Sometimes, often even, I’m in a state of total astonishment/wonderment/angst at the direction of the thinking of many of the people on these lists. As I see it everywhere, for those not willfully blind, the writing, announcing both collapse and life’s death knell, is on the wall in huge capital letters (and it has been for some years). Over two-thirds of vertebrates have gone in the last 50 years. Insects, the very enabler of flowering plants and thus the food chain, are disappearing at a similar rate. A billion birds gone from North America in recent times (that’s one-third). According to figures published by the Guardian, CO2 has gone up almost 2 points, and that in a Covid year. There is a record drought in much of North America. The permafrost is melting. There is enough plastic garbage in the oceans, likely, to kill all multicellular life. The ocean’s big fish are all gone, and the factory ships are mining up all the rest. Etcetera, on and on.
Those who know, or at least, scientifically, know a very lot more than me, say to have any chance of 1.5 degrees, we have to stop using fossil fuels by 2030. Who has noticed that the risk odds used by climate politicians are criminally abnormal and tremendous? For example, if we do this or that we have a two-thirds chance of surviving. Which of us would accept those odds in any other part of our lives, much less for all of our lives?
Now, on to the source of today’s rant, aviation, (and by extension, business and tourism). Even in a Covid year, in which lots is shut down, CO2 went up by ~2 points. Instead of dozens of flights over my house every day, there are none. Why would any person without a death wish allow the resumption of a huge CO2 polluter which, clearly, we can do without? Who would trade the so-called advantages for the death of life? Why do we even allow the talk or resuming a large portion of the CO2 emitting infrastructure?
“Just cap it and start reducing it.” The post has more sense than most of us! So far we’ve frittered away five months of 2021; soon we’ll have only eight years and not nine in which to do it (to the start, not the end, of 2030). Where is our cap, and a ten percent a year reduction plan? Why is CACOR not vociferously advocating for it?
As long as I’m at it, delay is defeat! Any long term plan, like to 2050, is a deadly defeat for life. We all should so state every time we see it.
Bah, I could go on and on. Perhaps some of us should read Bright Green Lies by Derrick Jensen.
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