Climate Strike Quotes

Entomologist Dr. Ovid Byron speaking to television journalist, Tina, who says, re: global warming, "Scientists of course are in disagreement about whether this is happening and whether humans have a role." He replies: "The Arctic is genuinely collapsing. Scientists used to call these things the canary in the mine. What they say now is, The canary is dead. We are at the top of Niagara Falls, Tina, in a canoe. There is an image for your viewers. We got here by drifting, but we cannot turn around for a lazy paddle back when you finally stop pissing around. We have arrived at the point of an audible roar. Does it strike you as a good time to debate the existence of the falls?

A 2013 study by Riley Dunlap and political scientist Peter Jacques found that a striking 72 percent of climate denial books, mostly published since the 1990s, were linked to right-wing think tanks, a figure that rises to 87 percent if self-published books (increasingly common) are excluded.23

One of the problems with climate change, global warming and global air pollution is that it may change the frequency and intensity of electrical storm activity. Too much lightning activity may cause excessive mating, aggression, fatigue, illness and disease to occur. Too little may turn off the animal and plant breeding cycles.

The power of the intelligentsia is demonstrated not only by their ability to create a general climate of opinion that strikes fear into those who oppose their agenda but also by their ability to create a climate of opinion which richly rewards those political leaders whose decisions are consonant with the vision of the intelligentsia.

In his airport bestseller from 2018, Enlightenment Now, Steven Pinker, the leading voice in the choir of bourgeois optimism, revelled in the ‘conquest of infectious disease’ all over the globe – Europe, America, but above all the developing countries – as proof that ‘a rich world is a healthier world’, or, in transparent terms, that a world under the thumb of capital is the best of all possible worlds. ‘ “Smallpox was an infectious disease” ’, Pinker read on Wikipedia – ‘yes, “smallpox was” ’; it exists no more, and the diseases not yet obliterated are being rapidly decimated. Pinker closed the book on the subject by confidently predicting that no pandemic would strike the world in the foreseeable future. Had he cared to read the science, he would have known that waves from a rising tide were already crashing against the fortress he so dearly wished to defend. He could, for instance, have opened the pages of Nature, where a team of scientists in 2008 analysed 335 outbreaks of ‘emerging infectious diseases’ since 1940 and found that their number had ‘risen significantly over time’.

The quake experience stays in our hearts, ready to strike again with greater force. Memory looms with the potential to return.

When we compare the individuals of the same variety or sub-variety of our older cultivated plants and animals, one of the first points which strikes us is, that they generally differ more from each other than do the individuals of any one species or variety in a state of nature. And if we reflect on the vast diversity of the plants and animals which have been cultivated, and which have varied during all ages under the most different climates and treatment, we are driven to conclude that this great variability is due to our domestic productions having been raised under conditions of life not so uniform as, and somewhat different from, those to which the parent species had been exposed under nature. There is, also, some probability in the view propounded by Andrew Knight, that this variability may be partly connected with excess of food. It seems clear that organic beings must be exposed during several generations to new conditions to cause any great amount of variation; and that, when the organisation has once begun to vary, it generally continues varying for many generations. No case is on record of a variable organism ceasing to vary under cultivation. Our oldest cultivated plants, such as wheat, still yield new varieties: our oldest domesticated animals are still capable of rapid improvement or modification.

There are only four events that truly have the power to negatively affect the entire planet. One is all-out thermonuclear war. Another is an asteroid striking earth. The third is global climate change. And the fourth is infectious disease.

Social democracy works on the assumption that time is on our side. There must be plenty of it. Then one can move slowly towards the good society, step after incremental step, without having to clash head-on with the class enemy and break up its power; it will rather leak away in drips. But if catastrophe strikes, and if it is the status quo that produces it, then the reformist calendar is shredded. Social democracy can now do one of two things. It can continue to flow with the time, deeper into catastrophe - the choice from August 1914 - or it can become something else, another taxon of socialism, one that recognises that time is up and another decade or even year of this status quo is intolerable.

A BRAVE AND STARTLING TRUTH We, this people, on a small and lonely planet Traveling through casual space Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns To a destination where all signs tell us It is possible and imperative that we learn A brave and startling truth And when we come to it To the day of peacemaking When we release our fingers From fists of hostility And allow the pure air to cool our palms When we come to it When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean When battlefields and coliseum No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters Up with the bruised and bloody grass To lie in identical plots in foreign soil When the rapacious storming of the churches The screaming racket in the temples have ceased When the pennants are waving gaily When the banners of the world tremble Stoutly in the good, clean breeze When we come to it When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders And children dress their dolls in flags of truce When land mines of death have been removed And the aged can walk into evenings of peace When religious ritual is not perfumed By the incense of burning flesh And childhood dreams are not kicked awake By nightmares of abuse When we come to it Then we will confess that not the Pyramids With their stones set in mysterious perfection Nor the Gardens of Babylon Hanging as eternal beauty In our collective memory Not the Grand Canyon Kindled into delicious color By Western sunsets Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji Stretching to the Rising Sun Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor, Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores These are not the only wonders of the world When we come to it We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace We, this people on this mote of matter In whose mouths abide cankerous words Which challenge our very existence Yet out of those same mouths Come songs of such exquisite sweetness That the heart falters in its labor And the body is quieted into awe We, this people, on this small and drifting planet Whose hands can strike with such abandon That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness That the haughty neck is happy to bow And the proud back is glad to bend Out of such chaos, of such contradiction We learn that we are neither devils nor divines When we come to it We, this people, on this wayward, floating body Created on this earth, of this earth Have the power to fashion for this earth A climate where every man and every woman Can live freely without sanctimonious piety Without crippling fear When we come to it We must confess that we are the possible We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world That is when, and only when We come to it.

