naomi klein
intro’d to Naomi via the documentary: words from the edge.
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naomi on shock doctrine – may 2020
utopia from the ashes – oct 2020 – avi
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sept 2014:
book trailer:
book site:
http://thischangeseverything.org/
https://solutions.thischangeseverything.org/
book links to amazon
– – – – –
notes:
It was a matter of collective survival, so the money had to be found. In the process, some rather large fictions at the heart of our economic system were exposed (Need more money? Print some!).
on ridiculous ness – and we have all we need – just need to re allocate
Finding new ways to privatize the commons and profit from disaster is what our current system is built to do;
built to prosper from disaster – bad is profit ness
protests have also shown that saying no is not enough. If opposition movements are to do more than burn bright and then burn out, they will need a comprehensive vision for what should emerge in the place of our failing system, as well as serious political strategies for how to achieve those goals
a people experiment ness
Rather than the ultimate expression of the shock doctrine—a frenzy of new resource grabs and repression—climate change can be a People’s Shock, a blow from below. It can disperse power into the hands of the many rather than consolidating it in the hands of the few, and radically expand the commons, rather than auctioning it off in pieces.
Indeed the only thing rising faster than our emissions is the output of words pledging to lower them
So we are left with a stark choice: allow climate disruption to change everything about our world, or change pretty much everything about our economy to avoid that fate. But we need to be very clear: because of our decades of collective denial, no gradual, incremental options are now available to us.
we need to think differently, radically differently,
yes. let’s try a different experiment – perhaps something not yet tried
For any of this to change, a worldview will need to rise to the fore that sees nature, other nations, and our own neighbors not as adversaries, but rather as partners in a grand project of mutual reinvention
It seems to me that our problem has a lot less to do with the mechanics of solar power than the politics of human power—specifically whether there can be a shift in who wields it, a shift away from corporations and toward communities, which in turn depends on whether or not the great many people who are getting a rotten deal under our current system can build a determined and diverse enough social force to change the balance of power.
scale the individual – via networked individualism
When fear like that used to creep through my armor of climate change denial, I would do my utmost to stuff it away, change the channel, click past it. Now I try to feel it. It seems to me that I owe it to my son, just as we all owe it to ourselves and one another
So the real trick, the only hope, really, is to allow the terror of an unlivable future to be balanced and soothed by the prospect of building something much better than many of us have previously dared hope
Eisenstein et al ness
the thing about a crisis this big, this all-encompassing, is that it changes everything. It changes what we can do, what we can hope for, what we can demand from ourselves and our leaders…
..It means there is a whole lot of stuff that we have been told is inevitable that simply cannot stand. And it means that a whole lot of stuff we have been told is impossible has to start happening right away
The bottom line is that we are all inclined to denial when the truth is too costly—whether emotionally, intellectually, or financially. As Upton Sinclair famously observed: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!
what if money were no object ness – away from earning a living.. sinclair perpetuation law
if there is a reason for social movements to exist, it is not to accept dominant values as fixed and unchangeable but to offer other ways to live—
Not only do fossil fuel companies receive $775 billion to $1 trillion in annual global subsidies, but they pay nothing for the privilege of treating our shared atmosphere as a free waste dump—a fact that has been described by the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change as “the greatest market failure the world has ever seen
To allow arcane trade law, which has been negotiated with scant public scrutiny, to have this kind of power over an issue so critical to humanity’s future is a special kind of madness
or – perhaps – to allow the concept of money to have this kind of power – what is money..? if we can simply print more – when “we” deem it proper
there is no way in the world that we can have a sustainable economy and maintain international trade rules as they are.
question assumptions.. ie: any rules
when people wake up to the fact that our governments have locked us into dozens of agreements that make important parts of a robust climate change response illegal…
The habit of willfully erasing the climate crisis from trade agreements continues to this day
while trade has repeatedly been allowed to trump climate, under no circumstances would climate be permitted to trump trade.32
the television in my living room, appear nowhere on Canada’s emissions ledger, but rather are attributed entirely to China’s ledger, because that is where the set was made. And the international emissions from the container ship that carried my TV across the ocean (and then sailed back again) aren’t entered into anyone’s account book
exploited workers and an exploited planet are, it turns out, a package deal.
Anderson argues that we have lost so much time to political stalling and weak climate policies—all while emissions ballooned—that we are now facing cuts so drastic that they challenge the core expansionist logic at the heart of our economic system.47
I realize that this can all sound apocalyptic—as if reducing emissions requires economic crises that result in mass suffering. But that seems so only because we have an economic system that fetishizes GDP growth above all else, regardless of the human or ecological consequences
again – what is money… why are we letting it decide everything – let’s experiment w/o money – no?
Anderson and Bows-Larkin argue, the time has come to tell the truth, to “liberate the science from the economics, finance and astrology, stand by the conclusions however uncomfortable . . . we need to have the audacity to think differently and conceive of alternative futures.”53
yes. that. exactly.
In other words, changing the earth’s climate in ways that will be chaotic and disastrous is easier to accept than the prospect of changing the fundamental, growth-based, profit-seeking logic of capitalism
we’re so messed up.
the rest of us are going to have to quickly figure out how to turn “managed degrowth” into something that looks a lot less like the Great Depression and a lot more like what some innovative economic thinkers have taken to calling “The Great Transition.”56
a people experiment – a qr film – too much
Policies based on encouraging people to consume less are far more difficult for our current political class to embrace than policies that are about encouraging people to consume green. Consuming green just means substituting one power source for another, or one model of consumer goods for a more efficient one
Indeed, a number of researchers have analyzed the very concrete climate benefits of working less. John Stutz, a senior fellow at the Boston-based Tellus Institute, envisions that “hours of paid work and income could converge worldwide at substantially lower levels than is seen in the developed countries today.” If countries aimed for somewhere around three to four days a week, introduced gradually over a period of decades, he argues, it could offset much of the emissions growth projected through 2030 while improving quality of life.64
Forget et al – if we want drastic – unbelievable change – set people free – to luxury ness
In short, it means changing everything about how we think about the economy so that our pollution doesn’t change everything about our physical world.
“We have no option but to reinvent mobility . . . much of India still takes the bus, walks or cycles—in many cities as much as 20 percent of the population bikes. We do this because we are poor. Now the challenge is to reinvent city planning so that we can do this as we become rich.” —Sunita Narain, director general, Centre for Science and Environment, 20131
Steve Fenberg of New Era explains, “We have one of the most carbon-intensive energy supplies in the country, and [Boulder] is an environmentally minded community, and we wanted to change that. We realized that we had no control over that unless we controlled the energy supply.”10
boulder – 30 min away (and even closer) to people doing
What stands out about Boulder’s experience is that, unlike some of the German campaigns, it did not begin with opposition to privatization. Boulder’s local power movement began with the desire to switch to clean energy, regardless of who was providing it
It’s entirely possible to have a booming market in renewables, with a whole new generation of solar and wind entrepreneurs growing very wealthy—and for our countries to still fall far short of lowering emissions in line with science in the brief time we have left. To be sure of hitting those tough targets, we need systems that are more reliable than boom-and-bust private markets
Sorting out what mechanisms have the best chance of pulling off a dramatic and enormously high-stakes energy transition has become particularly pressing of late. That’s because it is now clear that—at least from a technical perspective—it is entirely possible to rapidly switch our energy systems to 100 percent renewables
watching the insurance companies continue to put money before human health in the midst of the worst storm in New York’s history cast this preexisting injustice in a new, more urgent light. “We need universal health care,” Mohit declared. “There is no other way around it. There is absolutely no other way around it.” Anyone who disagreed should come to the disaster zone, she said, because this “is a perfect situation for people to really examine how nonsensical, inhumane, and barbaric this system is.”31
Taibbi ness
we are what is standing in the way. with out policy and/or with our blindness to it.
