War makes climate change more dangerous

This feels like it shouldn’t need to be said, and yet we continue to have an economy that seems to use war as a method of turning raw materials into profit by killing people. War is a high-pollution industry, from the direct emissions of fuel consumption, to the fires created, to habitat destroyed, to poisons left in the land. Unfortunately, it goes beyond that. Unexploded ordinance is a long-known problem, and a constant threat for people who live around current and former war zones.

You may be surprised to hear this, but this scenario doesn’t combine well with wildfires.

If you’re near Washington D.C., there’s an action tomorrow that you should try to attend

Now or Never is going to protest the Congressional baseball game at 6pm on July 28th, I’m planning on doing another post about this after the event, but the more people turn up, the better. I don’t know how I didn’t hear about this before today, but now that I know about it, I’ll do what I can to help get the word out.

What is Now or Never? 

We are a new collective, founded because we can no longer accept that our politicians twiddle their thumbs as the world burns. We see this summer as our last chance to pass bold, federal climate legislation. We need our leaders to see that too.

Why are you choosing to engage in direct action?

Because conventional tactics are not enough. Petitions are not enough. Phone calls are not enough. We need a dramatic and confrontational intervention to demonstrate just how serious this is.

We spoke truth to power but power shrugged us off. It’s time to escalate.

Will you still shut down the Congressional Baseball Game if they’ve reached a deal by game time?

If a climate spending bill has passed by then (or if passage is imminent), we will still take action to demand further legislation – this crisis won’t be solved by one bill, no matter how broad. However, we will ensure that our tactics fit the moment we are in. If Congress has passed climate legislation or is on the cusp of doing so, we may use a more conciliatory tactic.

Is this action about Biden, too?

Yes. It is time for him to play hardball.

Will there be a training before the action in which participants can learn how to engage in nonviolent direct action?

Yes. Details about the training will be available soon!

I want to protest the Congressional Baseball Game but cannot risk arrest – can I still come?

Yes.

Why are you announcing this plan publicly? 

Because we need this to be as big as possible.

This is good.

In case it wasn’t clear by now, I’m in favor of yelling at members of Congress over climate change, and doing it at this baseball game is even better. The Republican Party is committed to Christian fascism, with all the horrors one might expect, and they seem to be perfectly happy to drive our entire species to extinction. The Democratic Party responds to this unprecedented evil by bragging about how good they are at being chummy with the fascists. Their inaction has been unacceptable for decades. This game, whatever you think it may have been in the past, is now about normalizing and humanizing fascist politicians. The fact that the Democrats are going along with it is a clear demonstration of just how little they actually care about dealing with climate change. It’s disgusting.

The collective has a clear plan, both for tomorrow’s action, and for further action in August and September. Join tomorrow if you can, and look for ways to help if you can’t.

Video: Biden Burgers and Right-Wing Media

Today was a day off for me, so I’ll leave you all with this video on how right-wing media uses obvious bullshit to obfuscate, and how liberal media tends to enable that. The fact that the bullshit is so obvious is a part of the strategy.

Right-wing news media invents a story about a liberal politician. Mainstream media debunks it. Liberal media uses the invented story to defend the liberal politician from legitimate criticism and from the left. It happened during the Barack Obama administration, and it is happening under the Joe Biden administration already. This is not just about hamburgers.

Video: New York Times debunks corporate climate lies

I never look to the New York Times for my climate news, but this popped up in my Youtube feed, and I was pleasantly surprised by it. The concept of “Net Zero” long predates the current corporate vogue, but I think it has always acted to protect the unrealistic notion of continuing fossil fuel use, and just “cancelling it out” through various forms of carbon capture, and other things declared to be “offsets”. Basically, it’s the foolish hope – a hope that I held before gaining a better understanding of the world – that we can somehow solve this problem while keeping our society more or less the same as it was at the end of the 20th century. I will always be in favor of pulling excess carbon out of the air, but we can’t afford to fall for capitalist misdirection and misinformation. We haven’t the time.