At four degrees, there would be eight million more cases of dengue fever each year in Latin America alone and close to annual global food crises. There could be 9 percent more heat-related deaths. Damages from river flooding would grow thirtyfold in Bangladesh, twentyfold in India, and as much as sixtyfold in the United Kingdom. In certain places, six climate-driven natural disasters could strike simultaneously, and, globally, damages could pass $600 trillion—more than twice the wealth as exists in the world today. Conflict and warfare could double.

You really don’t believe that anything can have a value of its own beyond what function it serves for human beings?” Resaint said. “Value to who?” Resaint asked Halyard to imagine a planet in some remote galaxy—a lush, seething, glittering planet covered with stratospheric waterfalls, great land-sponges bouncing through the valleys, corals budding in perfect niveous hexagons, humming lichens glued to pink crystals, prismatic jellyfish breaching from the rivers, titanic lilies relying on tornadoes to spread their pollen—a planet full of complex, interconnected life but devoid of consciousness. “Are you telling me that, if an asteroid smashed into this planet and reduced every inch of its surface to dust, nothing would be lost? Because nobody in particular would miss it?” “But the universe is bloody huge—stuff like that must happen every minute. You can’t go on strike over it. Honestly it sounds to me to like your real enemy isn’t climate change or habitat loss, it’s entropy. You don’t like the idea that everything eventually crumbles. Well, it does. If you’re this worried about species extinction, wait until you hear about the heat death of the universe.” “I would be upset about the heat death of the universe too if human beings were accelerating the rate of it by a hundred times or more.” “And if a species’ position with respect to us doesn’t matter— you know, those amoebae they found that live at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, if they’re just as important as Chiu Chiu or my parents’ dog, even though nobody ever gets anywhere near them—if distance in space doesn’t matter, why should distance in time? If we don’t care about whether their lives overlap with our lives, why even worry about whether they exist simultaneously with us? Your favorite wasp—Adelo-midgy-midgy—” “Adelognathus marginatum—” “It did exist. It always will have existed. Extinction can’t take that away. It went through its nasty little routine over and over again for millions and millions of years. The show was a big success. So why is it important that it’s still running at the same time you are? Isn’t that centering the whole thing on human beings, which is exactly what we’re not supposed to be doing? I mean, for that matter—reality is all just numbers anyway, right? I mean underneath? That’s what people say now. So why are you so down on the scans? Hacks aside. Why is it so crucial that these animals exist right now in an ostensibly meat-based format, just because we do? My point is you talk about extinction as if you’re taking this enlightened post-human View from Nowhere but if we really get down to it you’re definitely taking a View from Karin Resaint two arms two legs one head born Basel Switzerland year of our lord two-thousand-and-when-ever.” But Resaint wasn’t listening anymore.

But I was thinking of Polly. If Boy was bored and lonely she was not likely to be very happy either. The success or failure of all human relationships lies in the atmosphere each person is aware of creating for the other, what atmosphere could a disillusioned Polly feel that she was creating for a bored and lonely Boy? Her charm, apart from her beauty, and husbands, we know, get accustomed to the beauty of their wives so that it ceases to strike them at the heart, her charm used to derive from the sphinx-like quality which came from her secret dream of Boy; in the early days of that dream coming true, at Alconleigh, happiness had made her irresistible. But I quite saw that with the riddle solved, and if the happiness were dissolved, Polly, without her own little daily round of Madame Rita, Debenhams and the hairdresser to occupy her, and too low in vitality to invent new interests for herself, might easily sink into sulky dumps. She was not at all likely to find consolation in Sicilian folk-lore, I knew, and probably not, not yet, anyhow, in Sicilian noblemen. 'Oh, dear,' I said. 'If Boy isn't happy I don't suppose Polly can be either. Oh, poor Polly.

President Obama warned that the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime would pose a “red line” that would trigger an American military response. In August 2013, word filtered out that Assad’s forces had used poison gas against a rebel suburb of Damascus, killing as many as fourteen hundred people. This was a key moment. The United States was just a few hours away from launching airstrikes. “Our finger was on the trigger,” General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, later said.13 Obama decided otherwise. He concluded that airpower would be insufficient and ineffective, and he wanted congressional authorization but could not get it. He had come into office to end America’s two wars—in Iraq and Afghanistan—and he was loath to slip into a third, with no clear path to success. Air power in Libya had helped remove Gadhafi, but it had left chaos behind. Obama was also demonstrating that, as he later said, he had broken with the military response “playbook” of the “foreign policy establishment.” Moreover, he feared that an air strike would not eliminate all the chemical weapons, and Assad could then claim that “he had successfully defied the United States.”14 Still, an American president had said using chemical weapons was a red line, but had not acted on that. Coming on top of Mubarak, it made leaders in other countries question the credibility of the United States and its reliability as an ally.