The disaster revealed how dangerous it is to be dependent on centralized forms of energy that can be knocked out in one blow. It revealed the life-and-death cost of social isolation, since it was the people who did not know their neighbors, or who were frightened of them, who were most at risk
Over the course of the 1970s, there were 660 reported disasters around the world, including droughts, floods, extreme temperature events, wildfires, and storms. In the 2000s, there were 3,322—a fivefold boost. That is a staggering increase in just over thirty years, and clearly global warming cannot be said to have “caused” all of it. But the climate signal is also clear
The cost of Superstorm Sandy is estimated at $65 billion. And that was just one year after Hurricane Irene caused around $10 billion in damage, just one episode in a year that saw fourteen billion-dollar disasters in the U.S. alone. Globally, 2011 holds the title as the costliest year ever for disasters, with total damages reaching at least $380 billion. And with policymakers still locked in the vise grip of austerity logic, these rising emergency expenditures are being offset with cuts to everyday public spending, which will make societies even more vulnerable during the next disaster—a classic vicious cycle.37
A 2011 survey by the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs looked at how much it would cost for humanity to “overcome poverty, increase food production to eradicate hunger without degrading land and water resources, and avert the climate change catastrophe.” The price tag was $1.9 trillion a year for the next forty years—and “at least one half of the required investments would have to be realized in developing countries.”40
ridiculous ness of money – why are we even talking this language? – what does this even mean to us. who’s deciding we pay things – who decides price matters.. what does paper mean. oh my.
In 2011, the Department of Defense released, at minimum, 56.6 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent into the atmosphere, more than the U.S.-based operations of ExxonMobil and Shell combined.46
then she asks – where will the money come from – and adds – assuming that the govt won’t just print more – like they’ve done for banks. and to that i’d ask – why not – and/or – why do we even need money..
According to Stephen Pacala, director of the Princeton Environmental Institute and codirector of Princeton’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative, the roughly 500 million richest of us on the planet are responsible for about half of all global emissions
then she gives a short (and she says incomplete) list of some ways we could get money, including.. low rate financial transaction tax, closing tax havens, a 1% billionaire’s tax, slashing military budgets, $50 tax per metric ton of co2, phasing out fossil fuel subsidies…. then she adds:
If these various measures were taken together, they would raise more than $2 trillion annually.55
so – even if we played within the ridiculous rules we keep assuming can’t be changed/wiped-out, we could do it
it is not that “we” are broke or that we lack options. It is that our political class is utterly unwilling to go where the money is (unless it’s for a campaign contribution), and the corporate class is dead set against paying its fair share.
end ch3 – talks about need for populace to create political leaders who would: do long term public planning and say no to corporate moneys
That has decentralized not just electrical power, but also political power and wealth: roughly half of Germany’s renewable energy facilities are in the hands of farmers, citizen groups, and almost nine hundred energy cooperatives.
Iwan Baan ness – oh to trust self-organizing
Though often derided as the impractical fantasy of small-is-beautiful dreamers, decentralization delivers, and not on a small scale but on the largest scale of any model attempted thus far, and in highly developed postindustrial nations
These examples make clear that when governments are willing to introduce bold programs and put goals other than profit making at the forefront of their policymaking, change can happen with astonishing speed.
leap frog ness
The key, she says, is to offer people something the current system doesn’t: the tools and the power to build a better life for themselves.
something else to do ness
Communities should be given new tools and powers to design the methods that work best for them—much as worker-run co-ops have the capacity to play a huge role in an industrial transformation. And what is true for energy and manufacturing can be true for many other sectors: transit systems accountable to their riders, water systems overseen by their users, neighborhoods planned democratically by their residents, and so on.
exactly. short. ness. let’s try that.
“agroecology,” a less understood practice in which small-scale farmers use sustainable methods based on a combination of modern science and local knowledge.
“Agroecology is the solution to solve the climate crisis.” Or “small farmers cool the planet.”25
as De Schutter notes, “Today’s scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production where the hungry live—especially in unfavorable environments.”
All this amounts to a compelling case against the claim, frequently voiced by powerful philanthropists like Bill Gates, that the developing world, particularly Africa, needs a “New Green Revolution”—a reference to philanthropic and government efforts in the mid-twentieth century to introduce industrial agriculture in Asia and Latin America.
Hunger isn’t about the amount of food around—it’s about being able to afford and control that food. After all, the U.S. has more food than it knows what to do with, and still 50 million people are food insecure.”28
“The tragedy here is that there are thousands of successful experiments, worldwide, showing how climate-smart agriculture can work. They’re characterized not by expensive fertilizer from Yara and proprietary seeds from Monsanto, but knowledge developed and shared by peasants freely and equitably.”
mincome as well..
while his administration ordered more environmental reviews, then reviews of those reviews, then reviews of those too.
inspectors of inspectors – too much
The energy sector is changing dramatically all the time—but the vast majority of those changes are taking us in precisely the wrong direction, toward energy sources with even higher planet-warming emissions than their conventional versions.
Those numbers also tell us that the very thing we must do to avert catastrophe—stop digging—is the very thing these companies cannot contemplate without initiating their own demise. They tell us that getting serious about climate change, which means cutting our emissions radically, is simply not compatible with the continued existence of one of the most profitable industries in the world.
roughly $27 trillion
ridiculous ness
It also helps that these companies are so profitable that they have money not just to burn, but to bribe—especially when that bribery is legal. In 2013 in the United States alone, the oil and gas industry spent just under $400,000 a day lobbying Congress and government officials, and the industry doled out a record $73 million in federal campaign and political donations during the 2012 election cycle, an 87 percent jump from the 2008 elections.59
What all this money and access means is that every time the climate crisis rightfully triggers our collective self-preservation instinct, the incredible monetary power of the fossil fuel industry—driven by its own, more immediate self-preservation instinct—gets in the way.
Ashton concluded, “In government it is usually easy to rectify a slight misalignment between two policies but near impossible to resolve a complete contradiction. Where there is a contradiction, the forces of incumbency start with a massive advantage.”63
the handy thing about selling natural resources upon which entire economies have been built—and about having so far succeeded in blocking policies that would offer real alternatives—is that most people keep having to buy your products whether they like you or not
since these companies are going to continue being rich for the foreseeable future, the best hope of breaking the political deadlock is to radically restrict their ability to spend their profits buying, and bullying, politicians.
or change that whole system thinking as well… no?
Because these distortions have been in place for so long—and harm so many diverse constituencies—a great many smart people have done a huge amount of thinking about what it would take to clean up the system.
part of noise ness. time for new system. rather than spin wheels on clean up.
We can’t sit this one out, not because we have too much to lose but because we have too much to gain. . .
As many are coming to realize, the fetish for structurelessness, the rebellion against any kind of institutionalization, is not a luxury today’s transformative movements can afford.
or.. it’s exactly what we need to expedite. perhaps we’re just missing the mechanism to unleash.
A bitterly ironic infertility for an island whose main export was agricultural fertilizer.12
“solastalgia,” with its evocations of solace, destruction, and pain, and defined the new word to mean, “the homesickness you have when you are still at home.”
Glenn Allbrecht
although this particular form of unease was once principally familiar to people who lived in sacrifice zones—lands decimated by open-pit mining, for instance, or clear-cut logging—it was fast becoming a universal human experience, with climate change creating a “new abnormal” wherever we happen to live.
Few places on earth embody the suicidal results of building our economies on polluting extraction more graphically than Nauru. Thanks to its mining of phosphate, Nauru has spent the last century disappearing from the inside out; now, thanks to our collective mining of fossil fuels, it is disappearing from the outside in.
And we tell ourselves all kinds of similarly implausible no-consequences stories all the time, about how we can ravage the world and suffer no adverse effects. Indeed we are always surprised when it works out otherwise. We extract and do not replenish and wonder why the fish have disappeared and the soil requires ever more “inputs” (like phosphate) to stay fertile. We occupy countries and arm their militias and then wonder why they hate us.
people who could very well be the climate refugees of tomorrow to play warden to the political and economic refugees of today.20
the warming is no less real for our failure to pay attention.
later on – reading about all the strategies shared at summit. and thinking of a time in gradeschool, where they brought this stuff we put on our teeth – to see where we were missing dirty spots. wondering how could we see better – what we’re doing to the air/earth? exposing what we keep looking past.. or is currently invisible to the naked eye..
It’s not that these substances are evil; it’s just that they belong where they are: in the ground, where they are performing valuable ecological functions. Coal, when left alone, helpfully sequesters not just the carbon long ago pulled out of the air by plants, but all kinds of other toxins.
true about so many things (and people) in life.. no?
