The No. 1 Cause of Climate Change the Media Don’t Mention

another great piece by Lee Camp here.

Reason to stop eating meat (well, would’ve been that back in the 70s … now, well, it’s reason to accept the blame, to feel the guilt for our demise … ):

“Globally, humans use 59 percent of all the land capable of growing crops to grow food for livestock.” (p79)

“One-third of all the fresh water that humans use goes to livestock, while only about one-thirtieth is used in homes.” (p79)

“Seventy percent of the antibiotics produced globally are used for livestock, weakening the effectiveness of antibiotics to treat human diseases.” (p79)

“Trees are 50 percent carbon.  Like coal, they release their stores of CO2 when burned.” (p92)

“Forests contain more carbon than do all exploitable fossil-fuel reserves.” (p92)

“The cutting and burning of forests is responsible for at least 15 percent of global GHGs per year.  According to Scientific American, ‘By most accounts, deforestation in tropical rainforests adds more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than the sum total of cars and trucks on the world’s roads.'” (p92) 

“About 80 percent of deforestation occurs to clear land for corps for livestock and grazing.” (p92)

“in 2018, Brazil elected Jair Bolsonaro as president.” (p93)

“Bolsonaro campaigned on a plan to develop previously protected swaths of the Amazon (i.e., deforestation).”  (p93)

“It has been estimated that Bolsonaro’s policy would release 13.2 gigatons of carbon—more than two times the annual emissions o the entire United States.” (p.93)

“Animal agriculture is responsible for 91 percent of Amazonian deforestation.” (p93) 

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Another interesting bit: 

“Every day, 360,000 people—roughly equal to the population of Florence, Italy—are born.”

(p80)

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And another:

“Just one hundred companies are responsible for 71 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.” (p150)

from https://deadwildroses.com/2021/01/03/the-dwr-sunday-religious-disservice-half-a-chromosome/

Trump’s Military Drops a Bomb Every 12 Minutes, and No One Is Talking About It

by Lee Camp – read the whole article here.

“In fact, more than half of the carbon exhaled into the atmosphere  by the burning of fossil fuels has been emitted in just the past three decades.  Which means we have done as much damage to the fate of the planet and its ability to sustain human life and civilization since Al Gore published his first book on climate than in all the centuries—all the millennia—that came before. … this means we have now engineered as much ruin knowingly as we ever managed in ignorance. (4) emphasis mine

What the fuck is wrong with us?

“… two degrees Celsius of global warming was considered the threshold of catastrophe: flooded cities, crippling droughts and heat waves … There is almost no chance we will avoid that scenario.  The Kyoto Protocol achieved, practically, nothing; in the twenty years since, despite all of our climate advocacy and legislation and progress on green energy, we have produced more emissions than in the twenty years before.  (9) emphasis mine

What the fuck is wrong with us?

“Since 1980, the planet has experienced a fiftyfold increase in the number of dangerous heat waves … ”  (40)

“… most estimates put the number of undernourished at 800 million globally.” (56)

All because men cannot keep their penises out of women’s vaginas.

“Much of the infrastructure of the internet, one study showed, could be drowned by sea-level rise in less than two decades … “(61)

[During the California fires of 2017] “On local golf courses, the West Coast’s wealthy still showed up for their tee times, swinging their clubs just yards from blazing fires in photographs that could not have been more perfectly staged to skewer the country’s indifferent plutocracy.” (73)

” … the effect of wildfires on emissions is among the most feared climate feedback loops—that the world’s forests, which have typically been carbon sinks, would become carbon sources, unleashing all that stored gas. … In California, a single wildfire can entirely eliminate the emissions gains made that year by all of the state’s aggressive environmental policies. … At present, the trees of the Amazon take in a quarter of all the carbon absorbed by the planet’s forests each year.  But in 2018, Jair Bolsonaro was elicted president of Brazil promising to open the rain forest to development—which is to say, deforestation.  How much damage can one person do to the planet?  (76) emphasis mine

“Every round-trip plane ticket from New York to London … costs the Arctic three more square meters of ice.” (120)

So why aren’t such trips illegal?  Why didn’t Trudeau approve the construction of a water pipeline from the melting glaciers in the north instead of an oil pipeline?  (We’re going to have droughts worldwide, affecting agriculture, worldwide, and we’re just letting all that fresh water go to waste, do damage, in fact, by warming the oceans …)

What the fuck is wrong with us?

“It took New York City forty-five years to build three new stops on a single subway line; the threat of catastrophic climate change means we need to entirely rebuild the world’s infrastructure in considerably less time.”  (169)

“According to the IPCC, we have just twelve years to cut them [carbon emissions] in half.  The longer we wait, the harder it will be.  If we had started global decarbonization in 2000,  …  we would have had to cut emissions by only about 3 percent per year to stay safely under two degrees of warming.  If we start today [2019], when global emissions are still growing, the necessary rate is 10 percent.  If we delay another decade, it will require us to cut emissions by 30 percent each year.” (179-180)

“In 2003, Ken Caldeira, now of the Carnegie Institution for Science, found that the world would need to add clean power sources equivalent to the full capacity of a nuclear plant every single day between 2000 and 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change.” (181)

“If the world’s most conspicuous emitters, the top 10 percent [the U.S. accounts for 15%; China, for 28% — https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emissions], reduced their emissions to only the E.U. average, total global emissions would fall by 35 percent.” (187)

In other words, it would have been no hardship.  To save the planet.  To save ourselves.

