Category Archives: Inspiration

Like all social movements, this one must confront despair. Here’s some inner fuel for the soul.

“The Road And The Sky”

While listening to Jackson Brown’s album “Late for the Sky” for the ump-teenth time, the words of “The Road and the Sky” suddenly registered with my new climate activism. In 1974, he was singing about climate change and I hadn’t noticed. Listening with “new ears”, I realized he was telling the story of our time. Have a listen, or read the words:

When we come to place where the road and the sky collide
Throw me over the edge and let my spirit glide
They told me I was going to have to work for a living
But all I want to do is ride
I don’t care where we’re going from here
Honey, you decide

Well I spend my time at the bottom of a wishing well
And I can hear my dreams singing clear as a bell
I used to know where they ended and the world began
But now it’s getting hard to tell
I could be just around the corner from Heaven or a mile from Hell

I’m just rolling away from yesterday
Behind a wheel of a stolen Chevrolet
I’m going to get a little higher
And see if I can hot-wire reality

Now can you see those dark clouds gathering up ahead?
They’re going to wash this planet clean like the Bible said
Now you can hold on steady and try to be ready
But everybody’s gonna get wet
Don’t think it won’t happen just because it hasn’t happened yet

I’m just rolling away from yesterday
Behind the wheel of a stolen Chevrolet
I’m going to get a little higher
And see if I can hot-wire reality

Kierkegaard’s parable

A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world is going to end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.

Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I

“Chopping down our fence for fuel”

In 1931, the year he died, Thomas Edison told Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, his retirement neighbors in Florida:

“We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind, and tide. I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

 

September 20th

Leviathans in the Harbor

More and bigger cruise ships are crowding coastal destinations. When is enough, enough? Who gets to decide?

by Brian Payton , August 27, 2019, Hakai Magazine 
‘Knoll Lowney, the lawyer representing the three plaintiffs who claimed they were victims of Carnival’s environmental violations, said, “Time and time again, Carnival has shown its contempt of environmental laws and the rule of law.”’

DNC votes down a Climate Debate

Today the DNC voted down holding a climate debate. Evan Weber of the Sunrise Movement was in the room and live tweeted the conversation. The link below is that thread.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1165334843221168128.html

Bill McKibben

Falter:
Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

Thirty years ago Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about climate change. Now he broadens the warning: the entire human game, he suggests, has begun to play itself out.

Bill McKibben’s groundbreaking book The End of Nature — issued in dozens of languages and long regarded as a classic — was the first book to alert us to global warming. But the danger is broader than that: even as climate change shrinks the space where our civilization can exist, new technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics threaten to bleach away the variety of human experience.

Falter tells the story of these converging trends and of the ideological fervor that keeps us from bringing them under control. And then, drawing on McKibben’s experience in building 350.org, the first truly global citizens movement to combat climate change, it offers some possible ways out of the trap. We’re at a bleak moment in human history — and we’ll either confront that bleakness or watch the civilization our forebears built slip away.

Falter is a powerful and sobering call to arms, to save not only our planet but also our humanity.