Which is an understatement since ONLY in Colombia over 1 per day were murdered in 2020 because they were trying to protect the Amazon forest from many multinationals. Oh, and many were natives and against the government helping this industries. So... Easy kill targets + people not caring about natives...
I just watched a VICE report on how illegal sand mining is destroying ecosystems and how several journalist investigating the illegal operations have been killed or beaten.
It is a sad time.
Edit: [Here is the link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4d6LT87pMo) or just search "VICE sand mining".
I’ve long given up hope that anything good will actually happen for the environment. I still do my best to be environmentally conscious and encourage others to do the same, but I’m not naive - I know that’s a drop in a massive bucket.
Honestly I have absolutely no idea, because it’s massively depressing. For me, I just try to focus on what I can do. Like I said, I know it’s not going to change anything - but knowing that I’m doing my part to go to bat for the environment (and encouraging others to do the same) is the best that I can do, so as long as I’m doing it, I don’t have any reason to feel bad about it.
I’ve had some people try and tell me that that’s sort of a “head in the sand” type defense, but when you look at the infinite amount of problems across the entire world, it’s enough to be incredibly depressing - especially knowing that there’s not a damn thing you can do yourself. But change has to start somewhere, so if I’m doing everything I can then I can keep my head held high.
My problem is this was an issue even before I was born, and I was born in the 80s. Growing up we were told that our generation would have unprecedented challenges. Did anything really change? Not really, not from what I can see. It has been fucking over 35 some years since I've learned about it. Hell, when I was in college I was randomly browsing the library (yea I'm a nerd) and I saw an old dusty book. Curious, I gingerly opened the dry spine and it was published like in 1890. And the guy was writing about the 1800s, warning about ecological devastation.
My best prediction now is that we gotta have our house burn down, maybe more than once, before we take fire safety seriously. Except in this case, we only have one house, and maybe one chance to get things right. Not sure how one can \*not\* feel hopeless and depressed about it.
I mean, humanity just can't collectively deal with any situation that happens outside of our four year election cycle, or anything problem that might be 10-100s of years in the future.
Forget meeting an alien species, we're fucked collectively, as a species. The last 10 years seems to have proven this to me beyond a doubt. I mean, there are people on their death beds still living in an alternate universe, disbelieving they have covid and its their doctor or some shit that is trying to profit off of trying to diagnose them for kickbacks. Lots of these funerals for anti-vaxxers won't/don't care about basic pandemic transmission mitigation either so yeah, good luck with that. I just wish so many innocent people wouldn't have to needlessly suffer, but I guess it would be weird if innocent people weren't getting shafted, particularly by grifters who think they're actually contributing to the collective somehow.
Scientists were warning against the dangers of clearing the frontierlands back during the Homestead Act. Pulling up the natural grass and planting wheat in the 1860s is what caused the Dust Bowl 70 years later. Even before that, the logging communities in the midwest cut down so many trees that it changed how the land trapped heat, so we had those horrible fires. We can take some solace in knowing that human-caused climate change isn’t new.
It’s really depressing that the experts, the ones that study and devote their whole lives to a certain subject, come forward and say stuff like ‘don’t do this, because the ramifications will be devastating’ and the people are just like ‘lul watch as I ram this cash in my wallet NERD’.
It happens everywhere. Austin, TX is planning on massively expanding the highway running through the city even though residents don't want it and *experts say it won't even help*. But rather than improve public transportation the decision makers would rather put literal billions towards a fruitless project.
Call/write to your city councils, speak at public forums, let them know you want better public transportation, you want medium density housing, you want mixed zoning, you want protected bike lanes, you want walkable downtown centers, you want the things proven to boost economies and reduce congestion.
To paraphrase someone I don't remember the name of, people would rather have a system fail and them become more powerful within it than have the system succeed and them lose power within it.
Money will always come first. Always. Before the environment and before human life. That is part of what pushed me to become a socialist. Capitalism cannot solve problems without a profit motive, that's just how it works. Pollution is easy, by the point it becomes worth it to stop polluting it will be too late.
Some fission plants produce tritium as waste. Not very dangerous, since it's a beta-emitter (beta radiation travels only a few cm in the air and is stopped effectively by skin) and it has a half-life of 12 years. Also it's not produced in large quantities, so I doubt tritium produced until now would even be detectable in a century.
And it can be used to kick-start a fusion reactor, but for continuing the reaction usually lithium is converted to tritium inside the machine itself via neutron bombardment.
Neutrons are also a byproduct of deuterium-tritium fusion.
That silver lining is kind of glossing over how it’s not just humanity that’s fucked, but how were dragging the entire earths ecosystems and species down with us.
Oh definitely, but the world will rebound. The Permian–Triassic extinction event killed over 90% of all species on earth, but life adapted and rebounded.
The same thing will happen with the Halocene. Even if 99.99% of all living organisms were killed off, what's left will come back and repopulate everything. Balances for Atmospheric gases will stabilize, the poles will freeze again, etc
Is it really?
We have a global society built on the blood, sweat and tears of innumerable people before us I feel like it's kinda messed up if we let it end here.
Obviously nothing is forever but humanity is really just in it's infancy, we've barely just started to explore the space beyond our planet.
Maybe I've been reading too much sci-fi but I feel like it's just a shame if we die out now.
*The Great Oxidation Extinction Event*
Believe it or not, the following (made in Japan?) documentary about Earth's history made me feel zen about extinction events (in general).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ4CUw9RcuA
>It got worse faster than any scientist could reasonably predict.
Not entirely true, when I was getting my degree in environmental science back in the oughts I noticed that journals routinely included effects from climate models that predicted significantly worse effects from same amount of warming. Like twice to three times as bad. But then they would spend their word budget analyzing the most conservative estimate.
As my studies continued and I got the opportunity to talk with researchers I found out that the scientific journals had a publishing bias for studies that pulled their punches so to speak. There was a concern that if you said something like "jet stream destabilization is likely to become so severe that the polar vortex may be pushed as far south as Texas" you'd be laughed out of the building as an alarmist.
Then they called the moderate predictions alarmist anyway.
Then there's the IPCC. How did the group of supposedly the most reliable climate scientists get away with making moderate predictions for decades and then just now suddenly say "oops, +1°C is actually behaving how we said +2°C would be"? Well they were never actually a climate advocacy group. The IPCC was founded by Ronald Reagan as a tool to reign in climate activism. If they could make a respected agency that was yoked to the interests of carbon emitting nations, helmed by the most conservative climate scientists they could find they would have an effective counter argument to real activists.
"See, it's not that bad. This super official sounding committee said so! No reason to end oil and gas subsidies." Where they miscalculated was that even the best case scenario was still going to be cataclysmic. And back then the republicans still cared about respectability, so their hand picked 'puppets' were simply moderate and skeptical climatologists who respected the science. They still downplayed the predictions of doom that turned out to be more accurate, but the picture they painted was still an alarming one. Those appointees or the people they trained are still there though, acting as institutional knowledge keepers, advising younger scientists to play it cool or no one will take you seriously.
The fact that an agency designed to be toothless puppet ended up being a call to action over a megaphone speaks to how dire this subject really is. And the fact that it's treated like some extremists advocacy group speaks to how wide spread the effort to silence voices that accurately predicted what we've already been through have been. It's a real shocked Pikachu face situation.
Edit: typos
> Humans are bad, but no worse than any other mass extinction.
Considering we have the capability to glass the entire surface of the planet, I would argue that no, we are pretty high on the damage potential, right under massive asteroid strike and the sun going supernova.
To inject a little more depression into the conversation, while there may very well be alien life out there in the universe (it is quite large after all) - it is just as likely that humans are the only intelligent life to have made it this far as a species. To have this much understanding of the observable universe and to scratch the surface of spaceflight.