Saving a few beautiful mountain ranges wouldn’t be enough to get us out of this fix; the logic of growth itself needed to be confronted.
same with concept of money – no?
“step in line, or else you’re not going to get your share of the money,”
too complex and arcane for nonexperts to understand, seriously undercutting the potential to build a mass movement
so important that movement is simple enough, ie: be you. it can’t require that the 99% who may/may not read or be interested in your thing.. do so.. 99 and 1 ness
while green groups battle over the research and voluntary codes, the gas companies are continuing to drill, leak, and pour billions of dollars into new infrastructure designed to last for many decades
inspectors of inspectors – while we’re suffocating from the day… the death of us ness
The added irony is that many of the people being sacrificed for the carbon market are living some of the most sustainable, low-carbon lifestyles on the planet
learning from those we think we need to manage.. oi – quiet enough ness
does nothing to change the underlying cause
i would even suggest that for climate – perhaps our underlying cause: 2 needs – that would unleash all people – to take care of all else – got to be deep enough – if we want it to sustain itself
instead treats only the most obvious symptom
how we deal with most of life.. no?
Geoengineering debate generally takes place within a remarkably small and incestuous world, with the same group of scientists, inventors, and funders promoting each other’s work and making the rounds to virtually every relevant discussion of the topic.
imaginary cosmopolitanism. ness.
This is how the shock doctrine works: in the desperation of a true crisis all kinds of sensible opposition melts away and all manner of high-risk behaviors seem temporarily acceptable.
According to Latour, Shelley’s real lesson is not, as is commonly understood, “don’t mess with mother nature.” Rather it is, don’t run away from your technological mess-ups, as young Dr. Frankenstein did when he abandoned the monster to which he had given life.
a terribly poor metaphor for geoengineering. First, “the monster” we are being asked to love is not some mutant creature of the laboratory but the earth itself. We did not create it; it created—and sustains—us. The earth is not our prisoner, our patient, our machine, or, indeed, our monster. It is our entire world. And the solution to global warming is not to fix the world, it is to fix ourselves.
yeah. that. 2 needs.
geoengineering the very antithesis of good medicine, whose goal is to achieve a state of health and equilibrium that requires no further intervention
cure begs to be temporary.. designed to become obsolete
Perhaps this is mere coincidence, but it does seem noteworthy that so many key figures in the geoengineering scene share a strong interest in a planetary exodus.
imagine if we focused all that time/energy/money on earth/us – at least first.
“The first step towards reimagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination—an imagination that is outside of capitalism as well as communism. An imagination which has an altogether different understanding of what constitutes happiness and fulfillment. To gain this philosophical space, it is necessary to concede some physical space for the survival of those who may look like the keepers of our past, but who may really be the guides to our future.” —Arundhati Roy, 20101
then the largest protests in the history of the U.S. climate movement (more than 40,000 people outside the White House in February 2013).
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and then – live tweets while reading book – sept 2014:
and.. The heirs of oil baron John D. Rockefeller are dumping fossil fuel investments thkpr.gs/3570338 pic.twitter.com/CkznrD5CbF
step one for getting out of a hole: Stop digging.”24
oh. on so many levels. of course i see it so deeply in Ed.
on January 4, 1993, “an estimated 300,000 Ogoni, including women and children, staged a historic non-violent protest, and marched against Shell’s ‘ecological wars.’ ”
To this day, oil production has ceased in Ogoniland—a fact that remains one of the most significant achievements of grassroots environmental activism anywhere in the world.
The Ijaw Youth Council voted unanimously to call their new offensive Operation Climate Change. “The idea was: we are going to change our world,” Isaac Osuoka, one of the movement’s organizers, told me. “There was an understanding of the link that the same crude oil that impoverishes us, also impoverishes the Earth. And that a movement to change the wider world can begin from changing our own world.”
an attempt at another kind of climate change—an effort by a group of people whose lands had been poisoned and whose future was imperiled to change their political climate, their security climate, their economic climate, and even their spiritual climate.34
government declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew. According to Osouka, “In village after village, soldiers deployed by the state opened fire on unarmed citizens.” In the towns of “Kaiama, Mbiama, and Yenagoa people were killed in the streets and women and young girls were raped in their homes as the state unleashed mayhem, ostensibly to defend oil installations.”35
rule of their protests – were no guns, no drinking..
Brutal events like these go a long way toward explaining why many young people in the Niger Delta today have lost their faith in nonviolence.
creating bad starfishness
And yet it is worth looking back to the 1990s when the aims were clear. Because what is evident in the original struggles of the Ogoni and Ijaw is that the fight against violent resource extraction and the fight for greater community control, democracy, and sovereignty are two sides of the same coin.
This is coming as a rude surprise to a great many historically privileged people who suddenly find themselves feeling something of what so many frontline communities have felt for a very long time: how is it possible that a big distant company can come to my land and put me and my kids at risk—and never even ask my permission? How can it be legal to put chemicals in the air right where they know children are playing? How is it possible that the state, instead of protecting me from this attack, is sending police to beat up people whose only crime is trying to protect their families?
here’s to questioning more assumption – for all of us – commons ness – ie: Sophia Campos ness
“I would like to officially welcome Rex to the ‘Society of Citizens Really Enraged When Encircled by Drilling’ (SCREWED),” wrote Jared Polis, a Democratic Congressman from Colorado, in a sardonic statement. “This select group of everyday citizens has been fighting for years to protect their property values, the health of their local communities, and the environment. We are thrilled to have the CEO of a major international oil and gas corporation join our quickly multiplying ranks.”47
After two centuries of pretending that we could quarantine the collateral damage of this filthy habit, fobbing the risks off on others, the game is up, and we are all in the sacrifice zone now
equity. just wrong end. for now.
What is clear is that fighting a giant extractive industry on your own can seem impossible, especially in a remote, sparsely populated location. But being part of a continent-wide, even global, movement that has the industry surrounded is a very different story.
prior to now ness.
This networking and cross-pollinating is usually invisible—it’s a mood, an energy that spreads from place to place.
a qr ness
In a sane world, this cluster of disasters, layered on top of the larger climate crisis, would have prompted significant political change.
The power of this ferocious love is what the resource companies and their advocates in government inevitably underestimate, precisely because no amount of money can extinguish it.
We know that we are trapped within an economic system that has it backward;
..it behaves as if there is no end to what is actually finite (clean water, fossil fuels, and the atmospheric space to absorb their emissions) while insisting that there are strict and immovable limits to what is actually quite flexible: the financial resources that human institutions manufacture, and that, if imagined differently, could build the kind of caring society we need.
yes. tweeted it twice on purpose.
“It’s not a fun time to be in the coal industry these days,” said Nick Carter, president and chief operating officer of the U.S. coal company Natural Resource Partners. “It’s not much fun to get up every day, go to work and spend your time fighting your own government.”26
oh my. just. .. oh my. like – welcome to the real (99%) world.
if there is one thing billion-dollar investors hate, it’s political uncertainty.
They were there to send the message, as one protester put it, that, “This is going to affect our future generations. They still need to live.”
What has changed in China in recent years—and what is of paramount concern to the ruling party—is that the country’s elites, the wealthy winners in China’s embrace of full-throttle capitalism, are increasingly distressed by the costs of industrialization
What has changed in China in recent years—and what is of paramount concern to the ruling party—is that the country’s elites, the wealthy winners in China’s embrace of full-throttle capitalism, are increasingly distressed by the costs of industrialization.
