PowerSwitch

Recovery of an ex-environmentalist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_s8Vo0 ... e=youtu.be

Looks interesting, good points made. It will probably upset the “renewables� believers. I’ll watch the rest in the morning

UndercoverElephant wrote:Recovery of an ex-environmentalist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_s8Vo0 ... e=youtu.be

What I've watched so far is very good and honest. Some of the places are familiar (the wind turbines near the beginning are quite possibly Derrybrien above Loughrea) so hopefully I might bump into him at some point.

I agree with what he is saying but I don't agree that we shouldn't try to do something about mitigating the damage of climate change. If we work hard to reduce the damage we are doing the better our life could be in the future. By a better life in the future I mean one with a less extreme climate; one that is slightly more liveable from a human perspective and one that will be more liveable for as many of the species with which we now share the world.

As far as Woodburner's comment goes on the ""renewables" believers", I don't think that anyone on this forum with even half a brain believes that we can carry on into the future as we have done recently powered by renewables.

Life in the future will have to be very different to the life of today or even the life of the 1950s. I'm not sure what that life will be, that will depend on what sort of climate we end up with, but it won't immediately be going back to any historical era of the past because we have a different knowledge base and mindset from previous eras. The future will be based on our present but with a lot less than we have now.

The future will be mining the past for the waste of the past as the earth's mineral resources have been put out of reach of all but the highest tech mining methods: you can't dig minerals with an ore ratio of a few percent out of an open caste mine without vast quantities of usable energy at your disposal.

The future will be far fewer people as we can't move vast quantities of food across miles of land or even sea without the ready availability of vast amounts of power. Even the production of that food requires power and the technology to maintain the machines which use that power. The humans who have been replaced with the machines to provide food don't have the knowledge or the physical strength to replace the machines again. That knowledge and strength will take to to renew and during that time there will be die off from hunger and disease.

Having said all that I must go out and see if more of the next generation of food has arrived since I went away at the weekend. Yorkshire, I found, has vast number of wind turbines of all sizes all over the place. They vary from individually owned 6kW to massive farms of 250kW turbines. They are almost as common as the old water powered mills which seem to pop up around every corner, even half way up the side of a very steep valley. wind replacing water although a would have thought that water could be used in addition to wind although at a smaller scale.

Good doc. It could be us!

I didn’t get the impression he meant “we shouldn’t try�, ken. He is trying in the best possible way, having tried alternatives. Few individuals can make a difference at anything but the individual level and I think he’s saying that.

Anyway, whatever criticisms there might be, I wish there were lots more like him.

As individuals we can only do what is right ourselves and, in doing so, show others how to live.

Individuals can join together and increase their influence massively, as is shown by the 44 million Avaazers on the Monsanto in bother thread. Individuals joining together are having an effect on the government over climate change as has been shown by the Extinction Rebellion actions and the school strikes. They were started by one person, Greta Thunberg.

As far as Woodburner's comment goes on the ""renewables" believers", I don't think that anyone on this forum with even half a brain believes that we can carry on into the future as we have done recently powered by renewables.

It seems Extinction rebellion wants zero carbon by 2025. Good luck with that, or do they only have half a brain?

woodburner wrote:

As far as Woodburner's comment goes on the ""renewables" believers", I don't think that anyone on this forum with even half a brain believes that we can carry on into the future as we have done recently powered by renewables.

It seems Extinction rebellion wants zero carbon by 2025. Good luck with that, or do they only have half a brain?

Ad hominen attack, Woodburner?

If you don't set the bar high you won't get anywhere in this life. At last someone is setting a high bar after decades of the IPCC setting it low to keep politicians happy.

What is extinction rebellion doing exactly? Is there a 5G connection? Are you aware of the (bad) health implications of 5G?

Start here.

Do they really have any concern for the climate?

woodburner wrote:What is extinction rebellion doing exactly?

Demanding that the government "tell the truth" about climate change, while simultaneously claiming it is possible to reduce carbon emissions to zero in 5 years.

The Kingsnorth video is pretty good. Don't agree with everything he says but he and I are in similar places with our thinking.

clv101 wrote:The Kingsnorth video is pretty good. Don't agree with everything he says but he and I are in similar places with our thinking.

I agree with almost everything he says.

UndercoverElephant wrote:

woodburner wrote:What is extinction rebellion doing exactly?

Demanding that the government "tell the truth" about climate change, while simultaneously claiming it is possible to reduce carbon emissions to zero in 5 years.

I agree that is what it appears on the surface.. Not what can be found with a little bit of digging though.

woodburner wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:

woodburner wrote:What is extinction rebellion doing exactly?

Demanding that the government "tell the truth" about climate change, while simultaneously claiming it is possible to reduce carbon emissions to zero in 5 years.

I agree that is what it appears on the surface.. Not what can be found with a little bit of digging though.

ANy chance you could summarise that? Don't have time to watch it now.

I also pretty much entirely agree with his shifted perspective towards the idea that there has to be a spiritual rationale to preserve the environment rather than purely economic reasoning.

Ironically and sadly, even in the Church where there is a growing tradition of environmental theology seeking to place spiritual value on 'God's creation', the conclusion still tends to be that we can effectively or sufficiently respond to the crisis by small acts such as reducing meat consumption, plastic bag usage, and carbon-driven transport. In my experience, even those who have concluded that we should protect the earth because 'God made it' still rarely go further than those who are convinced by the economic notion of 'sustainable growth'.

I prefer Paul Kingsnorth's conclusion that what's really needed is to move away from the mindset that the earth is a resource we can exploit however we like (however kindly), to a more humble idea that we belong to the earth and must learn to experience ourselves as interconnected with it and dependent on it, as a continual 'spiritual' practice. It won't save the world, because we can't force anyone to join in, but it may save our own sanity.