Posts Tagged ‘Disinformation’

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Bushfire regeneration and transhumanism

January 21, 2020

Earlier I wrote a post about the possible difficulties for the regeneration of the bush.

I’m now interested in the continuing idea that the bush will regenerate without problems, without any human help. This idea seems quite common, but often hides a disregard for what is currently present, or for creatural suffering.

For example, one person wrote:

The bush will always recover. It always does.

Now that appears to be a non-problematic statement, even if it might be false, but it is problematic for a number of reasons we can observe in what I’ll call ‘denier’ literature. It implies no change, but when pressed it appears lack of change is not what is meant. The sentence comes from a disregard for any kind of change in ‘nature’. It becomes transhuman, or post-human, in the sense that humans are rendered irrelevant spectators; they are just another unimportant species which could cheerfully go extinct. Humans do not matter, and have no effect on anything, and it is merely a conceit to say they do. However, it can appear that support for human irrelevance is accompanied by an apparent horror of change in economics or power relations.

My response to this was much as I wrote in the previous post:

If the fire was too hot in some places, then it could destroy seeds, so the bush won’t regenerate. It could have killed the insects so there is no pollination, and it could have killed the birds so there is no seed distribution, animals will not dig up the soil… We shall have to see. It is, in any case, unlikely the rainforests will regenerate quickly.

The response was:

This has never been seen in the history of earth. Although it could be possible. The earth always regenerates. If not exactly as before but as new species emerge. Never doubt the amazing ability of nature to re-emerge. Otherwise mamals like us would still be scurrying in fear in our burrow.

There is an initial comforting suggestion that nature will go on and recover (as such failure is apparently unseen “in the history of the earth”), but in the end the suggestion implies that the person is really arguing that humans cannot kill life on earth. The latter point is probably true, but it is not even vaguely the same as the former. “Recover” usually means return to something like what it was previously, not become something completely different, even apparently dead or wiped out.

By talking of evolution (and conflating it with progress), and life in general, the suggestion avoids creatural suffering; effectively creatures are just being wiped by natural forces, and there is nothing to worry about or be concerned about. Some other creatures may be impelled to progress and crawl out of their burrow. Being sad at animals and humans being burnt to death, or ecologies being destroyed, is clearly silly, from this transcendent point of view.

So the person recognises the reality that Earth does not always regenerate in ways that are happy for humans or other creatures, or in ways which are similar to what was before. We can add, that this has happened many times in the history of humanity, and civilisations have seemed to collapse as a result of the changes. Failure to recover has been seen many times, even in the short span of human history. So they are contradicting themselves, apparently in order to be comforting, distant and uninvolved.

Failure to recover, can be how deserts form; humans change the environment, say through intensive agriculture, and an unintended consequence is that the land does not regenerate, and people can no longer live there. Perhaps that is helped by wider climatic and ecological changes which are being ignored, I don’t know. However, deserts have been supposedly expanding for quite some time now, and are likely to expand in Australia. One possible sign of this is that after the fires there have been massive dust storms as top soil has blown away.

Evolution is, in current human terms, more or less irrelevant. New species can take tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of years, or longer, to emerge, although colonising species can move in and produce long term change to previous ecologies pretty immediately. Evolutionary frameworks, when used in a certain way, appear to be yet another mode of distancing oneself from what is going on.

To repeat: in human time-frames, destruction is quite possible, and neither the flora nor the fauna may recover. The change could come with an extinction of species, that might otherwise not have occurred for considerable amounts of time

The arguers response to this, is to assume that wanting the world to be safe for humans (and as many other creatures as possible) is human arrogance. We can destroy what we will and it does not matter because everything changes, and hey no individual species is of any import.

Nature does not aim to please our arrogant species. It will regenerate in ways that best suit the new environment. Simple. We may find it tragic, but that is purely subjective. The very notion that we somehow know what is best for nature is dangerous at least.

If this is the case, which is probably correct, then saying the flora and fauna will recover is misleading, because it may not.

It is much more accurate to say, the old ecology could possibly be destroyed, and a new ecology may eventuate. This may be bad for a whole heap of plants and creatures, and good for some others. Change happens. There is no straightforward recovery. But this is not what is being said on the surface – and it is odd that it is not being said, because it is not difficult to say, and this silence implies some other rhetoric is in play.

While the idea that whatever happens after human induced destruction is ok, may be extremely dangerous, it could be comforting to the destroyers. Perhaps this is a quietist response to the recognition that humans (including ourselves) are destroying the world?

So, it may not be surprising, when it turns out the person does deny human induced fires, and posits that the bushfires are a purely natural process (which they are of course).

However, this position obscures the role of humans in the fires, and the politics of that role. Not only climate change or accident was responsible. Humans lit some fires. The government cut back on fire fighting services, refused to listen to advice that the coming season could be bad, especially given the drought, made no preparations etc. So the fires were partly human induced, even if we posit that there was no human induced climate change.

This is a post-humanism which acts to excuse human actions, by making everything equally ‘natural’ and humans irrelevant, while pretending that

  • All is well, and normality is not threatened,
  • They have a modest non-interfering model that represents humans as not the dominant species, as opposed to those who would try and direct the actions of nature.

When you push, it appears that they think that altering our destructive tendencies in economic and political behaviour is bad. For them, going along with our economy is natural and apparently not directing the actions of nature. Perhaps the economy is considered more ‘natural’ and immoveable than the Earth itself? Planning mitigation or amelioration, or the politics which might lead to such actions is defined as conceit. We are not to try and disrupt corporate power.