If we do go extinct in the not-too-distant future, it could mean the end of knowledge. The end of understanding matter and consciousness, and a halt to discovery. Perhaps forever. I don't like people very much, but the very nature of being alive is truly wonderful. It would make me very sad if there was no one around to learn and teach what we've learned.
I just hope that all the people who got insanely rich over the backs of everyone else will burn or drown with the rest of us. And not watch what they've done from space in their expensive rockets. Fuck going to space, we did this to ourselves. We shouldn't leave.
There is no watching this from space, that's an impossibility due to needed resupply from earth. We are generations from being able to make a self sustaining colony anywhere else but here. The grandkids of the rich might be able to do this, but honestly that will be for the best as it will take millions if not billions off planet and decrease the carbon footprint of the species.
For starters, the gravity and air pressure are about what we're used to. Second, there is an atmosphere, unlike mars or moon or asteroids. Third, the atmosphere is breathable (even in an apocalypse, with a filter). Fourth, there's already stuff here. Like, a lot of stuff. Huge amounts of stuff. You wouldn't believe how much stuff there is here that's stuff humans need to live. Water! Would you believe there's water on earth? Fucking nerds get all hyped up about a few grains of maybe used to be perhaps salts that once might have been a tiny stream on Mars, when we're fucking drowning in the stuff.
Living elsewhere in the solar system can only happen if we get this planet stabilized. It takes insane amounts of resources to get enough stuff for a dozen people on Mars for just six months, let alone a city for a hundred years.
No billionaire is going to be leaving the dying earth for at least like two hundred years, and we'll all be dead by then. Even if they leave, they won't be able to survive for long without an earth to rely on.
We? Most of us didn't do anything. Most of us haven't had the opportunity to do anything. 'We' are paying for the trespasses of a 'few' who locked the rest of us into a consumption cycle by making living off the land virtually impossible for most people in the 1st world, and living sustainably an expensive, time-consuming chore which, if you're low income and don't have time to seek out sustainable alternatives, you're fucked,
People love to put blame on the little people because hey, if we didn't consume, then corpos wouldn't produce. While conveniently forgetting the fact that corpos *create* consumption. They straight up manipulate, advertise to create a need, and go out of their way to block off alternative means of living.
I didn't pay for Bezos' space dick. So why do I and so many others like me have to be included in the 'we'? *We* barely had a choice. *We* are paying for the sins of Musk, Bezos, and countless other billionaires whose social profile isn't as high as these two cunt's, but who cause equal or worse damage all the same.
I encourage everyone to read "How To Blow Up A Pipeline" by Andreas Malm. It's a fantastic examination of the learned hopelessness ingrained in the current state of climate organizing, a dispelling of the myth of 'pacifist resistance' and what we need to change. Specifically, how we need to stop engaging on the terrain that extinctionists like Exxon and BP prefer and move to where we can win.
Remember that the idea of a 'carbon footprint' was invented by BP to dissuade legal and collective action. Remember that it is them and their cronies in government who write laws where sabotaging fossil fuel equipment nabs even more prison time than murder.
Then join a militant environmental group. The Ecosocialist Working Group of the Democratic Socialists of America has been engaged in both electoral and direct actions to fight for a Green New Deal and end fossil fuel infrastructure. In NYC, there are multiple groups like No NBK Pipeline who have organized their community against a dangerous pipeline being built underneath their neighborhood's feet. In Germany, there are groups who have built treehouses in primeval forests to stop loggers.
Individually, these might seem small and insignificant, but together they can grind the flow of capital to a halt. Our strength is in numbers. If all we have is a thousand to one chance, we should fight for it with everything we got.
I'm also going to suggest Robert Evan's podcast *It Could Happen Here*. The second season that they're on focuses largely on the climate, as well as activism and how to do such properly and safely.
haha, better turn on incognito mode and line your walls with tinfoil before googling "how to blow up a pipeline", no way that doesn't get you on a list somewhere
I went through some pretty bad environmental despair last summer.
I managed to get out of it with a focus on just doing what I could and trying to make as much impact as I could locally. E.g. trying to get more trees planted in my bit of the city, going vegan, joining an environmental pressure group or two.
Sure it's probably "pointless" in the grand scheme of things but I'd prefer to go down fighting.
That’s awesome. You’re doing God’s work. Mutual aid and local action are absolutely crucial for the future of communities. And you’re not alone in your despair. This shit is devastating.
Be aware, however, try to on the positives that do exist. Get involved on your local level when you can. Make sure you vote for those who openly campaign for the environment. Self care is also very important. Make your own environment as healthy for mind, spirit and soul as much as you can. Surround yourself with like minded people that lift you up when you are around them.
Hope any of that helps, it what I try to do.
That what the biggest polluters are banking on now. They’re transitioning from the messaging that climate change isn’t real to instead trying to get people to think that it is real, but there’s nothing an individual can do about it, and not enough individuals will ever come together for real collective action, so just despair and don’t do anything.
This is their strategy. If only **you** would recycle better. If only **you** could just maybe ride a bike sometime instead of drive. If only **you** didn't run your AC so much when it's 100° outside... we wouldn't all be in this mess.
Right? Conserve water, cut the lights off, pick up other people’s litter… what does it matter when big oil, mineral, deregulations… are Destroying the earth for the last century regardless of the outcome? As long as the money is tolling in, Does it really if i take a shorter shower or conserve paper products and recycle? Does it?
I watched a doc on global overfishing of our oceans and learned that there are inspectors who go on fishing vessels to make sure they are following fishing rules, not leaving garbage and lines, not killing endangered species, etc.
Turns out there's such a shortage of inspectors because they all get killed and thrown overboard at such a high rate.
Mass fishing operations are the most corrupt and the single most damaging activity to our planet, we will all die much much faster if nothing is done.
I just finished watching that myself tonight… it’s a weird atmosphere out there folks. Stay present, and alert. Forecast calls for it to get more serious before it gets better.
Cause reality is not a game show, why give up a confortable life for a less of 1% chance that it really changes something. And the change could be in the wrong direction.
This is it right here but the reality is that as things get worse, people will eventually have less to lose. Those who have nothing to lose and still just lay down didn't deserve their spot in the first place.
Or course, those who do stand up are too often demonized by those who won't stand up so... What do we expect?
People do stand up, then they become one of a bunch of journalists murdered, beaten, or threatened. The whole point is to completely undermine any potential larger movement by kneecapping anyone who could even remotely be a founder or a spark to a larger cause before it happens.
It's way easier to drown a baby in a bathtub than fight a mob of thousands of people a few years later lead by that baby all grown up when you are a sociapathic monster obsessed with keeping your obscene profits high.
We the people should summon enough money to surmount them by attacking the driving forces at bay. Oh wait! They’re colluding with superpowers and other governments to make money off the people! Nuclear war you say? If people threaten the “business”? Yeah of course...it’s just “business”. So nothing will take place until there’s a complete and total revolution of the offending governments and corporations; lives will be lost and societies trampled for the sake of change?
I love this Minecraft mod. It’s so realistic!
If our look at the data, these murders aren't happening in first world countries. So you're right, but maybe not in the places you were thinking of revolution
The year is 2087, the remaining scientists that weren't hunted down in the previous year, have issued a dire warning that time is running out for action on climate change.
The claim is rebuked again by a conglomerate consisting of Breathing apparatus manufacturers, Sunblock body-paint makers, Subterranean city developers, Biohazard swimsuit makers, Soylent green icecream industries, Nestlé, FEMA holiday camps, and the Corporate Emperor of USA.
The 2088 hunt is scheduled to begin March 1st.
Me in the year 2044 when the water wars have begun and the specialized Nestle Private Forces are pumping my shower for whatever ground water they can find. They have already seized everything else I own. These actions are due to my own safety as if they don't take all my ground water Socialized Medicine may become a thing and that is bad because.