According to Yale’s Cultural Cognition Project, for example, one’s “cultural worldview”—that would be political leanings or ideological outlook to the rest of us—explains “individuals’ beliefs about global warming more powerfully than any other individual characteristic.”16 More powerfully, that is, than age, ethnicity, education, or party affiliation. The Yale researchers explain that people with strong “egalitarian” and “communitarian” worldviews (marked by an inclination toward collective action and social justice, concern about inequality, and suspicion of corporate power) overwhelmingly accept the scientific consensus on climate change. Conversely, those with strong “hierarchical” and “individualistic” worldviews (marked by opposition to government assistance for the poor and minorities, strong support for industry, and a belief that we all pretty much get what we deserve) overwhelmingly reject the scientific consensus.17 The evidence is striking. Among the segment of the U.S. population that displays the strongest “hierarchical” views, only 11 percent rate climate change as a “high risk,” compared with 69 percent of the segment displaying the strongest “egalitarian” views.18 Yale law professor Dan Kahan, the lead author on this study, attributes the tight correlation between “worldview” and acceptance of climate science to “cultural cognition,” the process by which all of us—regardless of political leanings—filter new information in ways that will protect our “preferred vision of the good society.” If new information seems to confirm that vision, we welcome it and integrate it easily. If it poses a threat to our belief system, then our brain immediately gets to work producing intellectual antibodies designed to repel the unwelcome invasion.19 As Kahan explained in Nature, “People find it disconcerting to believe that behavior that they find noble is nevertheless detrimental to society, and behavior that they find base is beneficial to it. Because accepting such a claim could drive a wedge between them and their peers, they have a strong emotional predisposition to reject it.” In other words, it is always easier to deny reality than to allow our worldview to be shattered, a fact that was as true of die-hard Stalinists at the height of the purges as it is of libertarian climate change deniers today. Furthermore, leftists are equally capable of denying inconvenient scientific evidence. If conservatives are inherent system justifiers, and therefore bridle before facts that call the dominant economic system into question, then most leftists are inherent system questioners, and therefore prone to skepticism about facts that come from corporations and government. This can lapse into the kind of fact resistance we see among those who are convinced that multinational drug companies have covered up the link between childhood vaccines and autism. No matter what evidence is marshaled to disprove their theories, it doesn’t matter to these crusaders—it’s just the system covering up for itself.20 This kind of defensive reasoning helps explain the rise of emotional intensity that surrounds the climate issue today. As

Do you know what the expression ‘running amok’ means?” “‘Running amok?’ Yes, I think I do… a kind of intoxication affecting the Malays…” “It’s more than intoxication… it’s madness, a sort of human rabies, an attack of murderous, pointless monomania that bears no comparison with ordinary alcohol poisoning. I’ve studied several cases myself during my time in the East—it’s easy to be very wise and objective about other people—but I was never able to uncover the terrible secret of its origin. It may have something to do with the climate, the sultry, oppressive atmosphere that weighs on the nervous system like a storm until it suddenly breaks… well then, this is how it goes: a Malay, an ordinary, good-natured man, sits drinking his brew, impassive, indifferent, apathetic… just as I was sitting in my room… when suddenly he leaps to his feet, snatches his dagger and runs out into the street, going straight ahead of him, always straight ahead, with no idea of any destination. With his kris he strikes down anything that crosses his path, man or beast, and this murderous frenzy makes him even more deranged. He froths at the mouth as he runs, he howls like a lunatic… but he still runs and runs and runs, he doesn’t look right, he doesn’t look left, he just runs on screaming shrilly, brandishing his bloodstained kris as he forges straight ahead in that dreadful way. The people of the villages know that no power can halt a man running amok, so they shout warnings ahead when they see him coming—‘Amok! Amok!’—and everyone flees… but he runs on without hearing, without seeing, striking down anything he meets… until he is either shot dead like a mad dog or collapses of his own accord, still frothing at the mouth…

Land and Sea The brilliant colors are the first thing that strike a visitor to the Greek Isles. From the stunning azure waters and blindingly white houses to the deep green-black of cypresses and the sky-blue domes of a thousand churches, saturated hues dominate the landscape. A strong, constant sun brings out all of nature’s colors with great intensity. Basking in sunshine, the Greek Isles enjoy a year-round temperate climate. Lemons grow to the size of grapefruits and grapes hang in heavy clusters from the vines of arbors that shade tables outside the tavernas. The silver leaves of olive trees shiver in the least sea breezes. The Greek Isles boast some of the most spectacular and diverse geography on Earth. From natural hot springs to arcs of soft-sand beaches and secret valleys, the scenery is characterized by dramatic beauty. Volcanic formations send craggy cliffsides plummeting to the sea, cause lone rock formations to emerge from blue waters, and carve beaches of black pebbles. In the Valley of the Butterflies on Rhodes, thousands of radiant winged creatures blanket the sky in summer. Crete’s Samaria Gorge is the longest in Europe, a magnificent natural wonder rife with local flora and fauna. Corfu bursts with lush greenery and wildflowers, nurtured by heavy rainfall and a sultry sun. The mountain ranges, gorges, and riverbeds on Andros recall the mainland more than the islands. Both golden beaches and rocky countrysides make Mykonos distinctive. Around Mount Olympus, in central Cyprus, timeless villages emerge from the morning mist of craggy peaks and scrub vegetation. On Evia and Ikaria, natural hot springs draw those seeking the therapeutic power of healing waters. Caves abound in the Greek Isles; there are some three thousand on Crete alone. The Minoans gathered to worship their gods in the shallow caves that pepper the remotest hilltops and mountain ranges. A cave near the town of Amnissos, a shrine to Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth, once revealed a treasure trove of small idols dedicated to her. Some caves were later transformed into monasteries. On the islands of Halki and Cyprus, wall paintings on the interiors of such natural monasteries survive from the Middle Ages. Above ground, trees and other flora abound on the islands in a stunning variety. ON Crete, a veritable forest of palm trees shades the beaches at Vai and Preveli, while the high, desolate plateaus of the interior gleam in the sunlight. Forest meets sea on the island of Poros, and on Thasos, many species of pine coexist. Cedars, cypress, oak, and chestnut trees blanket the mountainous interiors of Crete, Cyprus, and other large islands. Rhodes overflows with wildflowers during the summer months. Even a single island can be home to disparate natural wonders. Amorgos’ steep, rocky coastline gives way to tranquil bays. The scenery of Crete--the largest of the Greek Isles--ranges from majestic mountains and barren plateaus to expansive coves, fertile valleys, and wooded thickets.

