Choosing revolution over reform means waiting and waiting and waiting until the agent of the revolution emerges, builds the movement and acts. We can’t wait for the promise of some distant revolution which may not be successful. I know I’ve been there … SWP … decades ago. Scotland … car factories … maybe before your time? Right thing to do at the back then but … !!

We need to act now and it may be that in some years or decades time we look back and decide that cumulatively …. yes there was a revolution. Today we need to pursue a range of measures, pressuring business and governments with our spending patterns and votes and deploying other tactics. I include changing individual behaviour. Obviously one person making a minor adjustment to CO2 emitting behaviour won’t register on any scale. But we are not acting alone in this. There is a movement emerging. Every week there is evidence of yet another person or organisation engaging, starting up and campaigning or doing something to reduce CO2 emissions. My favourites list grows and grows – this internet thing is a wonderful tool.

I think there a real contradiction evident when people say they are not going to take action at an individual level to reduce emissions but they are expecting government to do more. Don’t they understand that if the government does eventually do more part of that “more” will be, using either carrots or sticks, introducing incentives and measures to persuade us to do what we’ve just refused to do individually. I don’t get it … we know how urgent the situation is … act now individually AND pressure government etc to encourage others to act in concert.

If there is a flaw in this argument would someone please point it out to me!

Anyway debate is good.

Onwards and upwards

Douglas Coker

I only really “got it” on AGW/CC just over 2 years ago as a result of reading High Tide by Mark Lynas. Since then I’ve joined the Green Party, read a bunch of books and do some of this new fangled blogging business. Google me – it’s all out there.

Before getting into various thoughts about denial I’d like to air some concerns about how I figure in this CO2 global warming business. While I certainly don’t think I’m in denial I do eat meat and drive a car and am (currently) a second hand car dealer. I feel increasingly uncomfortable with the car dealer thing and the business is up for sale. Ideas for other sources of income welcome! I’ve sold second hand cars since 1995 following redundancy from further education.

I reckon there are loads of people out there who are engaged in some form of “essential” economic activity with which they are increasingly uncomfortable. We need a whole raft of routes out of these situations.

I’ve been into things with wheels and then wheels and engines since I was very young. Riding a motorbike fast and driving a car fast round a race track are seriously exciting experiences (for some). I know many don’t get it but then I don’t get football. I did try recently but … what a yawn. And cricket … what’s all that about.

My car mileage has halved recently and I did ride a bike 15 mile on the Isle of Wight recently so I can wean myself off the ICE and onto more public transport to some extent. But how do I visit half-a-dozen folk scattered around various relatively remote parts of England and Scotland in the space of a few days? Using public transport in greater London puts my blood pressure up never mind trying a tour like that on buses and trains. The overground from Liverpool Street to Enfield has not run on many occasions on recent weekends. I was turfed off the Victoria line the other day at Highbury due to “works”. Many elements of the infrastructure in this country especially in the South-East are very old and very, very tired. Too much consumer consumption and not enough public investment?

My point is … with the best will in the world … giving up certain CO2 emitting activities is very difficult. Tuning the toilet (to use less water!), buying less “stuff” and stopping flying are actually (for me) very easy.

We need help to crack this! More another day.

Douglas Coker

Anyway, following your comments George, I am also struck by the lack of what I would describe as a revolutionary response to this crisis, the absence of a ‘I know, what can we do, we need to organise’ response from people when I try and discuss the real and present truth of the climate catastrophe.

I don’t have the answers, only that to me it seems a drastic reordering of society is needed in order to achieve the required 80% – 90% cuts but that can only begin once people are willing to sit down with their fellow humans and talk about how this can be achieved.

Unfortunately people seem completely unable to think imaginatively, people have been forced into a corporate intellectualism which allows for people to only use their minds in support of the status quo. Any discussion of breaking free of that mind set is met with blank stares.

One solution = ecosocialism…

We need to introduce some scepticism about growth, markets, conventional economics if we are to have a sustainable future moving from planet money back to planet earth.

“libenter homines id quod volunt credunt” (men willingly believe that which they wish for) Cæsar

When the biblical prophets foretold that all things will end by intense heat and fire, it appears that they got it right (2 Peter 3 v. 10). The Apocalypse, unfortunately for us, it appears is right on schedule.