Doing nothing to oppose the routine pollution, and destruction, of ecologies by business and governments is accepting a plan to interfere with natural processes, and to prefer profit for some over survival for all. And perhaps that is the intention.

First: say everything will recover. The earth always regenerates

Second: if pressed, admit ecologies will change and creatures and plants will become extinct.

Third: suggest that any actions or thinking taken to prevent this extinction and harmful change, are conceit and we should quieten down and accept our insignificance, and accept the flow.

Fourth: do not worry about the ecological consequences of corporate and government action, because it does not matter in the long run. Humans are irrelevant after all, and we could have no effect either way. Let it, and the social power relations, continue. Let us submit to fate, or rise above the earth, rather than become political or active.

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A brief comment on the US Democratic primaries

January 19, 2020

People seem to be noticing that Bernie Sanders is either getting a hard time in the media, or he seems to be being ignored, even in the supposedly left media.

This illustrates the proposition that there is no mainstream left-wing media in the US, whatever Fox and its friends declare. To reiterate a point: all mainstream US media is corporately owned, and depends on corporate advertising. It is necessarily corporately controlled and will rarely challenge the interests of its owners and sponsors.

If people can recognise there is no left wing media, then it becomes obvious the media will not treat Mr Sanders well. After all, they could not even bring themselves, in general, to treat Hilary Clinton particularly well, and they participated gleefully in spreading and repeating Republican slurs against her for thirty years. And Hilary Clinton was only a moderate threat to corporate power.

This hostility is nothing to do with the Democrat establishment. It is a fact of life over which they have no control.

From their point of view, the media hostility towards Sanders would become part of his campaign. The hostility is such that Democrats could well decide that it is not worth the risk, unless they were shown otherwise by massive voting for Sanders, and a massive grass roots campaign. People tell me he has the latter, but it may not be enough to get votes from Democrats in the primaries – we do not know yet.

While it seems probable that the media would be hostile and dismissive if Sanders won the nomination – we can guarantee that if he does not get the nomination, the media sphere will be full of stories about how he was betrayed, not by the media (which will not be mentioned), but by the Democrat establishment, so as to try and convince left-inclined people to vote for a third party candidate and put Trump back in, who will then continue his moves to destroy the ecology, destroy health care, destroy protest, destroy the constitution, make money for himself, and have a war.

On the other side, if Sanders wins the Presidency, then the hostile media may have given Sanders useful experience for dealing with a hostile congress and Senate, when the Reps get voted back in.

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Climate paranoia, or the real reality?

January 17, 2020

I have just received an email, that tells me that

“Vatican Societas Iesu and Secular Illuminati controlled City of London, People’s Republic of China, United Nations and Obama led US Senior Executive Service Satanic Occultist SOCIALISTS have initiated WAR AGAINST the population and land of AUSTRALIA”

Yes this is through the bushfires and through generating climate change….

You will notice that everyone evil is a Socialist, a Catholic, a financier, Chinese, black, or Satanist. Goes without saying – but they are really Socialists. This perhaps means the Protestant Right now hates everyone. I wonder if the use of the City of London, is a deflection from Wall Street; so that the financial evil in the world is British, not American? or just an expression of all those US movies in which the villain has a British accent (if they don’t have a Russian or Arabic accent). Have these supposed truth seekers been BOUGHT OUT by US finance?

That the US has a Senior Executive Service Satanic Occultist explains a lot. That must be how Trump got in.

“Drought has been engineered through criminally unconstitutional ‘water harvesting’ privatisation of natural water resources.”

This is possibly correct, and privatisation of water has affected rivers severely. Always good to start with something plausible, but this is soon left behind.

“criminally irresponsible neglect of ‘controlled burn’ forestry management”

Ok that’s from Mr Murdoch and the Coalition, and about as wrong as it gets. the controlled burning did not have much effect, even though the rural fire service in NSW supposedly exceeded their targets. Of course things can always be done better. But 17m Hectares is a lot of burning.

If you want a conspiracy about lack of prevention then you could ask what has happened to Peter Dutton who is head of Emergency Management Australia. EMA is supposed to aim at building “a disaster resilient Australia that prevents, prepares, responds and recovers from disasters and emergencies.” It appears Dutton and his department were warned, after the election, of “more frequent and severe heatwaves, bushfires, floods, and cyclones. These will increasingly occur concurrently.” However, he did nothing, and has disappeared during the fires, leaving Scott Morrison to take the heat and the blame.

Anyway, apart from real politics, we have:

“Stratospheric aerosol injection of aluminum and barium fire accelerants.”

Ingenious.

“Amplified by Ionospheric Microwave Heater Array weaponry”

How good is that?

“The enormous fire disaster in Australia has nothing to do with anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions ‘climate change’, let alone Australia’s anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions” [This idea of climate change is promoted by] “celebrity prostitutes and Socialist activists delusionally insist in fervent mass murder”

There you are, trying to stop people destructively changing the earth systems is now to be classed as mass murder.

And this fire disaster represents a political take over by such people as:

“Extinction Rebellion, School Strike 4 Climate and the National Union of Students.”

