Tag: climate change

Is Limiting Carbon Emissions a Crime?

This might become criminal activity when six of the nine SCOTUS judges follow through with their opinion of 2.28.2022. Fossil-fuel extractors lose business whenever power plants switch to providers of sustainable energy. This is what happens if you vote conservatives into office. However, cretins such as Mitch McConnell use their political might to keep progressive candidates from even receiving a Senate hearing, such was the case when Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland for consideration. McConnell kept Garland from a single word of consideration for the entire 11 months remaining before Obama left office. DJ Trump installed three hand-picked by the hard-nosed and highly conservative Federalist Society, each has proven their loyalty to highly conservative supporters who gifted them with a rubber stamp.

Checks and Balances

Climate change is not the stuff of opinion, it is happening precisely as determined by the scientific method, a process that looks for flaws in a hypothesis at every stage before accepting a hypothesis as a working theory. Compare this to a process that props up untenable arguments in a way that builds a house of cards. Expect a collapse and refuse to learn from past bad decisions.

Time is not on the side of those who get to witness the damage caused by global warming. Each fraction of 1.5 Celsius degrees brings the destruction already discovered in 1973 when it could have been addressed with ease. Now, three decades later, we have collectively squandered precious time. And we have done so with abandon. Closing your eyes and ears, shutting your mouth, does not turn opinions into facts.

Math and science are not strong points in the American educational system, they have become weak points that require us to fill those weak spots with students from elsewhere on the planet. How many Americans do you see in University math classes?

We are the proverbial frogs waiting for the slowly warming pot of water to suddenly cool. Unfortunately, the lid is on the pot and we cannot jump out. Our entire planet is becoming that pot of boiling water and we are very slowly recognizing that planet B is a fictional orb. Six of nine Supreme Court justices live in a fairy tale land where bad moves do not have consequences. Sadly, Earth’s entire ecosystem might suffer from those consequences.

Thanks for reading.

The Carnivore in the Room

Veganism is a way of being that threatens the biosphere the least while threatening the destroyers of the biosphere the most.

The largest contributors to climate collapse are fossil-fuels, the consumption of sentient-animal body parts, consumption of sentient-animal byproducts, and their related purchases in the marketplace — including the fuel exhausted to get you there or the fuel exhausted to bring those purchases to you.

My suggestion to replace the familiar cacophony of beeps at the checkout lane with bleats, oinks, moos, clucks … no bites so far. Kroger headquarters are in a town just north of us, perhaps they could set up a trial to test my modest proposal.

Part of a serenity prayer : changing the things you can — do not consume the flesh, non-human breast milk, or the eggs of a sentient being and you cast one vote for preventing catastrophic climate change. It’s not just a concern expressed for creatures living near a coastline. See Humpty Dumpty for more on this principle.

I’ve been a climate watcher since the 1960s and have had the privilege of teaching climate vagaries back then. Nixon approved creating of the EPA in a political swap, he was never anything wiser than a consummate politician. Our current POTUS is a climate-change denier, doncha know.

When you encounter an article on climate change, search for the word “vegan.” It usually does not even get mentioned.

Thanks for Reading.

Forked Tongues

It’s always a good day to learn something you did not know before, but it’s a better day when you learn things that confound your complacency and introduce you to post-Santa compassion.

There is a soundbite for every event taught in American classrooms — 90% of history curricula are either grossly twisted, are outright sanctified falsehoods, or are events not complimentary to sensitive Whiteous feelings: the eighth deadly sin.

Genocide on American soil is slathered over with sugary white icing before it can meet publishing standards established in Texas. Before Columbus, Indigenous Americans were a tapestry of tribes. Should they be thankful for Western Evilization?

Blacks lived in the tapestry that was Africa before the Europeans arrived. Should they be thankful for being saved by the generous very nice plantation system that offered better? Better Lives Through Slavery?

Somehow most White genealogies trace back to families that were very very nice to their slaves. Who the hell ever learns about the Black Stock Market of Greenwood, OK that was burned to cinders in 1921? What of their American dream?

“According to eye-witness accounts, the scope of the attack was equal to warfare: homeowners shot dead in their front yards, planes dropping turpentine bombs onto buildings, a machine gun firing bullets on a neighborhood church. It was a living nightmare, and for many decades Tulsa treated it as such, a dark apparition of the mind that might fade from memory so long as it was repressed.”


Fox News doesn’t have to be your only source for faux news, you can turn the channel, change the dial, read a “newspaper of record” and mislearn about current regime changes in the process. Perhaps you watch, perhaps you hear, perhaps you think you know about what happens in Venezuela. Here is something by Greg Palast that inspired me, something I promised to post: In Venezuela, White Supremacy is a Key Driver of the Coup.


