Collapse Chat: Birds, Vindictive Climate, Climate Strike & a Better World—Ashes Ashes #93
Channel: Stop Fossil Fuels
Date: 20/05/2020

You asked for topic updates so we deliver. Bird populations are not doing well in North America and researchers are shocked at how effective it is to connect the dots. Tropical storms in Texas remind us of the economic paradoxes we've placed ourselves in. In addition, we reflect on Friday's climate strike from New York and Boston and start tackling the looming question in all of our minds over the climate crisis, "What now?"

Podcast by Ashes Ashes, reposted under CC License. Browse episode resources & read full transcript at https://ashesashes.org/blog/episode-93-collapse-chat-birds-vindictive-climate-and-cinnamon-toast-crunch


Stop Fossil Fuels researches and disseminates effective strategies and tactics to halt fossil fuel combustion as fast as possible. Learn more at https://stopfossilfuels.org 

CHAPTERS
2:06 Birdemic
13:48 Tropical Storm Catch-22
23:47 Responsibility
27:29 Climate Strike
43:24 A Better World

TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT
Daniel: A new paper discovered that over the past 50 years, 3 billion birds have been lost in both the United States and Canada, a whopping 29% decline.

David: That's just the last 50 years. 1972 saw the ban of DDT, which had heavily impacted bird populations. So this 30% drop is already beginning after a bird apocalypse.

Daniel: We don't understand the pace of change, because we only really know what we grew up with. I’m in awe of the birders I've met who walk down the trails and identify all these birds. I’m equal parts inspired and saddened because I see the passion they have and I wonder… what would this passion look like a hundred years ago? How many more birds would they have to identify?

---

Daniel: Last week, a tropical storm dumped more water on Texas than since Hurricane Harvey.

Daniel: A large oil refinery and adjacent chemical plant in Beaumont had to shut down. So did a major oil pipeline from Texas to Oklahoma had to be shut down. Earlier in the day I heard this on the news, I'd been daydreaming about climate change. What if climate change had a conscience and the hurricanes only impacted the oil companies, or storms only flooded oil companies?

David: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia just saw a large attack on their refinery infrastructure, and global oil prices are jumping. It’s good timing for the Earth. It's bad timing for global economies, but that's always good for the Earth.

---

David: I attended last Friday's global day of climate strike. I was shocked at how little police presence there was. Normally, when you have an event that is even moderately radical, NYPD likes to respond with an overwhelming show of force. They bring up paddy wagons, they bring up huge amounts of police, they bring up bike battalions, motorcycle battalions, the LRAD cars are always just there so you can see them, they’re yelling at you to stay on the sidewalk. Every single police officer has, like, 10 zip ties hooked on their side, they have riot police ready to go. The idea of all this is just to intimidate you, and let you know who runs this town and that if you want to step off, you're going to end up spending at least a couple hours in processing.

But for this climate march, probably because it had so much media attention, probably because it was semi-sanctioned by the city, NYPD had the good sense that it wouldn't be a good look for them to be heavy-handed in the reaction to this.

It felt, overall, like what this was more than anything was a release valve: “let's take away some of the anger, some of the pressure, some of the threats that people have been building up to, and see how can we dissipate this as quickly as possible.” And a parade that pretends it's a protest is a really great way to do that, and it echoed to me all these other unfortunate fails of protests that we've seen that started in the 60s with mass movements, continues through the 90s, and a lot more to this day with things like the Women's March, which it’s exciting to see that many people turn out and try and be there for women's rights, to protest certain things that they feel are unacceptable, but nothing happened from that protest.

The powers-that-be have figured out the way to allow this type of protest to occur. Everybody can feel good about protesting, post their media, tell people they were there, tell people “oh yeah, I'm marching that; I'm fighting for the Earth,” when in reality nothing is accomplished, and these are lessons that we've already learned through the history of protesting: these types of mass movement, when they aren't directed in any sort of end goal that is something beyond a speech, don't really end up getting us much, unfortunately. This PR-based protesting raises awareness, yes, but climate awareness has already reached a critical mass. Now we need climate action, and not the type of action that politicians and corporate leaders are prepared to do, but actual preparations to slash and destroy the economy.