Keep it in the ground

Written By: - Date published: 2:09 pm, March 17th, 2015 - 14 comments
Categories: climate change, global warming, newspapers - Tags: , ,

The front page of The Guardian today is excellent (let it load). Click through to sign the petition:

Keep it in the ground
Join us in urging the world’s two biggest charitable funds to move their money out of fossil fuels

guardian-keep-it-in-the-ground

14 comments on “Keep it in the ground ”

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  1. exit lane 1
    17 March 2015 at 2:48 pm

    Well past time for NZ Herald, DomPost and other NZ media to show similar gutsy leadership

    • Maui 1.1
      17 March 2015 at 3:27 pm

      I would love to see that too, but.. those “mainstream” papers are the mouthpieces of our capitalist society that runs everything on fossil fuels. They will not bite the hand that feeds, unless they’re getting paid for it.

  2. Robert Atack 2
    17 March 2015 at 4:45 pm

    Divestment is yet another scam foisted on the ignorant.
    All investment is based on turning nature into garbage and pollution, and our inevitable extinction.
    It doesn’t matter where you invest, if you are using money (or pixels that represent money) then you are as much part of the problem as Exon etc.
    Another word for an investor is a parasite.
    Just like the 350.org crowed, the people promoting this scam haven’t a bloody clue about our true situation.
    Maybe one way of reducing global warming is to [r0b: calls for violence not even in jest please] every politician, place their ‘crosses’ in a grid pattern all around the world, being as they are such cold hearted bastards, it might bring the global temperature down. And that suggestion has as much going for it as divestment.
    Our goose is toast )

  3. Sable 3
    17 March 2015 at 11:03 pm

    Not to mention banks likes ANZ and others.

  4. Robert Atack 4
    18 March 2015 at 7:54 am

    There is only one ‘corporation’ where divestment will reduce future suffering of humans – maternity wards 😉
    With every child born or alive today well and truly in the group that is going to suffer the most from our destruction of the environment, it is just common sense not to produce any more.
    @ 57 it is kind of comforting knowing I have the same life expectancy as a new born, ie only a matter of years.
    An ice free Arctic this summer will herald massive methane releases, we should know inside of 8 months, if the 120 million children created this year will be around for their 2nd birthday.

    • Pasupial 4.1
      18 March 2015 at 1:05 pm

      RA

      Your defeatist screeds are very tedious.

      Just because you can’t achieve perfection by yourself, doesn’t mean that you should stop trying. Yes, civilisation as we know it will probably be radically different (or even nonexistant) within a century, maybe even a decade. And the prospect of Arctic methane clathrate effusion is certainly daunting. Doing nothing except wailing; “the end is nigh”, lacks style, as well as wasting other’s time into the bargain.

      All life on earth will not be extinguished by the progressing climate catastrophe. It would be better to work to ensure that there’ll be some multicellular life-forms; maybe even a few rodents, amongst the algae and bacteria that’ll remain. The odds of many humans making it past 2100 CE are remote, but it’s not inconceivable.

      Your half-witticism of closing down maternity wards is flawed in that; these are not actually required for childbirth. The rich can have private obstetricians helicoptered to their mansions, and the poor can crawl into a shack or cave to give birth. The resultant increase in child mortality and parental misery may paradoxically lead to a higher birth rate to compensate. But this doesn’t address the issue of unequal resource use – even if one were so lost to empathy as to eradicate all human life in Africa and South America (even the entire southern Hemisphere); that wouldn’t have much effect on the global emissions profile.

      Reducing emissions may be futile in maintaining the status quo, but it can increase the time available to boost the chances for the survival of some species. It’s not all about us.

      • weka 4.1.1
        18 March 2015 at 3:43 pm

        +1000 Pasupial.

        (agree on maternity wards, but still think population is the thing the left can’t get to talk about).