Morbid Monday: Heatwave edition

It is far too hot. Over the last three years, the cool climate of these islands has spoiled me a little, but at 31.1°C/88°F, I’d be suffering even if I was more accustomed to the heat. It’s at times like this that I find it hardest not to think about what the rest of my life might look like. A fair amount of attention has been paid to the fact that this heat wave is almost identical to a hypothetical 2050 forecast run two years ago to raise awareness about climate change.

One of the most consistent themes in climate science over the past couple decades has been the ways in which the temperature is rising faster than expected, and the ways in which that’s causing problems faster than expected. The current heat wave has already killed over one thousand people on the Iberian Peninsula, and it is an absolute certainty that it has killed a great many people in the other affected countries. And, in case you need reminding, there are other heat waves happening around the world at the same time, and we are only halfway through July.

This is at 1.2°C over pre-industrial temperatures.

The rate of warming has been increasing, and it’s pretty much certain that that acceleration will itself accelerate in the coming decades. We are currently on track for a whole host of worst-case scenarios, and what do our political leaders do? Toady up to the same vicious monsters they’ve always aligned with, and push for more fossil fuel extraction.

Either these people actively want to bring about the extinction of humanity, or they are so senile, pampered, ignorant and arrogant that they truly cannot comprehend what is happening. Whether through malice or incompetence is irrelevant – these people are on track to getting us all killed.

In case it wasn’t clear, that’s not hyperbole. The path we’ve all been forced to take will lead to our extinction if we don’t make extremely big changes extremely soon. That extinction could happen a lot faster than a lot of people seem willing to consider.

And it’s going to be a miserable death. I’m writing this at 2am because I decided to just sleep through the hottest part of the day. The sun set a few hours ago, and it has cooled down a little, though there’s still depressingly little breeze. I’m irritable in the heat, and physically uncomfortable. It feels like it’s tiring just to exist, let alone work. Year after year, decade after decade, it’s going to just keep getting hotter. Heat waves are going to keep getting longer, and more intense, which means more and more people are going to suffer and die, and all of this was preventable.

Never forget that.

Never forget the future that these fuckers have stolen from us, and never forgive them for their crimes.

In spite of it all, I still think a better world is possible. I think we can reforge our civilization into one that can actually last, and can uplift everyone. What we can’t do is build that world in the image of the one we’ve got today. Obviously that means a more just and equal society, but it also means radically different infrastructure.

Take this heat wave, for example. Even without melting pavement, the way we live will not work in the climate we’re creating. If we want to avoid massive death from heat, we’re going to need to make air conditioning available to everyone. We also have to end fossil fuel use as soon as possible. Part of the reason scientists have been pushing for a proactive approach to climate change is that the energy transition will itself require a huge amount of energy. That means more emissions. The longer we delay it, the more we’re adding momentum to an avalanche that’s already set to destroy us.

But let’s say we end all fossil fuel use by 2030. The temperature is still going to keep rising. Even if greenhouse gas levels stayed the same, it would be at least 20 years before we reached thermal equilibrium. Ending fossil fuel use will also cause a drop in aerosol pollution, which will cause a spike in temperature, as that pollution will no longer be reflecting sunlight. And greenhouse gas levels are going to keep rising, because amplifying feedback loops, from permafrost to forest fires, are already active.

You know how futurism in the mid-20th century had everyone expecting flying cars and futuristic cities by this point in history? Well, the cars don’t seem practical, but I think we’re going to increasingly going to need cities that allow people to navigate without having to go outside.

I’ve been called alarmist a number of times by a number of people over the last decade, but I think most people have caught up to the idea that this really is an emergency. We really are facing ever-worsening heat waves and storms. We really are facing massive crop failures leading to planet-wide famine. This is happening, and it’s killing us.

And as it does, we have to keep paying rent.

Keep paying taxes to a government that funnels all that money into death and profit, while scolding us for “not doing enough”.