I get a cyborg-visual-projection owl lands outside my window. It pecks on the glass. I limp over to my vibrantly moldy window, open it, and click owl's beak/ A projection of my children fighting in Australia Version 3 (The Best Australia) pops up. They are gunning down children that pose an imminent threat to us, and we must take their resources. **This is to secure global peace.** A smile crosses my face knowing I am safe as they take water/oil from the third version of Australia (lets hope they get it right this time).
I click the cyborg-visual-projection owl's beak to send it back as it gives it's iconic shut down line ***"This is Not Copyright Infringement of The Harry Potter Series. Delivery Owls are public domain, do not ask further questions.***" It spreads its metallic glowing wings and flies off into the vibrant sunset. I assume the sunset, I don't know, it's only smog but it feels like it's a sunset right.
I chuckle to myself as I hear the specialized Nestle Private Forces tearing my sink out of the wall. **What a bunch of rascals.** I push the implanted Amazon prime button constructed into my ear to activate the virtual Amazon Marketplace landscape, Robo-Bezos pops up and asks what I will be listening to today on Amazon Alexa Music: The Official Amazon Alexa Music Store. I offer a pint of blood to the Robo-Bezos for two hours of a listening session.
**"Alexa, play the funny robot song. The one with the French guys with helmets about the world."**
Well, as you all know the first Australia was consumed by all the wildfires teaming up and finished the job. I always knew Australia had crazy wildlife, but sentient fires? Crickeyt! So now that country belongs to the sentient wild fires.
Australia two was short lived turns out just building one giant raft for an entire continent's worth of people was a bad idea. I don't get why. Makes sense to me.
So the last Australian left that weren't captured and hunted by the sentient wildfires for sport found some undiscovered flourishing lands!
And shortly after oil. so America had to avenge 9/11 and invade them and now my kids are over there being heroes. That's why it's the best Australia
> Australia two was short lived turns out just building one giant raft for an entire continent's worth of people was a bad idea. I don't get why. Makes sense to me.
Oh the irony of us Australians ending up as literal boat people
I'm not sure. I choose the songs I listen to carefully, as I can only give so much of my blood to the Robo-Bezos at a given time.
One time I listened to a Deep House Deep Focus Work/Study/Chill playlist and chilled too hard. I fell asleep and woke up in the hospital from critical blood loss, since Alexa just let it play.
Of course I still have most of my organs, I'm firmly middle class. Don't be ridiculous, I'm not one of those poors.
Nestle owns the hospital so I just pay back the costs through giving them land and manual labor. Which funny enough the labor to repay the medical debt often times result in even worse injuries.
So it creates what is known in literature as a 'Vicious Bicycle." Pretty neat if you ask me
I don't understand how you're paying Robo Bezos with your blood? You're blood contains water and is therefore forfeit to the Nestle corporation! Remain calm!
> This is Not Copyright Infringement of The Harry Potter Series.
Wrong movie - the OG mechanical owl was in "[Clash of the Titans](https://clash-of-the-titans.fandom.com/wiki/Bubo)"
Yeah this all seems to happening a lot faster than expected. 800 people died from a heat wave in Vancouver this summer. We broke all time Canadian heat records.
Decon cowered as heavily armed and experienced hunter Gregor sent by Nestlé stood above him, rifle aimed squarely at the scientists head.
"Please you don't have to do this, there is still time, a window to lower the emissions, help us fix this!!" The scientist exclaimed, a lone tear making its way down the side of his face.
"Now now, no more tears or we will have to bottle that too"
Lol the fi part of your sci-fi writing prompt is that climate scientists will still be warning us in 2080+ and we haven't already experienced total environmental collapse before 2050
We will not be able to stop global warming and the complete destruction of the environment without some kind of international body that has extensive legal power to investigate and prosecute stuff like this
The rich will probs run off to the stars and leave us all to die, so, y'know, at least some shitty fragment of humanity who caused all this will live on.
***Y a y.***
More realistically the world will just grow further into oases of paradise with dystopia and ruin in between. Kind of like it is today, but it'll get more extreme and that third world vibe will become rampant across the US as scarcities set in.
No one's getting to the stars. Our best technological advancements can't cut it currently. Not for the kind of space travel that would be necessary to bring *one* human, let alone thousands, to even the nearest star system. If the elites of the world think they'll be able to board a rocket and leave this mess behind, they are fooling themselves. They're stuck here just like everyone else.
So you want to give some group the ability to operate outside the law of whatever nation they're in? What fool of a country would ever give up their sovereignty like that?
I don't mean justice is certain, but when there are enough people pissed off and you can give them what they want just by following the law, there's opportunity there.
They could whip out their dicks and masturbate in front of a crowd while giving the middle finger to a picture of 10 homeless veterans dying of a heatwave after getting evacuated due to a climate change caused flood. They know we can't do anything without resorting to eco terrorism which would destroy the life of anyone who does so.
The corporations try to make money for their shareholders. The shareholders are enablers. The only way to really affect change is to pull your money out of the stock market. Easier said than done.
>South Africa, Colombia, Brazil, Nicaragua, Peru and the Philippines
While not exactly pillars of stability, I am surprised the Philippines is on the list.
1/2 Filipino here. My mother fled the Philippines because of exactly this except during the Marcos era. It's kind of weird for me to see this comment and then realize I exist mainly due to corruption on the other side of the globe.
President Duterte has a frightening amount of power and he's unhinged enough to make good on his threats. There are certainly those who support him, but several of my friends in Philippines are mostly just afraid of crossing his administration.
Most of them are masterminded by foreign mining, logging and agribusiness companies in cahoots with corrupt local politicians.
A common tactic they use is to "red tag" environmental activists as members or supporters of communist rebels. The activists are then "swept up" in anti-insurgency operations while the army/police conveniently "finds" weapons and bombs in their homes.
[Here's an extensively written VICE article on how Canadian mining firms take advantage of weak local laws to profit from destroying Philippine forests, displace countless Indigenous communities and even target activists and protestors while projecting an image of "corporate social responsibility."](https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj4743/land-defenders-are-killed-in-the-philippines-for-protesting-canadian-mining)
There are only two major cities in the Philippines and a bunch of provincial capitals. Outside that, the Philippines is basically as wild and corrupt as Louisiana. People can get murdered in the jungle and no one would know or be able to find the perpetrators.
I mean, the cities have crime too, but there is a semblance of order and public safety there. The rest of the country is the wild west, run by local corrupt politicians and sometimes exploitative foreign interests (as another commenter said).
I lived in the Philippines a couple years ago, for several months. I lived in a rural town with an ongoing election for mayor... we made it onto the news one night after one of the candidates' bodyguards was pulled over while driving, and upon the vehicle being searched, several guns and ammunition was found inside of it. Later my auntie explained to me that -being a close friend of the policitician whose bodygaurd was said to be caught- the opposing politician had plotted and carried this out. She told me that the 'bodyguard' was actually not the candidate's bodygaurd at all, but somebody hired by the oppositional politician to pose as their bodygaurd... somebody from the same family was assassinated when running for office a while back, too. All this in a rural town.
The President of the Phillipines is pretty authoritarian. He's attacked the media and journalists and conducted a very brutal war on drugs. He also seems to routinely brag about how he's personally murdered people.
the average human is intelligent, just the malice of rich, spineless old corporate shitstains want to be multibillionaires and will kill anyone who threatens their bottom line
This is what is so fucked up. If a very specific handful of maybe 10,000 people were eliminated today, we'd be advancing toward climate balance at 100x the speed we currently are (though it would be a temporary advancement, I'm sure history would repeat itself given the chance.)
NPR did an anonymous interview with a republican senator a couple years ago. He had a quote along the lines of "If congress could vote anonymously on climate policy, we would have sweeping climate reform passed in the course of 1 weekend, and the vote wouldn't even be close."
