All The Things

So COP21 take-away? Seems it's a call to mutual fund executives and large shareholders alike to divest from oil and coal, and for governments to end subsidies in fossil fuels and support renewables, and hope that could do the trick? Carbon tax on polluters provides the "stick", and the viability of a new market of renewables, and carbon credits act as the "carrot". Our "free-o-liberal" market should now align with the scientific consensus about what needs to happen to keep temperature rise @ or <1.5c No surprises here. The world's 1%ers (everyone with an income at >$35,000 a year?) can feel like there's a plan that will work, and the best part is, they won't have to do anything any differently... The carnival barking Republicans will claim it's a redistribution of wealth... Yes, different companies (under the same old corporate umbrellas (e.g, BP, EXXON/Mobile, GE, etc. ) will now make a lot of money for shareholders. Neo-liberal thinking is never meant to pan out for the 99%. It's possibly (imho very likely) too little, too late to avoid really crazy shit coming down the pipeline in even just the next 20 years... I get sickened looking around at all the hypocrisy, i.e., Wealthy people in the USA (the 1%ers of the world) braying, "hold gummints accountable!" Um, last time I checked, (however anemic in practice), we actually ARE our government. Liberals, especially, are wailing and gnashing their teeth thusly: "They" should do something now! " Most "liberals" I know are Conservatives. They own (inherited?) sweet investment portfolios that read like an Apocalypse Manifesto. They wear $300 Patagonia jackets that the company entreated them not to buy. They eat "local grass fed" beef somehow exempting the impacts because these are "green" dollar bills, not the unwasheds' money that contributes to factory farmed animals. The 1%ers travel frequently by air, drive big vehicles, burn wood and oil to heat their homes, etc, etc, etc.?) This is the best we can expect without radical change, and I mean "radical" at the individual level... Massive divestment from MOST STOCKS, crashing this fake neo-liberal economy and bring most of what we know of our modern lives to a standstill. This would bring about chaos. At best, it organizes into anarcho-syndicalism and mutualism in local areas. I know people who do this voluntarily because they know what sustainable actually IS. They're looked at as kinda insane. Most of them were a cog in the machine, or inherited from a parental cog. They "got in and got theirs" to afford the initial set-up, land, etc then dropped out. I wish I had got there in the rat race, but I was busy being voluntarily simple for the last 15 years. Stupid me and my thrift store wardrobe, a car that got 40mpg, and vegetarianism. I can feel good about my footprint. Sorry, mom and dad, I didn't "contribute" much. Still the planet will burn. I see people going through the motions of adopting "voluntary simplicity" lifestyles, but it's really fake now. (Live like a poor person... or, try the no frills version: actually BE poor! ) I took a lot of shit for living this way and have ended up pretty insecure. This rhetoric has been around for over a decade, yet still not many people with the slightest desire or know-how of giving up creature comforts. The "developing" world is anxious and poised to adopt the American brand of creature comforts that we've rubbed the world's noses in for a century... things like world-travel, automobiles, red meat, bottled water, throw-away fashions, etc. Wealthy liberals should stop pretending they're interested in doing anything about it all, or that they honestly want anything to be any different. Eventually, we'd need to heat our homes via a ferment of our own poop, scrap all cars and walk everywhere, eat only vegetarian we grow ourselves, gather our own downed wood to burn in a rocket stove, etc. etc. Without being forced into it, it will never happen. The consumerist machine rolls on!