He looks through the windscreen at nothing. They are returning to Cuba. The announcement came after the droids withdrew. An auto-animated voice. It did not proclaim their furlough a success or failure. Ibn al Mohammed does not know if the others will accept implantation. He believes they will not, as he will not. Temptation is legion, yet what does it mean? He is not of Satan’s world. What would implantation bring except ceaseless surveillance within a greater isolation? That, and the loss of his soul. Sun-struck and empty, so immense it frightens, the desert is awesome in its indifference. Even as he stares at it, Ibn al Mohammed wonders why he does so. The life that clings to it is sparse, invisible, death-threatened. Perhaps they will cast him out just here, he and all others who do not cooperate. No matter: he has lived in such a place. Sonora is not the same as Arabia, or North Africa, or The Levant, yet its climate and scant life pose challenges that to him are not unfamiliar. Ibn al Mohammed believes he would survive, given a tent, a knife, a vessel in which to keep water, a piece of flint. Perhaps they will grant these necessities. A knife, they might yet withhold. As if, wandering in so complete a desolation, he might meet someone he would want to hurt. As he watches, images cohere. Human figures made small by distance, yet he knows them. His mother, in a dark, loose-fitting, simple abaya. How does he recognize her, in the anonymous dress? Ibn al Mohammed has not seen his mother in a dozen years. He knows her postures, movements she was wont to make. He sees his sisters, also wearing abayas and khimars. What are they doing? Bending from the waist, they scrounge in the sand. Asna, the eldest, gentle Halima, Nasirah, who cared for him when he was young. They are gathering scraps and remants, camel chips for a fire. Where is their house? Why are they alone? It seems they have remained unmarried—yet what is he seeing? Is it a moment remembered, a vision of the past? Or are these ghosts, apparitions summoned by prophetic sight? Perhaps it is a mirage only. His sisters seem no older than when he left. Is it possible? His mother only appears to have aged. She is shrunken, her back crooked. Anah Kifah, who is patient and struggles. He wonders how they do not see the ship, this great craft that flies across the sky. The ship is in the sky, their eyes are on the ground. That is why they do not see it. Or his windscreen view is magnified, and Halima and Nasirah and Asna and Anah Kifah are much farther away than they seem, and the ship is a vanishing dot on an unremarked horizon. If he called, they would not hear. Also, there is the glass. Still, he wishes to call to them. What is best to say? “Mother … Mother.” Anah Kifah does not lift her head. His words strike the windscreen and fall at his feet, are carried away by wind, melt into air. “Nasirah? It is Ibn. Do you hear me? Halima? Halima, I can see you. I see all my sisters. I see my mother. Asna? How has it been with you? Do you hear me? It is Ibn. I am here—far away, yet here, and I shall come back. They cannot lock me always in a cage, God willing. In a month, in a year, I shall be free. Keep faith. Always know God is with you. God is great. God protects me. God gives me strength to endure their tortures. One day, God will speed my return.” The women do not lift their heads. They prod the sand, seemingly indifferent to what they find. Straining toward them, Ibn al Mohammed cries out, “Mother! Nasirah! I am alive! I am alive!” [pp. 160-162]

1988 was a watershed year for interest in climate change. Scientists were speaking out, bills were introduced in Congress, the IPCC was formed, and the first steps were taken toward an international agreement. This threatened those who were making billions in profits from fossil fuel-related activities and so they began to strike back. In 1989 the leading oil and automotive companies, along with the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, formed the Global Climate Coalition (GCC).

At about this time David hit on a scheme to end their financial problems. With his growing family, their limited income must have been the cause of constant worry to him. Stories of the rich strikes in the Klondike a decade earlier, perhaps bolstered by his spell of active service in South Africa, seem to have persuaded him that gold-mining might be the answer. On hearing that a new goldfield had been discovered in Ontario, he staked several claims to forty acres near the small township of Swastika, in the Great Lakes area. Only small quantities of gold had been found there so far, but a big seam was believed to exist. ---- Over the next twenty years or so, David would travel to Ontario many times to work the claim. He had already been there alone when, in the spring of 1912, he and Sydney decided to go together and – the biggest treat — they were to sail on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. Fortunately, something happened to make this impossible, and their departure was delayed until autumn of the following year. ---- It is not difficult to see why David remained keen, although the mining project eventually came to nothing. Furthermore, he and Sydney were at their closest in the shack at Swastika through the winter in that inhospitable climate, and it was one of the happiest times of David’s life. It was there that Sydney conceived their fifth child. ---- The parents, still hoping for a second boy, were disappointed, but soon came round. There was time for another boy. In David’s absence Sydney called her Unity after an actress (Unity Moore) she admired, and then Grandfather Redesdale said that she must have a topically apposite second name so they added Valkyrie, after Wagner’s Norse war-maidens. Almost from the time of her birth she was known in family circles as ‘Bobo’, but with hindsight, Unity Valkyrie’s unusual name, combined with the place of her conception, Swastika, seems almost like an eerie prophecy which the fifth Mitford child had no alternative but to fulfil.

