THE SECOND COMING OF THE ANTHROPOCENE

"Announcement! 
Jesus of Nazareth has now revealed one of 
his successors, named Greta Thunberg."

WHY SAIL TRANSATLANTIC WHEN YOU CAN WALK?

The Limhamns kyrka deleted these tweets a few days aftyer they appeared:

Dear Twitter,

If we have hurt someone, we apologize.

Our sense has been to talk about Jesus Christ in our own way. Now we leave the arena.

Thank you for your commitment, joy, and debate.

God bless you!

Jonas Persson, 

Ward pastor

Limhamns kyrka

ANNALS OF CARBON FOOTPRINT MANAGEMENT VEGAN DIVISION

At Soyworx, we pride ourselves on creating premium fragrance products that are safe for the environment and good for the soul. burns longer and cleaner than traditional paraffin wax because there's no petroleum involved.

THE GOOD SHIP LOLLYPOP TIPTOES THROUGH THE BAMBOO

If you’re searching for signs that climate change is a top issue of the 2020 election, look no further than this week’s news cycle: Even with a presidential impeachment underway in Washington, Climate Week NYC is managing to turn heads. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's troubling speech at the U.N. General Assembly yesterday suggested further deforestation of Amazon lies ahead. But he was overshadowed by Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who has galvanized the international climate movement and drawn bile-filled tirades from conservative critics. In The New Republic’s October issue, Emily Atkin explored the dire predictions for the world over the next 80 years: how climate change could transform international politics and conflict by empowering reactionary strongmen, multiplying famines and refugee crises, and triggering an ever-expanding number of wars over dwindling resources. For the most vulnerable and marginalized among us, Kim Kelly pointed out last week, the physical danger of climate change has already arrived. The defining feature of Thunberg’s activism, Osita Nwanevu writes—what alternately excites and alienates her viewers—is her insistence that global warming is an existential threat today, not tomorrow. Thunberg’s speeches are not filled with talk of “green stimulus” or gradual adjustment. They ask, instead, for “difficult decisions, in an urgency mindset, about what we should protect and what we should value.” The New Republic senses that urgency, which is why we're ramping up our climate coverage in the coming weeks and months. Expect more stories like the highlights below. Heather Souvaine Horn, Deputy Editor New York (CNN Business) Listeners of WNYC's daily program The Brian Lehrer Show say they're limiting their use of plastics.  They're using bamboo toothbrushes.  They're making their own coffee with a French press. They're purchasing reusable cups. It's all part of Lehrer's #PlasticChallenge, which he launched last week in tandem with the global journalism initiative, Covering Climate Now.  "A rap on climate talk is that it's boring, that it can be technical, doom and gloom without a lot of solutions and remote from people's lives unless you were caught in the middle of something, that it's abstract and a remote threat for the year 2100. Judging from the demand to get on the air by callers and participating in the #PlasticChallenge people were really engaged," Lehrer told CNN Business. WNYC is one of more than 300 media outlets that have agreed to use the lead-up to the UN Climate Action Summit on Monday to elevate stories about the climate crisis. Covering Climate Now is spearheaded by progressive publication The Nation and by Columbia Journalism Review, which billed it as "the biggest effort ever undertaken to organize the world's press around a single topic." Soon after Climate Change Now launched in April, The Guardian also joined the effort as a "lead media partner," and newsrooms have been signing on ever since. The partner list includes wire services, photo agencies, newspapers, magazines, digital outlets and individual journalists.

AND FURTHERMORE, HER MOTHER IS AN OPERA STAR.

APOLOGIES TO THE GRAUN

MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE WORLD UPSTAGED BY UKRANIAN COMEDIAN & TV STAR FROM QUEENS

WHY BROOKLYN NEEDS A BREWERY WITH A SNAKE CULT

YALE CLIMATE CONNECTIONS   INTERVIEW

The uncanniness of 

climate change

An interview with Amitav Ghosh, author of 'Gun Island.'

By Amy Brady

Friday, September 27, 2019

In 2016, Amitav Ghosh, the author of more than 10 books including The Hungry Tide, published The Great Derangement, a polemic about why contemporary literature has yet to embrace the scale of climate change. With his latest novel, Gun Island, Ghosh offers... a beautifully layered story about climate change and its thorny relationship to immigration, the legacy of colonialism, and the very nature of storytelling... 

The novel stars Dinanath “Deen” Dutta, a Kolkata-born rare books dealer who lives in Brooklyn and who embarks on an adventure of a lifetime after visiting a shrine in the Sundarbans. The shrine is dedicated to the ancient Gun Merchant, who circled the globe in an attempt to escape the wrath of Manasa Devi, the goddess of snakes.

Amy Brady: In The Great Derangement, your 2016 nonfiction treatise about how difficult it is for contemporary novelists to write about climate change, you describe a tornado. You’ve said that writing about this tornado in fiction has proved difficult because it’s such an improbable event. In Gun Island there’s a tornado.

Amitav Ghosh:..The weirdest thing has happened, Amy... things I’ve written about in my books have actually happened. There was another tornado like the one I describe in Gun Island in Venice quite recently. I also write in Gun Island about a massive hail storm and rare, poisonous spiders appearing in places they aren’t supposed to be. Well, a hail storm occurred in Venice just a few weeks ago. And very recently I received a message from a friend of mine who lives there – he had to take his son to the hospital for a spider bite...   It’s all so uncanny.

Amy Brady: Are you a prophet?