    • fisiani 4.2
      18 March 2015 at 2:50 pm

      The sky is falling said Chicken Little

    • Robert Atack 4.3
      18 March 2015 at 5:18 pm

      The facts are that the planet has just hit 403 ppm CO2
      Added to that the 2 ppm CH4, which could be as much as 300 to 1,000 times a stronger GHG than CO2, and several other GHG gasses,(Nitrous oxide is = to about 100PPM CO2e) it is looking like we are around 1,000 ppm CO2/CO2e now. In the last 150 – 200 years ‘we’ have gone from 280 ppm CO2 and .7 CH4 to were we are now, in one of the past great extinction events (when nearly 90% of life went extinct) it took over 10,000 years to do what we’ve done in about 150, someone please explain why this isn’t bad?
      The last time the planet was @ 400 ppm CO2 (not counting the other contributors) the sea was about 26 meters above present levels, and the global average temperature was about 6c above pre industrial (1800ish), about the only mammal that could survive those (coming) conditions was a Shrew, which was about the size of a large bumble bee.
      Like I said we should know within the next 8 months if humanity has 2 years or 15?

      Keep tilting at windmills, I’m sure you will save humanity ….. yeah right )

  5. fisiani 5
    18 March 2015 at 1:47 pm

    “Reducing emissions may be futile in maintaining the status quo, but it can increase the time available to boost the chances for the survival of some species. It’s not all about us.”
    According to the Greens … wait for it….Trees should have personhood.

    • Pasupial 5.1
      18 March 2015 at 3:12 pm

      f

      Shaw’s idea of extending the legal fiction of personhood from corporations (plus; the Whanganui river, and; Te Urewera) to nonhuman organisms is not official GP policy. It seems very much the kind of thing a lawyer would think up – and that was behind Tava’s positive response to it. Hague represented the GP policy better when he talked about; “constitutional protection for our natural environment”. From 11:31 in this clip:

      http://www.3news.co.nz/tvshows/thenation/debate-part-2—who-wants-to-be-the-next-greens-co-leader-2015031409#axzz3UJAQCSK2

      Before the evolution of complex life, there was 2 billion years of bacteria and other single cell organisms (that’s why there is so much oxygen in the atmosphere). Even after the evolution of the first multicellular organisms, it was another 1.5 billion years until the Cambrian Explosion. Since then, it has been a mere 500 million years to our time, and that has included at least 5 mass extinction events.

      Given all this, it would be a shame if the anthropogenic extinction period we are living through was to reduce the diversity of organisms back to the precambrian. Human greed may prove sufficient to eradicate humanity, but we need not destroy the entire biosphere while we’re at it.

      There’s even the outside chance that we’ll stop fouling our nest soon enough to prevent our own extinction.

      • weka 5.1.1
        18 March 2015 at 4:39 pm

        I don’t know what the legal ins and outs of personhood mean, but there are other models. Bolivia is leading the way on this with it Law of the Rights of Mother Earth which was passed in 2010. Details are still being developed but below are the translation of the act. In NZ Moana Jackson and Margaret Mutu have been doing much work on a NZ constitution that is tikanga based and includes nature rights.

        The law enumerates seven specific rights to which Mother Earth and her constituent life systems, including human communities, are entitled to:[9]

        To life: It is the right to the maintenance of the integrity of life systems and natural processes which sustain them, as well as the capacities and conditions for their renewal

        To the Diversity of Life: It is the right to the preservation of the differentiation and variety of the beings that comprise Mother Earth, without being genetically altered, nor artificially modified in their structure, in such a manner that threatens their existence, functioning and future potential

        To water: It is the right of the preservation of the quality and composition of water to sustain life systems and their protection with regards to contamination, for renewal of the life of Mother Earth and all its components

        To clean air: It is the right of the preservation of the quality and composition of air to sustain life systems and their protection with regards to contamination, for renewal of the life of Mother Earth and all its components

        To equilibrium: It is the right to maintenance or restoration of the inter-relation, interdependence, ability to complement and functionality of the components of Mother Earth, in a balanced manner for the continuation of its cycles and the renewal of its vital processes

        To restoration: It is the right to the effective and opportune restoration of life systems affected by direct or indirect human activities

        To live free of contamination: It is the right for preservation of Mother Earth and any of its components with regards to toxic and radioactive waste generated by human activities

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_Rights_of_Mother_Earth

        I think Shaw and Tava are leading the way on this for Pākēhā, but am not yet convinced about how they are doing it. Hague’s comment that the solution to corporate personhood was to remove that right from corporations is probably spot on, but it doesn’t do anything to protect the rights of nature. As Moana Jackson said in his Waitangi Day speech, if you build nature rights into the constitution then you don’t have to end up protesting Statoil, or whatever the insanity du jour is.

        Jackson at Waitangi (12mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yf81erxrdA