Li Bo, who heads Friends of Nature, the oldest environmental organization in China, describes urban air pollution as “a superman for Chinese environment issues,” laughing at the irony of an environmentalist having “to thank smog.” The reason, he explains, is that the elites had been able to insulate themselves from previous environmental threats, like baby milk and water contamination, because “the rich, the powerful, have special channels of delivery, safer products [delivered] to their doorsteps.” But no matter how rich you are, there is no way to hide from the “blanket” of toxic air. “Nobody can do anything for special [air] delivery,” he says. “And that’s the beauty of it.”30
World Health Organization sets the guideline for the safe presence of fine particles of dangerous air pollutants (known as PM2.5) at 25 micrograms or less per cubic meter; 250 is considered hazardous by the U.S. government. In January 2014, in Beijing, levels of these carcinogens hit 671. The ubiquitous paper masks haven’t been enough to prevent outbreaks of respiratory illness, or to protect children as young as eight from being diagnosed with lung cancer
or not..
consent seems beside the point. Again and again, after failing to persuade communities that these projects are in their genuine best interest, governments are teaming up with corporate players to roll over the opposition, using a combination of physical violence and draconian legal tools reclassifying peaceful activists as terrorists.V51
Scahill and Taibbi and Soling and … ness. so in need of another way.
as George Monbiot, The Guardian’s indispensable environmental columnist, put it on the twenty-year anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit,
“Was it too much to have asked of the world’s governments, which performed such miracles in developing stealth bombers and drone warfare, global markets and trillion-dollar bailouts,
..that they might spend a tenth of the energy and resources they devoted to these projects on defending our living planet? It seems, sadly, that it was.” Indeed, the failure of our political leaders to even attempt to ensure a safe future for us represents a crisis of legitimacy of almost unfathomable proportions.56
Finding ways of expanding public spaces and nurturing civic involvement is not just some woolly-headed liberal project—it’s a survival strategy.”58
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more going on live just now:
via Astra: Nice short video of @FloodWallStreet arrests and testimonies. And yup, plenty of footage of my awesome sister.
NYPD arrest 102 people (incld. 1 polar bear, 2 Captain Planets and people in wheelchairs)
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“Dear Matafele Peinem”
– – – –
restoring the balance
from idle no more
– – –
extraction ness
– – –
back to book:
Debbi Hauper, told a video crew, “It’s just a real sense of togetherness. We are united in what is most important. And I think we’re seeing more and more of government and industries’ methods of trying to separate us. And let’s face it, these methods have worked for decades. But I think we’re waking up.”
I suddenly understood what this actually meant: some of the most marginalized people in my country—many of them, like all the senior members of the Lameman clan, survivors of the intergenerational trauma of abusive residential schools—are taking on some of the wealthiest and most powerful forces on the planet. Their heroic battles are not just their people’s best chance of a healthy future; if court challenges like Beaver Lake’s can succeed in halting tar sands expansion, they could very well be the best chance for the rest of us to continue enjoying a climate that is hospitable to human.
That is a huge burden to bear and that these communities are bearing it with shockingly little support from the rest of us is an unspeakable social injustice.
It is this gap between rights and resources—between what the law says and what impoverished people are able to force vastly more powerful entities to do—that government and industry have banked on for years.
In New Brunswick, Suzanne Patles, a Mi’kmaq woman involved in the anti-fracking movement, described how non-Natives “have reached out to the Indigenous people to say ‘we need help.’ ”27 Which is something of a turnaround from the saviorism and pitying charity that have poisoned relationships between Indigenous peoples and well-meaning liberals for far too long.
schooling the world ness
It was in the context of this gradual shift in awareness that Idle No More burst onto the political scene in Canada at the end of 2012 and then spread quickly south of the border.
whoa. dancing with a book/life. in many ways.
ironically, in many cases, climate change is further increasing the economic pressure on Indigenous communities to make quick-and-dirty deals with extractive industries.
It was tremendously difficult for local shrimpers and oystermen to take work from the company that had just robbed them of their livelihood—but what choice did they have? No one else was offering to help pay the bills. This is the way the oil and gas industry holds on to power: by tossing temporary life rafts to the people it is drowning.
parallels with so many other sectors.. ie: kids trying to change Ed. no?
if non-Native people are going to ask some of the poorest, most systematically disenfranchised people on the planet to be humanity’s climate saviors, then, to put it crassly, what are we going to do for them? How can this relationship not be yet another extractive one, in which non-Natives use hard-won Indigenous rights but give nothing or too little in return?
Ed again.. token stu-voicers.. but not protected/supported.. in fact – so often demeaned.
If this situation is going to change, then the call to Honour the Treaties needs to go a whole lot further than raising money for legal battles
So now we find ourselves back where we started, in dialogue with nature.
imagine the exponentiated\ing change if we took a yr off to just listen. to nature. to ourselves. to each other. the answers are everywhere. quiet enough.
John Jordan, a longtime ecological activist in Britain and France, describes resistance and alternatives as “the twin strands of the DNA of social change. One without the other is useless.”26
connected adjacency ness – two loop theory
recurring mega-tragedies like Superstorm Sandy and Typhoon Haiyan that kill thousands and cause billions in damages serve dramatically to educate the public about the terrible costs of our current system, driving an argument for radical change that addresses the root, rather than only the symptoms,
two needs – deep enough to get at the root
debates seem to matter little to residents: the shared experience of tremendous loss, as well as the outpouring of generosity that follow the disaster, have, in Greensburg, rekindled the values of land stewardship and intergenerational responsibility that have deep roots in rural life. “The number one topic at those tent meetings was talking about who we are—what are our values?
perhaps we are paneling/debating ourselves to death. reminds me of this image of Jaime – ask/give it a try.. then if rejected – have a good day.. and carry on with what matters.
the only true green and sustainable things in life are how we treat each other.”28
Developed countries, which represent less than 20 percent of the world’s population, have emitted almost 70 percent of all the greenhouse gas pollution that is now destabilizing the climate. (The United States alone, which comprises less than 5 percent of the global population, now contributes about 14 percent of all carbon emissions.)34
in the absence of a political solution, Indigenous groups are likely to resist extraction with their bodies.
the central question of whether climate action will reflect the history of who created the crisis. The end result: emissions keep soaring way past safe levels, everyone loses, the poorest lose first and worst.
amazing… when they are perhaps the closest to the solution/answers we seek most.
if governments are unwilling to live up to their international (and domestic) responsibilities, then movements of people have to step into that leadership vacuum and find ways to change the power equation.
As we have seen, emissions in North America and Europe still need to come down dramatically but, thanks largely to the offshoring of production enabled by the free-trade era, they have pretty much stopped growing. It’s the fast-rising economies of the Global South—with China, India, Brazil, and South Africa leading the pack—that are mostly responsible for the surge in emissions in recent years, which is why we are racing toward tipping points far more quickly than anticipated.
if we accept the scientific evidence that we need to act fast to prevent catastrophic climate change, it makes sense to focus our action where it can have the greatest impact. And that’s clearly in the Global South.
the math of all this. the zero sum game ness.. mostly loss ness.. of not being in sync. ie: doesn’t matter how great your intentions and how much effort you put into it – if there’s a counter going on somewhere else… or even right next to you. (otherwise we would have cleaned/changed things up by now.. because there are certainly enough people currently doing/seeking good.)
we need to get the dance down. we can.
we need money, we need technology, to be able to do things differently.”43 And that means the wealthy world must pay its climate debts. – Sunita Narain – director general of one of the most influential environmental organizations in India,
The research project delved into the fact that when the British Parliament ruled to abolish slavery in its colonies in 1833, it pledged to compensate British slave owners for the loss of their human property—a backward form of reparations for the perpetrators of slavery, not its victims. This led to payouts adding up to £20 million—a figure that, according to The Independent, “represented a staggering 40 per cent of the Treasury’s annual spending budget and, in today’s terms, calculated as wage values, equates to around £16.5bn.” Much of that money went directly into the coal-powered infrastructure of the now roaring Industrial Revolution—from factories to railways to steamships. These, in turn, were the tools that took colonialism to a markedly more rapacious stage, with the scars still felt to this day.48
whoa.
As a direct result of these centuries of serial thefts—of land, labor, and atmospheric space—developing countries today are squeezed between the impacts of global warming, made worse by persistent poverty, and by their need to alleviate that poverty, which, in the current economic system, can be done most cheaply and easily by burning a great deal more carbon, dramatically worsening the climate crisis. They cannot break this deadlock without help, and that help can only come from those countries and corporations that grew wealthy, in large part, as a result of those illegitimate appropriations.
The difference between this reparations claim and older ones is not that the case is stronger. It’s that it does not rest on ethics and morality alone: wealthy countries do not just need to help the Global South move to a low-emissions economic path because it’s the right thing to do. We need to do it because our collective survival depends on it.
one ness. none of us.. if one of us.