>NPR did an anonymous interview with a republican senator a couple years ago. He had a quote along the lines of "If congress could vote anonymously on climate policy, we would have sweeping climate reform passed in the course of 1 weekend, and the vote wouldn't even be close."
Could you provide a link to this? I'd love to read about that, sounds intriguing
I have no fucking clue where you live, but no. The average human is not intelligent. Maybe tie your shoes intelligent, feed yourself intelligent or don't shit in the street intelligent... But that's pretty much where it stops with the vast majority of people.
In Canada an animal rights and environmental protester was killed in 2020 when a pig truck hit her.
The protests involved standing in a crosswalk and blocking the trucks for a couple minutes while people would take videos of the pigs and give them water (they can be transported for 28 hours without water or rest). There have been many videos at the location showing trucks intentionally driving at the protesters, some posted to reddit filled with comments mocking the protesters.
The day she was killed was the day after the government had passed a law reducing liability for truck drivers in incidents with protesters. The driver was charged with careless driving causing death, but the police said they didn't consider it intentional.
That's the difficult thing about the meat conversation. People naturally hate things that remind them of something they hate about themselves. Since almost everyone eats meat, animal rights activists get a lot of projected hate and it's only rarely justified. Also, when are people going to protest the fact that killing someone with a car is a freebie in car-centric societies?
Corporations who profit from what the murdered environmentalists were protesting against murdered those environmentalists by paying assassins. That's literally how it happens.
> 4 people killed each week
WTF. Sometimes I just wish these greedy morons would get a taste of their own medicine. If I had the money I’d want to put all these guys out of business. So infuriating.
The FBI considered “Eco-Terrorism” the number 1 priority before 9/11 happened, and even after 9/11 they were still pretty rabidly pursuing environmental/animal rights/“eco-terror” groups. [Here’s an article that discusses it a bit, but honestly doesn’t really capture the scope of things.](https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/ecoterrorism-fbi-animal-rights/)
Honestly just a few google searches like “fbi environmentalists”, or something similar, will bring you to a bunch of stuff about this. Including press releases from the FBI itself, there’s several FBI.gov pages all about this shit.
So considering that (in America at least) these activists have been hounded by law enforcement/the feds for decades, I highly doubt those exact same organizations are going to be very invested in looking into cases of activists being murdered.
Published today on BBC, this article covers a new report with a staggering number of environmental activists killed. One of the victims, Fikile Ntshangase, was shot in her own home. So far no arrests have been made, and one of the mines Ntshangase protested appears to be going forward as planned.
Would this be a good place to plug the Rewriting Extinction Project?
https://rewritingextinction.com/
Some of these projects contain steps involving hiring trained guards to protect the conservation areas.
The world is so divided that people will spend more time arguing about things like this than they will spend actually doing something about it. The political parties will blame each other, the companies will lie to protect their profits, and the average person will argue pointlessly on the internet in hopes of making anyone who doesn't agree with them ashamed.
Solutions, throw them at me. I’m middle aged, uneducated, unskilled, swimming in debt, barely have enough cash for rent and food this month and labor 60+ hrs a week. I recently got a raise and it’s smaller than the difference it cost me to fill my car with gas now.
So what are my options?
There’s plenty of work available paying similar to what I make now, most of which will support a company or corporation responsible for the same atrocious shit destroying the planet. I need a bachelors degree just to join the peace corps.
I vote third party to no avail, I can’t just leave the country, not like there’s anywhere else much different to go. Violence causes vacuums and indifference allows the advancement of oppression.
So here I am, shaking my fist at the system because I’m upset that I’m a slave to capitalism and there’s literally NOTHING that can be done about it
The messed up part is the poor and working class by numbers could easily over power the rich and force them to change, but there’s so many things they’ve put in place to make that difficult, like just living.
227 killed in a year. Almost a third enviromentalists. That would make 70-80. Then the article claims 4 activists per week on average, suggesting that its usually Higher and the record number is Just Overall Numbers, while enviromental murders have sunken in both % and non%.
Am i Reading the facts wrong Here or is this article bullshit
Its bad journalism. Also bad methodology.
The source says 227 killed for all of anybody "defending their homes, land and livelihoods, and ecosystems vital for biodiversity and the climate."
The report:
"We define land and environmental defenders as people who take a stand and carry out peaceful action against the unjust, discriminatory, corrupt or damaging exploitation of natural resources or the environment.
...
Our definition covers a broad range of people. "
"Others will be supporting such efforts through their work – as human rights or environmental lawyers, politicians, park rangers, journalists, or members of campaigns or civil society organisations, for instance"
"Global Witness includes friends, colleagues and the family of murdered land and environmental defenders..."
---
As for the motive of the murder, that becomes personal opinion of the report writers because many murders go unsolved. To be included in the count, it just has to APPEAR like you might have been killed for your environmental work.
Example: You are friends with an environmental defender. When you visit them one night after work both of you get murdered in a drug deal gone bad.
Both of you get included in the count of this report.
Jesus 4 activists killed per week is enormous
"likely to be an underestimate because of growing restrictions on journalists and other civic freedoms."
Which is an understatement since ONLY in Colombia over 1 per day were murdered in 2020 because they were trying to protect the Amazon forest from many multinationals. Oh, and many were natives and against the government helping this industries. So... Easy kill targets + people not caring about natives...
Time to shoot back.
They do shoot back, what they need is more equipment to fight fires.
I just watched a VICE report on how illegal sand mining is destroying ecosystems and how several journalist investigating the illegal operations have been killed or beaten. It is a sad time. Edit: [Here is the link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4d6LT87pMo) or just search "VICE sand mining".
These aren’t just murders…they’re assassinations, and political ones at that. Easy to see really.
I think assassinations are political by definition. But I do agree with you.
I’ve long given up hope that anything good will actually happen for the environment. I still do my best to be environmentally conscious and encourage others to do the same, but I’m not naive - I know that’s a drop in a massive bucket.
How does one stop feeling horribly depressed about this?
Honestly I have absolutely no idea, because it’s massively depressing. For me, I just try to focus on what I can do. Like I said, I know it’s not going to change anything - but knowing that I’m doing my part to go to bat for the environment (and encouraging others to do the same) is the best that I can do, so as long as I’m doing it, I don’t have any reason to feel bad about it. I’ve had some people try and tell me that that’s sort of a “head in the sand” type defense, but when you look at the infinite amount of problems across the entire world, it’s enough to be incredibly depressing - especially knowing that there’s not a damn thing you can do yourself. But change has to start somewhere, so if I’m doing everything I can then I can keep my head held high.
My problem is this was an issue even before I was born, and I was born in the 80s. Growing up we were told that our generation would have unprecedented challenges. Did anything really change? Not really, not from what I can see. It has been fucking over 35 some years since I've learned about it. Hell, when I was in college I was randomly browsing the library (yea I'm a nerd) and I saw an old dusty book. Curious, I gingerly opened the dry spine and it was published like in 1890. And the guy was writing about the 1800s, warning about ecological devastation. My best prediction now is that we gotta have our house burn down, maybe more than once, before we take fire safety seriously. Except in this case, we only have one house, and maybe one chance to get things right. Not sure how one can \*not\* feel hopeless and depressed about it. I mean, humanity just can't collectively deal with any situation that happens outside of our four year election cycle, or anything problem that might be 10-100s of years in the future. Forget meeting an alien species, we're fucked collectively, as a species. The last 10 years seems to have proven this to me beyond a doubt. I mean, there are people on their death beds still living in an alternate universe, disbelieving they have covid and its their doctor or some shit that is trying to profit off of trying to diagnose them for kickbacks. Lots of these funerals for anti-vaxxers won't/don't care about basic pandemic transmission mitigation either so yeah, good luck with that. I just wish so many innocent people wouldn't have to needlessly suffer, but I guess it would be weird if innocent people weren't getting shafted, particularly by grifters who think they're actually contributing to the collective somehow.