Yay!!!! But these evil students want

“total conversion to SolarCity and SpaceX/StarLink/NeuroLink ‘Smart Grid’ Neural Implant Integrated ‘Internet of Things’ Electronic Enslavery & Eugenics Extermination 5G ACTIVE DENIAL Microwave Radiation Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

Whatever that is.

Insects are being exterminated via

“MASSIVE MICROWAVE OVEN WEAPON OF MASS EXTERMINATION VIA CARCINOGENIC CIRCUITS & CYBERNETICS”

I guess this is more obvious than insects are dying because of genetic modification of crops, massive use of insecticides or changing ecologies.

“5G Ghz Prelude to 6G Thz Plague
UN Agenda 2030 ‘666’ Terra Hurts ‘Lake of Fire'”

I like Terra Hurts…. and the 666 frequency. But again I understand many people are disturbed by 5G, so we might as well add that to the mix.

“Kevin Rudd & Julia Gillard’s massive donations to Clinton Foundation Pay-to-Play Child Sex & Cannibalism corruption, blackmail and extortion linked to Cardinal Pell”

In case you didn’t know, the first part of this is standard right wing noise. There is precious little evidence presented, but then the Clinton Foundation is not the Trump foundation, which seemed to indicate its charitable object in its name. Anyway, we all know Hillary is crooked, so this just adds to the weight of socialist, Satanist, English, Chinese, Vatican crooks. They all have something in common. We don’t like them.

China is bad, it is growing emissions… but

The rabid, deluded and democidal POLITICAL “climate change” drones refuse to ever direct their efforts against the PRC:

That could be because many of them don’t actually vote in the PRC, or speak Chinese, and they have no political influence there. But plenty of people do criticize China and India, although both countries are expanding their renewables at a considerable rate.

“ACHTUNG ! Stop breathing ! How dare you exhale CO2 ! I said stop breathing !”

This, I presume, is a parody of a person who believes in climate change. Clearly these people have swallowed the idea that CO2 is absolutely harmless under all circumstances, and we can have as much as we like. Here let me show you:

before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric carbon dioxide densities where at near starvation levels for planetary flora whereas the current atmospheric carbon dioxide density is still only 40% of the optimal level for planetary flora.

We need more CO2 its good for you, even if its poisonous. The people who wrote this must be the EXTERMINATING SLAVES of the fossil fuel companies!!!!

We should also probably stop chopping trees down, so they can benefit from all this beautiful CO2, but that is not part of the agenda either, maybe they are fossil fuel bought out loggers. Oh and wasn’t China bad for increasing its emissions? If emissions are good, surely they should be welcomed as saviours of the worlds plant life?

I ran a game once in which the criminal shape changing lizards who ran the world, were trying to terraform Earth to something more suitable to their biology….. Seems like reality has almost caught up….

Climate change is the kind of strange object which for many people seems to make a conspiracy of disparate powerful and non-powerful people, (Catholics, Satanists, socialists, politically diverse scientists, school children with hyper-weaponry), more believable than a conspiracy of neoliberals and established fossil fuel interests, who already have networks, paid for think tanks, paid for politicians and a documented reputation for deception and ruthlessness. Indeed the success of the latter can be shown by the fact that the former have not managed to get any thing done to delay climate change at all, and the latter have managed to do things which should make it worse.

Why is this displacement so?

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Jobs from Adani

January 17, 2020

An old bit of honesty from the Federal Government on the tens of thousands of jobs that were to be provided by the Adani mine. Note the revised figures are still supposed to be wonderful:

Senator Bridget McKenzie: “They [Adani] will be employing 1,500 through the construction phase and around about 100 ongoing”

This can be seen as a classic example of ignoring one’s promise and putting a happy face on.

However, these figures still seem significantly greater than the figures given in court for the full mine, where there are actually penalties for lying.

Since this interview jobs figures have been revised again – telling the likely truth is unpolitic. I guess we will not know until it’s all over, and we have just permanently lost water.

A further comment this time from the Australia Institute:

coal mining contributes 2.2% to the GDP of Australia, $39.8 billion of almost $1.85 trillion. [how much of that stays in Australia, or goes to Australian workers, taxes and royalties is another matter]

coal mining employs around 57,900 workers, making up only 0.4% of the almost 13 million-strong Australian workforce

There are still other figures.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics considers that their the relatively recently introduced Labour Account is now the best source of information on employment by industry. It is “specifically designed to produce industry estimates that present the most coherent picture of the Australian labour market.” However it could still be classed as experimental, and primarily includes people who directly work in the industry and not in its supply chains.

These figures shows that in the 2017-18 financial year, there were around 38,100 people employed in coal mining. 

Coal mining is not that important or that big an employer

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Thunbergs are go! 06

January 5, 2020

I’ve just been sent another document about Greta Thunberg, arguing against “this teenager who had the audacity to reprimand others!!! – rather hypocritical of her!”

I should probably begin by stating that I do not know why a teenager should not reprimand adults. How many people never complained about adult politics when they were young? Are adults sacred or something? What on earth is hypocritical about criticizing other people, their actions or ideas? Is it hypocritical to criticize a teenage girl for accepting help?

Anyway, the author makes a number of points against Thunberg, but one problem is that, in the version of the post I have seen, they give absolutely no evidence for their assertions at all, so let’s just see if the arguments hang together.

1) “She is backed by a number of Swedish/Swiss venture/vulture capital funds focused to investing in green technologies.“

If true, so what? Denial is sponsored by large companies interested in preserving fossil fuels. There is massive amounts of evidence about this. Would you not expect other corporations to join in the discussions and throw money at it, as well?

