Are we all fucked?

[Eoin McLove]

Factor in industrial scale farming.  There are 1.5 billion cattle in the world and their digestion process (ultimately their belching) releases phenomenal amounts of methane into the atmosphere which isn't helping things.  If you tie that back in to the mass deforestation needed to create new farmland and the cycle feeds off itself.  There is a counterargument against veganism/vegetarianism in that if we all stop eating meat it will actually have a more detrimental effect as we'll need to create even bigger farms to feed ourselves.  I don't know where the truth lies but there's a good reason to believe that either way,  we are having a massive negative impact on the environment through farming.

An initial response might be to reduce the amount of people so we won't need to produce as much food but there's a line of thought that says that rather than reducing the number of humans through draconian measures like the one child system, by raising third world countries out of poverty, the human population will stabilize.  Statistically, as societies become more wealthy,  people have fewer kids. 

[Pedrito]

Have a look at this ted talk from Hans Rosling in terms of population..

https://youtu.be/2LyzBoHo5EI

This video is excellent too:

https://youtu.be/hVimVzgtD6w

The outlook is so unbelievably positive that it again leads back to questions concerning the hysteria and doomsday prophecy stuff that is being bandied about in relation to overpopulation and it's relation to global warming. It also gives great hope that we are on an upward trajectory in so many ways, and, for me, leads nicely into many.of the arguments the likes of Pinker and Lomborg are talking about i.e. the world is going the right way and we can sort out this climate issue if we keep our heads about us.

Realistic, thought out, fact based concepts that are wary of the knee jerk 'live aid-esque' reactions that mean well but are ultimately doing more harm than good, or at the very least, are a complete waste of time, resources and money. The Ocasio Cortez hysteria that the world is over in 12 years time and we should all follow.her Green Plan which is just a farce of a document is a perfect example of how we could go down a rabbit hole in terms of climate.

What becomes glaringly obvious from the talk, as stated in the description, is that we are all carrying around myths that are simply not true. Ideas like 'the population of the world is out of control/at breaking point' is absolute nonsense.

If we look at Ireland as a really great example, actually one of the best examples. If we hadn't had the famine, the population would have hit 9 million. It stood at 8.5 million prior to the famine. I read an article recently that said if we hadn't had the famine and utterly devestating emigration/poverty etc, we would now have a proper population of 40 million, our population having been 60% of England's at the time. On top of that we are the country with greatest space per
head of population in the whole of Europe(can't remember the metric itself), our country being incredibly underpopulated in relation to what it could, might and probably should be.

Anyway, the video well worth a watch to quell any of that nazi eugenics lebensraum talk that seems to have become so popular amongst, probably unwitting, climate doomsayers.

[John Kimble]

Greta Thunberg has only recently appeared on my radar and now she appears to be everywhere. I have mixed emotions around her.  On one hand, listening to a precocious fifteen year old throwing a tantrum and pretending it's politics is cringey as fuck.  On the other hand,  despite her annoyingly hysterical approach she is managing to activate millions of her peers and essentially everything she is trying to do I'm in favour of so more power to her.  She has tapped into something here and,  being cynical,  you could say she's exploiting a  agenda for her own ends but if she is being listened to and taken seriously by the powers that be, even if they are just being shamed and embarrassed into listening to her,  then perhaps she can be a force for greater good and that might be what we need right now.

Decent enough article which addresses some of these points

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/why-is-greta-thunberg-so-triggering-for-certain-men-1.4002264?mode=amp

I'm undecided as well. On a gut level, there's something definitely immensely irritating about her. On the other hand, as the above article touches upon, when you have the likes of Donald Trump posting snide remarks about a 16 year old who has a better command of the English language that he has, then...well, enough said

[Pedrito]

If only it was as simple as Jennifer is making it out to be in that article and im fairness she says so at the end. There are plenty of women who would have their qualms about Greta's accusatory fimgerpointing as opposed to the child herself.  Youthful exuberance and stomping up and down and making a big fuss is great, but if it was as simple as 'let's stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow' then the issue would be solved in a day and the danger now is that politicians and policy makers start panicking and making badly thought out choices to try and appease the mob. It's good she is bringing attention to it all, but you'd want to be living in a fucking cave over the last 20 years not to know that the climate ia an issue. I just see too much polarisation in these lecturing, 'I know better than you, you thick redneck fuck' movements and one would wonder if they are doing more damage than good.

