Naomi Klein - How Science Is Telling Us All To Revolt

[agent46]

In December 2012, a pink-haired complex systems researcher named Brad Werner made his way through the throng of 24,000 earth and space scientists at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, held annually in San Francisco...

But it was Werner’s own session that was attracting much of the buzz. It was titled “Is Earth F**ked?” (full title: “Is Earth F**ked? Dynamical Futility of Global Environmental Management and Possibilities for Sustainability via Direct Action Activism”).

Standing at the front of the conference room, the geophysicist from the University of California, San Diego walked the crowd through the advanced computer model he was using to answer that question. He talked about system boundaries, perturbations, dissipation, attractors, bifurcations and a whole bunch of other stuff largely incomprehensible to those of us uninitiated in complex systems theory. But the bottom line was clear enough: global capitalism has made the depletion of resources so rapid, convenient and barrier-free that “earth-human systems” are becoming dangerously unstable in response. When pressed by a journalist for a clear answer on the “are we f**ked” question, Werner set the jargon aside and replied, “More or less."

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/10/29-4

[democratisphere]

1. MORE not less.

[hedda_foil]

2. Governments are starting to intimidate scientists rather than listening to them.

Do you think this is why the government of Canada is closing their science libraries as fast as they can? (I can't find the links for the posts on that. Hoping someone else has them bookmarked.)

But there are many people who are well aware of the revolutionary nature of climate science. It’s why some of the governments that decided to chuck their climate commitments in favour of digging up more carbon have had to find ever more thuggish ways to silence and intimidate their nations’ scientists. In Britain, this strategy is becoming more overt, with Ian Boyd, the chief scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, writing recently that scientists should avoid “suggesting that policies are either right or wrong” and should express their views “by working with embedded advisers (such as myself), and by being the voice of reason, rather than dissent, in the public arena”.

[Pantagruelsmember]

3. If you believe this

the logical response is to essentially go into survivalist mode or perhaps simply "party til you drop" , carpe diem lifestyle.
No point planning for the future if there isn't one. Maybe the party has already started and we're just getting the memo?

[Todays_Illusion]

4. The not very smart humans who created and maintain the false hierarchy with all the wealth, power

and control of the earth's resources by a few hundred, some say less, is a winner for them or is it? They are about to discover it is unsustainable, or we are?

The system is not sustainable from either resource exploitation for maximum profit, nor from the exploitation, without consent, of the other 7 billion people on earth.

[BrotherIvan]

6. Truth!

[defacto7]

5. I rarely share my general opinion

because I will admit the CT value of it is pretty far out there. I am very science oriented but there are issues concerning all the perplexing, contradictory decisions by the bureaucrats and ultra wealthy in the world that sometimes leads me to less scientific or reasonable conclusions. In a nutshell, I think the powers that be know exactly what is happening to the environment, the masses, the old systems of government and civilization in general and I think there is reason in the madness. They are basically hoarding and preparing to protect the ultra few, hunker down and wait out the catastrophe they and their ancestors have dug us all into. It would serve their multi-generational ego to be the sole survivors, the remnants of humankind. Whether their progeny will be able to stick it out that long is hard to say; I say not. But in the end, the earth wins and humankind will have been a very short lived virus that finally purged itself from existence.

That's about as dismal as I can get... but viewing our direction at the moment anything else is almost too pretty. But I'll fight for life. There's no room in my insignificant existence for a complacent party time end.

[Todays_Illusion]

7. It is ok to harbor an awareness of what is at work and it is deeply dark and

stark and very visible now as we sit on the edge. But be hopeful, we are not consenting and this power group is busy fighting with each other on the best way to proceed, continue with the slow squeeze or step it up to cataclysmic.

Thanks for telling us, you are not consenting.

[cprise]

8. No. There is a lot of self-delusion among TPTB.

In the 2010s, they have scarcely more information available to them than the average westerner. They aren't rational superbeings who see past their own pathos whenever necessary (so don't buy into their propaganda to that effect).

If we demote them, it will be as much for their incompetence as for their greed, indifference or malice.

Also, most life on this planet may be at stake. It would take hundreds of millions of years to recover from the worst-case scenarios now posited by ecologists-- if it ever recovers. In that kind of time frame, the sun will be substantially hotter and the earth less able to subduct carbon into the lithosphere (e.g. 'game over').