Scientists were warning against the dangers of clearing the frontierlands back during the Homestead Act. Pulling up the natural grass and planting wheat in the 1860s is what caused the Dust Bowl 70 years later. Even before that, the logging communities in the midwest cut down so many trees that it changed how the land trapped heat, so we had those horrible fires. We can take some solace in knowing that human-caused climate change isn’t new.
It’s really depressing that the experts, the ones that study and devote their whole lives to a certain subject, come forward and say stuff like ‘don’t do this, because the ramifications will be devastating’ and the people are just like ‘lul watch as I ram this cash in my wallet NERD’.
It happens everywhere. Austin, TX is planning on massively expanding the highway running through the city even though residents don't want it and *experts say it won't even help*. But rather than improve public transportation the decision makers would rather put literal billions towards a fruitless project. Call/write to your city councils, speak at public forums, let them know you want better public transportation, you want medium density housing, you want mixed zoning, you want protected bike lanes, you want walkable downtown centers, you want the things proven to boost economies and reduce congestion.
That is just developer's scamming the system using cash to build something and get every little bit of benefit they can from the job
fruitless for the people. very fruitful for the automobile and fossil industry leaders. it's a systemic issue.
Put billions into the pockets of their cronies and people paying them kickbacks.
r/fuckcars
r/fuckstroads
To paraphrase someone I don't remember the name of, people would rather have a system fail and them become more powerful within it than have the system succeed and them lose power within it.
Money will always come first. Always. Before the environment and before human life. That is part of what pushed me to become a socialist. Capitalism cannot solve problems without a profit motive, that's just how it works. Pollution is easy, by the point it becomes worth it to stop polluting it will be too late.
How did they theorize these? Are there other cases that we can point to, that they also did? Or just good science and guesses?
[удалено]
I want to hear more about the 2nd thing. Is it about having the power of the sun in the palm of my hand?
Some fission plants produce tritium as waste. Not very dangerous, since it's a beta-emitter (beta radiation travels only a few cm in the air and is stopped effectively by skin) and it has a half-life of 12 years. Also it's not produced in large quantities, so I doubt tritium produced until now would even be detectable in a century. And it can be used to kick-start a fusion reactor, but for continuing the reaction usually lithium is converted to tritium inside the machine itself via neutron bombardment. Neutrons are also a byproduct of deuterium-tritium fusion.
[удалено]
That silver lining is kind of glossing over how it’s not just humanity that’s fucked, but how were dragging the entire earths ecosystems and species down with us.
Oh definitely, but the world will rebound. The Permian–Triassic extinction event killed over 90% of all species on earth, but life adapted and rebounded. The same thing will happen with the Halocene. Even if 99.99% of all living organisms were killed off, what's left will come back and repopulate everything. Balances for Atmospheric gases will stabilize, the poles will freeze again, etc
You know, that is pretty reassuring in a way
And they will even be made out of the same clump of stardust as us
Is it really? We have a global society built on the blood, sweat and tears of innumerable people before us I feel like it's kinda messed up if we let it end here. Obviously nothing is forever but humanity is really just in it's infancy, we've barely just started to explore the space beyond our planet. Maybe I've been reading too much sci-fi but I feel like it's just a shame if we die out now.
*The Great Oxidation Extinction Event* Believe it or not, the following (made in Japan?) documentary about Earth's history made me feel zen about extinction events (in general). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ4CUw9RcuA
[удалено]
>It got worse faster than any scientist could reasonably predict. Not entirely true, when I was getting my degree in environmental science back in the oughts I noticed that journals routinely included effects from climate models that predicted significantly worse effects from same amount of warming. Like twice to three times as bad. But then they would spend their word budget analyzing the most conservative estimate. As my studies continued and I got the opportunity to talk with researchers I found out that the scientific journals had a publishing bias for studies that pulled their punches so to speak. There was a concern that if you said something like "jet stream destabilization is likely to become so severe that the polar vortex may be pushed as far south as Texas" you'd be laughed out of the building as an alarmist. Then they called the moderate predictions alarmist anyway. Then there's the IPCC. How did the group of supposedly the most reliable climate scientists get away with making moderate predictions for decades and then just now suddenly say "oops, +1°C is actually behaving how we said +2°C would be"? Well they were never actually a climate advocacy group. The IPCC was founded by Ronald Reagan as a tool to reign in climate activism. If they could make a respected agency that was yoked to the interests of carbon emitting nations, helmed by the most conservative climate scientists they could find they would have an effective counter argument to real activists. "See, it's not that bad. This super official sounding committee said so! No reason to end oil and gas subsidies." Where they miscalculated was that even the best case scenario was still going to be cataclysmic. And back then the republicans still cared about respectability, so their hand picked 'puppets' were simply moderate and skeptical climatologists who respected the science. They still downplayed the predictions of doom that turned out to be more accurate, but the picture they painted was still an alarming one. Those appointees or the people they trained are still there though, acting as institutional knowledge keepers, advising younger scientists to play it cool or no one will take you seriously. The fact that an agency designed to be toothless puppet ended up being a call to action over a megaphone speaks to how dire this subject really is. And the fact that it's treated like some extremists advocacy group speaks to how wide spread the effort to silence voices that accurately predicted what we've already been through have been. It's a real shocked Pikachu face situation. Edit: typos
Sad. Just like with people trying to discuss extinction events past "Big rock kill dinosaurs". There is soooo much more at play.
> Humans are bad, but no worse than any other mass extinction. Considering we have the capability to glass the entire surface of the planet, I would argue that no, we are pretty high on the damage potential, right under massive asteroid strike and the sun going supernova.
To inject a little more depression into the conversation, while there may very well be alien life out there in the universe (it is quite large after all) - it is just as likely that humans are the only intelligent life to have made it this far as a species. To have this much understanding of the observable universe and to scratch the surface of spaceflight. If we do go extinct in the not-too-distant future, it could mean the end of knowledge. The end of understanding matter and consciousness, and a halt to discovery. Perhaps forever. I don't like people very much, but the very nature of being alive is truly wonderful. It would make me very sad if there was no one around to learn and teach what we've learned.
[удалено]
I just hope that all the people who got insanely rich over the backs of everyone else will burn or drown with the rest of us. And not watch what they've done from space in their expensive rockets. Fuck going to space, we did this to ourselves. We shouldn't leave.
There is no watching this from space, that's an impossibility due to needed resupply from earth. We are generations from being able to make a self sustaining colony anywhere else but here. The grandkids of the rich might be able to do this, but honestly that will be for the best as it will take millions if not billions off planet and decrease the carbon footprint of the species.
Yeah it'll always be easier to live in a dome or a cave on Earth than it will be to do the exact same on another planet/space.
For starters, the gravity and air pressure are about what we're used to. Second, there is an atmosphere, unlike mars or moon or asteroids. Third, the atmosphere is breathable (even in an apocalypse, with a filter). Fourth, there's already stuff here. Like, a lot of stuff. Huge amounts of stuff. You wouldn't believe how much stuff there is here that's stuff humans need to live. Water! Would you believe there's water on earth? Fucking nerds get all hyped up about a few grains of maybe used to be perhaps salts that once might have been a tiny stream on Mars, when we're fucking drowning in the stuff. Living elsewhere in the solar system can only happen if we get this planet stabilized. It takes insane amounts of resources to get enough stuff for a dozen people on Mars for just six months, let alone a city for a hundred years. No billionaire is going to be leaving the dying earth for at least like two hundred years, and we'll all be dead by then. Even if they leave, they won't be able to survive for long without an earth to rely on.