So we have to keep going. We have to keep surviving so we can change things. Personally, I highly recommend shaving your head. When I realized my immigration status didn’t allow me to get normal work, I decided to try out a mohawk, and I honestly like how it looks. I also am a huge fan of how much it helps  me stay cool. I sharpened my razor and shaved yesterday, and I can feel every breeze leeching a little heat off of my scalp. I honestly don’t think I can ever go back to having a full head of hair. It’s just too hot.

That’s the one upside, if you can call it that. The meme going around is that we live in a cyberpunk dystopia, but without any of the cool fashion or gadgets, and medical technology. Well, we’ve got some of the gadgets, and I know a number of wonderful people who’ve been able to make incredible changes to their bodies, to improve their lives. Mainly it feels like what we’re missing is the aesthetic and the organized resistance movement.

Fortunately, both of those are under our control.

Support me at patreon.com/oceanoxia for more uplifting content like this! It’s a little sparse there right now, but I’m working on a couple things to make it a  more useful resource in its own right, as a sort of supplement to this blog.

Video: How Britain Sabotaged the Caribbean

If we want to build a better future, we need to understand our past, and how it led to our present. As a global species facing global crises, that means learning the history of places far from where we live. There’s so much to learn, this is necessarily a lifelong process. That’s doubly true when you account for ongoing efforts to mislead people, in order to maintain the current global power structure. As I learn, I try to learn from those people who’ve been hurt by the the way things are, as it’s hard not to hear the perspective of those whose lives and countries are doing well.

You should all be following Andrewism’s youtube channel, and contributing to his patreon if you can afford it. I’ve learned a huge amount from him. One of the many things discussed in this video is the concept of underdevelopment as a weapon that has been used against former colonies, to force them to continue generating wealth for colonial empires. Just as the creation of capitalism protected the power of the feudal lords, so did the “liberation” of colonies protect the power of the former empires that had ruled over them. This is everywhere on this planet right now. It’s so ubiquitous, and so normalized that a lot of people in wealthy nations don’t even seem to realize it’s a thing they don’t think about.

Video: Let’s talk about the end of any pretense to democracy in the United States

If this court decides that this doctrine should be in effect, then your vote no longer matters. That is not an overstatement.
-Beau of the Fifth Column

At this point, I don’t think anyone worth consideration will pretend that the United States was a free and democratic society before 1964 or so. The existence of explicit, legislative racial segregation makes the very suggestion absurd. I would also argue that we haven’t have democracy (even the representative sort) since then, both in terms of general participation in governance, and in terms of the government’s responsiveness to the wants and needs of the people. Intentional hold-overs from the Segregation era, like redlining and white supremacist policing, combine with gerrymandering and capitalism to keep power in the hands of the same people who’ve always held it in this society.

I think that some form of direct democracy is what we need. Representative democracy has shown itself to be far too vulnerable to the abuses of the upper class, and looking at history, I think that was by design. It was a way to protect the privilege and power of those at the top. It let some new people into the club and complicated the process of ruling, as did the adoption of capitalism, but that was a price worth paying for making sure the club retained its benefits.

That said, representative democracy – even the vicious parody of it that we’ve had in my lifetime – is better than what may soon be in store for the United States.

At issue is the “independent state legislature theory” (ISLT), which the Brennan Center for Justice describes as a “baseless” concept “making the rounds in conservative legal circles” that posits congressional elections can only be regulated by a state’s lawmakers, not its judiciary—or even its constitution.

Prominent purveyors of former President Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen”—most notably, Ginni Thomas, a right-wing activist and wife of Justice Clarence Thomas—have invoked the dubious theory when pushing state lawmakers to help overturn President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.

“In Moore, North Carolina lawmakers argue they essentially get a ‘free pass’ to violate state constitutional protections against partisan gerrymandering when drawing districts which undeniably hurt voters,” said Riggs. “We will vigorously fight these claims and instead advocate on behalf of North Carolinians to prove what the ‘independent state legislature theory’ has been all along—a fringe, desperate, and anti-democratic attack by a gerrymandered legislature.”