2) “She was chosen from a number of young Swedish girls to represent their interests, trained and given information to start espousing.”

Again, no evidence and again, so what? Personally I would not choose someone on the Autistic/aspergers spectrum to train and manipulate because, knowing specialist teachers in this field, I know this is bloody hard and the results are highly unpredictable; she is likely to get annoyed and reveal all, for one. ‘People on the spectrum’ also tend to wind people up and annoy them, which Thunberg does. Lots of people tell me they don’t like her manner, or her tone, (again so what?). Not a good object choice for a conspiracy.

There is also no evidence that she could not find information herself. After all, its not that hard to find real scientific reports, or comments on those reports, no matter how difficult this seems for those commentators who prefer anonymous youtube videos.

3) She got an audience with the UN through a high powered marketing campaign, but “the 500 scientists, from around the world, who sent a letter to the UN did not gain an audience.“

This is perhaps the most significant point. The UN will not listen to scientists. The UN did have a panel of young people, and Thunberg was an obvious choice for that panel as she is well known, people would comment if she was not there. You don’t need a marketing campaign to do this.

4) “She slammed my generation and generations previously. We stole her childhood. A script written for her by the German marketing firm. Her childhood is like it is because of the sacrifice of a previous generation, many of whom lie buried in fields in Europe.“

Most of the generation who lie buried in the fields of Europe would be in their 80s and 90s if they were alive, which I think demonstrates the point here. This person is not reliable even for facts we all know. Most of the people in power are younger than mid sixties, they were not participants in the war. They may not have sacrificed particularly much.

No evidence is given that her speech was written by a marketing firm, and the idea of generational conflict is widely promoted by the media, probably in an effort to diffuse the idea of class conflict, or the conflict between the hyper-wealthy corporate sector and everyone else. So it is not inconceivable that she thought of the generation idea herself, without deliberate help.

Again people often complain about the emotional deadness of her speeches. They do not seem to have been written by marketeers who know more about humans and what is persuasive. Furthermore, she basically never gives ‘solutions’ which you would expect her to do if she was a passive tool of a conspiracy.

5) “She then gets used again by political leaders for photo op’s. Shame on our political leaders. The fact that she got face to face time should be abhorrent to countries.”

Sorry, but how is the fact she gets used for photo ops by some leaders her fault, or evidence of conspiracy? Some politicians abuse her and ignore her, is that similar evidence of something foul?

And why is it abhorrent that a relatively ordinary person gets face time with leaders and talks to them? Is it being claimed a person should be a billionaire, or a massive celebrity before any face to face contact, or that they should do it in secret because they represent some fossil fuel company?

6) “She leads schools protest march another photo op for greedy politicians, take part. Her ability to protest rests solely with the sacrifice of other generations.“

She occasionally participates in or inspires school marches which leads to greedy right wing politicians and media pundits calling her names, and abusing her pretty continually for the publicity it gives them. That is more realistic.

These right wingers, try to discredit the school (and other) protests by saying they are all organised by Thunberg and a few tech billionaires, and implying that there is no anger against their refusal to act on climate change from real people – its all manipulated, and we can keep on nannying fossil fuel companies and miners.

Again, so what if her ability to protest depends upon the sacrifice of previous generations? Isn’t that what the author is implying they sacrificed their lives for? Are we only supposed to protest in support of established power?

The author also berates her for travelling by yacht and for the crew taking planes back. This is a good point, but Thunberg does not control the crewing arrangements of yachts. That is the owner’s responsibility and planning. For what it is worth, Thunberg “has renounced at least one award and numerous speaking invitations to reduce her own carbon footprint” according to wiki. So go easy on the fact she travels.

Not a particularly coherent lot of criticisms, but it does show how threatening she can appear to be to some people.

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Donald Trump on Wind Energy

December 26, 2019

This is an excerpt on wind power and the Green New Deal, from a speech by President Trump issued by the Whitehouse, so its absolutely official…. Read and enjoy?

Palm Beach County Convention Center
West Palm Beach, Florida: 5:23 P.M. EST

“How about the senator from Hawaii? Nasty. Nasty. Horrible. Gee, what she says — what she says is so mean and angry. She’s not the smartest person on the planet. (Laughter.) She wants the Green New Deal, and then they informed her that that does not include airplanes. And you’re the senator from Hawaii. So they said, “What are you going to do?” And then they talked about building a train to Hawaii, can you believe it? (Laughter.)

“No, no, she wants it, even though you can’t — you’ll never get to Hawaii again. Say goodbye to Hawaii. No, it’s crazy, isn’t it, though?

“But I don’t want to knock it. All of these things have to be st- — it’s too soon. It’s too soon. Let it go. Let — let it seed. Like — just like our great agenda has to seed like a tree. It has to seed. Let the Green New Deal seed. (Laughter.) And then about two months before the campaign ends, I will rip that sucker like you have — (applause). We’ll let it seed, the Green New Deal. (Applause.)

“We’ll have an economy based on wind. I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much. I’ve studied it better than anybody I know. It’s very expensive. They’re made in China and Germany mostly — very few made here, almost none. But they’re manufactured tremendous — if you’re into this — tremendous fumes. Gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint — fumes are spewing into the air. Right? Spewing. Whether it’s in China, Germany, it’s going into the air. It’s our air, their air, everything — right?