Additional unnerving, disturbing, real-time coverage is available at Shelby Courtland dot com. Truth can be unsettling sometimes.

…”The New York Times, NPR and other mainstream outlets in the US reported on marches against the Chavez government, describing the tens of thousands of Venezuelans calling for Chavez’s removal. The light-skinned protesters were overwhelmingly wealthy — and they wanted you to know it. Many of the women marched in high heels, the men peacocking in business suits, proudly displayed in the uniforms of their privileged class. The Chavistas wore patriotic yellow, blue and red T-shirts, sneakers, jeans.”

Most people do not even participate in their own lives, life happens in an autonomic way — if you prefer that the cranium function as autonomically as breathing, it will do so. Existing-While-Black, Existing-While-Palestinian, Existing-While-LGBQT+, Existing-While-Living InMyNeighborhood? Cognitive dissonance happens. I think myself a cognitive dissonancer because I am a lightning rod for the cognitively dissonanced. You must learn to expect such when you speak for the most exploited among us, and I even include all sentient animal beings among the most exploited. Factory farms really are death camps. It’s always a good day to eschew blood-laden “resources” — for all parties involved, both the muncher and the munched.

Avoiding television frees up the time to think independently, in my opinion. The tube/screen has always been a popular passive way to address boredom, a popular alternative to thinking, a stress-reducing mechanism. Propagandists, marketers and people like DJT know how to direct their messages to target audiences by any means possible, such as eye-scanning apps that detect minute movements in a supermarket, process the scanned data at the checkout, and follow you home. Technology is very good. Technology is very bad.

Thanks for reading.

Talking Turkey About Climate

Let’s talk turkey…

For 245 million turkeys, a lifespan averages 4 months — 3 generations per year. A wild turkey can live up to 10 years, fly 55 miles an hour, and run 35 miles an hour.

…climate change does change everything. Adopting a vegan diet is powerful enough to slow the course, to stem a looming mega threat to the only planet we have. She has already shaken off five extinction events, a sixth won’t stop her. When climate goes rogue, the planet does not die. She’ll have to wait for the sun to extinguish under the weight of depleted helium atoms. She will still revolve around the sun and still rotate on her axis daily. The beings she nourished from Extinction Event 1 through Event 5 lived under the same star,  the Sun.

Once a rolling stone starts rolling downhill, you can’t stop it, unless:

  1. a miracle happens

OK, short list.

Humankind always abides every threat, doesn’t it? Where was humankind during the previous five extinction events? Not around, Ken Ham, of AnswersInGenesis notwithstanding. Scripture is not science.

Unpaid Political Announcement

What a terrible time to suffer a ne’er-do-well in the Oval Office. We’ve set a boulder atop Sysiphus’ boulder. Full speed aHell.

The Art of the Devil: A Memoir by D. Trump, forward by Alistair Crowley.

Become a vegan and take the single most effective step for stemming global warming. But that’s a non-starter, isn’t it?

There’s no way, man.

Get real, Bill. Who made you boss?

Yeah, I’m like, right.

My eyes roll in your general direction.

Nobody really knows.

A fable

A mythical Sysiphus rolls a mythical boulder up a mountain. Sisyphus’ twin meets his brother at the mountain’s peak. I’ll call him Sysiphus B. He accepts the boulder from Sysiphus. The twin’s task: keep the orb from rolling any farther downhill. His feet are slipping on some moss. He can’t push the boulder upwards, he can only slow its progress. Somewhere between marker 1.5 and marker 2.0, Sysiphus B has to stop the boulder, else:

#SR15

Game Over.

Replay? No replay option. We’re toast.

Editors note:

Dear Meat Eater, I used to be among the crowd you’re in with. A body gets very weary during detox. The more meat you eat, the more toxins you must excrete. I’ve had to detox from alcohol. In my experience, detox from animal cells takes longer, you get tired and feel depleted, but don’t blame a plant-based diet. Cold, dead turkey, sorry for piling my plate with your white and dark. I don’t expect an apology, cold dead turkey. I did the crime and served the time, but the animals I have consumed are still dead meat.

There is nothing great about being a mega-greedy species (the crowd I’m in with), one that drains the lifeblood of trillions of fish, billions of birds, billions of land creatures 24/7/365 (366 on leap years). It’s not a thing to be proud of. Karma presents as arterial plaque, over-burdened heart, stroke to the brain, diabetes. Statistically speaking. Who knows?

You may say I’m dreaming, but I’m not the only one.

Let’s talk some more turkey:

  • 245 million turkeys raised and killed every year in the U.S.
  • More than 46 million of them are killed each year at Thanksgiving alone,
  • more than 22 million die at Christmas.

Source

T’day is six weeks away, today is a good day to start a detox.

“We’ll see” means “never.”

Thanks for reading.