Read the whole piece here:

http://www.pinecone.on.ca/MAGAZINE/stories/the-well-groomed-trail.html

So I watched Star Trek: Picard, wherein he saves the day, and the future, for the creation of synthetic life.  A surprising move for someone so … intelligent.

With respect to the creation of organic life …

1. We have not been able to control how many we create. Our planet can comfortably sustain 2-3 billion people (‘comfortably’ defined as the current European standard of living) (which is about 60% of the current American standard).  To date, there are 7.8 billion organic life forms in existence.  And we’re adding (that’s net gain) 150 per minute.

2. Men often force women to create organic life (by raping them, when they aren’t using, often because they don’t have access to, effective contraception). Although statistics show that one-quarter (United States) to two-thirds (Africa) of all women are raped, we really don’t know how often this forced reproduction occurs because, apparently, it’s no big deal.

3. Men (primarily) also often force women to be incubators for organic life forms (by prohibiting abortion).

4. Once organic life is born, men (primarily) have been woefully irresponsible toward it, abandoning it in one way or another (financially, emotionally) or, worse, hurting it (up to 93% are beaten, and over a million are raped each year).

So, Jean-Luc, what is it that makes you think ‘we’ will be any more responsible when creating synthetic life?

“By 2050 at the latest, and ideally before 2040, we must have stopped emitting more greenhouse gases [typically caused by the burning of fossil fuels]  into the atmosphere than Earth can naturally absorb through its ecosystems (a balance known as net-zero emissions or carbon neutrality).  In order to get to this scientifically established goal, our global greenhouse gas emissions must be clearly on the decline by the early 2020s and reduced by at least 50 percent by 2030.”  The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis, Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, (architects of the Paris Agreement), pxxii

Snowmobiles and ATVs “emit 25 percent as many hydrocarbons as all the nation’s cars and trucks put together, according to an EPA study.”

https://products.kitsapsun.com/archive/1999/02-19/0062_environment__snowmobiles__atvs_du.html

“In one hour, a typical snowmobile emits as much hydrocarbon as a 2001 model auto emits in about two years (24,300 miles) of driving. ”

https://mymuskoka.blogspot.com/2010/01/snowmobile-pollution.html

“Two-stroke PWC engines dump 25 – 40% of uncombusted fuel in the lake, the air, or on the land.”

https://mymuskoka.blogspot.com/2010/01/snowmobile-pollution.html

“In a single hour of run time, a 2000-model PWC will dump about 4 gallons (15 liters) of unburned oil and gas into the water [source: CO Parks].”

https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/watercraft-destroy-planet.htm

Snowmobiles and ATVs “emit 25 percent as many hydrocarbons as all the nation’s cars and trucks put together, according to an EPA study.”  https://products.kitsapsun.com/archive/1999/02-19/0062_environment__snowmobiles__atvs_du.html

And yet ATVs, jetskis, and snowmobiles are still legally allowed.  That is, we allow fossil fuel emissions  — a lot of fossil fuel emissions — just for fun.  Through our precious climate-controlling forests and on our struggling fresh water lakes, no less.

What the hell is Canada thinking?

(And yes, this is another reason to hate men.  After all, over 95% of those who drive ATVs, jetskis, and snowmobiles are men.)

(And that’s quite apart from “”Snowmobiles create a noise corridor five miles wide” and “PWC produce noise levels in the range of 85-102 decibels (dB) per unit — levels at which the American Hospital Association recommends hearing protection (above 85 dB).”  https://www.stopthrillcraft.org/statistics.htm)

Let’s say we are born with a gender identity.  Either

(1) it isn’t a binary, in which case there’s no need to change your sex to attain some sort of ‘fit’

(2) it is binary, but it doesn’t necessarily or always align with sex, in which case again there’s no need to change your sex, or

(3) it is binary and it does align with sex, in which case one couldn’t possibly feel a mismatch—feeling a mismatch would just prove that (2) is the case.

I suppose one could say that for 99%, it is aligned, and those who feel a mismatch are anomalies, but look around at all the women who are not feminine.  Are we all anomalies?  If so, then we’re not really anomalies, are we.  (And even if we are, so what?  How does that necessitate chemical or surgical transformation?)

