[P2P-F] Climate crisis

Tue Jun 11 07:24:13 CEST 2019

thanks Alex,

I'm working with the Flemish Greens, and have potentially big news after
the 22nd <g>

Michel

On Mon, Jun 10, 2019 at 12:48 PM Alex Foti <alex.foti at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear friends,
>
> dystopia is near but can still be averted. we shouldn't dive in to despair
> when movements like Greta's FFF and London's XR and huge surge of greens in
> Germany and elsewhere point to the fact that the people are finally ready
> to ditch fossil capitalism. i've recently lost (very suddenly) my beloved
> dad. so my outlook to life is dark. still he'd have wanted me to fight on
> even in the face of crushing odds. since last summer i went back to climate
> activism and was surprised to discover that many of my age (GenX) and
> millennials i know had done the same, in milano and elsewhere. green is the
> new red. p2p postcapitalists should join green parties, methinks.
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 9, 2019 at 5:59 PM Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> thanks for reading Slater's loss of faith apocalyptic warning letter
>> below,
>>
>> Michel
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
>> From: Mathijs de Bruin <mathijs at mathijsfietst.nl>
>> Date: Sun, Jun 9, 2019 at 12:04 PM
>> Subject: Climate crisis
>> To:
>>
>>
>> Dear friends,
>>
>> Not much of an update of my part. Tears are in my eyes as I’ve read
>> Matthew Slater’s post (forwarded below). Knowing him as one of the
>> strongest ‘possibilitists’/optimists who has been working on realistic
>> options for a livable future.
>>
>> I don’t know what to make of this, how to interpret this, how to deal
>> with this. I do know, that his words are not lightly spoken. I do think we
>> should worry. I feel that our solution(s) are not in maintaining wellbeing,
>> as much as in sticking together. I want to hold your hands as the tsunami
>> is coming, feel your embrace. See what is the best we can do, as *our*
>> world is failing.
>>
>> To me, in this context, even knowing (and: doing!) what should be done.
>> To choose survival, together, is worthwhile challenge. Even though the
>> fruits of our labour might not be the utopic reality we long and strive
>> for. It might be a different one: parting with grace, embracing what is to
>> come, overcoming despair and: building on what is (or might be) left.
>>
>> “Alles van waarde is weerloos.”
>> — Lucebert
>>
>> With love,
>> Mathijs
>>
>> *Van: *"Matslats - Community currency engineer" <matslats at fastmail.com>
>> *Onderwerp: **matslats.net <http://matslats.net>: Climate crisis*
>> *Datum: *9 juni 2019 om 10:27:07 WEST
>> *Aan: *mathijs at mathijsfietst.nl
>>
>>
>> <https://cdn.blog.ucsusa.org/wp-content/uploads/polar-vortex-2019-Jan-29.jpg>
>>
>> I suspected for a long time that our civilisation wasn't viable. When the
>> banks crashed in 2008 I paid attention to a lot of apocalyptic reporting
>> that said we came *this* close to economic Armageddon - whatever that
>> meant. As I better understood how capitalism is a stupid dogma preached
>> increasingly only by self-serving, vain sociopaths
>> <https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/give-and-take/201310/does-studying-economics-breed-greed>,
>> how it requires exponential consumption of resources
>> <http://www.missingtheforest.com/capitalisms-problem-exponential-growth-in-a-finite-system>,
>> and how it has failed to respond to increasingly shrill science-based
>> warnings, I came to expect an ugly financial and/or climate collapse as
>> inevitable in my lifetime.
>>
>> I was alarmed in early April 2018 when the polar vortex broke
>> <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/27/north-pole-temperatures-soar-past-freezing-beast-east-blasts/>
>>  and Europe froze, but Jem Bendell's paper, Deep Adaptation: A map for
>> navigating the climate tragedy
>> <http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf> didn't alarm me too much.
>> His favoured theory was a multi-breadbasket failure (MBBF) within 5-10
>> years; the melting of sea ice at the north pole would disrupt the weather
>> so much that that grain harvests in Russia, USA and Canada would all fail,
>> and that this would probably lead to societal collapse. Fair enough, I said.
>>
>> Jem's instincts can be uncanny. Last week I heard the news that the polar
>> vortex has shifted over from the less cold north polar ocean to greenland,
>> where more ice remains, and this has meant near incessant rain for grain
>> farmers in USA. By the end of the planting season, only 60% of the fields
>> had been planted, and much of what was planted had drowned.  This plus
>> drought in Australia
>> <https://www.world-grain.com/articles/11664-australian-wheat-output-falls-to-11-year-low> and
>> a long Russian winter
>> <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-25/russia-s-wheat-crop-under-threat-from-miserable-start-to-spring> means
>> that we are facing MBBF this year.
>> Suddenly I'm not so sanguine. My last ten years work on complementary
>> currencies has been an expression of optimism I didn't feel, that it was
>> possible for people to self organise and run society differently. I felt
>> even if there was the smallest chance of it being meaningful, in the face
>> of such suffering, working to change the system was meaningful. Now without
>> time to change the system, its hard to find purpose. We've been sunning
>> ourselves on the beach until the tide went out waaaay to far, and now we
>> see the froth of the tsunami on the horizon. Its too late to install the
>> early warning system, too late to reinforce our houses, now we've only got
>> time to run and to hope. Its time for me to admit that the system I was
>> working to change for the better will be destroyed and all my work will be
>> dashed on the rocks. Its too late to build a decentralised energy grid; too
>> late to redesign finance; too late to build a better food system, too late
>> to restore our national manufacturing base; too late to restore our soils,
>> agriculture; too late for carbon capture technologies too late to dismantle
>> the fossil fuel leviathan; too late for every hope I clung to; from last
>> week to this, I don't know who I am any more.
>>
>> Climate science is far from exact, but when it starts playing out we'd be
>> foolish to say it was wrong. But there's a leap from "crops will fail" to
>> "society will collapse" which is another field entirely. A sensible society
>> could still take steps (that's what Deep Adaptation is about) not so much
>> to reduce carbon emissions but to ensure that resources are shared. But our
>> society is very far from sensible, or even aware of what is coming. A real
>> but manageable hunger crisis, perhaps comparable to the special period
>> in Cuba <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs6xoKmnYq8>, will be
>> compounded by shock, blame, #ClimateGrief
>> <https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/gy48d4/environmental-grief-climate-change-anxiety>,
>> and opportunist elites profiting from pain.
>>
>> So this winter the global grain reserves will be eaten and as in 2011,
>> the poorer countries will probably experience political unrest fueled by
>> high food prices. Since the north pole is past its tipping point, next year
>> will almost certainly be worse than this, so about 18 months from now, a
>> LOT of people will be freaking out. More than ever before, the food we eat
>> will be taken directly out of the mouths of the starving.
>>
>> Some people are predicting human extinction
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqIt93dDG1M>, but that seems a rather
>> abstract loss to me. My chest is heavy and my gaze constantly drifts
>> because I'm grieving the failure of our wondrous civilisation,
>> contemplating the expansion of needless suffering, and turning to face a
>> difficult future.
>>
>> ----------------------
>>
>> Please share this link on social media if you like it!
>>
>> http://matslats.net/climate-crisis
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>>

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