There’s no putting this toothpaste back in the tube.
A lot of people are going to be pretty angry as they wake up to the already unstoppable impacts.(see below).
For decades, Exxon has publicly questioned the science of global warming, contradicting internal findings by the company’s own scientists. Recent exposés by InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times reveal that Exxon concealed for decades its own conclusions that fossil fuels cause global warming, alter the climate and melt the Arctic. Exxon’s climate deception is now sparking calls for a federal probe similar to that which yielded a racketeering conviction of Big Tobacco for hiding the dangers of smoking. We are joined by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-California), who is calling for a Justice Department investigation of Exxon, as well as 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben, who was just arrested for a one-man protest shutting down his local Exxon gas station. “It’s difficult to think of a company that could have set back humanity for decades, and perhaps permanently,” Rep. Lieu says. “But that’s what happened here.”
For millions of Americans, climate change has already passed the point of no return: no matter what action the world tries to take, their cities will be submerged by rising sea levels.
Scientists have identified 414 towns and cities in the United States that are guaranteed to eventually be underwater, regardless of how much humans decrease their carbon emissions.
“Historic carbon emissions have already locked in enough future sea level rise to submerge most of the homes in each of several hundred American towns and cities,” said a statement on the website of Climate Central, the group who conducted the study.
Published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, the doomsday list has on it the names of major population centres, including Miami and New Orleans.
The media would be clever in leveraging off the Don Blankenship trial occurring presently; that is, if the state of WV has the gumption to put one of its only billionaires in jail. Most of WV is in authoritarian driven ‘all hail the job creators’ mode: they gave that guy from Freedom Industries, or whatever his company was called, a little slap on the wrist for poisoning the capital city’s drinking water for weeks. At any rate, if Blankenship goes down, then the media can call it a new era and ask who’s next.
Good point. They have to have permission to go all out. Blankenship going down could well be the rabies infection the media needs to go all out.
Your picture of a pitchfork wielding mob seems appropriate. But you do realise that’s generally considered a bad thing, not a good one?
I realize it very much. Pakistan is at ground zero for climate disaster, and if they go the way of Syria, there will be more than pitchforks in the streets.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/08/27/435189782/report-in-a-decade-or-sooner-pakistan-could-be-no-3-nuclear-power
India will not be far behind, 2 nuclear armed states potentially going dark side
TWO nuclear armed states? Actually, there are THREE that we need to worry about over there. China, Pakistan, and India have border disputes that have been going on for 100 years now, and there are signs of things heating up (again). Here’s some crazy talk from India, and one of the topics under discussion is India’s need to develop tactical nukes (but they of course would never use them against the Pakistanis, mind you, only against China, who could stomp them flat in days—-maybe).
http://www.firstpost.com/world/why-china-may-be-plotting-a-short-border-war-with-india-as-in-1962-2281132.html
With AGW in the Himalayas causing loss of winter snow pack and melting of glaciers, the changing of the timing of the monsoon, and the possibility for serious water shortages (and water wars) throughout south and east Asia, we have much to worry about. Those three countries have about 500 nuclear weapons between them (that we know about). And if the Taliban types take over Pakistan during the climate changed “pitchfork times” that CAGW may bring on, all bets are off.
For many years now I’ve been saying that global climate change is going to end up causing massive civil unrest once the reality of it sinks in. When John and Jane Public start dying, losing their homes to sea level rise, having the value of their lifetime investment stripped away due to the predicted sea level rise, realize that it is only going to get worse for their children and grandchildren, then the 1% and their minions will see what true family values bring. Whatever the modern equivalent of tumbrels rolling down the street and the snick of the guillotine’s blade will be no one knows but is sure to happen. Already the 1% are buying properties in foreign lands where they can escape to – remote areas they can build a private airstrip on and private islands. It’s going to get ugly folks – there is no escaping that.
“…..Already the 1% are buying properties in foreign lands where they can escape to – remote areas they can build a private airstrip on and private islands. It’s going to get ugly folks – there is no escaping that.”
Where they will undoubtedly find that unless it’s a heavily armed private island, where-ever they are, the locals will be sharpening their pitchforks and/or machetes.
They will then realise that there’s no Gucci store on the island or Mercedes workshops, that frozen food only keeps for a year or two and there isn’t anyone able or willing to sell them food.
Their private island will become a private prison….there is no escaping that….
Given the magnitude of the crime there’s only one outcome of this which could qualify as “justice”
… and that’s if the Big Oil companies involved in this decade long misinformation campaign are required to pay damages without regard to whether it will bankrupt them.