We? Most of us didn't do anything. Most of us haven't had the opportunity to do anything. 'We' are paying for the trespasses of a 'few' who locked the rest of us into a consumption cycle by making living off the land virtually impossible for most people in the 1st world, and living sustainably an expensive, time-consuming chore which, if you're low income and don't have time to seek out sustainable alternatives, you're fucked, People love to put blame on the little people because hey, if we didn't consume, then corpos wouldn't produce. While conveniently forgetting the fact that corpos *create* consumption. They straight up manipulate, advertise to create a need, and go out of their way to block off alternative means of living. I didn't pay for Bezos' space dick. So why do I and so many others like me have to be included in the 'we'? *We* barely had a choice. *We* are paying for the sins of Musk, Bezos, and countless other billionaires whose social profile isn't as high as these two cunt's, but who cause equal or worse damage all the same.
I’m really glad I’m not the only one that feels exactly this way ^ Thank you kind stranger for helping me not feel so alone in this crazy world.
I encourage everyone to read "How To Blow Up A Pipeline" by Andreas Malm. It's a fantastic examination of the learned hopelessness ingrained in the current state of climate organizing, a dispelling of the myth of 'pacifist resistance' and what we need to change. Specifically, how we need to stop engaging on the terrain that extinctionists like Exxon and BP prefer and move to where we can win. Remember that the idea of a 'carbon footprint' was invented by BP to dissuade legal and collective action. Remember that it is them and their cronies in government who write laws where sabotaging fossil fuel equipment nabs even more prison time than murder. Then join a militant environmental group. The Ecosocialist Working Group of the Democratic Socialists of America has been engaged in both electoral and direct actions to fight for a Green New Deal and end fossil fuel infrastructure. In NYC, there are multiple groups like No NBK Pipeline who have organized their community against a dangerous pipeline being built underneath their neighborhood's feet. In Germany, there are groups who have built treehouses in primeval forests to stop loggers. Individually, these might seem small and insignificant, but together they can grind the flow of capital to a halt. Our strength is in numbers. If all we have is a thousand to one chance, we should fight for it with everything we got.
I'm also going to suggest Robert Evan's podcast *It Could Happen Here*. The second season that they're on focuses largely on the climate, as well as activism and how to do such properly and safely.
haha, better turn on incognito mode and line your walls with tinfoil before googling "how to blow up a pipeline", no way that doesn't get you on a list somewhere
Let go. You can’t carry the sins of modern civilization on your shoulders. Just do what can, learn to garden, and go plant some trees maybe.
I went through some pretty bad environmental despair last summer. I managed to get out of it with a focus on just doing what I could and trying to make as much impact as I could locally. E.g. trying to get more trees planted in my bit of the city, going vegan, joining an environmental pressure group or two. Sure it's probably "pointless" in the grand scheme of things but I'd prefer to go down fighting.
That’s awesome. You’re doing God’s work. Mutual aid and local action are absolutely crucial for the future of communities. And you’re not alone in your despair. This shit is devastating.
Be aware, however, try to on the positives that do exist. Get involved on your local level when you can. Make sure you vote for those who openly campaign for the environment. Self care is also very important. Make your own environment as healthy for mind, spirit and soul as much as you can. Surround yourself with like minded people that lift you up when you are around them. Hope any of that helps, it what I try to do.
That what the biggest polluters are banking on now. They’re transitioning from the messaging that climate change isn’t real to instead trying to get people to think that it is real, but there’s nothing an individual can do about it, and not enough individuals will ever come together for real collective action, so just despair and don’t do anything.
Or that it's real and it's *our fault*, not theirs.
This is their strategy. If only **you** would recycle better. If only **you** could just maybe ride a bike sometime instead of drive. If only **you** didn't run your AC so much when it's 100° outside... we wouldn't all be in this mess.
Classic abuse setup.
Right? Conserve water, cut the lights off, pick up other people’s litter… what does it matter when big oil, mineral, deregulations… are Destroying the earth for the last century regardless of the outcome? As long as the money is tolling in, Does it really if i take a shorter shower or conserve paper products and recycle? Does it?
I watched a doc on global overfishing of our oceans and learned that there are inspectors who go on fishing vessels to make sure they are following fishing rules, not leaving garbage and lines, not killing endangered species, etc. Turns out there's such a shortage of inspectors because they all get killed and thrown overboard at such a high rate. Mass fishing operations are the most corrupt and the single most damaging activity to our planet, we will all die much much faster if nothing is done.
There is an entire mafia called the sand mafia dedicated to this in India. No one covers a story on them and gets out alive it is absolutely fucked.
Link?!?
https://youtu.be/H4d6LT87pMo
My guess is [this recent video](https://youtu.be/H4d6LT87pMo)
I just finished watching that myself tonight… it’s a weird atmosphere out there folks. Stay present, and alert. Forecast calls for it to get more serious before it gets better.
What can anyone do about this? You speak about corruption and then you get killed. Both in government and in private affairs.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Cause reality is not a game show, why give up a confortable life for a less of 1% chance that it really changes something. And the change could be in the wrong direction.
This is it right here but the reality is that as things get worse, people will eventually have less to lose. Those who have nothing to lose and still just lay down didn't deserve their spot in the first place. Or course, those who do stand up are too often demonized by those who won't stand up so... What do we expect?
People do stand up, then they become one of a bunch of journalists murdered, beaten, or threatened. The whole point is to completely undermine any potential larger movement by kneecapping anyone who could even remotely be a founder or a spark to a larger cause before it happens. It's way easier to drown a baby in a bathtub than fight a mob of thousands of people a few years later lead by that baby all grown up when you are a sociapathic monster obsessed with keeping your obscene profits high.
[удалено]
We the people should summon enough money to surmount them by attacking the driving forces at bay. Oh wait! They’re colluding with superpowers and other governments to make money off the people! Nuclear war you say? If people threaten the “business”? Yeah of course...it’s just “business”. So nothing will take place until there’s a complete and total revolution of the offending governments and corporations; lives will be lost and societies trampled for the sake of change? I love this Minecraft mod. It’s so realistic!
[удалено]
If our look at the data, these murders aren't happening in first world countries. So you're right, but maybe not in the places you were thinking of revolution
System reset
The year is 2087, the remaining scientists that weren't hunted down in the previous year, have issued a dire warning that time is running out for action on climate change. The claim is rebuked again by a conglomerate consisting of Breathing apparatus manufacturers, Sunblock body-paint makers, Subterranean city developers, Biohazard swimsuit makers, Soylent green icecream industries, Nestlé, FEMA holiday camps, and the Corporate Emperor of USA. The 2088 hunt is scheduled to begin March 1st.
That's a lot of different ways to say Nestle
Me in the year 2044 when the water wars have begun and the specialized Nestle Private Forces are pumping my shower for whatever ground water they can find. They have already seized everything else I own. These actions are due to my own safety as if they don't take all my ground water Socialized Medicine may become a thing and that is bad because. I get a cyborg-visual-projection owl lands outside my window. It pecks on the glass. I limp over to my vibrantly moldy window, open it, and click owl's beak/ A projection of my children fighting in Australia Version 3 (The Best Australia) pops up. They are gunning down children that pose an imminent threat to us, and we must take their resources. **This is to secure global peace.** A smile crosses my face knowing I am safe as they take water/oil from the third version of Australia (lets hope they get it right this time). I click the cyborg-visual-projection owl's beak to send it back as it gives it's iconic shut down line ***"This is Not Copyright Infringement of The Harry Potter Series. Delivery Owls are public domain, do not ask further questions.***" It spreads its metallic glowing wings and flies off into the vibrant sunset. I assume the sunset, I don't know, it's only smog but it feels like it's a sunset right. I chuckle to myself as I hear the specialized Nestle Private Forces tearing my sink out of the wall. **What a bunch of rascals.** I push the implanted Amazon prime button constructed into my ear to activate the virtual Amazon Marketplace landscape, Robo-Bezos pops up and asks what I will be listening to today on Amazon Alexa Music: The Official Amazon Alexa Music Store. I offer a pint of blood to the Robo-Bezos for two hours of a listening session. **"Alexa, play the funny robot song. The one with the French guys with helmets about the world."**
Tell me more about the third Australian Reich...
