Showing posts with label fossil fools. Show all posts

Friday, 18 November 2016

The Only Way to Save the World is to Save Yourself

“We are not here to save the world. We are here to save ourselves, but in doing so, we save the world.”

As I write this, some shit is probably going down at Standing Rock. For anybody awake to the tyranny at hand, the events of the last few months have weighed heavily on our hearts. But the thing people need to remember is this: We’re all Native Americans. If you were born in the USA, and you love the land you were born on (which includes the entire fucking planet, by the way!), you are a Native American. You are a Native Earthling, for shit’s sake.

It’s all connected. Their fight is our fight. Skin color is irrelevant. Where you were born or where you migrated to is irrelevant. The only thing relevant is this: are you for freedom, life, cooperation, and love; or are you for statism, profit, divisiveness, and violence? As Derrick Jensen said, “We are the governors as well as the governed. This means that all of us who care about life need to force accountability onto those who do not.”

The media (even the alternative media, mind you) is trying to spin this as a land issue, or a Native American issue. But it’s not. This is a freedom versus tyranny issue. This is an anarchy versus statism issue. This is a life versus entropy issue. All land is free. We just need to quit focusing on imaginary lines and think cooperation first, competition second. All human beings are free. We just need to quit being obsequious to state-driven authority and start asking (and answering) the tough questions.

The only way to save the world is to save yourself. The only way to save the land from being poisoned is to save yourself from being poisoned (and from poisoning the land, yourself). The only way to save the environment from pollution is to save yourself from pollution (and from polluting the environment, yourself). In other words: The only way to save the Crashing Plane that is the Human Race is to put the oxygen mask on yourself first before attempting to put it on anybody else, and especially before attempting to right the plane. The oxygen mask, if you haven’t gathered already, is a metaphor for health, awareness, and truth.

Save Yourself

“Only the individual can rise to the heights of consciousness and awareness. The more you belong to the crowd, the deeper you fall into darkness.”

~Osho

Saving yourself is putting on the oxygen mask of health, awareness, and truth. But what does that mean? It means questioning yourself to the nth degree, to the point of self-interrogation, and then questioning some more. It means psychosocial upheaval. It means getting uncomfortable. It means admitting you are wrong. In short: It means pain, existential pain of monumental proportions.

Why is it so painful? Because much cognitive dissonance must be navigated. Everything that you’ve taken for granted as a fundamental truth must be turned inside out and given proper scrutiny. After such scrutiny, you will likely find that you were wrong about a great many things. But the only tool you need to weigh yourself against your deep questioning is the following anonymous quote: “When an honest man realizes that he is mistaken, he will either cease being mistaken or cease being honest.”

The question is: Do you have the courage to be honest with yourself? Because if you honestly choose the moral side of freedom, life, cooperation, and love, then you’re going to have to admit that statism provides none of these. It only sells the illusion of these.

Statism is about profit, ownership, divisiveness, and violence. It steals people’s freedom by enforcing, and profiting on, outdated and unjust laws (but only if the person believes in the law). It stifles life and human flourishing through calculative debt slavery and by convincing people into believing in an illusory debt. It creates physical divisiveness by drawing imaginary lines in the sand and declaring them “borders.” It creates psychological divisiveness through xenophobic nationalism and conditioned flag worship, setting up an us-versus-them mentality. When, really, the only us-versus-them mentality that holds any moral weight and intellectual validity is the freedom versus tyranny position.

Statism is tyrannical. There’s simply no way to wiggle out of this fact. It teaches authoritarianism and oppression. It teaches the individual to oppress and to tyrannize him/herself and others. It teaches people to blindly follow and obsequiously respect authority. It teaches extortion and violence. For if the authority of the state is not obeyed, or its many outdated and immoral laws are not followed, the individual is forced, violently if need be, to acquiesce. Comply or die, is what it comes down to. Either that or your freedom is taken away from you.

So, when it comes down to it, saving yourself is, first and foremost, waking yourself up from the spell that statism has over you. And then it’s breaking that spell. Break that particular spell, and freedom is at hand. Break that particular spell, and (your) life begins. Break that particular spell, and you free yourself to learn how cooperation and love actually work, because you will finally begin taking responsibility for your own shit. No Masters. No rulers. That means taking responsibility for yourself and your own actions as a social creature on an interdependent planet. No more leaning on the crutch of authority. No more codependence on the state. Saving yourself is choosing freedom.

