alanjjohnstone
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https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-35068-1
non-technical summary here
https://thenewdaily.com.au/life/science/2018/11/16/2000-ways-kill-the-world/
Researchers from Australia and Italy created 2000 variations of the planet we live on and then subjected them to different stresses such as runaway global warming, nuclear winter following the detonation of multiple atomic bombs, and a large asteroid impact.
“This is what surprised us: warming turns out to be the worst case scenario”.
“In the case of global warming in particular, the combination of intolerance to heat combined with co-extinctions mean that five to six degrees of average warming globally is enough to wipe out most life on the planet.”
Oh, i omitted this recent blog
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2018/11/socialism-is-green.html
“Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation.” – Marx
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
Is LBird only being premature with his concerns and that perhaps later when his aim is actually achievable we will set about solving the science Vs. democracy conflict
Not sure about the correct pronunciation – i say dower.
This is a discussion forum and we are debating mostly ourselves.
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2018/11/how-to-save-world.html
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2018/11/capitalism-is-our-real-enemy.html
Capitalism says it can fix it
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46263770
The Energy Transitions Commission (ETC), says it is both practical and affordable to get their emissions down to virtually zero by the middle of the next century. It calculates that industrial emissions can be eradicated a cost of less than 1% of global GDP, with a marginal impact on living standards.
The focus of the report is on the tough nuts of climate change: cement, steel, chemicals, trucking and aviation. These sectors account for close to a third of total global carbon dioxide emissions, but on current trends that is likely to increase just as the rest of the economy is cleaning up. The report says it is technically possible to decarbonise all of them by the middle of the next century at costs per tonne of carbon dioxide saved of $60 or less for steel, $120 or less in cement, and $270 or less in the case of plastics.
The chair of the ETC, Adair Turner, said there was an “incredible disconnect” between the urgency of the climate problem and the “glacial” pace of technologies such as carbon capture and storage, where emissions are captured then pumped underground.
“Making the transition involves a step change in the way we do things,” said the former CBI chief. “It can be done and it won’t break the bank … but it will require real urgency from policy-makers, from business leaders and from investors and financiers.”
See !! Nothing to worry about, after all, comrades. I’ve over-reacted to the hype. Capitalists know best and have everything in hand. Let’s just trust them and have faith in them, they’ll bring us through with some Churchillian determination.
Ooops…
Kevin Anderson, a professor of economics at Manchester University, points out that the UK’s proud record of carbon emission cuts does not count statistics on key polluting sectors.
“If we include CO2 from international aviation; shipping; imports and exports – then UK plc has made no real dent in CO2 since 1990, nor have the other climate-progressive EU nations. Until we dispense with our rose-tinted specs we’ll not even recognise the problem – let alone the solutions. No nation is even approaching doing what ‘they feasibly can’ – and we will continue to fail whilst we worship the god of Mammon and ephemeral economics.”
Worse scenario is I think has only been mentioned in passing but along with climate change, the conditions for the breeding of bacteria also evolves and so comes the spread of new diseases and new epidemic plagues (and recall the failing efficiency of anti-biotics). Just what is the population required to keep things going. I recall a flu outbreak some years and a lot of necessary infrastructure began to crack when staff called in sick.
Climate Change Hunger and the Black Death along with desperate Climate Change Refugee invasions. Sounds like a return to the Middle Ages. Let us recall also that when Europeans arrived in the Americas there were over a 100 million reduced to half-a-dozen million. Wherever white explorers tread, smallpox, measles had got there before them and they found empty cities and towns. Even the Amazon had large populations and vibrant civilisations.
Is it no wonder that the rich are building bunkers and choosing island sanctuary New Zealand as their refuge of choice.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-rich-new-zealand-doomsday-preppers/
An AF article
Is this the start?
US stock markets continued to fall on Tuesday, wiping out all of 2018’s gains…The leading tech companies have now lost a combined $1trn in value since their year highs…oil price tumbled and investors sold investments in retailers, energy companies and bitcoin…there were likely to be more wild swings to come. “I don’t think Santa Claus is going to waltz in and give us a rally for Christmas,” said Michael Antonelli, managing director of institutional sales trading at Robert W Baird in Milwaukee. Investors have been “throwing growth stocks and tech in the trash”, said Antonelli. “It’s not that there is new news. It’s tension and nervousness.”
Jack Ablin, chief investment officer of Cresset Capital explained, the sheer size of the tech companies had propped up the stock market rally and their recent wobbles were exposing “deterioration” in the wider market, said Ablin. Corporate America has been buying its own shares, and boosting share prices as a result, at a record-setting rate – $115bn of stock in the first three-quarters of 2018. The Federal Reserve’s decision to keep rates rising is likely to cap that trend, said Ablin.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/20/us-stock-markets-continue-fall-erasing-2018-gains
“All good things eventually come to an end,” said Goldman Sachs’ market analysts on Tuesday, striking a bearish tone in their predictions for 2019. “Cash will represent a competitive asset class to stocks for the first time in many years,” the Wall Street bank said
As a newcomer to the thread, Malcolm, you may have not read all the messages posted on this and under other topics.