Not just Exxon …
“We held tobacco companies responsible for lying about cancer. Let’s do the same for oil companies & climate change,” former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democratic-candidates-investigate-exxon_5622eb16e4b0bce34700fe40
I think it’s crucial to combine draconian but suspended sentences for these crimes against humanity and the Earth, millions (eventually billions) of felony murders associated with RICO and other violations… with an escape hatch.
People who deceived the public and used their wealth (or took others’ wealth in the form of campaign money, bribes, revolving door jobs, etc) to delay rational action to avoid cataclysm should be able to appeal to a Truth and Reconciliation process. If they plead guilty they’d be allowed to avoid prison and seizure of all assets if they agreed to turn over all documents and confess all such offenses legal and illegal, forfeit their fortunes and agreed to never hold a position of responsibility in business, education, government, non-profit or religion again. They should be able to support themselves as janitors, servers and similar jobs that seem to suffice for billions of other people, and maybe they should agree to read, watch and listen to daily reports of the unimaginable suffering their despicable actions have caused. Maybe they should also be asked to publicly perform the song “Faith’s Review and Expectation” more commonly known as “Amazing Grace” once a month for their community.
How forgiving, merciful, humanitarian, benevolent, charitable, caring, and warmhearted of you to make such a suggestion! Where were you at the Nuremberg trials when the Nazi war criminals were being dealt with? They were rather grim affairs and needed some comic relief.
Yes, we should have sent Himmler et al to your yurts on the beach in Oregon, where they could have sat in meditation circles, played bongos., and thereby atoned for their sins. That would have been more “humane” than executing them. Unfortunately, the nature of the human beast runs more to “an eye for an eye” etc, and pitchforks ARE most appropriate. This country is, after all, the one in which a black teenager can be lynched for looking at a white woman.
The most effective and impactful thing that could be done would be to stand just a few of the Exxon execs against a wall and shoot them. Hold an auction to be one of the shooters, just as they do for Cecil the Lion’s relatives and other animals in Africa. I for one would bid for a spot, and I’d even bring my own gun and ammo. If we did that, the rest of the sinners would fall all over themselves in the rush to “…turn over all documents and confess all such offenses legal and illegal”.
PS What planet do you live on?
Well, I for one, wouldn’t want to be on the planet YOU live on, dumboldguy.
You should study Mandela’s process of reconciliation that has helped keep the lid on unrest in South Africa.
J4zonian’s suggestions would be incredibly humiliating & punishing to the high fliers and a damn sight cheaper for the taxpayers.
I’m sure there will be room for Kiwiiano (along with the ghosts of Himmler and all the other Nazi war criminals) in J4zonian’s meditation circles.
I HAVE “studied” Mandela’s process of reconciliation enough to know that it was stupid for Jeffy4Z to suggest it in the first place, and even more stupid for you to support him. A process that was designed to deal with the aftereffects of apartheid and help people who occupy the same country try to put the past behind and live together has NO (repeat NO) relevance to what is going on with AGW and Exxon (and the other Merchants of Doubt). Your comments usually make more sense, but perhaps your need to run your mouth without thinking overtook you this time..
When we are overtaken by CAGW, and the deaths per year due to burning fossil fuels and climate change rise from the present 7 million to a hundred million or more and the world is in complete turmoil, you and Jeffy4Z would be content if the criminals were simply “humiliated”? Lord love a duck! (And ammunition is not very expensive at all—-ever buy any?)
PS. If you don’t want to live on my planet, Kiwi, sign up with Musk or the con artist Dutchmen for a trip to Mars. Take your bongo drum.
Both the Mongol and the Zulu armies used their superior mobility and organization to almost, but not quite surround the enemy they were fighting. They knew if they surrounded it completely they would face a costly and by no means certain fight to the death from grimly determined foes. By leaving an escape route they encouraged the enemy to run, throwing down their weapons and armor as they did. That allowed the Mongol or Zulu army to chase along and slaughter the fleeing enemy with little danger and few casualties.
Despite the reaction I’ve gotten over this metaphor before, I’m not suggesting that there’s any slaughter involved here, or should be. We need to recognize the usefulness of getting all the information we need, with full confessions and admission of not just responsibility but money sources, consciousness of decisions, and consciousness and admission of wrongness. We could make anything we want a condition of forgiveness—however many years of psychotherapy and public service were needed for each perpetrator to understand their problem, for example.
