Extinction Rebellion

[laklak]

I used to work out of 666 5th Avenue. The address wasn't a coincidence. I used to practice my New Yawk accent as the plane descended into Hell LaGuardia. "5th and 53rd. I fucking live here. I ain't payin' your fucking tolls. You fucking speak English? Fuck you".

[Brian Peacock]

Arrests at protest over New York Times' 'unacceptable' climate coverage

A climate change protest orchestrated by the Extinction Rebellion activist group briefly blocked Eighth Avenue in New York on Saturday afternoon, between the Port Authority transit hub and the home of the New York Times.

The New York police department (NYPD) said 70 people were arrested as they called for more effective media coverage of the dangers of climate change, in a dramatic demonstration that saw people stage a die-in in front of the newspaper building and disrupt traffic in midtown Manhattan.

Two demonstrators scaled the front of the Port Authority building, which houses a major bus terminal and subway interchange, to hang a protest banner. Protesters also climbed on to the canopy outside the Times headquarters and unfurled a banner that encouraged the use of the phrase “climate emergency” instead of “climate change”.

One protester, Donna Nicolino, told the Guardian she was ready to be arrested, because “we want the New York Times as well as all the other media to treat climate change as the crisis it is”.

She joined a line of people with arms linked on West 40th Street and Eighth Avenue, blocking the road. The group remained until they were arrested by New York City police officers.

“The lack of coverage of the climate crisis is completely unacceptable,” said Becca Trabin, a member of Extinction Rebellion’s press and fundraising teams. “It’s a public safety crisis on a global scale.”...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... s-coverage

[Scot Dutchy]

The Dutch, being "low countries", have a lot to lose with rising sea levels. But not to worry, Space Emperor Trump will send you engineers, expert wall building engineers, the best. And then all your cheese belong us.

Or the Dutch, having some experience in these things, will send their engineers to save NYC from the rising water. Of course, they will require we change the name back to New Amsterdam.

A Dutch engineering company did win the contract to design the water defences of NYC.

East Side Coastal Resiliency

The name was not changed.

[Joe]

The Big U for the Big Apple. Pretty cool!

[Brian Peacock]

What about the Subway?

#FuckTheBronx

[Brian Peacock]

UK.

Private sector must be forced to invest in ‘green revolution’, says Labour

Labour will back measures deterring investment in fossil fuels as part of a new drive to stop the financial sector from funding global heating, John McDonnell will reveal this week.

In the latest attempt by Labour to display its green credentials, the shadow chancellor will use a speech in the City on Monday to commit to using the “full might of the Treasury” to tackle the issue. He will commit the party to forcing the private sector into investing in the “green industrial revolution”.

He will announce a review of the financial sector’s role in the climate crisis, looking at “where and how it is causing or exacerbating problems”. It will examine measures preventing financial institutions from “actively contributing to planetary heating or exposing our economy to financial instability”.

McDonnell, who has invited Extinction Rebellion, the environmental activist group, to brief his team, will promise to “marshal the resources and levers of power available to the Treasury to fund and drive the climate change emergency programme” under a Labour government.

It is the latest sign that Labour is responding to the threat from the Greens, who earned more than two million votes at last month’s European elections, just 300,000 votes behind Jeremy Corbyn’s party. They more than doubled their tally of MEPs in the process...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ate-crisis

70% of the British public think the climate should be declared a national emergency, 27% think the environment should be the government's top priority, and after Brexit and health, the environment has become the third most significant issue for voters.

Seems there's votes in not turning the planet into New Venus after all.

[Brian Peacock]

Doctors call for nonviolent direct action over climate crisis

More than 1,000 doctors including 40 professors, several eminent public health figures and past presidents of royal colleges are calling for widespread nonviolent civil disobedience in the face of the environmental crisis.

In a letter to the Guardian, the doctors say government policies are “woefully inadequate”, and call on politicians and the media to face the facts of the unfolding ecological emergency and take action.

“As caring professionals we cannot countenance current policies which push the world’s most vulnerable towards progressive environmental catastrophe,” they write...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ate-crisis

The letter...

We the undersigned are qualified medical doctors. We are united by our distress at the world’s minimal response to looming environmental disaster, ignoring the early signs of a malignant process. We sympathise with current widespread protest, notably by children who will be the most affected. Peaceful protest can change society. We urge government and media to respond immediately and proportionately.

As scientists we hear the warnings of worldwide bodies including the IPCC, NASA , WWF and WHO becoming increasingly urgent, emotive and united. As caring professionals we cannot countenance current policies which push the world’s most vulnerable now, and all our children in the future, towards progressive environmental catastrophe. It is unethical to fail to adequately inform the public as carbon emissions continue to rise, societies and habitats are destroyed and the risk of irreversible damage increases.

We are particularly alarmed by the inevitable effects of rising temperatures on health: the Lancet’s “biggest global health threat of the 21st century”. We observe escalating extreme weather events, spread of infection, loss of productive land and massive flooding of low-lying areas. We heed predictions of societal collapse and consequent mass migration, both worldwide and within countries. Such societal collapse risks damage to physical and mental health on an unprecedented scale.