Life on this planet has always been a balancing act—a complex web of interconnectivity that’s surprisingly fragile. Remove or even alter enough key components and that web begins to fray and fall apart. Such a collapse—or mass extinction—has happened five times in our planet’s geological past. The first struck four hundred million years ago, when most marine life died off. The third event hit both land and sea at the end of the Permian Period, wiping out 90 percent of the world’s species, coming within a razor’s edge of ending all life on earth. The fifth and most recent extinction took out the dinosaurs, ushering in the era of mammals and altering the world forever. How close are we to seeing such an event happen again? Some scientists believe we’re already there, neck-deep in a sixth mass extinction. Every hour, three more species go extinct, totaling over thirty thousand a year. Worst of all, the rate of this die-off is continually rising. At this very moment, nearly half of all amphibians, a quarter of all mammals, and a third of all reefs balance at the edge of extinction. Even a third of all conifer trees teeter at that brink. Why is this happening? In the past, such massive die-offs had been triggered by sudden changes in global climate or shifts in plate tectonics, or in the case of the dinosaurs, possibly even an asteroid strike. Yet most scientists believe this current crisis has a simpler explanation: humans. Through our trampling of the environment and rise in pollution, mankind has been the driving force behind the loss of most species. According to a report by Duke University released in May 2014, human activity has driven species into extinction at the rate a thousandfold faster than before the arrival of modern man.

Look to the Southeast, where, as Taylor has noted, “colonial societies sustained a slave system more oppressive than anything practiced in Europe” and “the slave-owners relied on Indians to catch runaways.” There, too, the native groups, descended from Mississippian societies, were far more hierarchical and autocratically ruled than the Algonkian- and Iroquoian-speaking groups in the Northeast. As Gallay has documented, indigenous societies cooperated fully with the slave-trading system, sending war captives to colonists for sale overseas. In the Northeast, by contrast, the Wendat (Huron) and Haudenosaunee either killed or, more common, adopted captives; involuntary servitude, though it occurred, was strikingly rarer. On the map, the division line between slave and non-slave societies occurs in Virginia, broadly anticipating the Mason-Dixon line that later split slave states from free. The repeated pattern doubtless has to do with geography—southeastern climate and soil favor plantation crops like tobacco and cotton. And southern colonists’ preference for slavery presumably reflected their different ethnic, class, and religious backgrounds. But

In November 2013, Credit Suisse published research confirming this, saying that “US net business investment has rebounded – but, at around 1.5% of GDP, still only stands at the trough levels seen during the past two recessions”.[46] It showed that since the early 1980s, the peaks reached by net business investment as a share of GDP have been declining in each economic recovery. As John Smith writes in Imperialism In The Twenty First Century: “A notable effect of the investment strike is that the age of the capital stock in the US has been on a long-term rising trend since 1980 and started climbing rapidly after the turn of the millennium, reaching record levels several years before the crisis.”[47] Smith points out that in the UK the biggest counterpart to the government’s fiscal deficit (the difference between total revenue and total expenditure) of 8.8% of GDP in 2011 was “a corporate surplus of 5.5% of GDP, unspent cash that sucked huge demand out of the UK economy”.[48] The problem is even worse in Japan, where huge corporate surpluses and low rates of investment have been the norm since the economy entered deflation in the early 1990s. According to Martin Wolf in the FT, “the sum of depreciation and retained earnings of corporate Japan was a staggering 29.5% of GDP in 2011, against just [sic] 16% in the US, which is itself struggling with a corporate financial surplus”.[49]

Since The Great Recession, the global financial crash of 2008-09, the debt-fuelled post-recession recovery has been the weakest in the post-war era (since the end of World War Two). Whereas total outstanding credit in the US after the Wall Street Crash grew from 160% to 260% of GDP between 1929 and 1932, the figure rose from 365% in 2008 to 540% in 2010. (And this does not include derivatives, whose nominal outstanding value is at least four times GDP).[34] A long depression and rising right-wing populism have followed, including the stunning ascendency of property tycoon and TV celebrity demagogue Donald Trump as the President of the US in 2016.[35] The British public’s vote in June 2016 to leave the EU delivered another shock of global significance. A chronic drift towards trade wars and protectionism is accelerating and in January 2018, US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said that “great power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of US national security”, putting Russia, China and – yes – Europe in the crosshairs of the world’s long-time dominant economic and military power. Adding to this age of anxiety is the accelerating automation revolution. What should be an emancipatory and utopian development only generates insecurity at the prospect of unprecedented mass unemployment. It can be no coincidence that all these crises are converging at exactly the same time. They cannot be explained away by cynical and shallow generalisations about ‘human nature’. In the course of this investigation we will see that in fact all of these crises have a common root cause: the decaying nature of capitalism and its tendency towards breakdown. Indeed, average Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rates in the world’s richest countries have fallen in every decade since the 1960s and are clearly closing in on zero. Rates of profit, manufacturing costs and commodity prices are also trending towards zero. Drawing on Henryk Grossman’s vital clarification of Karl Marx’s methodology, we shall see that capitalism is heading inexorably towards a final, insurmountable breakdown that is destined to strike much earlier than a zero rate of profit. Indeed, we shall also see that the next, imminent economic crash will result in worldwide hyperinflation. We will also show that the economic crisis is intensifying competition between nation-states, forcing them into a situation which threatens the most destructive world war to date.

Hydrogen could end up a 10 percent or more player in the energy mix in the future. Indeed, some see hydrogen today as where renewables were two or three decades ago in terms of development. It is striking, too, that hydrogen does not seem to involve geopolitical issues. It is either a tool for countries to meet ambitious decarbonization goals or an opportunity for export, becoming a globally-traded commodity.

