Towheeblog

“No government, even the most progressive, is yet prepared to contemplate the transformation we need: a global programme that places the survival of humanity and the rest of life on Earth above all other issues. We need not just new policy, but a new ethics. We need to close the gap between knowing and doing. But this conversation has scarcely begun.” Click here for full essay by George Monbiot in the “Guardian”.

This Sunday the nations will have reps at a global warming conference in Glasgow. They will meet, discuss, gossip, dine, grant interfviews showing great concern and strong intent, most attendees will have arrived by seriously polluting airplane, most will avoid any of the demonstrators outside. It is unlikely any nation will volunteer to accept millions of Bengladeshi or thousands of Samoans as those nations are covered by seawater. Hardly likely any country will announce it is moving all coastal cities to an elevation of fifty feet above sea level, or fifteen meters since most of the world has long been metric [What is the American refusal to join the decimal world? “You can’t make me”–is that the core of our culture?] Will even South Carolina or Georgia willingly take millions from Florida as that state becomes a sodden archipelago? “You can’t make me.” Do we imagine immigrant camps full of fenced-in Floridians? When’s that movie coming out on Netflix?

At the conference there’ll be proclamations of progress. Monday I blogged (click here) about how bad the greenhouse gas situation has become…we are destined for over 2.5 degrees Celsius of planetary warming, even if we stop polluting today.

Zero emissions? Not on our lives, says India, world #3 greenhouse gasser. Click here. “You can’t make me.”

Take the Gulf Arab states, please…they are far more moved by petroleum prices (click here) than the coming sea level rise that will destroy their coastal development. Can our species not imagine future change? Even if we see it in movies? How could a recent invention like money has so entralled a species that once was self-sustaining?

More than a dozen nations and California have plans to phase out sales of internal combustion vehicles–click here. It goes slowly–in much of America it is still legal to have double-stroke noise makers to blow leaves even though re-charging electric blowers are as good and far less polluting and not unhealthy to the operator. And even though composting the leaves is best for soil and living plants and worms and sowbugs and earwigs and… “You can’t make me.”

The U.S. will have a huge delegation and wide representation–even some Republican officials. Present will be President Biden, half of his Cabinet, John Kerry, Obama, Bezos, Bill Gates, DiCaprio. Who’s going? Click here. Many of the top autocrats ARE NOT attending–Xi, Vlad, Bolsonaro, et al. “You can’t make me.” So that’s more of a species characteristic, not simply American.

Click here for World Bank prediction of tens of millions of East Africans being displaced by rising sea levels.

Eminent and wise biologist, E. O. Wilson, has just been talking about how biodiversity (the slide of many species toward extinction) and global warming are inseparable issues. Click here. Wilson advocates re-wilding half of the planet. Imagine what that would mean about corporate farming, giant fracking fields, clear-cut logging, endless suburban parking lots, etc. Know how profiteers hate endangered species? I’m told one rural Oregonian got a recording of Spotted Owl calls, used it to lure the birds and shot every one because the endangered owl was preventing logging from which he made a living. “You can’t make me.”

Has nobody noted that the climate summit begins on Halloween? A haunting fact and true, regardless of what Tucker Carlson says. Are we the planet’s ghouls? The walking dead out to kill the other creatures? Is there a ghost of a chance we will tame profit and learn to act responsibly? Is there some witchcraft to use against greenhiouse gases? Trick or retreat? Will everybody mask up for a covid Halloween? “You can’t make me.”