We acknowledge the challenge of transforming consumerist, fossil-fuelled economies into those that enable environmentally and socially sustainable societies. But we celebrate the opportunities such changes will bring, creating a kinder, more equitable and more sustainable world. There is hope. Tackling climate change “could be the greatest global opportunity of the 21st century”- the Lancet again. Urgent radical action will mitigate the inevitable environmental damage. But delay massively increases the cost of mitigation and risks irreversible progression of this global pathology.

Present policies and responses are woefully inadequate. The IPCC warns that we have only 11 years to halve global emissions (and then reach net zero by 2050) to meet their 1.5C target, yet last year our global emissions rose yet again. It will be a massive task to avoid catastrophic warming and we need radical action now. Our unchecked consumption, dependence on fossil fuels and decimation of ecosystems continue. The diagnosis is clear and the treatment urgent. Yet politicians prevaricate and global emissions still rise. What chance do we have to meet the IPCC target if we delay?

Governments abrogate their responsibility when they pursue grossly inadequate policies that risk environmental collapse. Non Violent Direct Action then becomes the reasonable choice for responsible individuals. History, evidence and recent events demonstrate the effectiveness of persistent, peaceful protest. The method enables the media in publicising this complex but vital message.

We therefore support the following key demands which parallel those made by the Extinction Rebellion movement:

• governments and media should be honest about the challenges and urgency of tackling ecological disaster;
• governments should effect carbon neutrality within the IPCC timeframe;
• governments should establish and be led by Citizens’ Assemblies to enable climate and ecological justice.

https://cancerofclimatechange.org/about/

[Brian Peacock]

To my mind what Extinction Rebellion represents is a morally unambiguous couterpoint to contemporary neo-liberalism that transcends party politics and traditional political ideologies.

[Brian Peacock]

Rampant deforestation of Amazon driven by global greed for meat

The cows grazed under the midday Amazon sun, near a wooden bridge spanning a river. It was an idyllic scene of pastoral quiet, occasionally broken by a motorbike growling on the dirt road that cuts through part of the Lagoa do Triunfo cattle farm to a nearby community.

But this pasture is land that the farm has been forbidden to use for cattle since 2010, when it was embargoed by Brazil’s government environment agency Ibama for illegal deforestation. Nearby were more signs of fresh pasture: short grass, feeding troughs, and salt for cattle.

The vast 145,000-hectare (358,302-acre) farm is one of several owned by the company AgroSB Agropecuária SA – known in the region as Santa Bárbara. Located in an environmentally protected area, Lagoa do Triunfo is more than 600km (372 miles) from the capital of the Amazon state of Pará on the western fringes of Brazil’s “agricultural frontier” – where farming eats into the rainforest. To get there takes hours of driving along dirt roads and a ferry ride from nearby São Félix do Xingu, a cattle town accessible only by plane until a few decades ago.

AgroSB supplies cattle to JBS, the world’s biggest meat packing company and single biggest supplier of beef, chicken and leather globally, with 350,000 customers in more than 150 countries.

A joint investigation by the Guardian, Repórter Brasil and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that during 2018, the Lagoa do Triunfo farm delivered hundreds of heads of cattle to other farms also owned by AgroSB for fattening. Cattle was sent from those farms to slaughter in JBS plants.

Embargos are imposed for environmental violations, such as farmers or landowners cutting down trees and deforesting illegally, and serve both as a punishment and protective measure to allow land to recover. Between 2010-2013 at least 12 areas of land on Lagoa do Triunfo were embargoed, and Ibama fined AgroSB more than $18m (£14m) – at current rates – for deforestation on the Lagoa do Triunfo farm....

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... eat-brazil

[pErvinalia]

Saw a news report yesterday that land clearing in the Amazon has increased under the current President to one football field per minute.

[Scot Dutchy]

It is cheap meat Brian. The stuff Americans want for their hamburgers. We have no shortage of meat in Europe.

[rainbow]

I used to work out of 666 5th Avenue. The address wasn't a coincidence. I used to practice my New Yawk accent as the plane descended into Hell LaGuardia. "5th and 53rd. I fucking live here. I ain't payin' your fucking tolls. You fucking speak English? Fuck you".

...so did you ever meet the wild beast with seven heads and ten horns that comes out of the sea?

[Brian Peacock]

It is cheap meat Brian. The stuff Americans want for their hamburgers. We have no shortage of meat in Europe.

Yeah. A carnivore will always defend their own consumption and shift the blame on to other, less reasonable, less enlightened, less responsible consumers. Next you'll be telling me that you regularly 2 or 3 meat-free meals a week.

The problem isn't with individual consumption or consumer choice, but with the entire global system of meat production. Individual consumers may chose to only eat happy sausages or sustainable free-range burgers etc, or to limit their personal intake, but that's only choosing from what is already in the butchers window.

[Scot Dutchy]

We wont talk about soya production, tropical fruits and palm oil production? The damage they are causing to the environment.
We here hardly import meat from outside the EU due to the tough regulations. I dont personally go to a butchers but buy meat from specialist organic supermarkets.

[Brian Peacock]

The point is we can't consume our way to a sustainable environment.