On June 23 the Detroit Free Press printed Jimmy’s last letter to the editor under the title “Race: The Issue Isn’t Black and White.” This letter said: It is no longer useful to look at the racial climate of this country only in terms of black and white. People from more than 100 ethnic groups live here. By 2040 European Americans and African Americans will be among the many minorities who make up the United States. Blacks in Detroit are a majority; they need to stop thinking like a minority or like victims. Both African Americans and European Americans should be thinking of how to integrate with Detroiters of Latino and Arab descent. To the very end Jimmy was striking out at two of his favorite targets: racial (or what he called biological) thinking, and blacks viewing themselves as a minority. When Ossie and Ruby stopped by to see us in June, he met them at the door with a three-page memo suggesting things for them to work on. The next week Ruby sent him a big batch of rich dark gingerbread that she had baked. A few weeks before his death he called Clementine to alert her to the killing of children that was going on in Liberia and to instruct her how to intervene. A few days later he spoke at a Detroit Summer gathering. The next day he went out with a friend (without his oxygen tank) to supervise the moving of a refrigerator. The week before he died he did a two-hour interview with a local radio reporter. Up to two days before his death, he was grooming himself as carefully as always. Then, suddenly on Tuesday night, July 20, he began to stumble, sat down in a bedroom chair, and never got up or spoke again. I was all alone and wasn’t sure what I should do. There didn’t seem to be any point in calling anybody. So I kept stroking him and saying to him over and over: You are a helluva guy. You raised a whole lot of hell—and a helluva lot of questions. You made a helluva lot of friends—and a helluva lot of enemies. You had a helluva lot of ideas— And wrote a helluva lot of books and pamphlets. You made a helluva lot of difference to a helluva lot of people.

The thoughts from a finite mind can at times be very similar to the clouds that move about over the surface of the earth. Both can cover a lot of ground, and can either disperse or increase in formation. Likewise—both are heavily influenced by the surrounding climate. Furthermore—a hard wind increases a fire’s spread, thunder proceeds a lightning strike, and when atmospheric water vapor accumulates, it produces clouds. Then, after an abundance of water has been condensed, the clouds will at some point release moisture; the rain/precipitation amount will range from the degree of abundance condensed. Similarly: an abundance of thoughts can also accumulate—eventually resulting in an overflow of emotion. The overflow can either be positive or negative—the determining factor relying on the characterization of the thoughts—whether they be positive or negative.

Pissed off by the lies, misrepresentations, and outright horseshit, I decided it was time to strike back. It was time to reclaim the Constitution. Besides, if the Righties were wrong about everything else—like health care, climate change, and the corporate tax rate—they had to be wrong about the Constitution. First, I did my homework. I read the Constitution and the amendments; perused The FederalistV and Madison’s notes taken during the Constitutional Convention; surveyed the lives of the Founders and FramersVI; looked over the Supreme Court opinions of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas; and even tried to digest Glenn Beck’s The Original Argument, Mark Levin’s The Liberty Amendments, and Dr. Ben Carson’s A More Perfect Union—three of the best over-the-counter sleep aids on the market. To find out how the mind of a strict constructionist works, I also dipped into Ted Cruz’s autobiography, A Time for Truth, a faith-based romance novel in which the hero falls in love with himself at an early age.

To understand what happened in the oceans at the end of the Triassic, it's useful to look at modern coral reef systems, which have shrunk by perhaps 30 percent since the early 1980s (an appalling, geologically instantaneous lightning strike).

#MeToo said Mother Earth —ALEX LIEBERMAN (age twelve), climate strike sign

The second point which now strikes me forcibly is the need to design our warships, aircraft and weapons for a tough war in all climates and to try them out in realistic tests in peace in every kind of weather. In World War I, our shells had been no good; but in World War II, we remembered this, and our explosives were on the whole satisfactory, though some of the bombs were bad. Our torpedoes were elderly but well tried and reliable — both the Germans and the Americans started the war with advanced but useless torpedoes! The design of our main propulsion machinery was also rather ancient, but both engines and boilers were rugged and reliable and ran like trains throughout the war. The Germans introduced some sophisticated high-pressure, high-temperature machinery just before the war started, and they had many teething troubles which resulted in ships being out of action for months at a time. The lesson here is to avoid getting new equipment into full production until it has been thoroughly tested at sea.

We better rethink our future to disguise our ongoing damage to the climate, this sperm whale ecosystem can’t go on forever let revolutionize our strike to make earth a finer place.

Oxygen comprises 21% of the Earth’s atmosphere. If oxygen were 25%, fires would erupt spontaneously. If it were 15%, human beings would suffocate.17 •​If the carbon dioxide level in our atmosphere were higher than it is now, a runaway greenhouse effect would develop. We would all burn up. If the level were lower, plants would not be able to maintain efficient photosynthesis. We would all suffocate.18 •​If the centrifugal force of planetary movements did not precisely match the gravitational forces, nothing could be held in orbit around the sun.19 •​If Jupiter were not in its current orbit, the Earth would be bombarded with space material. Jupiter’s gravitational field acts like a cosmic vacuum cleaner attracting asteroids and comets that might otherwise strike the Earth.20 •​If the rotation of the Earth took longer than 24 hours, temperature differences would be too great between night and day. If the period were shorter, atmospheric wind velocities would be too great.21 •​If the twenty-three-degree axis tilt of the Earth were altered slightly, surface temperatures would be too extreme.22 •​If the moon’s gravitational pull on the Earth were much greater, tidal effects on the oceans, atmosphere, and the Earth’s rotational period would be too severe for life. If it were less, orbital changes would cause climatic instabilities which would prohibit life.23

