Global Newsletter #58 The End of The World As We Know It Tuesday, November 16, 2021 by Extinction Rebellion

Paco Dennis

SF VIP
Location
Mid-Missouri
"Introduction

Dear rebel,

After all the fanfare, COP26 has failed. Not one of the G20 nations, the richest and most culpable for this crisis, will cut emissions to keep global heating even close to 1.5C.

Global South nations have not been given the promised funds to rebuild from and defend against the extreme weather that already devastates their lands and people.

Fossil fuel infrastructure will continue to expand and governments will continue to rig markets to encourage it.

On all fronts, yet again, the can has been kicked down the road. Next year, we are promised, will be different. Next year real progress will be made.

Half a world away, another convention that will define our climate has also just finished. But this one, held in Cape Town, has been a roaring success.

Africa Energy Week is a networking event designed to accelerate deals between regional governments and global fossil fuel companies. Africa is full of untapped oil and gas reserves. Contracts are being signed and vast infrastructure is being built to get it.

African governments need to bring their people out of fuel poverty. Agreements should be in place to push renewables, and compensate them for keeping their fossil fuels in the ground. Instead, the fossil fuel industry sent more delegates to COP than any country, escaped binding restrictions, and is free to plunder, pollute, and profit as usual.

African rebels are bravely trying to push back against this suicidal system. In Action Highlights you can read about protests across the DRC, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. You can also find out how unfettered extractivism is causing ecocide and genocide in Ecuador and Brazil.

Despite hosting another week of beautiful COP26 actions that championed Global South activists, Scottish rebels are angry. Understand why in COP Action Highlights.

Our last issue was so stuffed with Global South action that we had technical problems sending it out. To those who received it twice, apologies. To those who never read it at all, why not check your junk mail folder, or read it on our website.

The rallying cry of COP26 was to keep 1.5 alive. But the G20 leaders have left it to die, and instead breathed new life into the fossil fuel industry. The human cost of their negligence is terrifying to contemplate.

These so-called leaders do not just have blood on their hands, they have it up to their waists. They wade through it.

If they are not stopped, they will drown in it. For the good of all life, we must somehow wrestle power away from them."



About a 20 minute read

https://rebellion.global/blog/2021/...sletter-58-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it
 

COP26 has failed
Thanks for the post, interesting article. Don't agree with it all, but interesting. I do believe we have and will continue to impact climate, but I do not expect things like COP26 to ever have any beneficial effect for 2 general reasons:

  1. There is no scientific consensus as to a reasonable plan to address this, and I don't see one coming any time soon.
  2. I do not believe we are capable of agreeing on and implementing global action on this, even if we had that consensus. Never happened before, don't see it now.
 

Thanks for the post, interesting article. Don't agree with it all, but interesting. I do believe we have and will continue to impact climate, but I do not expect things like COP26 to ever have any beneficial effect for 2 general reasons:

  1. There is no scientific consensus as to a reasonable plan to address this, and I don't see one coming any time soon.
  2. I do not believe we are capable of agreeing on and implementing global action on this, even if we had that consensus. Never happened before, don't see it now.

Those two points you make are the existential threat to our survival as a species. Covid and Global heating. Most people are just trying to stay above water economically world wide, except the privileged elite. Both threats are going to take a massive concerted effort to get a handle on them, and as divided as people are on most everything, it doesn't look to promising. What about our Grandchildren? What chances do they have of living without the constant struggle to survive?
 
I have thought for many years that we are already making adjustments to ward off these threats...adaptation. Yes, local folk can have a big impact, but these problems are so vast in scope that our own self importance is our main enemy. It prevents us from forming a winning plan. It has to be a team effort, with no slackers.
 
Those two points you make are the existential threat to our survival as a species. Covid and Global heating. Most people are just trying to stay above water economically world wide, except the privileged elite. Both threats are going to take a massive concerted effort to get a handle on them, and as divided as people are on most everything, it doesn't look to promising. What about our Grandchildren? What chances do they have of living without the constant struggle to survive?
This may be one of the problems: although one would think that people with grandchildren would at least worry about their own grandkids' lives to come, seems like too many don't. A true example: our financial advisor--let's call him Ebenezer...ha--told us about some of his other clients who were speaking to him about how they should invest in light of climate change. He said he told them to not worry about climate change. They said to him, "Wait, you're not worried about climate change at all?!" He told them "No." They said but you have skin in the game, you know, your kids! Don't you worry about what kind of world your kids will be stuck with? He said he told them, "Nope. My kids are going to be stuck with the world they're stuck with just like I got stuck with the world I got stuck with." I've heard that a lot of the world's elite think the same way. This attitude is not only sad but dangerous IMO.
 
Right now, it's whose ox should be gored. So nobody is stepping up to the plate. We haven't reached the crisis point, yet. When it becomes obvious that the climate HAS changed, I don't think many present governments will be able to manage the effects, and a period of great instability will begin. We are not prepared for the mass migrations, and the increased weather changes. We only have to look at the past. For every great shining era in Egyptian history, it is followed by an era of famine, wars, civil discourse, and the break down of authority. It's repeated over and over. Humans haven't changed in thousands of years, and I doubt they will in the future.
 
After several years of the industrial revolution, and the age of oil and plastics, many scientists were warning of the dire consequences.
Scientists warning, yes, I'm with you there. Unfortunately most of the hand wringing is coming from others and exaggerated claims from non scientific folk only create more doubt and confusion and lead to more non believers. JMHO.
 
Some of those "hand wringers" include the CIA; I think it was in a climate book by Michael Mann IIRC; he got an appointment with the CIA office in D.C. and not mentioning climate at all, asked what were the spots in the world that the Agency was most concerned about as to political and other kinds of upheaval. Welp, golly, the agent mentioned every one of the areas that environmentalists are concerned about due to weather (ocean level rise, hurricanes, drought, etc.) and migration troubles. Well, you know, those dingbat, excitable, exaggerating CIA guys.
 
Scientists warning, yes, I'm with you there. Unfortunately most of the hand wringing is coming from others and exaggerated claims from non scientific folk only create more doubt and confusion and lead to more non believers. JMHO.
YES! In fact one of the leading scientists in the push to WARN us that catastrophy is immenent spoke recently about quitting the doom story NOW, he says it does more harm by trying to cause panic, and I agree totally. Level headed research and concerted adaptation seem best to me.
 
So, how will you force China to stop building coal-fired power plants? They are putting a new one on line about every week. While that's going on, we don't have a prayer in hell of curbing carbon emissions. We're emptying out the ocean with a teaspoon while the Chinese add water at the other end...using a firehose.
 
So, how will you force China to stop building coal-fired power plants? They are putting a new one on line about every week. While that's going on, we don't have a prayer in hell of curbing carbon emissions. We're emptying out the ocean with a teaspoon while the Chinese add water at the other end...using a firehose.
I have no idea...excellent point.
 
Yes, and around the same time the UN stated that the optimum "sustainable" human population would be 6 billion. We surpassed that number years ago, and will likely reach 9 billion around mid century. As the climate warms, oceans rise, water for agriculture becomes scarce, automation/robotics continues to make human labor obsolete, the latter years of this century are going to be a "tipping point" for humanity.
 


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