But there are, in the immediate term, plenty of affordable ways for Northern countries to begin to honor our climate debts without going broke—from erasing the foreign debts currently owed by developing countries in exchange for climate action to loosening green energy patents and transferring the associated technological know-how.
Moreover, much of the cost does not need to come from regular taxpayers; it can and should come from the corporations most responsible for driving this crisis. That can take the form of any combination of the polluter-pays measures already discussed, from a financial transaction tax, to eliminating subsidies for fossil fuel companies.
and/or redistributing them.. upcycling..
What we cannot expect is that the people least responsible for this crisis will foot all, or even most, of the bill. Because that is a recipe for catastrophic amounts of carbon ending up in our common atmosphere. Like the call to honor our treaties and other land-sharing agreements with Indigenous peoples, climate change is once again forcing us to look at how injustices that many assumed were safely buried in the past are shaping our shared vulnerability to global climate collapse.
jeffco protest – on the good intention side.
there is simply no credible way forward that does not involve redressing the real roots of poverty.
I. Renewables are, in fact, much more reliable than power based on extraction, since those energy models require continuous new inputs to avoid a crash, whereas once the initial investment has been made in renewable energy infrastructure, nature provides the raw materials for free.
huge. same with human capital/energy – no? we’ve got to find that self-re-generating element.
“Stop calling me resilient. I’m not resilient. Because every time you say, ‘Oh, they’re resilient,’ you can do something else to me.” —Tracie Washington, New Orleans–based civil rights attorney, 20101
whoa. Ed.
We have a global agricultural model that has succeeded in making it illegal for farmers to engage in the age-old practice of saving seeds, the building blocks of life, so that new seeds have to be repurchased each year.
seed freedom ness
As biologist Sandra Steingraber has observed, “Entire regulatory systems are premised on the assumption that all members of the population basically act, biologically, like middle-aged men. . . . Until 1990, for example, the reference dose for radiation exposure was based on a hypothetical 5’7” tall white man who weighed 157 pounds.” More than three quarters of the mass-produced chemicals in the United States have never been tested for their impacts on fetuses or children.
so this invisible dying.. no record/trace. suffocating ness.
the one-two punch of an economy built on fossil fuels: lethal when extraction goes wrong and the interred carbon escapes at the source; lethal when extraction goes right and the carbon is successfully released into the atmosphere. And catastrophic when these two forces combine in one ecosystem, as they did that winter on the Gulf Coast.
In species after species, climate change is creating pressures that are depriving life-forms of their most essential survival tool:
..the ability to create new life ..
… and carry on their genetic lines. Instead, the spark of life is being extinguished, snuffed out in its earliest, most fragile days: in the egg, in the embryo, in the nest, in the den.
This combination of diversity and perennialism keeps soil healthy, stable, and fertile: the roots hold the soil in place, the plants allow rain water to be more safely slowly absorbed, and different plants provide different fertility functions (some, like legumes and clover, are better at fixing nitrogen, critical to forming the building blocks of plant life), while diversity controls pests and invasive weeds. It’s a self-sustaining cycle, with decomposing plants serving as natural fertilizer for new plants and the life cycle being constantly renewed.
mimic the way similar plants grow in the wild,
Cage ness
fashion an agriculture as sustainable as the native ecosystems it displaced,”
replacing the turtle shell.. till we’re back to that natural state..
There are no hard-and-fast formulas, since the guiding principle is that every geography is different and our job, as Wes Jackson says (citing Alexander Pope), is to “consult the genius of the place.”41
quiet enough to hear that.
systems mimic nature’s genius for built-in redundancy by amplifying diversity wherever possible,
prejudice decreases as discrimination (as equity) increases.. – Langer
The goal becomes not to build a few gigantic green solutions, but to infinitely multiply smaller ones, and to use policies—like Germany’s feed-in tariff for renewable energy, for instance—that encourage multiplication rather than consolidation. The beauty of these models is that when they fail, they fail on a small and manageable scale—with backup systems in place.
ginormously smallness – Iwaan Bann ness – self-organizing ness
These processes are sometimes called “resilient” but a more appropriate term might be “regenerative.” Because resilience—though certainly one of nature’s greatest gifts—is a passive process, implying the ability to absorb blows and get back up. Regeneration, on the other hand, is active: we become full participants in the process of maximizing life’s creativity.
when we take, we must not only give back, but we must also take care.
“Developed countries have created a global crisis based on a flawed system of values. There is no reason we should be forced to accept a solution informed by that same system.” —Marlene Moses, Ambassador to the U.N. for Nauru, 20092
if there is any hope of reversing these trends, glimpses won’t cut it; we will need the climate revolution playing on repeat, all day every day, everywhere.
as the day ness – groundhog day ness – everyone getting a go everyday
a Marshall Plan for the Earth.
new deal ness
what is overwhelming about the climate challenge is that it requires breaking so many rules at once—rules
model another way – policy – game on
each of those rules emerged out of the same, coherent worldview. If that worldview is delegitimized, then all of the rules within it become much weaker and more vulnerable. This is another lesson from social movement history across the political spectrum: when fundamental change does come, it’s generally not in legislative dribs and drabs spread out evenly over decades.
the exponentiation of a qr
if we are to have any hope of making the kind of civilizational leap required of this fateful decade, we will need to start believing, once again, that humanity is not hopelessly selfish and greedy—the image ceaselessly sold to us by everything from reality shows to neoclassical economics.
looking good ness. i know you ness.
the task is to articulate not just an alternative set of policy proposals but an alternative worldview
no one is going to step in and fix this crisis; that if change is to take place it will only be because leadership bubbled up from below.
7 billion.. strong
a great many of us are continually engaged in a cacophonous global conversation that, however maddening it is at times, is unprecedented in its reach and power.
yes. prior to now ness
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book review by Astra Taylor:
http://thewalrus.ca/the-rising-tide/#.VD6VyPeQREc.twitter
Klein’s vision is positive, too. At a moment when past collective undertakings such as the New Deal or the Apollo program seem like political impossibilities, she favours something of more profound magnitude—“a Marshall Plan for the Earth.” We have been duped into believing we have only two options—“austerity or extraction, poisoning or poverty”—when a third way is possible. What’s more, this third way might be the key to true sustainability and an improved quality of life.
yes. to model another way.
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http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_09/damn_right_this_changes_everyt052173.php
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sept 2014:
What is wrong with us? I think the answer is far more simple than many have led us to believe: we have not done the things needed to cut emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have struggled to find a way out of this crisis. We are stuck, because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe – and benefit the vast majority – are threatening to an elite minority with a stranglehold over our economy, political process and media.
[..]
The idea that only capitalism can save the world from a crisis it created is no longer an abstract theory; it’s a hypothesis that has been tested in the real world. We can now take a hard look at the results: at the green products shunted to the back of the supermarket shelves at the first signs of recession; at the venture capitalists who were meant to bankroll a parade of innovation but have come up far short; at the fraud-infested, boom-and-bust carbon market that has failed to cut emissions. And, most of all, at the billionaires who were going to invent a new form of enlightened capitalism but decided, on second thoughts, that the old one was just too profitable to surrender.
[..]
It was then that I let go of the idea that infertility made me some sort of exile from nature, and began to feel what I can only describe as a kinship of the infertile.
http://www.thenation.com/article/181621/climate-change-peoples-shock#
what is overwhelming about the climate challenge is that it requires breaking so many rules at once
So how do you change a worldview, an unquestioned ideology? Part of it involves choosing the right early policy battles—game-changing ones that don’t merely aim to change laws but also patterns of thought.
Indeed, a great deal of the work of deep social change involves having debates during which new stories can be told to replace the ones that have failed us. Because if we are to have any hope of making the kind of civilizational leap required of this fateful decade, we will need to start believing, once again, that humanity is not hopelessly selfish and greedy: the image ceaselessly sold to us by everything from reality shows to neoclassical economics.
And the real surprise, for all involved, is that we are so much more than we have been told we are; that we long for more and—in that longing—have more company than we ever imagined.
