannot think from bottom up with a problem-solving for the people approach.

    It is very hard to get comfortable-living people to be generous where it counts. We are high for giving in world listings, but don’t feel bound to each other in our own country. The people aspect of the country is being held together by a people’s net that has rather large holes. The welfare attitude of the government has been corrupted with incredibly decadent and soulless ideas the norm among the wealthy and supposedly moral guardians of the country.. Soon government violence and authoritarianism will take away opportunities for citizen decisions. In the meantime petty laws and quasi-government agencies with institutional targets of no value to the real problems prevent individuals wishing to help themselves, while laissez faire laws will operate enabling the powerful to expand their interests.

    We need to keep in touch with each other and learn what projects are available to work on in each place. We can’t expect help from government if Labour doesn’t stay in. National people despise the ordinary, ‘unsuccessful’, non-stylish person who can’t mingle at the highest levels. And the Right will infiltrate all good-works groups to check that their higher interests (financial and resource monopolies) are not being undermined. Effort is required by good people who want to preserve some sort of decent life that is worthy of our intelligence.

  10. Stuff The Politicians 10
    14 July 2018 at 7:38 pm

    To find a heap of literature and research on why and how the planet is loosing water –

    Google, Drying Planet

  11. corodale 11
    14 July 2018 at 9:53 pm

    From the United Nations perspective, it’s our fear of environmental collapse that opens us up to giving them more power.

    But if the UN is the totalitarian govt to fight for our survival, like your National Socialist example in the artical, then where is their voice for alternatives to the run-away capitalist “democracy”? Much like the Greens, with “Green Sustainable Business Model” as green-wash, unless they include green-finance (which they are working on) and an address of the debt-hammer (which is still in their “too-hard-basket”). Trusting the NZ Greens will step forward with Social Credit ideas, when the time is right – building up their banking skill first.

    If Germany of the 1930’s had defeated the capitalist-shadow-govt and bablyonian-bankers of the time, do you think they would have continued with the boom-bust fiat-money-model, or would they have offered more sustainable finance to those states with the social responsablity to apply prosperity responsably?

    The true Jewish banking model, “only lend what can be paid back in 7 years, and clear ALL debt after 49 years”, is actually a very good one.

    • Draco T Bastard 11.1
      15 July 2018 at 1:35 am

      continued with the boom-bust fiat-money-model

      The Boom-Bust cycle has nothing to do with fiat money. All money is fiat money. Even the Gold Standard was only money by government fiat.

      It’s not that we have fiat money that’s the problem – it’s that we have the private banks creating infinite amounts of it and getting to charge interest on it. In other words, the private banks are incentivised to create as much money as they can and they do thus creating a boom. Then, when the bubble that they’ve created becomes obvious and the chances of them actually getting that money back is essentially zero they stop creating it through making loans and thus we get a bust.

      We need to address the system of the private banks creating money because that is the problem. In other words, we need to stop the private banks from creating money and leave it solely to government. Even then it needs to have restriction like being created and spent into the economy on productive uses.

      • corodale 11.1.1
        15 July 2018 at 6:24 am

        Cooperative banks are common in Germany, eg. SparKasse and VolksBank. Does this solve the problem or not? Under your logic, guess not, they only give a local stablity in crisis, but not an international solution?

        You seem to be half right, and you get points for being solution focused. (But paper money backed by physical gold reserves isn’t fiat, its commodity equivalent, yes yes gold price rising like modern house prices, I see where your logic goes.) But the gold-standard did limit money creation. Sky-high house-prices would not have happened if the gold-standard (or other commodity pegging) was held. Asset prices have out grown commodity prices since the seventies, and Quantitative easing would not be possible. But this is technocraty.

        • Draco T Bastard 11.1.1.1
          15 July 2018 at 11:46 am

          But paper money backed by physical gold reserves isn’t fiat, its commodity equivalent, yes yes gold price rising like modern house prices, I see where your logic goes.

          But it was still only money because the government decided it was by fiat.

          But the gold-standard did limit money creation.

          Yes and due to the accumulation of money by the rich would have crashed the economy due to their simply not being enough. We would have been in perpetual deflation. A growing economy can’t work with a fixed amount of money (I’m in favour of a stable state economy but even then I’d go for a fiat money system rather than a commodity money system).

          Asset prices have out grown commodity prices since the seventies, and Quantitative easing would not be possible.

          Yes, the present system of private banks have pushed asset bubbles. They have done for centuries.

          Under a good fiat money system we wouldn’t see asset bubbles or quantitative easing which pushed the asset bubbles even more. The amount of money in the system and how much it’s going to expand by would be known at all times and would have necessary restrictions on it to prevent excessive money creation.

    • corodale 11.2
      15 July 2018 at 6:52 am

      Ok, ‘ll guess the anwser: A National Socialist victory in the 1930s would not have made govt-created-money the international norm. Only the norm in the National Socialist favoured empire. This empire would have been ecomonically more productive and stable. While countries not on good terms with the empire would have been left in the dark, under private-bank-money-creation. A victorious empirial Gemany would logically only have offered the superiour banking to the select Aryian nations and eventually also to cooperative British, Nordic, etc, or those who where strong enough to maintain a civilised Christian culture, despite the economic crippling of the private banking. Technology would have advanced rapidly in the empire, and safe adoption of technology would have been a new challenge to global stability.

      That’s being optmistic. More likely the Masonic, Jesuit, etc, connections from Chicago, Switzerland and Rome would have become the new “Jewish” and they would have corrupted the empire from the inside, and all would have reverted back to business-as-usual private banking, but with more grammatical problems.

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