Empires are notoriously vicious when violence is directed upward against them. The first reaction to even a hint of it aimed at fossil fuel and other criminals-against-humanity-and-the-Earth will be to build on the foundation of the insane reaction to September 2001. That is, the so-called elite will instantly clamp down with melded military and police repression and violence comparable to that of the SS and Gestapo, Stasi, Savak and death squads.
Even in the extremely unlikely event that we won such a struggle in time to avoid climate catastrophe, the main thing punishment would accomplish would be just what it does in children (like the children who are now the perpetrators of violence and deception over our current crisis.) That is, it makes them sneaky, fearful, angry, resentful, ashamed, cowed, defeated, defiant, vengeful, split and unconscious, paranoid, immature, and so much more. The people most people think need punishment have almost by definition been pre-punished; what they need after that (like, now) is what they didn’t get while they were busy being punished as children (and beyond). That is, if they’re ever to be anything but problem-generators, they need to be healed psychologically.
The only way to get the quick surrender we need from the richest and most powerful people on Earth is to leave them a way out that at the very least isn’t prison or execution; while the only way we can save civilization, beyond the immediate dire GHG crisis, is to upend the current political-economic structure and establish both political and economic democracy. By all applications and ideas of power politics those are incompatible goals; only direct action in a series of peaceful campaigns, combined with a sure promise of some form of leniency and forgiveness with welcoming back into the society of healthy people after, will get us what we need for civilization to survive. That is, it will get us a quick end to the resistance against replacing fossil fuels with clean renewables, reforesting the planet and transforming chemical industrial agriculture with local, low-meat organic permaculture.
The fact that you’re misrepresenting the process that we need above all else in an attempt to ridicule it and us, BEFORE it gets to hundreds of millions dying of the crisis, suggests to me you need some of the healing I’m recommending, yourself. While I agree with many of the things you say and appreciate your comments, I’ve felt the same thing many times about them.
j4zonian: that was one of the most incredibly perceptive (and challenging) suggestions I have seen on this subject. Hats off to you. Of course, it’s blindingly obvious, give them a chance to survive and we have a chance of avoiding a bloodbath. There has been growing misgivings about the militarising of the US civilian police forces, with the apprehension that it’s not just a chance for the military to dump some of their surplus equipment. The scenario you envisage is just too, too possible.
Here’s Kiwi again, slathering Jeffy with praise—this time for having the most INCREDIBLE “perception” and offering the most “challenging” suggestions Kiwi has EVER seen!. Lord love a gagging duck! (and use the taken off hat to catch the duck upchuck and keep the carpet clean).
What is blindingly obvious is that Jeffy and Kiwi DO in fact live on some strange planet in some alternate universe. Jeffy acknowledges that humans have a capability for being “notoriously vicious”, but seems to think “forgiveness” is the solution, i.e., “We could make anything we want a condition of forgiveness—however many years of psychotherapy and public service were needed for each perpetrator to understand their problem, for example”. (The duck just threw up). Jeffy needs to go back and study what has happened in South Africa over the years, and particularly lately, in that racial conflict seems to be on the rise there. In addition to the same old roots, it would appear that the declining economy is adding fuel to the fire, and once CAGW disruption hits the smoldering embers of apartheid, there will be blood in the streets.
Jeffy also says he is is “…not suggesting that there’s any slaughter involved here, or should be” but then says “The first reaction to even a hint of it aimed at fossil fuel and other criminals-against-humanity-and-the-Earth will be to…instantly clamp down with melded military and police repression and violence comparable to that of the SS and Gestapo, Stasi, Savak and death squads”. Hmmmmm! So, let’s not get them mad, folks—-bring flowers to put down the muzzles of their rifles and chant “Make love, Not war”. If we just REASON with them and offer forgiveness, they will eventually see the error of their ways.
Jeffy throws out some half-assed and factually incorrect “metaphor” about the battle tactics of the Mongols and the Zulu. Don’t know where he got his “knowledge”, perhaps from the instructions for one of his Xbox war games, but those of us who have served in the military (and studied military history closely as a survival tool) do not look to the 1200’s or the late 1800’s for strategies that will be successful in 2015. The USMC’s basic motto of “Kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out” is far more useful in modern warfare. We no longer gallop about on horses like the Mongols or stand toe to toe and stab with short spears like the Zulu. The British managed to win the battle of Rorke’s Drift because they had “modern” weapons and lost the battle of Islandlwana in spite of having them. A company of today’s infantry with today’s tactics and supporting arms would have wiped out the Zulus at both places in minutes.