“So they make these things and then they put them up. And if you own a house within vision of some of these monsters, your house is worth 50 percent of the price. They’re noisy. They kill the birds. You want to see a bird graveyard? You just go. Take a look. A bird graveyard. Go under a windmill someday. You’ll see more birds than you’ve ever seen ever in your life. (Laughter.)

“You know, in California, they were killing the bald eagle. If you shoot a bald eagle, they want to put you in jail for 10 years. A windmill will kill many bald eagles. It’s true.

“And you know what? After a certain number, they make you turn the windmill off. That’s true, by the way. This is — they make you turn it off after you — and yet, if you killed one they put you in jail. That’s okay. But why is it okay for these windmills to destroy the bird population? And that’s what they’re doing.

“AUDIENCE MEMBER: Because they’re idiots!

“THE PRESIDENT: (Laughs.) This is a conservative group, Dan. (Applause.) No, but it’s true. Am I right? (Applause.)

“I’ll tell you another thing about windmills. And I’m not — look, I like all forms of energy. And I think (inaudible) — really, they’re okay in industrial areas. Like you have an industrial plant, you put up a windmill — you know, et cetera, et cetera.

“I’ve seen the most beautiful fields, farms, fields — most gorgeous things you’ve ever seen, and then you have these ugly things going up. And sometimes they’re made by different companies. You know, I’m like a perfectionist; I really built good stuff. And so you’ll see like a few windmills made by one company: General Electric. And then you’ll see a few made by Siemens, and you’ll see a few made by some other guy that doesn’t have 10 cents, so it looks like a — so you see all these windows, they’re all different shades of color. They’re like sort of white, but one is like an orange-white. (Laughter.) It’s my favorite color: orange. (Applause.)

“No, but — and you see these magnificent fields, and they’re owned — and you know what they don’t tell you about windmills? After 10 years, they look like hell. You know, they start to get tired, old. You got to replace them. A lot of times, people don’t replace them. They need massive subsidy from the government in order to make it. It’s really a terrible thing.

“And what they want to do is they want to get rid of all petroleum product. That means you basically won’t have any factories in the United States.

“So tell me though, how are you going to win Texas when you say, “We’re going to get rid of all petroleum,” right? (Applause.) If you win — how about this guy, Beto? Beto. He was a beauty.

“AUDIENCE: Booo —

“THE PRESIDENT: Beto came out — he’s from Texas. He came out against religion, he came out against guns, and he came out against energy — oil, right? So he’s against oil, guns, and the Bible. Abraham Lincoln can’t win with that platform in Texas. I can tell you, right? (Laughter and applause.)

“No, we’re doing it right. We’re doing it right. And you know, our numbers, environmentally, right now are better than they’ve ever been before, just so you know, because I’m an environmentalist. I am. (Applause.) I want the cleanest water on the planet. I want the cleanest air anywhere — crystal-clean water. I want perfectly clean air. And we have the best numbers right now that we’ve ever had, meaning in the last 40 years. (Applause.) I assume the numbers a couple of hundred years ago were better because we didn’t have anything. So, over the last 40 years — we’re in very good shape.

“The coming months will decide whether our country will be governed by a corrupt, failed, and far-left ruling class or whether we will govern our country. Will it be governed of and by the American people? That’s what we’re talking about. (Applause.)”

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What he did at Christmas

December 26, 2019

Short and complete message from Barnaby Joyce, ex-right wing, deputy PM of Australia….. on twitter…

“Well, you probably wonder what politicians do on Christmas Eve. Well, when it’s drought, feed cattle. [shot of drought affected land].

“Now, you don’t have to convince me that the climate’s not changing; it is changing. My problem’s always been whether you believe a new tax is going to change it back?

“Look, I just don’t want the government any more in my life, I’m sick of the government being in my life.

“Now, the other thing we’ve got to acknowledge is, you know, there’s a higher authority that’s beyond our comprehension, and right up there in the sky [camera shot of sky]. Unless we understand that’s got to be respected, then we’re just fools. We’re going to get nailed.”

Obvious Commentary:

People have been saying the drought is bad for some years now, and that it is being prolonged and made worse by Climate Change. During that time Barnaby has been running with the “I love a Sunburnt Country” line, with a rare, but disbelieving, ‘maybee something is happening’ comment…. So it is a boost to hear him say, on camera, climate change might be real.

Even if he almost uses the “climate always changes” line.

Then he asks us if a new tax change it back. No. It won’t.

Because of people like him, a Carbon tax and some mild government action could no longer prevent the current drought – after all the drought is happening, we can no longer prevent it. What could have happened if he and others had not prevented action, never mind concerted action, is a whole different world – completely unpredictable. It would most likely be a better world, with a much better future, but we won’t ever know for sure.

His remark does manage to show the massive lack of creativity on the Right. He can only think of a tax as a solution. Nothing else. This is particularly bad, given that the Carbon price was not thought up by him or by his side of politics, in the first place. They really do seem to have nothing to offer,

To be fair one action was probably never going to change a problem of a complex system. We have needed multiple actions, for some time.

Even now, we could try to stop making the situation worse. We could stop new coal mines and gas drilling, and phase out old coal and gas. We could help workers find new well paid work. We could support international action rather than oppose it. We could support renewables rather than try to make the market so complicated its hard to invest. We could invest in new transmission cables to allow new power sources to come on line. We could invest in storage to help smooth out supply. We could support regenerative agriculture and save the farm sector. We could investigate and fund GHG drawdown. We could de-financialise water to stop wealthy people accumulating most of it and letting towns die. We could stop mining in water tables and in catchment areas.