Joshua Douglas, an election law professor at University of Kentucky, called Moore an “extremely dangerous case in that it could take away state constitutional limits on state legislatures when they enact restrictive voting rules.”

Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, a plaintiff in the Moore, said in a statement that “in a radical power grab, self-serving politicians want to defy our state’s highest court and impose illegal voting districts upon the people of North Carolina.”

“We must stop this dangerous attack on our freedom to vote,” he added.

I would say this looks like a return to the Segregation era – and it may well mean that in some states – but I think it’s likely to be both different, and worse in a number of ways. With climate catastrophe looming, and global ecosystems already collapsing, the stakes are getting higher every year. When I look at what’s happening, and at the multi-generational effort that has gone into making all this happen, I have to assume that they’re also thinking about how to prevent their power grab from being undone.

As always, I think Beau’s take on this is worth considering.

In some ways, this doesn’t change anything. We still need to organize. We still need to work to bring about real democracy, for the sake of our survival. This is another symptom of the systemic problems that we’ve been trying to solve all along. It’s also a new level of bad when it comes to the amount of work that needs doing, and the danger of doing that work. The biggest reason I write about this sort of thing is that I want to provide tools that can help persuade people of the need for action that goes far beyond the boundaries of what our liberal society told us was “acceptable.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

 

Abolish the police

Is that too much for you?

Do you honestly think cops do more good than harm? Based on what? We need first responders, but we don’t need cops any more than we need the ruling class the cops defend. So many of the crises of our time come from the failed experiment of putting our political power in the hands of “representatives”, in the hopes that they will use it wisely.

They haven’t.

Police are just the tip of the bloody iceberg, but they’re a horror show all by themselves. Police lie, constantly. Police murder family pets. Police steal more from Americans than burglars do. Police kill people every day, and for every one they kill, many more are traumatized, injured, maimed, or have their lives ruined by a bullshit arrest on their record, or by cops making them late for something important. Cops also have open contempt for the constitution, if you happen to care about that thing. They exist to uphold and defend the current power structure, and nothing more.

We spend obscene amounts of money on the police, and that doesn’t go towards keeping us safe. It goes towards keeping the ruling class in power, and keeping them safe from us, even as they drive us towards extinction. Start with defunding them, and redistributing that money to things that actually help the communities, and reduce the incentives for crimes that actually cause harm. As with so much else, we know how to make a better world – we just can’t actually do it while we’re governed by those who would lose their power in making that world.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into it. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Be on the lookout for people spreading the propaganda of a fascist terrorist

I don’t have a lot to say about the Chicago shooting. It’s yet another act of terrorism by a white American fascist. These will continue to happen until some time after the fascists feel certain that they have no open support from the general public or from the ruling class. My proposed course of action hasn’t changed. There is, however, one thing that I believe is important to highlight:

This seems like a pretty clear-cut attempt to add fuel to the fire of American transphobia. There’s already an effort underway to erase trans people from U.S. society, and to paint them as every kind of villain, evidence be damned. I’ve seen headlines focusing on the fact the shooter “wore women’s clothes”, but they all seem to be claiming that the clothes were an attempt to blend in.

I suppose it’s possible that there’s some truth to that, but given the nature of online fascist discourse, I think Erin Reed’s reading in the above tweet is more than reasonable. It’s also playing on a pretty common trope in media. Everyone is in danger from this fascist movement, but the amount of danger depends on what stage we’re at, and whether you’re seen as an ally to the victims of the moment. Fascists have always preferred targets with little to no political power, and trans people are pretty much always at the top of that list. Pointing out propaganda can help defuse it, and I think more people should be on the lookout for this sort of thing.

And right now the most important thing you can do, is figure out how to join and/or support anti-fascist activity. I’m all in favor of rehabilitating fascists, but that must come after they have no power to hurt anyone. The top priority has to be stopping them.