alanjjohnstone
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
The video uses very clever techniques. They say the next generation will be harder to detect imposing faces and images
Anybody know the cost of buying that software for ourselves to make our own spoof videos?
A bit more imaginative than a blockade – XR in Zurich turn the River Limmat bright green.
It said it to “draw attention to the impending collapse of the ecosystem, and to the toxic system in which we live”
They added the dye was made from uranine and carried the same levels of toxicity as table salt.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has urged members to support student climate strikers on 20 September. A proposal by the University and College Union (UCU) originally asked the TUC to call for millions of workers to stop work for half an hour, aimed at shifting government complacency over the climate crisis. However, an amendment put forward by the rail union Aslef means the TUC will call for “workday campaign action” instead.
Ahhh well, better than nothing and every little bit helps
The UCU is urging workers to join the action alongside students at lunchtimes and before and after work, and to ask employers to jointly declare a climate emergency with staff unions and student unions.
Amnesty International called on head teachers worldwide to back their global protests. Its secretary general, Kumi Naidoo, has written to almost 25,000 schools in the UK and 2,000 more in Canada, Hungary, Spain and New Zealand, urging them to let pupils take part in the global climate strikes without being punished.
Extinction Rebellion has blocked the entrance to the UK’s only active fracking site in a demonstration against what it called the “burgeoning catastrophe” of global warming. Protesters from the environmental group gathered outside the shale gas site on Preston New Road, near Blackpool, on Tuesday morning alongside a yellow boat bearing the words: “Planet before profit”
What’s the big beef all about say the farmers. We’ve got it solved.
Farming can become climate neutral by 2040 without cutting beef production or converting substantial areas of farmland into forest, according to the National Farmers’ Union.
The NFU says three-quarters of the UK’s agricultural emissions can be offset by growing fuel for power stations and then capturing and burying the carbon dioxide, which could lead to energy plants becoming the nation’s biggest crop after wheat. Increasing the carbon stored in soils and using technology to reduce the emissions caused by cattle and fertiliser use are also needed. The NFU plan envisages half of farming’s emissions being offset by growing willow, miscanthus grass and other energy crops to use in bioenergy with carbon capture and storage power plants. The technology is only at the pilot stage but the scale required by the NFU plan is consistent with projections for 2050 from the Committee on Climate Change, the government’s official advisers. The NFU plans also call for a doubling of wind, solar and biomethane energy on farms. Storing more carbon in soils, peatlands, woodlands and hedgerows offsets another fifth of agricultural emissions. Only 1.5% of the total comes from new tree planting – less than the CCC has recommended – but the NFU sees its figure as the maximum realistically possible. A quarter of farming’s emissions can be cut by raising animals and growing crops more efficiently, according to the NFU. Its plans highlight feed additives to cut methane in animals, gene editing to improve crops and livestock, and controlled-release fertilisers.
Minette Batters, the president of the NFU, said “We don’t plan to make any cuts [in meat production],” Batters said. “We think we can do it without changing levels of production.” People are increasingly choosing to eat less meat and Batters said: “Everybody’s diet is up to individuals to choose, but there are other parts of the world that are hungry for high-quality meat.”
The Friends of the Earth campaigner Guy Shrubsole said: “Eating less but better meat is a crucial part of the fight against climate breakdown, yet astonishingly there is no mention of this in the NFU’s report. Doing so would free up much more land for trees and agroforestry, which would absorb huge quantities of carbon from the atmosphere. It seems the NFU is still not prepared to contemplate significant land use change in Britain, despite the CCC recommending this as being vital,”
When applying cost benefit analysis, there is not necessity to evaluate using actual money. It is only a method of determining the strengths and weakness of various alternatives in some sort of systematic way. I am no expert but I am confident those accustomed to the use of the principle can adapt it as they already do to fit differing circumstances.
Taken from wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost–benefit_analysis
Probably more appropriate is Cost-Effectiveness Analysis which is distinct from cost–benefit analysis, since it assigns no monetary value to the measure of effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost-effectiveness_analysis
Why is it necessary to convert it into monetary terms except under capitalism. Socialism can just as easy use the method by only attaching a points system. Or use another measurement.
“using the related technique of cost-utility analysis, in which benefits are expressed in non-monetary units such as quality-adjusted life years.” Frequently used by pharmaceutical corporations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost–utility_analysis
Marquito was talking metaphorically, I believe, not literally.
The met experts consider that it was climate change which intensified the Hurricane Dorian’s power and ferocity and, just now, relief efforts need more assistance, while survivors seeking help are being turned away from the USA for not having the proper visa requirements. (although this is being reversed due to averse publicity in certain cases)
The death toll may not be as high as if a atomic bomb was dropped but certainly the infrastructure damage might be equivalent to one
Another sign of the resurgence of the Left in the USA
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/09/sara-nelson-flight-attendants-union-interview-labor
Union leader addressed the DSA convention and talked the talk.
“No one is born with sexism, racism, ageism in their heart. These are the tactics of the boss, of those who want all the money and all the power to deny us solidarity, the greatest force for good. Expose it. Call it out. Deal with it. And in our unions and on our picket lines we can do exactly that.”
“The labor movement is not something that we have to rebuild,” Nelson said. “The structure already exists. It’s just something that has to be put into fourth gear and supercharged.”
“What’s exciting is that this year we actually have some real choices for labor,” she said. Nelson urged the audience not to wait until then [2020] to get involved.
“Change comes fast when the risk becomes too great for those in power,” she said.Another view on the DSA and race
My reason for not giving it is that I do not actually know who is currently General Secretary or Assistant Secretary.