And the various forms of magical thinking that have diverted precious energy—from blind faith in technological miracles to the worship of benevolent billionaires—are also fast losing their grip. It is slowly dawning on a great many of us that no one is going to step in and fix this crisis; that if change is to take place, it will be only because leadership bubbled up from below.
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sept 2014:
watch disruption
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unifor – sept 2013:
24 min – issue is too big to be just environmentalist’s
38 min – use climate change (as a tool) to demand the supposedly impossible
41 min – this is all one struggle
43 min – overburden -1. getting in the way of money 2. too much – and we are hearing – enough – we have not only had enough – but there is enough..
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in vogue:
http://www.vogue.com/1009011/naomi-klein-this-changes-everything-climate-change/
on being in vogue:
http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2014/08/being-vogue-and-getting-branded-twice
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find/follow Naomi:
Naomi Klein (born May 8, 1970) is a Canadian author and social activist known for her political analyses andcriticism of corporate globalization. She is best known for No Logo, a book that went on to become an international bestseller, and The Shock Doctrine, a critical analysis of the history of neoliberal economics.
The publication of The Shock Doctrine increased Klein’s prominence, with the New Yorker judging her “the most visible and influential figure on the American left—what Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky were thirty years ago.”
The suggestion is that when a society experiences a major ‘shock’ there is a widespread desire for a rapid and decisive response to correct the situation; this desire for bold and immediate action provides an opportunity for unscrupulous actors to implement policies which go far beyond a legitimate response to disaster.
her site:
on shock doctrine:
..leaders exploit crises to push through controversial exploitative policies while citizens are too emotionally and physically distracted by disasters or upheavals to mount an effective resistance. The book implies that some man-made crises, such as the Iraq war, may have been created with the intention of pushing through these unpopular policies in their wake.
“Disaster Capitalism Complex”, where the author claims that companies have learnt to profit from disasters.
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on logo (1999):
Uploaded on Jan 19, 2008
This is a 7 minute explanation of the ideas in Naomi Klein’s book No Logo. The audio in this movie was originally recorded and edited for a video documentary some friends and I produced for university class in November 1999, before No Logo was fist published. In 2001 I reproduced it for the web, and only in 2008 posted it to YouTube.
used to be that brand told you the product was good. now it tells you that you are good – because you buy/wear that brand
– – – – –
Published on Jun 6, 2013
No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies is a book by the Canadian author Naomi Klein. First published by Knopf Canada and Picador in December 1999, shortly after the 1999 WTO Ministerial Conference protests in Seattle had generated media attention around such issues, it became one of the most influential books about the alter-globalization movement and an international bestseller.
The book focuses on branding, and often makes connections with the alter-globalization movement. Throughout the four parts (“No Space”, “No Choice”, “No Jobs”, and “No Logo”), Klein writes about issues such as sweatshops in the Americas and Asia, culture jamming, corporate censorship, and Reclaim the Streets. She pays special attention to the deeds and misdeeds of Nike, The Gap, McDonald’s, Shell, and Microsoft — and of their lawyers, contractors, and advertising agencies. Many of the ideas in Klein’s book derive from the influence of the Situationists, an art/political group founded in the late 1950s.
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on the shock doctrine (2007):
Published on Jan 17, 2014
disaster capitalism
i wanted to understand how shock really worked on the human mind
after reportng in iraq – (shock therapy) cutting person off of senses.. a state of regression – conversion of adults to childlike state – window/gap opens up – so that person being interrogated sees interrogator as parent figure
shock – something so big happens – an event w/o a story
the impulse to take advantage of these windows that open up after tragedy
there is an extreme comfort level with disaster – when this kind of chaos takes place – there is an opportunity
10 min – the love shack at guantanomo – making up for torture
13 min – bremmer – wanting to do the country makeover – before democracy set in – before people could vote… ie: all decisions made first, then allowed to vote
14 min – the answer that rings truest to me was in Ron Suskind‘s 1% (on iraqi invasion)
26 min – benefit from war: military, reconstructors, oil industry – when we say this has been a disaster (war) we have to ask – for who
44 min – milton friedman – falling in love with math – wanting to spread it – but an intellectual movement that is generously funded – a lot of intellectuals – put in think tanks – to think for profit – as think tank denizens – they don’t have to share where money is coming from
48 min – robbing people to be a part of the reconstruction of their country
sound like scotland potential
49 min – after being in iraq for that year – i certainly saw the appetite in the people for real democracy – and it was shoved out of their way by these foreign experts
50 min – ie: new orleans liberated billions of dollars for reconstruction. and ed was no doubt bad before.. now they had a chance to rebuild ed
51 min – huge – Naomi saying – i think we have little faith in people.. when we say we need to call in the experts.. the best cure for trauma is being allowed to be involved in reconstruction
iraqi’s saw this as an extension of the invasion – (that they weren’t allowed to help reconstruct) – learned helplessness – the cure for helplessness is helping.. being empowered to be part of some kind of a rebuilding process
54 min – the book is an argument for a mixed economy – a true democracy
if you shock countries – the revenge will never end.. (paraphrase)
56 min – i don’t know why we have failed to learn this lesson of history
– – –
2008 – interview by John Cusack on the shock doctrine:
part 1
interrogator tries to put prisoner in child-like state
shock is being harnessed to push through policies that would otherwise not
6 min – friedman’s public policy suggestion – public ed to privatization – after new orleans
the official narrative – freedom = free markets.. trying to debunk that myth
part 2
new economy – the only downfall is peace.. ie: war on terror – bush – deep pocketed venture capitalist
shock is about a gap between information and analysis
information, analysis, narrative – are the tools against shock resistance -the best way to counter is to understand the process
– – –
2012 via big think:
this model that had been imposed, coercively yet peacefully, wasn’t working anymore
so we came to – economic shock therapy..
using shock of natural disasters to push through policies.. a social re-engineering of society for the benefit of social corporations – ie: she was able to see becktal leaving s america and going to iraq – for same water push
debt crisis is another kind of a shock
i take a look at 35 yrs – of how various crises has facilitated the advancement – what i find – in the book – is that the disasters are getting bigger – there needs to be something more disorienting.
i do believe that crisis are required for people to accept these policies
my argument is not that no one benefits – what i’m saying is that the result is major inequality
9 min – the flip side of this economic model – is displacement – so slums develop –
the first phase of this expansion could use positive terms ie: gdp et al, but now since so many have tried it and it failed.. the model is in crisis.. people have a track record.. and they can measure the rhetoric against reality
– – –
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nov 2014:
Naomi Klein: Reject Keystone XL Pipeline, We Need Radical Change to Prevent Catastrophic Warming
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/17/naomi_klein_reject_keystone_xl_pipeline
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oct 2014 – interview by Russell Brand:
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talk with Johann feb 2015 in toronto – via democracy now:
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/3/11/johann_hari_naomi_klein_does_capitalism
10 min – bruce alexander – not your morality, not your brain, it’s your cage
the having something you want to do ness
isolation and pain cause the addiction… currently – we infuse more isolation and pain to try to get people to stop..
we’ve created society where people can’t bear to be without being drugged… opposite of addiction – human connection
15 min – bud osborn – pulling together homeless to watch after each other.. finds out about injecting rooms in frankfurt – death by overdose down by 80% and life expectancy up by 10 yrs
20 min – juries and aa mtgs… only times we come together to talk anymore..
21 min – bruce – we need to talk much more about social recovery – not just individual recovery
fossil fuels are connection severing machines – helps us be so isolated… why it’s so hard to get off them as well.. – naomi
22 min – thinking we could do this (change) on our own… is a product of the triumph of capitalism.. – naomi
cruelest thing you can do is cut off what the person loves
27 min – truth.. cuts through all the noise (on how much Johann’s writings has been shared)
tough love is treating people like shit – struck a chord
40 min – the anti-therapy: further isolation
51 min – obviously the systemic/historic tie is about control
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Naomi Klein: Obama Is Beginning to Sound Like a Climate Leader, When Will He Act Like One?