of climate change. What was needed was a massive nudge in the right direction. In the past, the stick of regulation and the rod of taxation were the methods that environmentalists believed could break the fossil fuel economy. But the Inflation Reduction Act doesn’t rely on such punitive tactics, because Manchin culled them from the bill. Instead, it imagined that the United States could become the global leader of a booming climate economy, if the government provided tax credits and subsidies, a lucrative set of incentives. There was a cost associated with the bill. By the Congressional Budget Office’s score, it offered $386 billion in tax credits to encourage the production of wind turbines, solar panels, geothermal plants, and battery storage. Tax credits would reduce the cost of electric vehicles so that they would become the car of choice for Middle America. But $386 billion was an estimate, not a price tag, since the legislation didn’t cap the amount of money available in tax credits. If utilities wanted to build more wind turbines or if demand for electric vehicles surged, the government would keep spending. When Credit Suisse studied the program, it estimated that so many businesses and consumers will avail themselves of the tax credits that the government could spend nearly $800 billion. If Credit Suisse is correct, then the tax credits will unleash $1.7 trillion in private sector spending on green technologies. Within six years, solar and wind energy produced by the US will be the cheapest in the world. Alternative energies will cross a threshold: it will become financially irresponsible not to use them. Even though Joe Biden played a negligible role in the final negotiations, the Inflation Reduction Act exudes his preferences. He romanticizes the idea of factories building stuff. It is a vision of the Goliath of American manufacturing, seemingly moribund, sprung back to life. At the same time that the legislation helps to stall climate change, it allows the United States to dominate the industries of the future. This was a bill that, in the end, climate activists and a broad swath of industry could love. Indeed, strikingly few business lobbies, other than finance and pharma, tried to stymie the bill in its final stages. It was a far cry from the death struggles over energy legislation in the Clinton and Obama administrations, when industry scuppered transformational legislation. The Inflation Reduction Act will allow the United States to prevent its own decline. And not just economic decline. Without such a meaningful program, the United States would have had no standing to prod other countries to respond more aggressively to climate change. It would have been a marginal player in shaping the response to the planet’s greatest challenge. The bill was an investment in moral authority.

Most of the climate researchers I’ve met pursue their work with the objectivity and rigor that are the norm in every field of science. But because the potential impact of a changing climate strikes at human existence itself, the issue understandably engenders passion and emotion.

People who don’t read it, and even some of those who write it, like to assume or pretend that the ideas used in science fiction all rise from intimate familiarity with celestial mechanics and quantum theory, and are comprehensible only to readers who work for NASA and know how to program their VCR. This fantasy, while making the writers feel superior, gives the non-readers an excuse. I just don’t understand it, they whimper, taking refuge in the deep, comfortable, anaerobic caves of technophobia. It is of no use to tell them that very few science fiction writers understand “it” either. We, too, generally find we have twenty minutes of I Love Lucy and half a wrestling match on our videocassettes when we meant to record Masterpiece Theater. Most of the scientific ideas in science fiction are totally accessible and indeed familiar to anybody who got through sixth grade, and in any case you aren’t going to be tested on them at the end of the book. The stuff isn’t disguised engineering lectures, after all. It isn’t that invention of a mathematical Satan, “story problems.” It’s stories. It’s fiction that plays with certain subjects for their inherent interest, beauty, relevance to the human condition. Even in its ungainly and inaccurate name, the “science” modifies, is in the service of, the “fiction.” For example, the main “idea” in my book The Left Hand of Darkness isn’t scientific and has nothing to do with technology. It’s a bit of physiological imagination—a body change. For the people of the invented world Gethen, individual gender doesn’t exist. They’re sexually neuter most of the time, coming into heat once a month, sometimes as a male, sometimes as a female. A Getheian can both sire and bear children. Now, whether this invention strikes one as peculiar, or perverse, or fascinating, it certainly doesn’t require a great scientific intellect to grasp it, or to follow its implications as they’re played out in the novel. Another element in the same book is the climate of the planet, which is deep in an ice age. A simple idea: It’s cold; it’s very cold; it’s always cold. Ramifications, complexities, and resonance come with the detail of imagining. The Left Hand of Darkness differs from a realistic novel only in asking the reader to accept, pro tem, certain limited and specific changes in narrative reality. Instead of being on Earth during an interglacial period among two-sexed people, (as in, say, Pride and Prejudice, or any realistic novel you like), we’re on Gethen during a period of glaciation among androgynes. It’s useful to remember that both worlds are imaginary. Science-fictional changes of parameter, though they may be both playful and decorative, are essential to the book’s nature and structure; whether they are pursued and explored chiefly for their own interest, or serve predominantly as metaphor or symbol, they’re worked out and embodied novelistically in terms of the society and the characters’ psychology, in description, action, emotion, implication, and imagery. The description in science fiction is likely to be somewhat “thicker,” to use Clifford Geertz’s term, than in realistic fiction, which calls on an assumed common experience. The description in science fiction is likely to be somewhat “thicker,” to use Clifford Geertz’s term, than in realistic fiction, which calls on an assumed common experience. All fiction offers us a world we can’t otherwise reach, whether because it’s in the past, or in far or imaginary places, or describes experiences we haven’t had, or leads us into minds different from our own. To some people this change of worlds, this unfamiliarity, is an insurmountable barrier; to others, an adventure and a pleasure.

First is this weird word, agnotology. It’s the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data. The term was coined by Robert Proctor when he was studying this history of distortion by big tobacco. If you look at the climate change discussion, the public discourse, and you look at the tobacco discourse, there are some very striking parallels. The idea is to simply sow doubt, where there is almost universal scientific consensus, not only on the nature of climate change, but its causal mechanisms as being human activity. There’s nearly universal consensus, more consensus than you would get in science on most anything, and yet certain agents have been able to produce doubt, and thereby derail action. The same kind of thing happened with the adverse health effects of tobacco.