This lack of knowledge on my behalf reflects the relative lack of importance we attach to party positions and confirmation that we do not have any elites or leaders within our organization. General Secretaries come and go, they possess no special authority or any prerogatives above other members within the Socialist Party and their functions are purely administrative duties.
(In the past, it was the person who swept and cleaned the Head Office who received a payment for attendance other than expenses since we valued that work more important.)
I talked about the rate of carbon emissions being reduced in the short term and I offered the example of the end of the arms trade and military which substantially and almost immediately reduces GHG being emitted
But elsewhere I did say that dealing with global poverty would have to be compensated by savings elsewhere and the re-allocation of resources from this sector may well suffice. The maths still to be done.
However, we have not yet even considered the other aspects of the exchange economy that will be superfluous and redundant. Darren has re-posted old 1960s articles on transport that still of relevance, today.
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/09/coping-with-car-1964.html
I know others disagree but I have also argued that lifestyle consumption patterns such as the luxury of meat-eating being greatly reduced are also on the table as an almost immediate means of reducing the rate of CO2 emissions (and methane)
On the long term, CO2 can be removed from the atmosphere is my understanding of the science in that we can develop carbon sinks and somewhere else on this thread I mentioned reforestation and rewilding as an example but there are other approaches rather than natural ones such as the presently unpopular eco-engineering projects but we also go against the trend by also arguing for more use of nuclear power alongside the renewable energy resources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sink
https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/carbon-sinks.php
I have often referred to runaway climate change and reaching the tipping points that bring us to that stage of no-return. These are still being debated and the science is still undecided and some on the forum suggest it is alarmist to say we are there already, much like those eco-overpopulationists say we have already exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet which we obviously haven’t.
But we must determine what you once called the socialist unique selling point, (I rarely forget influences on my way of thinking).
I hold that we must be able to widen the environmentalist case with the socialist case which has to be, (to use another of your own expressions), positive action.
We do offer hope of what is possible, not as you say, unrealisable. Only under capitalism is there no solutions.
The choice as always lies not with our answers but whether people hear it and accept it. We fail on the former so logically it is not accepted as an option for people to choose from. What can be more ecologically sound than when in 1848 the separation of town and country is challenged?
spgb.gensec@worldsocialism.org
spgb.asstsec@worldsocialism.org
Also other than this forum you should also join
Spintcom – internal business
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/spintcom/info
Spopen – members only discussion
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/spopen/info
Brian, there are solutions out there, and world socialism is the only society that can implement them.
In a stroke, we abolish the waste of armament production. Military are excluded from statistics in all climate agreements, at least up to a few years ago. Off-limits.
Arms is 4% of global GDP. The US military alone use the same amount as fuel as all the UK does. Carbon emissions for the US military gives it the footprint larger than many nations such as Sweden
And imagine the increase of labour availability with no armies is just another prime example. The largest concentration of scientific knowledge is used to ensure military dominance.
I haven’t even mentioned the re-direction of resources from wars and conflicts.
We can reduce the rate of carbon emissions on the short term and we can then reverse the effects of climate change on the long term. Whatever negative impacts we inherit can be focused upon and tackled.
But once again our priority is to maintain that we can have both growth in production and overall consumption and sustainable production – our pledge to the billions of people who do not have security of a decent life. We are not just offering to feed the world but to present a nutritious, wholesome choice of menus. Our housing is not simply boxes with running water and electricity but communities. We should not shy away from declaring that the worse socialism will create will equal the best capitalism presently produces.
This is the dividing line between environmentalists and ourselves who all in one way or another advocate de-growth to different degrees.
It is what Sylvia Pankhurst drew the distinction about almost a hundred years ago.
“We do not preach a gospel of want and scarcity, but of abundance. Our desire is not to make poor those who to-day are rich, in order to put the poor in the place where the rich now are. Our desire is not to pull down the present rulers to put other rulers in their places. We wish to abolish poverty and to provide abundance for all. We do not call for limitation of births, for penurious thrift, and self-denial. We call for a great production that will supply all, and more than all the people can consume. Such a great production is already possible, with the knowledge already possessed by mankind. To-day production is artificially checked, consumption still more so.”
That is the very same message we take to the self-denying environmentalists but more importantly to our fellow-workers who do fear the dire predictions of the future put forward even by their saviours.
Fully Automated Luxury Communism, not just a utopian fantasy but an aspiration that only socialism can make into reality.
This is what separates us from the eco-activists – and to think i’m the one accused of doom and gloom pessimism.
“But what do we do? Join in demonstrations to try to get capitalist governments to do more or work to establish the framework within which the problem and its consequences can be dealt with rationally?”
What we do is join in the demonstrations to try to communicate what is the root cause so that “the problem and its consequences can be dealt with rationally?”
It does mean being alarmist, ALB, it is unavoidable because by indicating that the mainstream environmentalist’s trust and faith in a government approach does not hold the answer and therefore if we don’t establish socialism then all their fears are well founded and come to fruition. The scare-mongering becomes reality.
Either we argue the capitalism is incapable of providing solutions and therefore we are inevitably heading towards the intensifying consequences of climate change.
Or we join the reformers in agreeing that capitalism has remedies to cure the climate crises and revolutionary alternatives are not necessary.
Despite our small numbers we need to get a hearing and our voice won’t be heard if we are not present in the debate and discussions. These conversations are not taking place in meeting halls but on the internet, social media but more importantly on the actual protests and demonstrations, themselves. We need to prominently display our banner at every event for people to see and muster under.
