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You always talk about white privilege however let's us define it historically as white male privilege up to wwii. Next let us understand in now ways even today are truely been a civilized nation. Technology giving us more crap is not being civilized just as Roman conquest in ancient time decomposed the countries they took over. The truth is the poor of this nation the white ones fled this to invade native territory. Until there was no where left to flee around 1900s. In which we than had enough none whites and women to be uncivilized towards. White women were treated best starting no earlier than the start of WWII. We truly only have attempted to be civilized since TV connect the us for the first time. However we now are back to a state where who knows if we will be more or less civilized in the us. But make no mistake it was TV in the West along with massive labor movements that for the first made us civilized. We can go either way right now in history
Geological strata are often easiest seen at the cliff face. :)
Right on my friend no violence required .....this time ....it never was required just a small group of people engaging in conversation that could change the world .Its the only thing that can.
evolutionrevolution.net
I know Thom is vegetarian, maybe vegan, but why is the effect of animal agriculture never (?) or at least very rarely mentioned in these discussions and blogs on global warming? Animal agriculture has a larger impact on global warming than the fossil fuel industry and it is virtually ignored in the vast majority of these discussions. Decreasing meat and dairy consumption is the single most important activity anyone can do to decrease our impact on climate change. A simple google search will give you the information needed to support this fact.
That's correct Thom, crazed, obsessed, facile causistries not withstanding, socialism is the inevitable. The idea that the wealthy are indispensable is the ridiculous beyond anything. They are nothing but thieves and parasites. It is THEY who are the "takers".
The Native Americans represent the pre agriculural political economy before the domestication of plants and animals. After which the principle of domestication was soon applied not only to animals but to other people as well and different forms of slavery and patriarchy began and since, in all the systems of private property, the same slavery continues in different clothing.
In feudal times noblemen would advise one another to "Never oppress poor peasants. Their land doesn't produce and they [the peasants, the nobility's beasts of burden] will themselves starve if you take anything of any notable wealth from them. Always oppress rich peasants whose land is good and fecund. Then you can take very much from them leaving them only what they need for their own basic survival."
The very same principles guided capitalism only the capitalists gave the process inocuous and even cheery sounding language. They called that part of the wealth the labor of their workers produced that had to be left them for them to be able to survive to come to work the following day "labor costs" and part of "production costs" which also includes the tools the workers were to use in their labor. The amount of the wealth produced by the labor of the workers that was taken from them by their parasitic slaver, their employer, left after the deduction of those production costs is then called, not "the ill gotten, stolen product of the worker's labor" but something much more pleasant sounding. It's called "profits" or the "profit margin".
The employer with the superstitious, mystical faith in the infallibility of free enterprise considers a "fair wage" the least amount he can get away with paying his employees, as close to the bare minimum necessary for their basic survival as he can get it to be. Only government intervention or collective bargaining (which, without government intervention is of dubious effectiveness) would ever prevent that employer from getting his wages to that bare minimum point.
Dr. Econ was right about one thing. It was only at all possible to believe in the canard of the inherent fairness of capitalism in the 18th and 19th Centuries when land in the U.S. was everywhere and for the taking. Then, if someone wasn't doing well for themselves they were more likely to be just not working their land hard enough. But even then, different land has different capacities of productivity and a host of other factors can figure in.
The oil barons have been aware of the science behind global warming for decades and they made their choice long ago. That choice being: screw the planet, short sighted massive wealth means more than the catastrophic misery it will cause everyone else down the road. That choice, in my opinion, is premeditated violence that should be prosecuted.
This kind of impulsive/avaristic behavior is exactly what I mean when I constantly harp about the out of control few needing to be put in check by good government. Allowing irrational and out of control individuals like the Kochs to impose a Fascist system on all of us using nothing more than massive amounts of wealth could have been avoided. Tax laws, the kind that limit wealth in a sensible manner, would have stopped these guys and others like them. Tax laws would nullify the impact of citizens united. These guys imposed their arbitrary power over the will of the people, "us"...and we let them do this by not taking to the streets in extreme protest.
Words alone no longer work. I'm all for civil disobedience, that's how progressive change occurs ...what do we have left to loose, looks like not even the planet? Those we elect must be forced to follow the will of the vast majority, not the will of 50 billionaires. With Bernie one of the very few left speaking truth to power, it's time to rally in support of social, economic, and environmental truth. Screw the corpse media, and screw the Teapublican/Fascist Party, time to rally all good citizens.
Take down Fox Fascist propaganda with cyber attacks. Publicize the names of the oil barons responsible for the death of our planet. Let it be known how much we spend on the military industrial spy complex, and the fact that guys like Trump, Romney, and large corporations contribute zero to that amount most years. Demand the war crimes trials proceed. Wage war on the Fascists in all manner ..... It's 1775 again. We can foment change without violence this time.
hNorway's decision to avoid EU membership-
They were told many lies, however another safety net was their unaffected membership in Schengen, like Sweden, Denmark, Germany and others.