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Other than the external threat of asteroid and comet strikes (a common hazard throughout the solar system), all Earth’s natural hazards go hand in hand with its habitability. Indeed, Earth seems to be constructed almost perfectly to create calamities, with an outer shell thick enough to be rigid but thin enough to be breakable. Earthquakes, tsunamis, and extreme volcanic transformations are the price we pay for the life-sustaining gift of plate tectonics. Likewise, Earth’s atmosphere is primed to do damage by just the same qualities that make it so nurturing. Sun-animated, water-saturated, and seasonally shifting, our dynamic atmosphere maintains our comfortable climate. Its motions feed and water us, but can also swirl into violent storms that flood villages and splinter cities. Tornadoes, floods, blizzards, and climate shifts are collateral damage from life-enabling flows of energy, water, and chemical elements. All are also symptoms of Earth’s destructive/creative energy flows.*

Regardless of where they strike, large asteroids would boil seas, fill the air with dust and acidic compounds, and perhaps induce carbon dioxide to cook off out of the rocks and into the air, triggering a strong greenhouse effect, all of which in turn would change the world’s climate faster than living things could adjust to. Giant impactors could create enormous waves in the ocean and in the atmosphere that could upset weather patterns around the world for extended periods. Perhaps asteroids have also helped unleash Earth’s internal heat and caused subsequent volcanism.

Tankersley says while the cosmic strike had an immediate and deadly effect, the long term side effects were far more devastating, similar to Krakatoa's aftermath but many times worse, thus making it unique in modern human history. In the cataclysm's wake, toxic gas poisoned the air and clouded the sky, causing temperatures to plummet. The roiling climate challenged the existence of plant and animal populations, and it produced what Tankersley has classified as 'winners' and 'losers' of the Younger Dryas. He says inhabitants of this time period had three choices: relocate to another environment where they could make a similar living; downsize or adjust their way of living to fit the current surroundings; or swiftly go extinct. 'Winners' chose one of the first two options, while 'losers,' such as the woolly mammoth, took the last.

In the West, however, climatic differences far more striking than these may occur within the same state, even within the same county. In the Willamette Valley of Oregon, a farmer can raise a number of different crops without irrigation; there is usually a summer drought, but it is short, and even if he decides not to depend entirely on rainfall, a few inches of irrigation water—instead of the hundred inches used by some farmers in California and Arizona—will usually do. Two hours away, on the east side of the Cascades, rainfall drops to a third of what the Willamette Valley ordinarily receives; not only that, but the whole of eastern Oregon is much higher than the section west of the Cascades, and lacks a marine influence, so the climate is far colder as well. It can be forty above zero in Eugene and ten below zero in Bend, a two-hour drive to the east.

If this strikes you as tragic, which it should, consider that we have all the tools we need, today, to stop it all: a carbon tax and the political apparatus to aggressively phase out dirty energy; a new approach to agricultural practices and a shift away from beef and dairy in the global diet; and public investment in green energy and carbon capture.

His order cited "credible evidence" that a takeover "threatens to impair the national security of the US".Qualcomm was already trying to fend off Broadcom's bid.The deal would have created the world's third-largest chipmaker behind Intel and Samsung.It would also have been the biggest takeover the technology koo50 sector had ever seen.The presidential order said: "The proposed takeover of Qualcomm by the Purchaser (Broadcom) is prohibited. and any substantially equivalent merger. acquisition. or takeover. whether effected directly or indirectly. is also prohibited."Crown jewelSome analysts said President Trump's decision was more about competitiveness and winning the race for 5G technology. than security concerns.The sector is in a race to develop chips for the latest 5G wireless technology. and Qualcomm was considered by Broadcom a significant asset in its bid to gain market share.Image captionQualcomm has already showcased 1Gbps mobile internet speeds using a 5G chip"Given the current political climate in the US and other regions around the world. everyone is taking a more conservative view on mergers and acquisitions and protecting their own domains." IDC's Mario Morales. vice president of enabling technologies and semiconductors told the BBC."We are all at the start of a race. and you have 5G as a crown jewel that everyone wants to participate in - and every region is racing towards that." he said."We don't want to hinder someone like Qualcomm so that they can't provide the technology to the vendors that are competing within that space."US investigates Broadcom's Qualcomm bidQualcomm rejects Broadcom takeover bidHuawei's US smartphone deal collapsesSingapore-based Broadcom had been pursuing San Diego-based Qualcomm for about four months.Last week however. Broadcom's hostile takeover bid was put under investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US. a multi-agency led by the US Treasury Department.The US company had rejected approaches from its rival on the grounds that the offer undervalued the business. and also that any takeover would face antitrust hurdles.Earlier this year. Chinese telecoms giant Huawei said it had not been able to strike a deal to sell its new smartphone via a US carrier. widely believed to be AT&T.The US also recently blocked the $1.2bn sale of money transfer firm Moneygram to China's Ant Financial. the digital payments arm of Alibaba.

Heading into any one-year anniversary, our emotional climate shifts. We enter a new season of the heart.

It’s a movement now, and one increasingly led by kids, indigenous nations, communities of color. In the fall of 2018, a fifteen-year-old Swedish girl named Greta Thunberg staged a “school strike,” sitting on the steps of Parliament instead of going to class on the theory that she couldn’t be bothered if the government couldn’t be bothered to care about the climate.