Save the World

“The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. ‘Live,’ Nietzsche says, ‘as though the day were here.’ It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so, every one of us shares the supreme ordeal––carries the cross of the redeemer––not in the bright moments of his tribe’s great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.”

~Joseph Campbell

So, you’ve saved (freed) yourself from the grip of the state. What comes next? Freeing others, of course. But not so fast. Just because you’re free from the state, doesn’t mean the state isn’t still there, rearing its ugly head. It is still there, oppressing and extorting. It is still there, tyrannizing and destroying the planet under the guise of progress. It’s still there, trying to suck you back in. It is still Goliath and you are still David. And just because you recognize statism as tyranny and oppression, doesn’t mean that others do. Remember: most people are devoted statists who don’t even realize they are statists. Yes, the ignorance is that thick. But, I digress…

You’ve secured your “oxygen mask” on the crashing plane that is the human race. Now it’s time to start helping others to secure their own masks. The problem here is: you can’t control other people. And, really, you don’t want to. You want people to be free, after all. That means you’re going to have to convince them. You’re going to have to be creative. You’re going to have to use your imagination and come up with novel ways to persuade them into being healthy. Yes, sadly it has come to that. The only way to bring health to those who are all-too-well-adjusted to a sick society, is to sell it.

The real kick in the pants is: most people don’t want to hear what you have to say. People are wrestling with their own cognitive dissonance. People are caught up in their own state driven conditioning and brainwashing. Those cops “serving and protecting” the enforcement of the unhealthy, unsustainable, climate changing (game ender) North Dakota pipeline, are all wrestling with their own cognitive dissonance, conditioning, and brainwashing. They’re simply losing their own inner battle and coming up with the only thing they know: the cowardice and violence of a statist.

So, it comes down to this: What do we (those who are already free and have their oxygen mask securely fastened) do against the cowardice and violence of the inured statist? We teach. We use our imagination to persuade them away from the unhealthiness of the state and toward the healthiness of freedom. We lead by example, influencing them with our courageous words and our actions. We coax them into freely putting their own oxygen mask on. For we know that volition is paramount if freedom is to be had. Force is the way of the state. Violence is the way of the state. A free human being helping others to be free must never use force or violence, lest they wish to be a tyrant. An authentically free human being wishes other human beings to be just as authentically free.

But, and here’s the rub, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Your right to waive your fist ends one inch from my nose.”

This means that when our health and freedom are under attack, we are morally justified to defend ourselves. And so, the most important thing we can do as free people, as individuals who have our oxygen masks securely fastened, is to stand our ground. To protect ourselves. Which, by extension, means protecting that which immediately sustains us: water, and the land that grows our food. The worst thing we can do is back down and play the pacifist. Like Derrick Jensen said, “Love does not imply pacifism.” The Goliath that is the state will trample all over pacifism. Indeed, the road to an unhealthy, unsustainable, immoral, and violent world is paved with pacifism. It’s paved with people turning a blind eye. It’s paved with the inaction of people who recognized evil and did fuckall with it.

At the end of the day, Goliath (the state) is going to be Goliath. But Goliath is only Goliath because people believe in it. We dismantle goliath by convincing people not to give into Goliath’s unhealthy and unsustainable song and dance. First, we extract ourselves from being Goliath by transforming ourselves into courageous Davids. Then, we attempt to extract others from being Goliath. And if we cannot, we stand our ground and point out their cowardice and violence as unacceptable. We draw a line in the sand. We stand our ground. We protect our water. We declare, right in the face of the Goliath state, these courageous words by Thoreau: “I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”

About the Author

Gary ‘Z’ McGee, a former Navy Intelligence Specialist turned philosopher, is the author of Birthday Suit of God and The Looking Glass Man. His works are inspired by the great philosophers of the ages and his wide awake view of the modern world.