I believe that this worst case scenario this scientist talks about is happening now and if we don't get a handle on this by stop investing and using fossil fuels the ways we have up until now it will be the end of life on earth. I believe humanity won't be able to withstand all the effects before 2300 ! I think in less than 100 yrs. Remember the scientists were being conservative with their data in the recent past and are now saying how fast we are warming. Not only the warming but the affects from the ocean warming. The storms around the world are becoming biggger and often news says "worst storm" in 100 yrs. It is a scary time in the world now. My life at 66 has maybe 30 yrs. left and however long I live I will fight for people to become aware of fossil fuels and their harm to earth and all life on it. We are the cause and we must stop drilling as much as we do and stop digging for coal and using it. We absolutely must recycle, live simply, and advocate for electric cars and an end to gas powered ones. Stop fracking as it is worst for the atmosphere than drilling for oil. I really love your commentary Thom and am glad to have been turned on to you. Keep up the good work you do. I read every article I get from you and have learned alot from your info. Thank you for this forum. I also am a proponent for solar energy and wind to keep our electrical demand going. Every home, gov't buildings, colleges, businesses, you name it. Use clean energy for life to go on and not abuse our planet's atmosphere.
Your Rightwing panelists undermine your shows’ quality. They tend to distract from issue-airings, - by rehearsing tired Fox-ish talking points via sophomoric banter. … Your “Rumble”-featuring shows lose at least Me as audience {I fast-forward my replayings}.
I don't see this as an all-or-nothing crisis, which in a way is more cynical and dire than the view that we're going to destroy "earth" or make "humans" extinct. In the Cold War with its threat of momentary nuclear annihilation, all segments of leadership seemed to feel themselves to be at the same risk as the rest of us. There was no multibillion dollar nuke denial industry. But there is denialism with climate change and the simplest explanation is that leadership or ownership feels it has a good future for itself and its interests, so it's wiling to have the rest of us bear the consequences.
But worse, I also don't see the climate change acceptance factions from scientists to activists or culture leaders behaving as though it is a crisis at all. The organizing, messaging, informing, is all of the kinds we do for issues, not crises. Racial integration is an issue; laws and courts mandated it 2/3 of a century ago and since then we've made significant progress. --"Significant" in the scientific meaning, which is that it's measurable, not that it's anywhere near a solution. If we make as much and as rapid "progress" against climate change by responding to it as an issue, as we've made against the issue of segregation, that same interval of 2/3 century from now we'll be lucky to have cut our emissions in half.
Obama is acting the way he is acting...and gas is cheap right now..all for the same reasons..his handlers have told him to hold the line..because the end is near and there is nothing anyone can do..so in keeping with the "don't panic" management style, we try to maintain the status quo...because nothing matters anymore and to come clean would make our end more horrible and violent than it is already slated to be.
If the earth is the Titanic, then world leaders are the orchestra..and the least they can do is organize a civilized drowning for most of us.
Your remedies are like hoover dam having a crack then exploding, and someone says "if only we had used hydraulic paint"
too little, too late. the net result of even 1 child per person is still too many people in the end BUT...even THAT is no longer relevant.
Due to the laws of diminishing returns, the effects we have now are a result of emissions from around 1975. Yes..that kind of lag time.
Given the fact we have yet to experience the net results of the increased emissions from the 1980s to 2000 or China's joining of us in the great consumption wars, and given the fact scientist say the repair model takes about 1000 years to kick in AFTER all Carbon emissions cease and such an act would only bring us back to our critical threshold of 350ppm of CO2....
both math, common sense and a reality check says humans will be long gone and fried in the interim. it's too late. Funny, how we cannot seem to face or accept that.
Thus reminds me of someone dying, who prefaces their end with "next time....". Like there will BE A NEXT TIME...like there will be humans in 2300 and like by then, we will know how to not only stop reproducing but that the excess 6.5 billion humans already here will only replace themselves and no more.
It would be funny, if it was not so dire and pathetic.
Since the leading paleoclimatologists claim no humans have ever lived or survived in a world more than 3.5 degrees above baseline, and 11 degrees is a lot hotter..this does not matter.
It is not survivable, not even in bunkers underground. We don't need conjecture about what the world will be like in ,,2300. it is doubtful we will make it to ,2050.
The Permian extinction event which killed off about 95,% of all life on the planet was just a tad above 4 degrees C above baseline. So it is disingenuous to talk about what it will be like in 2300 When it is doubtful given our trajectory; that we will make it to 2030 as a species..and if any humans fo make it, the finite nature of their genetics means we will probably not even survive as a species.
..and the earth says "THANK YOU FOR PLAYING"
Yesterday Thom said that we had not seen 400ppm CO-2 for several thousand years.... Not so, it is more that 3-million years before the Pleistocene!. Thanks for having Michael Mann on today.