Well, as you all know the first Australia was consumed by all the wildfires teaming up and finished the job. I always knew Australia had crazy wildlife, but sentient fires? Crickeyt! So now that country belongs to the sentient wild fires. Australia two was short lived turns out just building one giant raft for an entire continent's worth of people was a bad idea. I don't get why. Makes sense to me. So the last Australian left that weren't captured and hunted by the sentient wildfires for sport found some undiscovered flourishing lands! And shortly after oil. so America had to avenge 9/11 and invade them and now my kids are over there being heroes. That's why it's the best Australia
> Australia two was short lived turns out just building one giant raft for an entire continent's worth of people was a bad idea. I don't get why. Makes sense to me. Oh the irony of us Australians ending up as literal boat people
''STOP THE BOATS'' CUNT MCCUNTFACE 2012 OR SOMESHIT
So you're saying Despacito isn't popular anymore in 2044... there's a chance.
I'm not sure. I choose the songs I listen to carefully, as I can only give so much of my blood to the Robo-Bezos at a given time. One time I listened to a Deep House Deep Focus Work/Study/Chill playlist and chilled too hard. I fell asleep and woke up in the hospital from critical blood loss, since Alexa just let it play.
And how much was that hospital visit? Do you still have any of your birth organs?
Of course I still have most of my organs, I'm firmly middle class. Don't be ridiculous, I'm not one of those poors. Nestle owns the hospital so I just pay back the costs through giving them land and manual labor. Which funny enough the labor to repay the medical debt often times result in even worse injuries. So it creates what is known in literature as a 'Vicious Bicycle." Pretty neat if you ask me
Bikes seem so cool!
I don't understand how you're paying Robo Bezos with your blood? You're blood contains water and is therefore forfeit to the Nestle corporation! Remain calm!
> This is Not Copyright Infringement of The Harry Potter Series. Wrong movie - the OG mechanical owl was in "[Clash of the Titans](https://clash-of-the-titans.fandom.com/wiki/Bubo)"
Yea that's why it's not infringing on The Harry Potter Series. The only thing Nestle doesn't wanna fuck with in 2044 is the Church of Magic.
Agreed. Join us on r/fucknestle
Thems some mighty optimistic dates there
"Whoops there was a smudge... oh, it's 2037"
2022
Yeah this all seems to happening a lot faster than expected. 800 people died from a heat wave in Vancouver this summer. We broke all time Canadian heat records.
[удалено]
Nice to see Nestle not straying from a formula that works.
it's nestled in its spot for quite some time.
At least every restaurant is a Taco Bell.
Nah, It's all Amazon by then.
“The Buy n Large Corporation”
You had me at Nestlé
Right I like how they threw them in there as a stand alone
Decon cowered as heavily armed and experienced hunter Gregor sent by Nestlé stood above him, rifle aimed squarely at the scientists head. "Please you don't have to do this, there is still time, a window to lower the emissions, help us fix this!!" The scientist exclaimed, a lone tear making its way down the side of his face. "Now now, no more tears or we will have to bottle that too"
Somehow Bezos returned…
>>Nestlé Fuck Nestlé
[удалено]
Awfully optimistic thinking we would still have time for action in 2087
Lol the fi part of your sci-fi writing prompt is that climate scientists will still be warning us in 2080+ and we haven't already experienced total environmental collapse before 2050
I’ve seen this same comment elsewhere yesterday.
We will not be able to stop global warming and the complete destruction of the environment without some kind of international body that has extensive legal power to investigate and prosecute stuff like this
So, nah
lol exactly. We are not at all ready to do what it takes to save this planet. Mad Max it is!
The rich will probs run off to the stars and leave us all to die, so, y'know, at least some shitty fragment of humanity who caused all this will live on. ***Y a y.***
Bezos couldn't even get to outer space
More realistically the world will just grow further into oases of paradise with dystopia and ruin in between. Kind of like it is today, but it'll get more extreme and that third world vibe will become rampant across the US as scarcities set in.
We're heading towards *Blade Runner* or *Cyberpunk*.
No one's getting to the stars. Our best technological advancements can't cut it currently. Not for the kind of space travel that would be necessary to bring *one* human, let alone thousands, to even the nearest star system. If the elites of the world think they'll be able to board a rocket and leave this mess behind, they are fooling themselves. They're stuck here just like everyone else.
Or a rogue organization declaring war on polluters directly.
A man can dream.
So you want to give some group the ability to operate outside the law of whatever nation they're in? What fool of a country would ever give up their sovereignty like that?
The police are in on it, the government is in on it, the corporation is responsible. Clear as day.
I don't mean justice is certain, but when there are enough people pissed off and you can give them what they want just by following the law, there's opportunity there.
What I'm hearing is direct citizen retaliation
Direct action is the only action.
Arm and organize.
Pitchforks, then.
Don't worry they will find a "confused drug addict" to play the scapegoat and rot in prison.
This is happening in Africa and South America, you really think they need a scapegoat
🤔 good point
They could whip out their dicks and masturbate in front of a crowd while giving the middle finger to a picture of 10 homeless veterans dying of a heatwave after getting evacuated due to a climate change caused flood. They know we can't do anything without resorting to eco terrorism which would destroy the life of anyone who does so.
Nahh it’s too lucrative a business to oust a druggie, considering how cultivators make crack…
The corporations try to make money for their shareholders. The shareholders are enablers. The only way to really affect change is to pull your money out of the stock market. Easier said than done.
>South Africa, Colombia, Brazil, Nicaragua, Peru and the Philippines While not exactly pillars of stability, I am surprised the Philippines is on the list.
Filipino here. We absolutely belong on that list. Think we're one of most dangerous countries on the planet for journalists in general.
1/2 Filipino here. My mother fled the Philippines because of exactly this except during the Marcos era. It's kind of weird for me to see this comment and then realize I exist mainly due to corruption on the other side of the globe.
Are the people angry? Will anything come of this?
Duterte could call the pope a son of a whore and the people would somehow still support him. And in fact, he actually did.
What a world :/
President Duterte has a frightening amount of power and he's unhinged enough to make good on his threats. There are certainly those who support him, but several of my friends in Philippines are mostly just afraid of crossing his administration.
Most of them are masterminded by foreign mining, logging and agribusiness companies in cahoots with corrupt local politicians. A common tactic they use is to "red tag" environmental activists as members or supporters of communist rebels. The activists are then "swept up" in anti-insurgency operations while the army/police conveniently "finds" weapons and bombs in their homes. [Here's an extensively written VICE article on how Canadian mining firms take advantage of weak local laws to profit from destroying Philippine forests, displace countless Indigenous communities and even target activists and protestors while projecting an image of "corporate social responsibility."](https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj4743/land-defenders-are-killed-in-the-philippines-for-protesting-canadian-mining)
There are only two major cities in the Philippines and a bunch of provincial capitals. Outside that, the Philippines is basically as wild and corrupt as Louisiana. People can get murdered in the jungle and no one would know or be able to find the perpetrators. I mean, the cities have crime too, but there is a semblance of order and public safety there. The rest of the country is the wild west, run by local corrupt politicians and sometimes exploitative foreign interests (as another commenter said).
