I hope the Mayans were right. The “end of the world as we know it” seems like a bloody good idea.
Being HumanPS. I’m not proud of the tone of voice this is written in, and really I should have waited a few days, edited, and posted up a version which speaks to love and beauty and connections. But this blog serves a number of purposes: it’s a place to share thoughts, it’s a personal diary of sorts, and it’s a place of honesty and transparency and a lab experiments in personal growth. Moreover, I live and may possibly die by this. So I ask your forgiveness for any disappointment, but also ask your compassion to understand that this anger is based on a deep love of this world and all our relations in it.
The world is a lovely, lovely wonderful place with lots of glorious people. But it’s also got a lot of fucking idiots. What is the point in science and intelligence and these growing brains if we’re still going to insist on being selfish, myopic bastards?
“A 4C world is likely to be in which communities, cities and countries would experience severe disruptions, damage and dislocation, with many of these risks spread unequally. It is likely that the poor will suffer most and the global community could become more fractured and unequal than today. The projected 4C warming simply must not be allowed to occur–the heat must be turned down. Only early, cooperative, international actions can make that happen.” — World Bank report – ‘Turn down the heat’ (2012)
I know we’re supposed to be all lovely and friendly and optimistic and non-confrontational and ‘sell the sizzle’ and what not, but right now, this is how I feel: FUCK YOU WEAK GOVERNMENTS EVERYWHERE, FUCK YOU PEOPLE WHO ARE WILFULLY IGNORANT, AND FUCK YOU COMPANIES WHO THINK YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE RESPONSIBLE.
It drives me to tears that we’ve come so close, carry so much history and faith and optimism and striving of all our ancestors who’ve hoped for more, who’ve worked for these days of luxury and ease which we enjoy today only to lose it all in the space of a few decades because we’re too scared and unimaginative to do better.
1. Eat less meat. Just a few meals each week without meat will make the world of difference (and make you far healthier).
2. Reduce flying to one long-haul flight every two years, and one short-haul flight every 3 years. (You can take the train as much as you like). The avg person in the UK is responsible for 13.4 tonnes CO2 per year. Aviation makes up 28% of that (3.78 tonnes). JUST FLYING MAKES UP ALMOST 30% OF CO2 EMISSIONS. So if you wonder why I get at you about flying, this is why. (If you think you have to “fly because work wants you to”, don’t be a twat. 30 fucking percent. The “my boss wants me to” excuse didn’t work in Guantanamo any more than it worked in Nazi Germany. And yes, if you fly a lot I did just compare you to a Nazi. This *is* a comparable moral issue because climate change is going to be killing way more people than the Germans did.)
3. Forgive the frustration expressed here. I wish I could be calmer about it but I hate that I’m part of a generation which is responsible for another mass extinction event. It’s not like we’re even doing it in a bid to help each other. 1bn people starving, 3bn people eeking out an existence 7bn people thinking that there’s probably a better way. Fucking the planet, fucking over each other, and yet all of us knowing that this isn’t right. And yet just enough people benefitting to keep the balance tipped in the wrong direction. It makes me sick to my core and disgusted to be part of it.
I hope the Mayans were right. I hope it is the end of the world as we know it.
Here’s what triggered this despair: CO2 emissions still rising, and too fast to curb dramatic climate change.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20556703