From Waking Times @ http://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/11/01/way-save-world-save/

Before the Flood

(Trailer)

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Thursday, 27 August 2015

Fossil fuels subsidies cost world $5.3 trillion a year – $10m a minute

By Sophie Vorrath

How large are global energy subsidies? The answer: quite a lot larger than we thought, according to new estimates from the International Monetary Fund, which puts the cost of subsidising fossil fuels at an enormous $US5.3 trillion a year, or around $US10 million a minute every day.

The eye-watering figure, based on calculations the IMF describes as “extremely robust,” is more than double the projected 2014 estimate the IMF released around this time last year, and amounts to more than the total health spending of all the world’s governments.

It is somewhat of an irony, then, that the IMF’s new figure of $5.3 trillion is largely attributed to polluters not paying the costs – social welfare, health, environmental and broader economic – imposed on governments for the burning of coal, oil and gas.

“Post-tax energy subsidies are dramatically higher than previously estimated — $4.9 trillion (6.5 per cent of global GDP) in 2013, and projected to reach $5.3 trillion (6.5 per cent of global GDP) in 2015,” the report says.

But according to eminent UK economist Nicholas Stern, even this “vast” figure amounts to a significant underestimate.

“A more complete estimate of the costs due to climate change would show the implicit subsidies for fossil fuels are much bigger even than this report suggests,” he said in a statement on Monday.

Unsurprisingly, coal is named as the biggest recipient of the subsidisation, “given its high environmental damage and because (unlike for road fuels) no country imposes meaningful excises on its consumption,” the report says.

Petroleum is the next most heavily subsidised product, the report notes, with the projected subsidy remaining at 1.8 per cent of global GDP in 2015 despite declining petroleum prices.

This is followed by natural gas, and then by electricity, for which the projected post-tax subsidy comes to 0.2 per cent of global GDP in 2015, with environmental impacts attributed to energy inputs rather than power generation itself.

The report also finds that post-tax subsidies are large and pervasive in both advanced and developing economies, but are “especially large (about 13-18 per cent) relative to GDP in emerging and developing countries.

“There is no justification for these enormous subsidies for fossil fuels, which distort markets and damages economies, particularly in poorer countries,” said Lord Stern.

In Australia, a report published in December estimated that the nation’s fossil fuel sector was set to receive $47 billion in federal government subsidies over the next four years.

In a statement to the Senate inquiry into wind turbines on Tuesday, Director of research at The Australia Institute, Rod Campbell, stressed that every dollar from treasury to the fossil fuel industry was one not being spent on schools, hospitals or public infrastructure.

“We know that over a six-year period, state governments in Australia spent $17.6 billion supporting the mineral and fossil fuel industries. Enough to fully fund the Gonski education reforms,” Campbell said.

“We know that the diesel fuel rebate (fuel tax credit) costs $6.2 billion a year. (2015 Federal Budget Paper 1, Statement 5)

“We know that Galilee coal projects, including Abbot Point terminal, cost Queensland taxpayers $2 billion.

“The old, false story of ‘cheap’ fossil fuels is bunk. In addition to the health and climate costs that are never accounted for, they’re very directly costing taxpayers billions,” Campbell said.

The good news – there is some – is that “the fiscal, environmental, and welfare impacts of energy subsidy reform are potentially enormous,” says the report.

The IMF estimates that eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels would cut global carbon emissions by 20 per cent; slash the number of premature deaths from outdoor air pollution by 55 per cent (about 1.6 million lives a year) and deliver projected economic gains of around $2.9 trillion in 2015 – an amount that could be an economic “game-changer” for many countries, the report says.

“What really matters for policy – not only for its own sake, but also for convincing policymakers and stakeholders of the need for reform – are the benefits that reform will produce in terms of fiscal balances, the environment, human health, and the economy,” the report says.

Another consequence, as the Guardian has noted here, would be that the need for subsidies for renewable energy – a relatively tiny $120 billion a year – would also disappear, if fossil fuel prices reflected the true cost of their impacts.

“If we get the pricing of fossil fuels right, the argument for subsidies for renewable energy will disappear,” said David Coady, the IMF official in charge of the report.

“Renewable energy would all of a sudden become a much more attractive option.”