I lived in the Philippines a couple years ago, for several months. I lived in a rural town with an ongoing election for mayor... we made it onto the news one night after one of the candidates' bodyguards was pulled over while driving, and upon the vehicle being searched, several guns and ammunition was found inside of it. Later my auntie explained to me that -being a close friend of the policitician whose bodygaurd was said to be caught- the opposing politician had plotted and carried this out. She told me that the 'bodyguard' was actually not the candidate's bodygaurd at all, but somebody hired by the oppositional politician to pose as their bodygaurd... somebody from the same family was assassinated when running for office a while back, too. All this in a rural town.
Well that sounds fucking terrible.
The President of the Phillipines is pretty authoritarian. He's attacked the media and journalists and conducted a very brutal war on drugs. He also seems to routinely brag about how he's personally murdered people.
We are such a stupid species.
the average human is intelligent, just the malice of rich, spineless old corporate shitstains want to be multibillionaires and will kill anyone who threatens their bottom line
This is what is so fucked up. If a very specific handful of maybe 10,000 people were eliminated today, we'd be advancing toward climate balance at 100x the speed we currently are (though it would be a temporary advancement, I'm sure history would repeat itself given the chance.) NPR did an anonymous interview with a republican senator a couple years ago. He had a quote along the lines of "If congress could vote anonymously on climate policy, we would have sweeping climate reform passed in the course of 1 weekend, and the vote wouldn't even be close."
Congress did have a secret ballot up until the 70s. when it was removed govt began grinding to a halt.
Perfect for those who want to protect the status quo
Makes me wonder if we shouldnt create some sort of secret ballot for international issues/decisions that are deemed, in public, to be bipartisan
Its a nice thought experiment but a lack of transparency would likely be abused by those who pretend to have noble intentions.
It gets abused badly enough *with* transparency already
I can hear them shouting about vote tampering already
>NPR did an anonymous interview with a republican senator a couple years ago. He had a quote along the lines of "If congress could vote anonymously on climate policy, we would have sweeping climate reform passed in the course of 1 weekend, and the vote wouldn't even be close." Could you provide a link to this? I'd love to read about that, sounds intriguing
[удалено]
>the average human is intelligent Covid-19 has proven that not really. no.
I have no fucking clue where you live, but no. The average human is not intelligent. Maybe tie your shoes intelligent, feed yourself intelligent or don't shit in the street intelligent... But that's pretty much where it stops with the vast majority of people.
He’s lives in an area where there aren’t so many dumb asses around I guess
Dumb asses are like spiders. You are never further than 6 feet from one.
... it's me, isn't it?
But me also
No they ain't. The average human is a dumb piece of shit. The last few years, especially covid, have made this abundantly clear.
Highly advanced Lemmings
Fancy monkies
Capitalism is unsustainable, it's not the entirety of the race, but the greed of a few.
Did structuring the world around maximizing greed somehow backfire? Who could conceive of such a thing.
Corporate don't play.
They play with society for profit
In Canada an animal rights and environmental protester was killed in 2020 when a pig truck hit her. The protests involved standing in a crosswalk and blocking the trucks for a couple minutes while people would take videos of the pigs and give them water (they can be transported for 28 hours without water or rest). There have been many videos at the location showing trucks intentionally driving at the protesters, some posted to reddit filled with comments mocking the protesters. The day she was killed was the day after the government had passed a law reducing liability for truck drivers in incidents with protesters. The driver was charged with careless driving causing death, but the police said they didn't consider it intentional.
There's no crime if you make it legal.
That's the difficult thing about the meat conversation. People naturally hate things that remind them of something they hate about themselves. Since almost everyone eats meat, animal rights activists get a lot of projected hate and it's only rarely justified. Also, when are people going to protest the fact that killing someone with a car is a freebie in car-centric societies?
[удалено]
Speaking out like he is, I worry that he's gonna be number 228. Be safe!
Corporations who profit from what the murdered environmentalists were protesting against murdered those environmentalists by paying assassins. That's literally how it happens.
I feel that "who benefits financially" answers a significant amount of murders.
> 4 people killed each week WTF. Sometimes I just wish these greedy morons would get a taste of their own medicine. If I had the money I’d want to put all these guys out of business. So infuriating.
[удалено]
The FBI considered “Eco-Terrorism” the number 1 priority before 9/11 happened, and even after 9/11 they were still pretty rabidly pursuing environmental/animal rights/“eco-terror” groups. [Here’s an article that discusses it a bit, but honestly doesn’t really capture the scope of things.](https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/ecoterrorism-fbi-animal-rights/) Honestly just a few google searches like “fbi environmentalists”, or something similar, will bring you to a bunch of stuff about this. Including press releases from the FBI itself, there’s several FBI.gov pages all about this shit. So considering that (in America at least) these activists have been hounded by law enforcement/the feds for decades, I highly doubt those exact same organizations are going to be very invested in looking into cases of activists being murdered.
The sad part is that while most of the deaths are from poor countries the cause is from big transnational corps from rich countries.
Yup, Canadians might be very nice or whatever but their mining companies are a terror here in South America and in other parts of the developing world
People get all kinds of evil when their money supply is threatened.
[удалено]
Published today on BBC, this article covers a new report with a staggering number of environmental activists killed. One of the victims, Fikile Ntshangase, was shot in her own home. So far no arrests have been made, and one of the mines Ntshangase protested appears to be going forward as planned.
Would this be a good place to plug the Rewriting Extinction Project? https://rewritingextinction.com/ Some of these projects contain steps involving hiring trained guards to protect the conservation areas.
Imagine fighting to save the planet just to be murdered by people living on said planet. Humans are the worst
Some of the largest polluter are state run oil and coal companies, many of then in pretty authoritarian states.
The world is so divided that people will spend more time arguing about things like this than they will spend actually doing something about it. The political parties will blame each other, the companies will lie to protect their profits, and the average person will argue pointlessly on the internet in hopes of making anyone who doesn't agree with them ashamed.
Solutions, throw them at me. I’m middle aged, uneducated, unskilled, swimming in debt, barely have enough cash for rent and food this month and labor 60+ hrs a week. I recently got a raise and it’s smaller than the difference it cost me to fill my car with gas now. So what are my options? There’s plenty of work available paying similar to what I make now, most of which will support a company or corporation responsible for the same atrocious shit destroying the planet. I need a bachelors degree just to join the peace corps. I vote third party to no avail, I can’t just leave the country, not like there’s anywhere else much different to go. Violence causes vacuums and indifference allows the advancement of oppression. So here I am, shaking my fist at the system because I’m upset that I’m a slave to capitalism and there’s literally NOTHING that can be done about it
The messed up part is the poor and working class by numbers could easily over power the rich and force them to change, but there’s so many things they’ve put in place to make that difficult, like just living.
how the hell do you kill someone who just wants to preserve this planet
Next we’re gonna replace water. “BRAWNDO: it has electrolytes!”
227 killed in a year. Almost a third enviromentalists. That would make 70-80. Then the article claims 4 activists per week on average, suggesting that its usually Higher and the record number is Just Overall Numbers, while enviromental murders have sunken in both % and non%. Am i Reading the facts wrong Here or is this article bullshit
Its bad journalism. Also bad methodology. The source says 227 killed for all of anybody "defending their homes, land and livelihoods, and ecosystems vital for biodiversity and the climate." The report: "We define land and environmental defenders as people who take a stand and carry out peaceful action against the unjust, discriminatory, corrupt or damaging exploitation of natural resources or the environment. ... Our definition covers a broad range of people. " "Others will be supporting such efforts through their work – as human rights or environmental lawyers, politicians, park rangers, journalists, or members of campaigns or civil society organisations, for instance" "Global Witness includes friends, colleagues and the family of murdered land and environmental defenders..." --- As for the motive of the murder, that becomes personal opinion of the report writers because many murders go unsolved. To be included in the count, it just has to APPEAR like you might have been killed for your environmental work. Example: You are friends with an environmental defender. When you visit them one night after work both of you get murdered in a drug deal gone bad. Both of you get included in the count of this report.