They have used her control of the English language as a stick to beat her detractors with(certainly many of them, myself included, probably deserve it) but it also hints at the privileged bubble she has grown up in, in one of the richest countries in the world, that she even has such a command of a second language. She sailed across the ocean, she brought attention to things, brilliant, we can give her a nobel prize. But that doesn't change the fact that there are a billion people in China a massive proportion of whom are struggling to dig themselves out of poverty, another god knows how many million in Latin America and Africa  and India who want to have a warm house and a roof over their heads, drive their kids to school and get to work and earn a living. Are we telling them that they need to go back to their huts and turn off the lights while we put all that on pause and try and figure out a proper, viable, economic alternative for their energy situation? What Jennifer fails to realise in her article is the underlying, veiled, elitism that pervades her article. Her dig about vegans and that so many people are angry about it etc. Yes there are assholes but there are also other people who simply don't agree and others who can't afford and then others who just don't give a flying fuck about veganism. So, again, a journalist covers themselves in glory lecturing to us, the great unwashed, who are just too thick to understand these big ole concepts. Sorry massah, I jus gonna put an x heuh cuz I ain't be knowing no letters and big things like dat...go way and fuck.

[Eoin McLove]

I think it's great that she is activating her peers around something meaningful,  regardless of my/your/her stance on the matter, rather than obsessing about the shape of their eyebrows or whatever happens to be the current trend.  Maybe if you are being generous you could extend that point to say that she deserves her place at the UN meeting as a representative of her generation (It's a bit of a stretch,  though). It's inevitable that any public figure will become a target for ridicule, and that's the nature of being a public persona. You don't have to like it but it won't ever change,  so if she intends on continuing down this path then she'll have to get used to it. 

[Pedrito]

Deffo, I actually admire her in many ways. I'd just hesitate with the style and presentation. Great to see some passion on something meaningful though we're so saturated with meaningless emotive language these days that it kight explain a lot of the negative reaction. If something longer burning, progressive and realistic comes out of it I'd be all for it.

[Carnage]

I think it's great that she is activating her peers around something meaningful,  regardless of my/your/her stance on the matter, rather than obsessing about the shape of their eyebrows or whatever happens to be the current trend.  Maybe if you are being generous you could extend that point to say that she deserves her place at the UN meeting as a representative of her generation (It's a bit of a stretch,  though). It's inevitable that any public figure will become a target for ridicule, and that's the nature of beyond a public persona. You don't have to like it but it won't ever change,  so if she intends on continuing down this path then she'll have to get used to it.

This, precisely. Anyone who raises awareness in the younger generation who're seemingly more concerned with Instagram 'likes' than what's actually going on around them deserves attention and a bit of leeway, despite how irritating she may be personally, and how managed/directed her appearances and message is. It's a problem that's not going away, and systematic lipservice while ignoring commitments to change is only going to continue, unless that younger generation are active in fighting it as the grow and take on responsibilities it future.

Good on her, I say. Her 'viral' presence is probably the only way of getting through to people in this social media and PR-obsessed age.

[Mower Liberation Front]

One thing I've noticed is that the level of personal vitriol that has been levelled at this child online just goes to show what a fucking cesspit social media is these days.

Whatever your position on the subject at least she's out there protesting for what she believes in. Most people giving out about her won't change a single thing in their lives.

Agreed, the abuse is way OTT, but the way it is these days. Where were all Thunberg's defenders when the headlines were all about the smirking kid in the MAGA hat last year? Oh yeah, they were all demanding he get the shit kicked out of him, made to suffer for the rest of his life, etc. I guess 16 years old wasn't too young an age to abuse somebody then.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Very pertinent comparison to make.

[ochoill]

Agreed, the abuse is way OTT, but the way it is these days. Where were all Thunberg's defenders when the headlines were all about the smirking kid in the MAGA hat last year? Oh yeah, they were all demanding he get the shit kicked out of him, made to suffer for the rest of his life, etc. I guess 16 years old wasn't too young an age to abuse somebody then.

Even though he was acting the maggot and deserved to be pulled on it, I don't agree with the amount of abuse he got online, it's something that should have been dealt with by his family but look, he apologised and it was largely done with soon after.  I don't think there's a comparison to be made between the two of them other than their ages.  They feel mostly like an easy two sides of a coin to pick because the whole issue now is now American focused.  One of them put themselves in the limelight to raise awareness of something that needs to be considered nowadays, the other pulled a shitty schoolboy stunt that spiralled in a wrong place/wrong time way.