So I wrote a story, “Men Need Sex.”  I started with the mistaken, but wide-spread, belief that men need sex (PIV).  Mistaken because, unlike food, water, and oxygen, without sex, you don’t die.  Then, ‘inspired’ by Roger Elliott, I thought, ‘What if?’  What if men really did die if they didn’t get sex.  I postulated contagion, perhaps social.  Then I postulated a shortening incubation period (between belief, not getting sex, and suicide). And I added the belief that men are entitled to get what they need, which ramped up rape and, consequently, women’s self-quarantine (after begging, to no avail, for stricter gun laws and a curfew for men).  I ended the story with something like ‘And then the women just … waited.’

The SciPhi Journal rejected it.  Which was disappointing, because I thought the story was clearly sf with a philosophical element (“As its primary mission, SPJ wishes to provide a platform for idea-driven fiction, as opposed to the character-driven mode that has come to predominate speculative fiction”).  Future Fire also rejected it, which was also disappointing, because they focus on feminist sf.  But what I want to focus on is the first rejection because it came with the explanation that my story “reads as a fully seriously intended apology of gendercide.”

How was what I described gendercide?  The women didn’t kill the men; they just waited for them to kill themselves.  Yes, they withheld sex, but if you’ll die without food and I refuse to give you food, am I killing you?  Perhaps.  The philosophical community has not yet come to a consensus on that; it’s called the passive euthanasia vs. active euthanasia debate (and the SciPhi editor should have been well aware of that debate).

Framed another way, if you’ll die without being able to hurt someone, and no one steps forward to be hurt, are we all killing you?  Not at all clear.  That’s called the Good Samaritan debate (and again, the SciPhi editor should have been well aware of it), often illustrated by the scenario of a drowning child: if the passerby is a competent swimmer, then yes, she has a duty to rescue, but if the passerby cannot swim, and the rescue puts her own life at risk, then no, she has no duty to rescue.  The essential question is ‘On what grounds would one have a duty to sacrifice oneself for another?’

Does intercourse put a woman’s life at risk?  If she has no contraception and no abortion, that is, if she’s forced to become pregnant and then doesn’t miscarry, well, maybe.  It is not uncommon for a woman to die giving birth.  At a minimum, there is a clear risk to her health: high blood pressure, diabetes, anemia,  stroke, cardiac arrest.  Perhaps the SciPhi editor is unaware of the health risks of pregnancy and childbirth …

But even with contraception and abortion … why is she obligated to allow herself to be hurt (yes, men, sexual intercourse against our will, absent our desire, hurts)  (maybe that’s what the SciPhi guy didn’t get?) so that the man will live?  If it’s a one-time thing, and the man in question is a good man (yes, that would figure into my deliberation), okay, maybe many of us would, and should, say yes.  Ten minutes, in and out, go on, live.

But if it’s an ongoing thing, like the provision of food (which is what my story suggests), then the scenario would be very much like one sex, male, enslaving another, female; men imprisoning women to ensure continued sexual access and, therefore, their continued existence.

All that aside, the editor said “Art is free, and I won’t criticise any apology of anything.”  Okay, then, an apology for gendercide, should that have been what my story was about, would have been okay.  “However,” he continued, “all pieces of writing for SPJ must have at least a grain of plausibility.”  When I pointed out that I’d referenced Elliot Rodger and Alex Minassian, he said he hadn’t heard of either one.  What?  What?  (I keep forgetting that since words like sexism and misogyny aren’t used on primetime tv or in mainstream news, most people [in the U.S. and Canada, at least, because their entire worldview is formed by those two media] `aren’t familiar with the concepts. And it keeps shocking me when I remember that.  But wait, weren’t both Rodger and Minassian reported in mainstream news?)  My guess is the editor just didn’t read my story very carefully.  (Both Rodger and Minassian were referenced in footnotes.)  And why might that be?  Because … oh, right.  It was written by a woman.

He went on to say “As a 100% gay male, I can assure you that your statements about ALL men are quite off the mark …”  Quite apart from the fact that any statements I made about ALL men were in the context of the story, a fiction, I never made any statements about ALL men; in fact, I quite deliberately say “Of course not all men” at one point.

“On the other hand,” he continued, “the funny notion implied in your story that women don’t need sex is also wrong”— oh do tell, please, go ahead and mansplain women’s sexuality to me.

“Myself and quite a few of my gay male friends have had experiences of being sexually harassed by women. Therefore, women seem to need sex as well.”  Therefore?  Okay, at this point, I’m thinking the editor of a philosophical science fiction journal doesn’t have a philosophy degree.

In a subsequent email (because yes, I responded to his rejection letter, refuting his points; I’m tired of just letting these things happen without challenge), he said “At any case, there is too much hate shown by the narrator to be humanely appealing.”  Need I point out all the sf in which male narrators show too much hate of women to be humanely appealing?  (Yes, men, any time you write a story or novel in which the males subordinate or sexualize the females, you’re expressing hatred of women.)

And, in yet another email, he said “There is no lack of publishing venues that would gladly accept any kind of male-bashing. SPJ is not one of them.”

To which I replied, “It’s just … disappointing that you didn’t see that the story is actually an argument against male entitlement and an exposé of, and a cautionary tale about, toxic masculinity.”