There is a lot of things we could do. I’m sure people can think of more possibilities. A carbon tax is only one prospect not all of them.

He says he wants the government out of his life. Cool. He could resign. Start up a business. Refuse Federal and State assistance for his farm and business. He could reject his government pension…. Its easy. No? Odd. He could want all the gifts and non of the responsibilities.

If the statement means that he thinks that he can solve climate change by himself without any government involvement, then he should get on with it, and stop complaining that he can’t think of anything to do. Personally, I think he needs to persuade his party to get involved and take on the Liberals now that he has seen the problem. He could be helpful. He could be a maverick.

I suspect that God is not going to be particularly joyful that Barnaby Joyce recognised the great problem of our time, the great moral issue of our time, the challenge of whether to help to keep the creation going or abandoning it to greed, and then walked away saying it was God’s problem?

If people don’t respect God and God’s Creation, then we will be ‘nailed’. Things will get worse. That is one message he could take away from this. There is no longer any excuse to try nothing.

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Psychology and climate?

December 23, 2019

The question of psychology, climate change, and our apparent inability to deal with the problems, is an extraordinarily complicated question, so please excuse the length of this attempted foray.

First off I’d argue that, in the case of climate change, we probably cannot isolate individual psychological inabilities to deal with the problems, from the social and political inabilities to deal with problems; they are almost certainly all related and interconnected.

We live in a society whose huge success has depended on ecological despoliation and the production of greenhouse gases (GHG). This is a reality. The ‘available energy’ we have had to innovate, to build the form of prosperity we have, and the levels of military expansion and protection we have had, depends almost entirely upon fossil fuels, concrete (with heavy GHG emissions) and steel production. The rest of the world, to a large extent (not completely), would like the same levels of prosperity for at least some people, and the same levels of military security, and those things currently appear to need expanded use of fossil fuels and steel production – although some people are trying to do it with renewable energy, but that is hard and a little uncertain.

So we live in such a society, and are psychologically adapted (to the extent we can be) to that society and to its consumerist drives. Many people find their main source of psychological satisfaction in buying products, and this keeps the economy, its production, and its energy usage going. Note I’m not arguing that buying products is necessary for human satisfaction or happiness, but simply that this is encouraged by our social arrangements – politicians and business people get worried if people are not buying things. Buying things often (not always) also encourages ecological destruction and pollution – this is the nature of our lives and social dynamics.

If people accept that climate change and ecological despoliation is occurring and occurring at a rate which is dangerous to their individual and social lives, then they are faced with what we might call an existential crisis. Their ways of living are apparently destroying those ways of living. Most of what they know about how to act is potentially disruptive of that ability to act. Much of what they do to protect their families, is potentially harmful to those families. What apparently produced stability in their worlds, now appears to produce instability, and so on. This realisation can be paralyzing.

This problem is extremely hard to deal with at an individual level. How do you find out what to do? How do you make and take effective actions, without keeping the destruction going? How can you, as an individual, stop the apparently suicidal course of world social order? How do you fight against your source of prosperity? What might result if you do? It may seem too complicated, too horrible.

Deciding what to do may be close to impossible in the circumstances. You may feel stunned, drained, anxious, depressed etc. Conception of the world proves difficult, disruptive and disturbing. There are no standard social guides to what to do. Advice from anyone, is really only conjecture – it cannot be anything else. We have not faced this problem before, on this scale. However, should you decide to act anyway, you then face another, and possibly even greater, social problem.

Faced with the same issues as yourselves, many currently more powerful people have decided to ignore the problem, or decided that it is too difficult or that it does not exist. To their minds solving the problem means potentially destroying their prosperity, potentially destroying their military security, potentially destroying stability, and potentially destroying the relations of power and wealth they apparently benefit from. If climate change is true, and its effects are potentially really bad, and we try and stop it, then it seems that some extremely powerful and large corporations can no longer make money out of selling and burning fossil fuels. Some other companies will have to stop destroying ecologies to get resources. Some companies will have to stop over-fishing, destructive agriculture and forest felling.

If all this is true, then the situation is certainly psychologically dislocating for powerful people, and the established interests of their organisations and paymasters.

Those powerful people will not act on their own. They will team up with each other, to defend their apparent interests. Hence they can spend a lot of money and a lot of effort, trying to convince you that nothing can be done, and nothing should be done. They can politicise climate change, claiming that if you are a real conservative, real Republican, or real pro-business person, you will understand that the science is a conspiracy, and that solutions to climate change are socialist and hence bad (or evil) and so on. They try to appeal to fundamental parts of your social and psychological identity, to make you ignore the problem, support existing modes of wealth and power, and to encourage you to attack those who disagree. Indeed the politicization of climate, makes it much harder for people to talk to each other about it, which reinforces psychological incapacity and silence. After all, to those who recognized climate change, it appears that ‘deniers’ are trying to kill them, through denial. This also does not help calm conversation and psychological health.