Fair dues to Greta either way.  When I was sixteen I was knocking in flagons of Devil's Bit behind an old ruins in the town park, listening to Draconian Times on a tape deck.  Good to have someone keeping the issue public because it exposes more holes in the denial camp.  Regardless of how bad the issue is, it does tie in to the state of the world in general and having more people consider their actions is always a good thing.  Definitely in agreement with earlier comments that there are vital things that need to be done to improve this aside from a bit of first-world recycling, but we've been over this earlier in the thread.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

The comparison is in the contrasting media and public reactions to the two of them from the opposing poles of the political spectrum, not in the content of their respective actions/inactions.

[ochoill]

No I get that, kind of went off track on it, sorry.  From the public and media perspective it is the inverse reaction to each for two sides, absolutely, but one was a reaction to a political protest and the other environmental - you would hope it wouldn't be so polictically polarised for the latter but this is just the way it is.

[Pedrito]

I think that's the whole issue here. It's not that her heart isn't in the right place. It's the self assuredness of all these yeasayers that have attached themselves to her, the messianic fervour and the earnestness and sanctimoniousness of people who are pushing her at all levels, from politicians to the man/woman on the street/office that turns me off.

The above ideas about 'at least she's trying to do something' I'd definitely go along with and fair dues, but I don't believe, as is backed up by much of the science, that we are on the verge of utter annihilation. We have an issue, it's serious, something needs to be done about it, but I'm not throwing myself in front of a train, chastising or flagellating myself or choosing not to have children to save the environment, or any of that utter bullshit, to go with the flow. The 'you need to repent', vibe of her speeches are just not going to work on me, I went to school in Ireland with priests and nuns lurking about the place, mass, all that drivel, so I've heard enough of that, thank you very much.

So, I'm definitely not saying no to her, and the nasty remarks and criticism are going too far. Our entire dialogue is now coloured, flavoured, some might even say hijacked by American social and political enmities, and as a result her prescence on the world stage has taken on a very different meaning to that of the girl who protested outside her parliament, utterly convinced that she needed to do so. It's not her fault, but it is the reality.

All that said, despite the fact that the Metoo movement felt very much like a witch hunt at times, and my having a somewhat similar, turn the page, turn off the TV, throw my phone away reaction to it, I did find myself, subsequently, reviewing things about male-female relations, questioning things about possible behaviours I had displayed over the years, whatever. My point being that the way the message was delivered, I found to be really unsavoury(not saying ALL metoo stuff, there were some definite real cases raised), but once I got over that initial response that I have to having ideas forced on me by the media, the mob etc. it did give me pause for thought. I'm sure I'm not alone in this and in that way, once Greta fades away to yesterday's news, the ripples of her actions will probably be felt and not by only the usual yeasayers, but out in the wider consciousness.

I feel I need to burn down a small woodland after that..

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

I don't really get why people see her as some kind of radical force or as being "brainwashed" or whatever. We've been talking about CFCs and the Amazon and everything that she's now literally just repeating for decades, since I was a kid. Whatever about the doomsday stuff, which I don't really go in for either, partly because I'm contentedly resigned to knowing that the species won't survive forever no matter what, we are making the planet filthier and uglier every day, and the more people push to reverse that trend the better. 'Cos while we are here, now and in the future, clean air, clean water, wild spaces, these all make living a richer experience.

Kids younger than her have ended up catapulted into "stardom" for far less worthy reasons and no one batted an eyelid. So she's becoming a star for repeating her frustration at being told X is true but the people in control continue to act as if it's false, while at the same time (in the main) parroting their agreement that X is true. I mean, whether X is true or not (and it mostly is), she's absolutely damn right to want to bang all those fat hypocritical policy-maker and corporation heads together.

[Pedrito]

Yep all valid points and certainly things need shaking up. All that said, there's a definite agenda behind her. When she talks about ending 'all economic growth' you'd wonder where a 16 yr old with aspergers and a history of depression amongst other issues has come up with her ideas. And quite frankly, they're not her ideas. They're her parents' ideas and the those of their social circle and they are anti-capitalist, anti-market etc etc etc..we all know the rant.

So I see good stuff there and other slightly odd/disturbing stuff and it's all being fed to me through a lense of global media where you're never quite sure what the hell you're looking at in the first place anyway.

More power to her, let's hope shit starts to change, I'd better get back to church and ask for forgiveness for all that wanking and spraying cans of Lynx to hide the stale smell..double the Our Fathers I'm told.