From Reneweconomy @ http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/fossil-fuels-subsidies-cost-world-5-3-trillion-a-year-10m-a-minute-27983

Fossil fuel industry must 'implode' to avoid climate disaster, says top scientist

‘The age of carbon is over’ and a transition to a greener economy is inevitable, says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, adviser to the German government and Pope Francis

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute. Photograph: Alamy

by Damian Carrington

An “induced implosion” of the fossil fuel industry must take place for there to be any chance of avoiding dangerous global warming, according to one of the world’s most influential climate scientists.

Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, an adviser to the German government and Pope Francis, said on Friday: “In the end it is a moral decision. Do you want to be part of the generation that screwed up the planet for the next 1,000 years? I don’t think we should make that decision.”

Schellnhuber was speaking at a major science conference in Paris, taking place before a crunch UN summit in December, also in the city, at which nations must seal a deal on global warming. World leaders were sent a stark message in the communique issued by the conference, which warned that the opportunity to avoid disaster is rapidly diminishing.

Laurence Tubiana, France’s climate change ambassador, said the aim of the UN summit is to send a signal that the transition from coal, oil and gas to a low-carbon economy is inevitable. If the aim is achieved, Tubiana told the Guardian, “you will see a massive acceleration [to a greener economy], particularly on the investment side in the next five years”.

The conference was addressed by Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who said the fossil fuel industry faced big challenges: “A mixture of many different changes going on – consumption patterns, civil society, political action – will be disruptive to the carbon economy.”

Stiglitz, Schellnhuber and Tubiana all expressed support for the global divestment campaign, which lobbies investors to sell their stocks in the biggest fossil fuel companies. “I fully support the divestment movement,” said Schellnhuber. “Do you want to be part of an economy that is destroying the world, or part of an economy that protects creation?”

Tubiana said the recent call by major European oil and gas companies for a price to be put on carbon pollution was partly the result of the “very important” divestment movement. She said: “Oil companies are like canaries in the mine. When there is no danger they are silent, but when they feel danger and opportunity they make a move.”

The Guardian is divesting from fossil fuels and is campaigning for the world’s biggest health charities, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, to do the same.

The Paris conference was attended by more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries. Schellnhuber told the delegates: “In order to stay below 2C (3.6F) [the internationally agreed limit for global warming], or even 3C, we need to have something really disruptive, which I would call an induced implosion of the carbon economy over the next 20-30 years. Otherwise we have no chance of avoiding dangerous, perhaps disastrous, climate change.”

Climate change sign up

“The promise of the fossil fuel age has never been fulfilled,” he said. “We still have 2bn people living on $2 (£1.30) a day – that is crazy.” He called for two strong messages to come from December’s UN summit: that “the age of carbon is over” and that “it is not the poor of the world who will pay for the transition”.

To achieve these outcomes, Schellnhuber said: “We need a global social movement and it is already happening.” He said the best analogy for the transition from dirty to clean energy was the abolition of slavery, which was fundamentally driven by ethical concerns.

The scientists’ communique said that tackling climate change is economically affordable, but that nations “waiting on the sidelines” will cause the costs to rise. It said global warming is already inflicting damage across the globe and that failing to act will lock in the dangers.

Stiglitz backed the affordability of tackling climate change: “Creating a green economy is not only consistent with economic growth, it can promote economic growth,” especially when there is a lack of demand in the global economy.

He said the best option for an enforceable climate deal was for willing countries to introduce carbon taxes and then penalise nations refusing to do the same with border taxes on their exported goods.

A voluntary agreement could not solve the climate crisis, he said: “The atmosphere is a public good – all want to get the benefits, but no one wants to pay the cost.” He also dismissed carbon markets as being too prone to political lobbying: “It is basically giving away money.”

Stiglitz said it was unsurprising that a carbon price has proven hard to implement on a worldwide scale. “If you own fossil fuel assets, and the impact of any global agreement on climate change is going to push their value down, you are going to resist, using whatever tactics. But the interests of global society have to overcome these narrow special interests.”

From The Guardian @ http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/10/fossil-fuel-industry-must-implode-to-avoid-climate-disaster-says-top-scientist?CMP=share_btn_fb

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