Surprisingly rather than attempting to produce solutions (which may have uncertain social consequences), these representatives of established ways tend to denounce all potential solutions – and they sometimes may have a point, not all proposed solutions will be good solutions. However, this behaviour is unusual. Normally they can put forward solutions to problems, even if it is the one solution to all problems, but not here. This problem and this inability paralyses them (and is, in turn, part of their paralysis), and it paralyses a whole body of politics, a whole part of society. They have nothing left other than denunciation, the hope that it won’t be so bad after all, that scientists are wrong, and things can continue, or perhaps the hope that Armageddon is here, and they can do nothing about that, other than walk to their doom/salvation. Again psychology is entangled with social and political life.

However, as things continue to get worse, as fire erupts in forests which have not burnt for thousands of years, as droughts become more prolonged and farms become unproductive, as heat waves last longer, as land glaciers and ice shelves melt, as floods affect living areas, as weird weather keeps hitting, people may become more and more uneasy. They still have little sense of where to go, they have new things to learn and no way of learning. The distress will likely continue to increase, and people become more and more debilitated.

Eventually the psychological social and political systems will have few options

1) They will break down under their own inertia and inability to solve problems.

or

2) The people in power will start thinking that if they don’t do something then everything really is threatened, so they had better act, even if they don’t know what they are doing, or even if preserving existing power relations is more important to them than productive change.

or

3) New people with new ideas will try and take over, and there will be a political war.

or

4) a miracle will occur….. for example a new cheap easy technology may replace fossil fuels – but if it does not replace the social organization that occurs around pollution and destructive extraction will it do more than delay the point of crisis?

In any case, it is likely that realising that both psychological incapacities and capacities have socially and politically active backgrounds may be useful to overcoming some of the incapacities, anxieties and depressions that we face.

The reality is that we are not facing these problems alone and, while we may be encouraged to face them alone by people who want us to do nothing, or by the fear of being denounced by others, there is a necessity of facing the problems together with others; especially if we are going to undo our psychological incapacities. Perhaps discussing the way we feel about climate change with others in small groups might help us to clear away some of the incapacities to act? Then we might find out how to act, or how to promote solutions. Maybe we might even come up with solutions and persuade others to act. When facing such a problem, we need to work together, but we may need to converse together first in a reasonably collaborative and non-condemning environment, so as to build trust. Working together is important as it expands our capacity to act, our capacity to think, and our capacity to effect change, and have an influence in the world.

Turning away from problems because they seem insurmountable, or trying to solve everything by ourselves, is rarely helpful either to our pyscho-social functioning or to our success in solving the problems which produce their distress. This is especially the case, when the problem arises from the social dynamics we live amidst.

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Climate change and ‘myth’;

December 20, 2019

Introduction: Conceiving complex systems

In the next ten or so posts (!) I will try to describe what happens when humans attempt to conceive something like climate change, that is not comprehensible in detail, and how that affects our actions and abilities to cope with the problems it presents.

Climate Change is a global phenomena, beyond individual experience and beyond our abilities to manipulate easily (especially as individuals). It is what Timothy Morton calls a “hyper object” although I would prefer “hyper-process” – or simply “large scale complex system”.

Being a large scale complex system, Climate change is

  • not completely predictable
  • not completely modellable
  • not completely and easily comprehensible
  • hard to manipulate by individuals or small groups.
  • not completely separable out as a phenomena of its own. For example, climate change involves weather, vegetation, animal life, local ecologies, large scale ecologies, human social behaviour, human economic behaviour, human political behaviour and so on. Normally separate categories interact and blend.
  • prone to tipping point behavior in which things radically and quickly change from the current ‘state’ to a new one,
  • likely to appear disorderly and paradoxical. For example, some places might suffer more cold, and some more heat. Rainfall might become more intense, but occur in fewer days, and thus increase the extremes of flood and drought.
  • constituted so that actions have unintended consequences as a matter of course.

Not being completely comprehensible or predictable, when we try to conceive climate change, we tend to use what we might call the ‘symbolic register’. That is, we, as humans, tend to try and represent it by using existing symbols (or patterns of symbols), that are used to think about other hyper-processes, like life, being/existence, or even religious experience.

These symbols are not constituted as fully formed ‘scientific’ or ‘logical’ categories, but will have traces of magic or power (awe, mana), hanging around them. If you prefer, then you can think of climate change as being responded to as we might respond to “the sublime” or even to God.

This is not the same as saying that climate change is like God, in any other way than it is also bigger than us, beyond complete comprehension, and appears to be out of our control.

This is one reason why I am calling these patterns of conception, ‘myths’ and ‘symbols’; reflecting the kind of language or understanding used by theologian Paul Tillich, psychologist Carl Jung, and historian and political scientist Eric Voeglin; although I clearly am not using their systems in their full complexity, as they are not necessary for the points I’m trying to argue.

Myths defined

In this framework, myths are defined as strings of metaphors and templates for thought and experience that provide affective and narrative links between disparate things, events or processes (especially those that are overwhelming), thus producing an appearance of order. Myths, as the term is being used here, also act as rhetorical topoi, or as organisers of argument and perceptions of truth in situations of relative uncertainty, overwhelm and incomprehension.

Defined this way, myths and symbols are different from what we might call ‘signs’, where the words and the processes and objects they are applied to, are relatively easy to manipulate and understand, if we have the right technology etc. Signs and symbols form a continuum, rather than staying as fixed binary oppositions, and conceptions can slide around between the poles adding to the confusion…. but this is extra detail, not needed for the moment.

Particular uses of a mythic topos can also mark group allegiance. Using the wrong kind of mythic topoi in a discussion, might exclude a person from being listened to, or accepted by another group.