The many social ills of capitalism, even world war was not an existential threat until the invention of nuclear weapons but even with those, humans are still in charge (despite sci-fi scenarios of terminator computers). Not so with runaway climate change which is the point at which no remedial policy, even with socialism, is possible to stop it only to mitigate some of the effects.
I don’t see us disagreeing except perhaps in how we express ourselves. This is a moment in history when more than just socialists are saying change is imperative and we no longer have the luxury of thinking there is plenty of time to do it in.
We have more and more of the science backing us up. It is an opportunity to connect the dots. Perhaps not a 100% of our fellow-workers are receptive to the global warming warning but there are many.
That snowball in hell may well become an avalanche of socialist ideas. Who knows? I don’t but i along with the rest of us in the Party do the limited things we can in the hope we might not be the only ones who understand exactly who the real culprit is.
Upon reflection re-reading the above post, i acknowledge it seems i come across as some eschatological Old Testament prophet or millennialist cultist …”Repent or meet thy doom.”
But i rather see it asa modern doctor to a cancer patient, with surgery and chemo-radiation therapy we may stop cancer’s advance rather than some witch-doctor of capitalism saying, give us your poor and vulnerable to sacrifice on the altar of Mammon so that the kings and princes may go on living.
If all is lost and we are really doomed, then the purpose of the Party no longer exists – so let’s divvy out our funds and assets to the membership and let us indeed all party on in great style.
But what Sussex and i are saying is simply that there is an urgency now about establishing socialism before we are very much doomed by runaway climate change. This pressing necessity for immediate action to establish socialism should now be our primary message to fellow-workers “Act Now – Or It Will Be Too Late.” (i think i mentioned that our economic analysis of the LTV simply does not motivate workers.)
No more are we talking centuries and no more even in decades. The count-down has begun for real. But in my personal opinion there is a new denial arising by those who although they understand and accept climate change, it is a denial of the actual impact on their lives and of their own family’s lives right now and in the very near future. We are like rabbits in the middle of the road, frozen and paralysed by the head-lights of a speeding car.
We may make merry at the prospect of an impending catastrophe but as ALB says on the Brexit thread, we cannot take any satisfaction in the tragic consequences that will be inflicted upon our fellow-workers – even more so with the extreme weather events associated with climate change as well as the longer term suffering from global-warming on agriculture.
Our problem has always been making our object an immediacy for people, who found it easier to campaign for the immediate programme of reforms and leave socialism to some future generation. Now we can present fellow-workers with a simple choice in earnest – Socialism or Barbarism – and mean what we say. It will no longer be a banal, trite quote of some long-dead socialist but an honest statement of fact.
I’ve mentioned it before in exchanges – working in a slaughter-house is dehumanising and in socialism, i think it is doubtful people will engage in this industrial assembly-line butchery.
“…Farmers Weekly has revealed that 10,000 positions are unfilled at major abattoirs … the report explains that for most potential applicants, the industry’s low pay is not the problem but that “people simply do not want to do this work any more”.
Slaughterhouse work has been linked to a variety of disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder and the lesser-known perpetration-induced traumatic stress. It has also been connected to higher incidents of domestic violence, as well as alcohol and drug abuse.
A pig slaughterer said the “worst thing” about the work is its “emotional toll”. He explained: “Pigs down on the kill floor have come up and nuzzled me like a puppy. Two minutes later I had to kill them – beat them to death with a pipe.”.
Most people don’t like to think about the effect that buying meat has on animals and the environment. Few are even aware of the plight of slaughter workers. But market forces are simple – every time you put meat in your shopping trolley, you are funding the slaughter, globally, of 70bn farmed animals each year, the destruction of the environment and yes, the exploitation of vulnerable workers…”
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While we focus on the Irish/Northern Ireland border, Spain’s interest is with Gibralter
85 arrested at the bridge blockade, several more earlier in the week, but i doubt the sentences will be more than a fine. I think the court system got a shock when they tried to jail those fracking protestors.
I have already highlighted our own peculiar vulnerability to breaking the law. Those older members might think deja vu from the CND sit-down protests.
I think in my replies to Robbo, i sort of agree with you that we have our work cut out reaching many of the environmentalists who whether veterans or not, may well have a jaundiced view of us from their experience of left groups and likely to view as much the same. We certainly cannot parachute ourselves in and assume the character of all-knowing oracles.
But we have to engage before they are totally co-opted into advocating legislative and regulatory palliatives. Was it not yo who the source of the quote “reforms by blows” …or in this case reformist direct-action
I’m not so sure they have been sucked in by the Establishment as yet, so perhaps the slogan “system change not climate change’ still resonates
Which group are likely to be receptive? – that is for us to find out by trial and error. Sussex in his first post suggested a debate. I would rather invite them as guest speakers or have a round-table forum for a non-adversarial meeting. I think we have shown that these have results. As you noted Glenn came on board. Maybe we can use both he and Brian Gardner as our spokes-persons in any event. Both are disarmingly charming.
But not as a one-off but perhaps a series of get-togethers. I simply don’t think people have a Damascene conversion or an epiphany moment especially if they are already committed to a certain outlook It takes a few interactions and exchanges. (probably why most successful meetings are in the pub, afterwards)
I actually think i am repeating myself from my attitude towards Occupy St Pauls where i believed we could have done a lot more.
