(Originally written and posted by me, @ann-narkeh, on my website, annnarkehmedia.com
On August 7th, 2018, here. ) Reblogging to steemit for the blockchain's immutability, posterity and for the edification of anybody who's interested in why I've chosen to join the Extinction Rebellion.
In my lifetime, I’ve witnessed a lot of batshit crazy. I suppose I should feel privileged to live in a time of such unprecedented global challenges.
We were taught about global warming in school. It was all a bit flakey back then because the fossil fuel corporations had just started distorting and disputing the climate science. A school of science which incidentally they had pioneered. The basic principles were understood long before I was born. ExxonKnew
When I started primary school, we were being taught that the apocalyptic climate collapse we’re witnessing now might happen in a few hundred years but if we recycled more and changed our light bulbs and used catalytic converters and stopped using CFCs everything would probably be OK.
By the time I started secondary school, they were saying this cataclysmic tragedy might unfold in about a hundred years and we should probably all recycle more to be on the safe side. By the time I finished, they were saying maybe 50 years, if we didn’t take more meaningful action.
As I got older, they revised it down further, saying probably within our lifetimes. Then the IPCC report. The World Scientists’ Warnings to Humanity. TWENTY THREE years of annual international climate conferences (COP24 will be in December this year). All too little too late and still held back by an industry determined to protect it’s short term shareholder interest.
Now, everything’s collapsing around our ears and it has become difficult to imagine a future in which organised human life on planet Earth is viable. Or life at all for that matter. It turns out most of the recycling we’ve been diligently doing has been going to landfill and incinerators all these years. Increasing numbers of people believe that we’ve already passed the tipping point. An uninhabitable planet is now baked in to the mix.
Corporate media have starting to make the most monumental U-turn in history: We should now accept that an increasingly chaotic climate is the ‘new normal’. We should be preparing for more heatwaves and sea level rise of 60m. (normally I wouldn’t link to sky news but it’s interesting that even they are now starting to accept the stark reality). It has become undeniable. Much of humanity’s minds are being blown. Like frogs in boiling water, slowly realising our shared fate too late.
The Global heatwave is symptom of early stage cycle of civilisational collapse
The world’s ‘leaders’ (such as they are) have procrastinated and lied and squabbled and squandered decades that could have made a difference. The farcical folly of the greenwashing industry; recyling going to landfill and incinerators, ‘catalytic converters’, ‘carbon trading schemes’ and so on tell us all we need to know about their ‘leadership’ on the issue.
You need only look at the brutal corporate policing of protests from Standing Rock to Preston New Rd to understand how intractable the problem is.
The fact that at least FIVE pacific islands have already been lost to rising sea levels is not yet commonly known or understood. I had hoped that this news might have woken up more people when it happened. Two years ago.
Imagining Hope
I’m suppose I’m lucky to have been engaged with the problem of catastrophic climate collapse and human extinction for quite a long time. I’m not as panicked by it as people who are just coming round to the concept now, so I can at least offer a relatively calm perspective.
An aside: Jaron Lanier tells a great story about how the difficulty we have in imagining a decent future is actually the responsibility of silicon valley tech engineers, who couldn’t draw heads properly with basic polygons back in the 90s. Long story short, they settled on a formula for 3D VR that relied heavily on lone survivor, post apocalyptic scenarios, so they’d have less heads to render. The gaming industry became massively influential on mainstream culture, thus most imagined futures in contemporary culture became post-apocalyptic. It’s a bit of a stretch, given the collapsing everything but a funny story regardless…
Besides sharing funny stories, it seems the most useful thing I can do now is signpost to the best advice; coping strategies and solutions that have been shared with me in my few years on this earth.
- Don’t isolate yourself. Choose love and hope over fear and hate. Be kind and respect yourself and everybody else.
- Remember there are good people. Be one of them. Look out for each other. Be as patient, understanding and forgiving as you can possibly be.
- Knowledge is power. Don’t be misled by false hope. Train yourself to think clearly and critically. Challenge yourself to properly inform yourself. Speak and act out against lies and injustice. Focus more on the solutions not just the problems.
- Schedule your time effectively. Monumental changes are developing ever faster. Keep your ear to the ground but be wary of the hypnotic, paralysing power of the spectacle. Be as adaptable and fluid as you can be. Remember to make time to rest, practise self care, enjoy and share any lulz that come your way. Lulz are increasingly few and far between.
- Engage your friends, family, politicians, businesses and communities on the challenges we’re facing.
Get active. Organise or join existing survival networks. Develop and maintain low-tech futureproofed communications systems, within and beyond your networks. Plan. Prepare. - Expand class consciousness, unity consciousness and the practice of empathy. Be autonomous and take leadership from the most impacted. Don’t fall into the Tyranny of Structurelessness.
- Engage in peaceful, non-violent acts of civil disobedience to lobby for meaningful reform of corporate power. Occupy, strike, resist. Join the Extinction Rebellion. (who are currently organising via facebook, unfortunately but starting to spread out a bit now, including to twitter).
- Consume less and as ethically as you can. Vote with your money. Spend less. Reuse, repair and recycle more. Buy local. Boycott the fossil fuel industry and other unethical corporations, starve them of capital. It’s only one plastic straw, bag. bottle. etc but it all adds up. Reject the fossil fuel lifestyle. If you take unnecessary journeys by fossil fuelled cars, buses or planes, stop now.
- Go vegetarian, or vegan if you can. Most people can do the former quite easily already. The latter is becoming easier and more accessible over time.
- Get off-grid, or switch to a green energy supplier. Grow your own food. Set up independent systems to harvest and filter rainwater.
- Go WWOOFING. There are world wide opportunities on organic farms all over the world. Small scale organic agriculture is one of the best solutions to a great many of the problems we are facing. I found WWOOFING to be a great way to relax and rebalance, peacefully cultivating nature while learning and being radically r3VOLutionary!
- Be urgent, but calm. Consider what is the most helpful thing you can do in the here and now. Do what you can. Don’t give yourself a hard time about the things you can’t do, or the things you can’t do yet.
- Share feasible solutions, love and hope with as many people as you can. Let it out if you need to but remember everybody’s struggling to cope with it all, consciously or subconsciously. Be sensitive.
- NETWORK NETWORK NETWORK
- Keep it lit, no matter how hopeless it looks.
I’ll probably keep editing and updating this list for the duration of the collapse.
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