I won’t address Jeffy’s psychobabble about children who have become adults who are “…sneaky, fearful, angry, resentful, ashamed, cowed, defeated, defiant, vengeful, split and unconscious, paranoid, immature, and SO MUCH MORE”. If the duck pukes any more, it may die.
Jeffy’s closing paragraph offers me some conditional forgiveness for my “misrepresentation” of the process that he just KNOWS will solve all our problems, and he says that I need “healing”? (and he has thought this “many times” after reading my comments on Crock?). I’ve been around a lot longer than Jeffy, and have a far better understanding of the real world than he does. Look to his “quick surrender” paragraph to see the depths of his naivete and wishful thinking and decide who needs healing.
It’s a terrible shame and in a minor way, a tragic and frightening prospect when some of the best examples of the rageful, terribly wounded children we’re trying to heal are our own supposed allies. It makes everyone lose hope except those who oppose us most because they’re also rageful, wounded children. We should do everything we can to become better instruments of change instead of trying to ridicule the well thought out, philosophically well-supported and proven-in-action factually correct ideas of those who agree with us about our goals. (Not to mention trying to ridicule by making up silly names. Wow.)
The number of incorrect assumptions and mistaken conclusions in such posts should be but really isn’t surprising, as is the number of gross misunderstandings. They pose a dilemma about whether to answer and try to have an interesting discussion and correct misconceptions at the risk of encouraging further nonsense, projection, and gross misinterpretation, or just leaving them unanswered, to stop before the deterioration goes too far, because they do bring discussion down to the lowest level.
In the future I’ll try to refrain from correcting DOG’s mistakes or trying to complement his valid points. But take his/her posts with a grain of salt. Though s/he does make valid points, in the end they all too often come down to the same kind of emotional and cognitive “mistakes” that have caused this entire human psycho-social mess in the first place, and that are on display here.
Unfortunately, effective healing is almost impossible on the internet, especially in conflictual discussions. And the people who need it most are generally the least likely to recognize it.
When Jeffy4Z first appeared on Crock many months ago, I pointed out that he was a dilettante—a smug and self-satisfied narcissist with minimal science knowledge who had little to offer in the way of solutions to AGW beyond sitting in “hippy” meditation circles on the beach in Oregon, chanting while playing bongos, and promoting “low meat organic permaculture”.
Jeffy is back, proving my point with his oh-so-condescending attempt to refute what I say. His use of “pop psychology” is laughable to those of us who have actually studied in the field and applied our knowledge to “heal” people. Somehow Jeffy has gotten the idea that slick language and bald assertions are enough to prove an argument. I hate to disabuse him of that type of wishful thinking in public, but I am, after all, trying to help him, and he needs to be told that he is FOS.
Jeffy says I should not ridicule “…the well thought out, philosophically well-supported and proven-in-action factually correct ideas…” that he spouts.
The duck was unable to deal with that and has just puked up his internal organs and died. His body is now quivering with the post mortem assaults on his sensibilities found in the rest of Jeffy’s screed.
Let’s cut to the core of Jeffy’s problem. He mentions “projection”, yet seems unaware that he is the one engaging in it. Jeffy is stuck in the Kubler-Ross “denial” stage, with some excursions into “bargaining” with his “hippy solutions”, but showing little evidence of “anger” (perhaps because in his mind anger is so NON “Jeffersonian” and would interfere with his carefully constructed self-image?)
Jeffy needs to know that due to my many years of study, my science training, and my understanding of economics, history, politics, and human psychology, I have gotten to the “acceptance” level in my feelings about AGW. I occasionally revert to the “anger” stage when the deniers, politicians, or the fossil fuel interests show what scumbags they are (as Exxon and the Repugnant candidates are now doing).
I also become frustrated when lightweights like Jeffy come around and sling self-serving bullshit and crap up the discussion. We were trying to talk about Exxon’s sins and the need to prosecute them when Jeffy arrived with his “…well thought out, philosophically well-supported and proven-in-action factually correct …” (and mindless) maundering about Mongols, Zulus, Mandela, no meat organic permaculture, and “forgiveness”.
Please DO continue to try to “correct my mistakes” and display your understanding of pip psych for us, Jeffy. You still have a a couple of toes to shoot off and are an interesting case study. (And you can knock off the PC “his/her” BS as well—I am most definitely a HE even though my T is down a bit at age 75).
(PS Silly people deserve silly names—-especially those who fancy their intellectual abilities and comments to be “Jeffersonian” in quality and so name themselves. WOW indeed to that bit of narcissistic foolishness!)
“pop” psych, not “pip”