We, of course, are the problem. Too many humans are producing too much heat. Only we, as individuals, can rectify the problem, by using less fossil fuel and producing fewer greenhouse emissions. We need to limit our future reprodctive activity to one-child families, reduce, reuse, repair, and recycle. Ocean going ships transporting cheaply manufactured goods from far-away labor pools are a huge part of the problem, but we buy this crap from Walmart everyday, and think nothing of it. We are the problem. Maybe the cartoon character Trump is the answer and a nuclear holacaust is needed. Obama's transformation into George W. Bush's surrogate has utterly disheartened me. HRC is an international war criminal, and, yet, we actually consider her for the Presidency. We have gone insane and the rest of the world is going along for the ride. Capitalism in the end becomes a beast that not even Marx and Engles dreamed of. God help us!
Well the Princeton study 2-3 years ago measured laws passed by government, and found that government had already stopped regularly representing any of us except the very rich by the time Reagan came to office. http://journal-neo.org/2014/11/11/princeton-makes-it-official-usa-has-be... So the time you see as quickly approaching already happened, around the time of Disco.
I don't mean to jump you about missing it, there's been a lot of that going around in the USA.
As you already know Thom, the problem is the god almighty dollar, and the arbitrary power that comes from too many of those dollars in too few hands. By far the vast majority of us lead quiet hard working lives. The out of control obsession for endless wealth and power are both problems most of us tend to avoid.
Those weaker individuals among us who can't seem to get a handle on never getting enough of getting more need to be regulated by a good government, one put in place by a sensible/well informed vast majority....the kind of vast majority that would exist if we had a responsible news media.
With the message being controlled by the out of control, we no longer have a representative democracy,....not even remotely. It seems much of our society has been bewitched by the rich via the media. For example, you won't hear the media mention that Paul Ryan is obsessed with cutting Social Security....they still call it Ryan's plan for entitlement reform. Heaven help him if the citizens ever find out the truth regarding his budget plans. Both Bernie and Hillary need to inform the public that Trump has climbed on board with Ryan's extreme hatred for the working class.
I sadly see a time quickly approaching when words may no longer be enough.
.
"Animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, more than all transportation combined," fao.org, Spotlight: Livestock impacts on the environment. So if we eliminate all forms of transportation that require fossil fuels, we're still stuck with that elephant in the room. We can't live without transportation since absolutely everything depends on it and it would be pretty useless to try to boycott, but we can most definitely stop eating animals and not only survive but thrive, all 7+ billion of us.
Begging multinationals to go against their bottom line is a cruel joke.
They have had their way for decades whether by the bribe or the bullet.
But, we citizens have one weapon that definitely gets their attention.
The BOYCOTT.
ct
john_mulkins123,
I don't understand how this is supposed to work. Firstly it would probably be impossible to get even 10% of the votes needed for a majority, and even if that were to happen, what would we do with that majority? Who would enforce your new "Bill of Rights?"
Trump: an Appraisal of
{… 1.40 limericks …}
While for the presidency he’s raced,
he’s left in our mouths the bad taste
of a character debased
by egomania interlaced
with values like toxic waste.
[Yet, MANY applaud{!!}
a character so flawed.]
============================
You literally have no idea what a libertarian believes. You confuse Randianism with libertarianism. Libertarians only believe that it is wrong to commit aggression. It has nothing to do with individualism. If you want to live with an Indian tribe, as long as you do so voluntarily and don't force others, there is nothing inconsistent with that and libertarianism.
The bankers on Wall Street should be held accountable for the harm they did and it is only libertarians who have consistently opposed bailouts for the rich. No bailouts for the auto industry, no bailouts for the airline industry and no bailouts for the big banks.
If you are going to criticize a philosophy, you should actually learn what the people who expound it actually believe instead of falling into the trap of creating a strawman argument.
The
Thom,
The information, for those who have not already heard, is vital to get out, so thank you!
As for our fish stocks, my conclusion is that ALL large enterprises need to be democratized, IMMEDIATELY. Our government is enabling the worldwide destruction of our commons and destroying democratic processes everywhere. That is an ominous trend, and only we the people can change that.
If the current state of the world is unacceptable to you, then join me in this conversation. Voting for Bernie can make a difference, but beyond that, we need a national discussion about modernizing our constitution via the initiative and referendum process.
We are past the point of no return. Still, we owe it to civilization to organize ourselves to deal with what is coming as peacefully as possible. Representative democracy isn't our only option. We can demand and have, a form of direct democracy as well.
Like this:
http://www.thenationalreferendum.org/proposed-laws-amendments/
John
Let me know any government that had ever spent less than the previous year.
I would hardly call that 'gutting'.
Your opening question is absurd! Of course fossil fuels have reeked devastating impacts on this planet. It isn't a question worth asking. The science has proven this and it's past time for people to accept facts and make the appropriate changes in our behavior. This has been an issue all of my life and yet we make very little adjustments because of our own fear of not having the leasure/luxury we are use too and the lobbying that goes on with OUR government that deceives us all.
It just isn't a worthy question. It's already been answered.