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/8/4/naomi_klein_obama_is_beginning_to
19 min – defn of insanity to drill in arctic where oil is only available because ice is melting..
on protest – kayaktivists and climbers –
our climate leader – these people who are trying to stop action with their bodies…
24 min – not a token act – even though just 40 hrs… actually quite significant.. because of the window
26 min – yes ness not enough.. ie: germany… yes to renewable energy hasn’t been accompanied by a no to fossil fuels
same perhaps.. as a climate change movement.. begs to be accompanied by a people movement..in order to garner all the energies.. ie: let’s do this first..
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“It’s easier to adjust a set of human-made laws than it is to override the laws of nature” Naomi Klein #COP21 #Paris https://t.co/57006WWp4K
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/Starbuck/status/673364761535385600
energy\ness
let’s do this first: free art-ists.
a nother way
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trailer – this changes
the big question.. what if global warming isn’t only a crisis.. what if it’s the best chance we’re ever going to get to build a better world…
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Good convo between Naomi and glen – re leaks – https://t.co/N3tzz5gWoA
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/johncusack/status/788782260296282112
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the leap blog
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on no is not enough
Jon Letman (@jonletman) tweeted at 12:54 AM – 16 Jun 2017 :
For a show that covers really important matters every day, this interview with @NaomiAKlein is ☆really☆ important. https://t.co/vcGrCmBiIB (http://twitter.com/jonletman/status/875607380582514689?s=17)
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Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) tweeted at 4:21 AM – 6 Jul 2017 :
Why We Must Kill Our Inner Trump
New #UnderTheSkin podcast with @NaomiAKlein
https://t.co/NfBILi2dYC (http://twitter.com/rustyrockets/status/882907299152580608?s=17)trump as symptom of culture.. fulfillment of greatest trends.. – naomi
grotesque – enlargement of ordinary to make more maginable – russell
he’s lying.. but open about it.. so can’t catch him out on anything.. he’s not technically honest.. – naomi
what’s getting traction is authenticity.. something about it haven’t seen – russell
symbols of the davos class.. party of the small group of super winners.. a world that most people had no access to.. w trump.. he did invite the world in.. most people.. super rich.. don’t want to flaunt their wealth.. ie: gates.. wants us to see him curing malaria.. trump said to world.. come into my mansion.. in a way.. there is gratitude for that.. that’s what people sometimes means by authenticity.. such a word.. – naomi
10 min – the brazenness seems like an authenticity.. how bereft must we be – russell
17 min – i hope trump is as far as we are going to take this.. selling of everything.. politics as market.. i think there’s room for another political project – naomi
20 min – i always found it quite hopeful.. that (use of words like community and revolution in ads) they knew we wanted more than the product – naomi
21 min – not a coincidence these companies started selling these ideas.. when all these places we used to get ie: community .. were eroding.. so a sense that we’re getting this from rebuilding our sense of community and belonging – naomi
23 min – what is the indigenous feeling.. that can be optimized.. – russell
it’s also a scientific idea.. we exist in interdependence.. interconnectedness.. – naomi
24 min – narrative of domination .. from religion/science/tech.. – naomi
ie: power of steam engine – you really are god – you are not the boss of the natural world.. of your workers.. you have portable energy.. not captive to workers.. can be a more abusive boss.. ideas weren’t real till had the tech – naomi
26 min – natural world is telling us.. you are not the boss.. every action has a reaction.. there was about 200 yrs we could tell ourselves this narrative of apartness.. not just a spiritual thing – naomi
30 min – diff in n america and here ..because of indigenous movements.. with indigenous people at forefront.. i come more from econ side of left.. but for past decade .. very immersed in climate.. exciting to watch ways non-indigenous people are being impacted by exposure to indigenous world view.. ie: fighting pipeline at standing rock.. according to community there.. ie: you are in ceremony.. not protestors but protectors.. – naomi
32 min – guy saying at standing rock.. every movement i’ve been a part of has fetishized youth.. but not this way.. this one.. respecting wisdom.. culture of left slowly changing.. – naomi
33 min – you’re coming from a place of love.. for this land et al.. against something.. but not driven by hate.. there is anger/opposition.. but it’s serving this broader love – naomi
34 min – so often people in those spaces are pickled in anti – but here.. focus on communities falling more deeply in love with their place.. learning about the interdependence that was always there before – naomi
35 min – if this are part of indigenous.. what else are we neglecting – russell
38 min – and we have to figure it out in a big hurry.. we don’t have time for this wake-up call – naomi
let’s try this: short/bit
39 min – original title: the message – climate change isn’t an issue.. it’s a message.. ie: refugees, grenfall tower, .. people are getting that now.. – naomi
40 min – does happen to happen all at once ie: great depression, new deal, soc sec, after ww2, environmental laws.. – naomi
42 min – if people could see a de construction of one of these symbols of what we call the deep state.. could be powerful.. but this zombie ideology.. ie: there’s no one left to defend de regulation et al.. this is why in this very dangerous moment.. vacuum of ideas.. – naomi
44 min – part of the neo lib project that is slowest to die.. was.. ‘there is no alternative’.. the war on imagination..
..outlasted policies itself..
this new gen didn’t get that indoctrination.. so hopeful.. nobody out there saying.. this is going to be good and don’t you dare think anything else.. – naomi
a nother way – short\bit.. short bp
49 min – has to be a marriage between academic/data-based/research-sounding-data and the power of reconnection with people the ability to stir viscerally.. sacrifice.. which they aren’t going to do for academia.. – russell
51 min – science itself got colonized – russell
52 min – social movements are re capturing the utopian imagination.. – naomi
53 min – what’s missing – what does the world look like after we win – naomi
leap manifesto..
we didn’t have a muscle memory for agreeing on what we want – naomi
54 min – we’re going to have to be inspired by a world we haven’t seen/created yet – naomi
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Today was an incredible day. Hearing the mayor of the biggest city in the richest country on earth announce a lawsuit against 5 oil majors for climate damages AND fossil fuel divestment? Wow. We needed this. We will build on it. Was such an honour to be asked to say a few words. https://t.co/PIFiGXJ3XX
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/NaomiAKlein/status/951195725702017024
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jan 2018 – Brainwash Festival: Naomi Klein, Srećko Horvat & Joris Luyendijk
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id0rby-ewP4]
1:00 – we’re in uncharted territory.. no place where we can look and say.. they’ve got it right..
i think there’s a crisis in connection that has to do w tech..ie: absent even in each other’s company.. multiple disconnection.. we are social creatures and that creates a crisis.. deeply longing for connection makes us ripe for demagogues to come in with these sort of cheap.. brands have been doing this for a long time.. and now politicians..
1:01 – when we think about what our alts are.. participation isn’t just for democracy .. it’s also about feeding this need.. deep longing for connection.. if that vacuum isn’t addressed.. it’s going to be filled…t
meeting maté basic needs
1:03 – we can’t simple say no.. we have to lay out a credible plan.. bring people along.. and build it in miniature wherever we can
let’s go ginorm small..
1:05 – one of the things i’m trying to do right now is support a plan for a people’s reconstruction of puerto rico
let’s try short bp .. in puerto rico
1:05 – primed for what is now called climate gentrification
1:06 – these are moments where we really see the system laid bare.. the moment of of political openness to other models.. these are the moments we must step in and say.. here’s a plan.. not a top down approach..but really bringing people in.. t
begs a mech to listen to and facil all the voices..everyday
the problem is people are reeling ..in shock.. but in puerto rico.. they are so used to this.. they know .. and simultaneously reconstructing
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democracy now fb share on puerto rico:
Naomi Klein: The massive death toll in Puerto Rico is not just a tragedy, or a natural disaster, but state-sponsored mass killing http://ow.ly/VFQ930knpAw
3 min clip: [https://www.facebook.com/democracynow/videos/10156399592448279/]
the phrasing.. ‘due to’ hurricane maria.. it’s not due to hurricane maria.. the largest cause was the collapsed healthcare system (ie: old people walking to get to a plug in for their oxygen).. which was intimately tied to the collapse of the electricity system.. which is intimately tied to the collapse of the water system.. so this is really about a total infra failure.. and it didn’t just fail.. a total society doesn’t have its infra fail unless you systematically knock out every support structure and you do so knowingly
rodolpho walsh when describing the econ policies of argentina’s military junta he called it ‘planned misery’.. i think that applies so much to what is going on.. i keep looking for a term to describe this.. it’s not a natural disaster.. not a tragedy.. it’s state sponsored mass killing..
naomi klein‘s battle for paradise:
x
the book is necessary read for anyone who wishes to understand the ongoing crisis in pr and to grasp what is at stake..