Other formulations of the problem of patterns of thinking: Marx and Foucault

The idea that our ideas are gathered around particular kinds of basic formulations is not new. Marx famously argued that ideas grow out of regular social practice, and that the ruling ideas of the time, the ideas which get most promotion and justification, are those ideas which justify and promote the rule of the ruling class, and their practice and experience. Neoliberalism, and its variants (what I will later call ‘religion of the market’), seem to be good examples of this.

If you are lucky in a Marxist world, then other classes might develop ideas which help them understand the world in terms of their practice, and act as counter-positions to, and critiques of, those ruling ideas, and allow actions against established power relations. If you are unlucky then you get the development of ideas which help the people reconcile themselves to their position, or even support their own domination – such as the sense that they are loosing out to minority groups, and their culture is being destroyed and undervalued by intellectuals, and they need more ‘free markets.’ Such positions may express the group’s practice to an extent, or they would have no appeal, but the positions may also ignore people’s more immediate problems, and propose solutions which only add further pain to their position.

Foucault, in his early work, suggested that ideas were patterned by an ‘episteme’ which linked things together in particular ways. For some reason or other (its not clear to me), the ‘episteme’ would change, and previous ideas would no longer make sense, or seem persuasive, and a new episteme would begin, which would have been incomprehensible to people working in the old episteme. For Foucault, Marxism is just another 19th Century mode of thinking that is no longer comprehensible in the current episteme, without a lot of work.

What I am suggesting is that these Marxist and Foucauldian positions are too systematic and, to some extent, ignore the force of previous developments on current popular forms of ideas.

Myths again

Myths are related to some previous patterns of ideas or tradition, and not any idea is likely to have mass appeal. There are many possible patterns of thought, not just a few, there is no extreme break between succeeding patterns, or necessary coherence between co-existing patterns.

The ‘myths’ I am discussing, are tied in with previous Western ways of understanding the world. They don’t have to mesh with each other perfectly. They can be wheeled into play when a group thinks them useful, or effective. Importantly, all these myths imply paradox or what I will call ‘counter-positions’. They imply a contradictory movement, as part of the myth’s governing dynamic. These paradoxes, when unrecognized may not help us deal with the situation we find ourselves in, they can split our energies and undermine our attempts at conceiving reality and our attempts to deal with that reality, but recognizing the paradox may open us up to new, more beneficial ways of conceiving the world.

Looking at the myths used to express Western relations to nature and disorder helps us to understand our ways of conceiving and persuading. People do not have to believe these myths, or take them as absolutely true, or nameable, for them to have effect; the myths are present in their collective history.

Here, I will discuss stories which I have classed as ‘Creation’, ‘Eden’, ‘Apocalypse-Millenium’, ‘Prometheus,’ ‘Justice’, ‘Reality is Elsewhere’, ‘The Problem’, the ‘Religion of the Market’ (see also Hulme 2009) and ‘Individualistic Rebellion’.

Although these myths are only nine amongst many, all are rife with immobilising paradox. The hope is that by realizing the source of our immobility, and being able to sit with the paradox, we may be able to move forward in a more creative way….

Next: Myths of Climate 01: Creation, order and disorder

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Its not an emergency…. What he did on his holidays

December 20, 2019

Interesting. The Australian Financial Review reports that “the Prime Minister’s minders ordered the media not to report that he had taken leave…” in the middle of a national bush fire emergency in which, in two weeks, over half of Australia’s yearly carbon emissions have been released, while refusing to talk to fire chiefs, or even recognising that there was a problem…. ‘Its not climate change. Its not climate change. How dare you suggest its climate change. How disrespectful is that….’

Weirdly, you might have thought the AFR would be a bit annoyed about this instruction, but they are calmly and kindly understanding. It was to protect the PM from “churlish criticism” and “undergraduate outrage on social media.”

Yes , it’s an “unremarkable holiday” and “everyone needs to take time out to recharge and reconnect with family,” especially a “hard-working Prime Minister” who is just like us, “Just a suburban dad.”

The problem with this, is that we all know that if a Labor PM bailed out on a major emergency, or if people were told not to report that, then the AFR would be howling for that PM’s head.

This is especially the case when we know his office at least twice denied the PM was in Hawai’i. They lied, but that is apparently not a problem.

Its Trump 101 reaching Australia.

Another minor thing, is that the instruction/request, assuming it existed (and why would the AFR, of all people, report it if it had not happened to them?), appears to assume that the media would largely treat the whole issue gently, and that the news would be suppressed. They assumed that, with the mainstream media onside, as usual, there would be no problem. There would also be no problem from the Labor Party, who have been consistently gentle about the Coalition. This was largely correct as the Right receives protection as standard.

However, a few outlets reported the issue (The New Daily, being the most vocal and breaking the story as far as I know) and it was taken up by ordinary people who then made it news through the derided social media, and they made it news in precisely the way that the Government and the PM, did not want it to be news. Some media clearly tried to play the issue down, others initially ignored it, and then under pressure from letters and fuss, decided to see it as worthy of discussion.

Whether this will be the change point in media representation of the government, in the way that Tony Abbott’s attempt to knight Prince Phillip and block gay marriage became a change point, it is too early to say. After all Abbott had to raise an huge amount of resistance before that change happened. But the politics of this is interesting to consider.

[I’m not linking to the AFR, because why give them clicks?]

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