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naomi w doulgas on team human live [https://www.facebook.com/rushkoff/videos/2332187123692996/]
d: do we need to start a thing.. (for people to join)
n: you already have it.. a hub..
n: is anybody out there trying to connect the dots between silos..? glue..? .. once you become an ngo.. we are all in the econ.. so you find quickly you are suddenly competing for scarce resources for people you support.. so .. how to complement the work out there.. it’s a big question..t
begs a mech to listen to and facil each dot (7b) everyday.. in a way that needs no ongoing funding..
ie: tech as it could be..
d: maybe it is a matter of facil ing people’s discovery
how about a means to do that everyday.. for 7b people
n: that can be a subtle thing w/o all that infra
d: how do we approach structural change as individuals.. is it required for us to be doing more than local change..t
we will be if the structure is deep enough.. to get us back to ie: meadows undisturbed ecosystem
n: i’d say yes is the short answer.. the umbrella for me is climate science.. it’s true for all of us.. this is the big tent.. not something we can do as individuals.. t
but not really the biggest/deepest tent.. since we are humans
ie: what we need most – the energy of 7bn alive people
n: we do need.. i don’t like the phrase .. take it to scale.. not about gigantic solutions.. something small same everywhere.. but about smart designs really fast everywhere
begs everyone in sync ness.. which begs we leap
n: we need those local ie’s but not because they’re going to get the job done.. not to scale.. but really fast proliferation
n: we have to understand we are at a fork in the road and if we are going to be human in this crisis.. we’re headed toward climate barbarism.. are we going to not believe that these borders matter
d: we can’t forge solidarity w people we don’t see as equal..
n: if you are going to grab people’s lands.. you need a system that makes that ok.. we have to engage w structural change and the underlying conditions..
d: a huge diversity of solutions.. maybe more consonant w nature..t
7b everyday.. yeah
n: the cities are our labs.. but i can’t go there w let 1000 flowers bloom.. absolutely cities matter.. but it has to be coordinated.. there is a limited amount of resources..t
begs a global do over
n: incentives that encourage community ownership
dang.. incentives and ownership both cancerous
n: has to be a green new deal for everyone..
everyone.. everyday
n: there has to be an improvisational.. try a lot of things quickly..t
tech as it could be…. listen to every voice everyday..
what we’ve been missing is having everyone in sync
today we have the means to go there.. ie: cure ios city
(has to be deeper than green)
d: it seems like any starting point is a great one
yeah.. as long as we have a solid infra (2 convers as infra).. to meet basic needs we all crave.. maté basic needs:
the fundamental reality is that we are all human beings.. and we basically all have the same needs.. your fundamental needs are human needs you share w every other human on earth
n: a time of overlapping crises that are all urgent.. creating a hierarchy of crisis can silence people..
again .. begs tech as it could be..
d: on doing things rather than meetings about what to do
n: on people being/doing good
n: these ideas of a do over country make them averse to looking backwards.. this obsession w turning the page.. and we can’t look back.. it’s so much a part of these national/settler ecologies.. it’s such a threat to say there are limits.. because the whole point was to be limitless.. we have to not be afraid to tell new stories.. i find the idea of *reparations exciting.. repair and care
*moten abolition law.. repair and care .. yeah..
n: we could have a job boom in just cleaning up the messes we’ve made.. and we’re already trained for that.. and there’s a lot of need for repair of our relationships
d: so hard because we don’t want to engage with what (the harm) we did
n: in order to make it.. we perform ourselves to the max.. but find out it’s really about the data.. so just posting.. you are a minor data set
self-talk as data.. sans money
n: every industry in the world is trying to figure out how to make use of this data.. advertisers were ahead of everyone else.. everyone’s business model is figuring out how to use this data
imagine .. it’s the wrong data
n: i think the solution to davos is shut it down.. i don’t think it’s redeemable.. trump is a mirror holding up the dystopian image of our society.. bn’s win.. people are so fed up w ie: talking about philanthropy
q: when people aren’t suffering enough to do good.. when given free will.. how to you work w that.. n: i think a lot of people are hurting.. and i think a lot are ready to jump.. i don’t know what we’re waiting for w this idea that things have to get bad.. i think it’s lack of vision.. a clear common plan.. ie: this is what you can do to plug in..i’m hoping in next few months a clear vision of green deal .. then becomes policy in 2021
dang naomi.. listen deeper.. we have the means now to have a clear/simple/common plan
d: fb could have been ok if didn’t have to pivot into full blown surveillance.. but had to make it more extractive.. beauty now.. is you could build fb for 93 cents.. these things can work
n: we need to weave narratives together w/o it being one big moosh..
n: woke-washing.. we have to challenge ourselves to not respond defensively.. focus more on the actual platform
n: nobody can simply be trusted.. we all need to be held to higher accountability
you just came off talking about politicians.. so perhaps seems logical to say that.. but it won’t work unless we trust 100% from the get go.. team human.. are you human.. 100% trust.. (obviously w diff infra/os set in place to truly free everyone first)
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7 min video (via AOC, Molly, Naomi..)
What if we actually pulled off a #GreenNewDeal? What would the future look like? The Intercept presents a film narrated and co-written by Rep. @AOC and illustrated by @mollycrabapple. https://t.co/zAMLAizbN7https://t.co/PywCR0jPUl
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/theintercept/status/1118517713322823682we can be whatever we have the courage to see
let’s go deeper than green new deal.. as it could be..
isolation.. depression.. et al.. deeper than fb/sm
today.. we have the means to go deep enough
It is vital that we imagine better realities for ourselves
Fantastic work by @aoc and my friends @mollycrabapple @KimBoekbinder and @battsignal https://t.co/yoo5xBvWT0
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/claytoncubitt/status/1118535523717398528
yes fantastic.. but there’s a nother way
imagine deeper than ie: green deal
let’s be that courageous
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more from hannah and greta and naomi on climate.. sept 20 2019 march..
hannah epperson (@hannah_epperson) tweeted at 6:35 AM on Fri, Sep 20, 2019:
crying appreciation tears into my oatmeal — see y’all in foley square this afternoon, new york comrades! #strikeforclimatechange https://t.co/MH6m02V92b
(https://twitter.com/hannah_epperson/status/1175025646453645312?s=03)Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) tweeted at 3:17 PM on Thu, Sep 19, 2019:
What a beautiful, generous, fiercely internationalist movement these young people have woven.
It’s the mirror opposite of the hateful isolationism, chauvinism and supremacist forces roiling and overheating our world
#ClimateStrike! https://t.co/Ty5iZjuSml
(https://twitter.com/NaomiAKlein/status/1174794597450600457?s=03)hannah epperson (@hannah_epperson) tweeted at 8:57 AM on Fri, Sep 20, 2019:
heading into the city heavily armed with and for the things that give me a pulse #StrikeWithUs #ClimateJustice #ClimateStrike #ClimateCrisis #GreenNewDeal #Strike4Climate https://t.co/yHLGDuFnZx
(https://twitter.com/hannah_epperson/status/1175061408268148737?s=03)
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Owen REGISTER TO VOTE Jones (@OwenJones84) tweeted at 5:49 AM – 24 Oct 2019 :
“We’ve run out of time for mistakes. Don’t fuck it up.” My interview with the wonderful and inspiring @NaomiAKlein https://t.co/A3a0LMimsx (http://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1187335231721877504?s=17)5 min – the power of greta is her extraordinary moral clarity.. she trusted her first instinct.. t
imagine a mech to augment/facil 8b people.. listening to their gut.. everyday.. ie: tech as it could be.. 2 convers as infra
a lot of the young people i meet.. do not want to be doing this
7 min – there’s no reason to respect institutional authority when people like that are in power
10 min – we have to turn everything around in a handful of years.. t
there’s a nother way – less than a year – why leap .. [aka: not part\ial.. for (blank)’s sake…]
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utopia from the ashes et al
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be you. 