Amitav Ghosh: [Laughs] No, we’re just living in an age where the improbable is becoming the probable.

Amy Brady: While reading Gun Island, I felt like I could experience the universe in two different ways, depending on how credulous I was willing to be... the strange “happenings” in your novel...  could be explained by... global warming. But your novel also leaves open the possibility that these are manifestations of a vengeful goddess. There’s a lot of ambiguity here.

Amitav Ghosh: Yes, absolutely...What’s interesting is that giving voice to the nonhuman is something that fiction used to do... Melville’s Moby-Dick is about a whale that has agency and the power of comprehension...

Amy Brady: It’s hard to know what an animal is thinking, isn’t it?...

Amitav Ghosh: Well, you know, animal suicide is quite common.

Amy Brady: It is??

Amitav Ghosh: Oh, yes. There’s a very good book about it called Animal Madness by Laurel Braitman. It’s very well written. Many kinds of animals commit suicide: dogs, parrots, elephants.

Amy Brady: I had no idea... Thank you for introducing me to that possibility, even though it’s horribly depressing.

CLIMATE PROGRESS VICTIM OF 6th THINK TANK EXTICTION

ThinkProgress Was Always Doomed

Independent journalism fits uncomfortably with mainstream think tank politics.
By ALEX PAREENE
September 11, 2019

The site ThinkProgress, long a stalwart among left-leaning news organizations, was shuttered last week by its owner, the Center for American Progress (CAP)The site’s closure, however, was brief.  Days later, CAP announced that ThinkProgress would continue publishing material by its in-house think tank staff at a new version of the site—becoming, in essence, an institutional blog. It was quickly pointed out to CAP’s top brass that this amounted to firing the entire unionized staff and running the site with scabs, and so the plan was canceled.

MOST POPULAR

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Greta Thunberg

These events were consistent with CAP’s funding model. For the most part, our donor class is simply indifferent to journalism...  (This indifference is distinct from the impulse that leads men like Jeff Bezos to buy a newspaper, or Pierre Omidyar to start a media company: There’s a bit more glory in being the owner, and not a mere institutional supporter.) And big political donors interested in a “media play” simply want vulgar propaganda

ThinkProgress was not shuttered because it loses money. It certainly did lose money—political journalism is not exactly a cash cow!—but it was not a business of any kind: It was an arm of an extremely well-funded nonprofit think tank...

It is perhaps not entirely coincidental that the independent media arm of the Center for American Progress was deemed inessential around the same time... that the head of the Democratic National Committee went to the mat to prevent presidential candidates from participating in a climate debate, 

And this is why the dream of a left-leaning media ecosystem as heavily subsidized as the American right’s propaganda machine will never come to fruition...

This is why Erick Erickson—...left the site he founded because he belatedly noticed its owners were scamming its readers (only to see them fire all its remaining Trump critics)..

The ThinkProgress experiment failed. “Liberal” institutions dependent on corporate money, political donors, and mainstream foundation support will only ever sponsor useful journalism by accident. Alas, none of us get to be Benny Johnsons of the left, eternally buoyed in an endless sea of money from rich suckers.

Alex Pareene is a staff writer at The New Republic.
@pareene

CAP'S  first president and CEO was John Podesta, who has served as White House Chief of Staff to U.S. President Bill Clinton, and remained  chairman of the  Center's board until he joined the Obama White House staff in December 2013. 

GUESS WHERE DELLERS SENT HIS BOY TO SCHOOL ?

Delingpole: Abolishing Eton – Great Idea, Labour! Go For It!

JAMES DELINGPOLE

23 Sep 2019

Labour has announced it intends to ban Eton (and other private schools) and I’m really glad.

Eton has produced some of the most egregious, squishy, politically-correct, Remainer surrender monkey, class traitor sellouts in the entirety of the Establishment, including the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby;  the Chief of the General Staff  Mark Carleton-Smith;  Woke Prince Harry;  Sir Nicholas ‘Did anyone ever mention I’m Churchill’s grandson?’ Soames;  Sir Oliver Wetwin;  Dave Cameron; and I’m sure there are plenty more I’ve missed.

Even when you consider the countervailing examples of George Orwell and Jacob Rees-Mogg, the case for abolishing Eton because it has nurtured so many disgusting Establishment pinkos is pretty overwhelming.

THE DISCRETE CHARM OF THE HOGWARTS TROUT TATTOO

Inside the Sunrise Movement: Six Weeks With the Young Activists Defining the Climate Debate

SEPTEMBER 20, 2019 12:56 PM

by CHLOE MALLE

ARIANA GRANDE’S VOICE FILLS THE rented Chrysler Pacifica minivan: “The light is coming to give back everything the darkness stole.” 

 “It’s so relevant!” ... as the early May weather shifts from fog to mist to rain and back again. Thunderstorms are a good omen, Prakash tells me... It thundered ... during Sunrise’s occupation of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, the action that catapulted the Green New Deal, and the Sunrise Movement with it, to the forefront of the nation’s conversation on climate..

“Kids these days are lit and ready to go,” says Prakash of Sunrise’s base, which is trending increasingly younger—it’s not uncommon to find preteens at their rallies and events. Born too late to be seduced by the promises of Reaganite neoliberalism and coming of age between late–Obama era languor and early–Trump era despair, Sunrise’s members are furious at what they see as inaction on climate and ready to take matters into their own hands.

ng and the global student climate strikes that were inspired by Greta Thunberg in Sweden,” says Naomi Klein, activist and author of 2014’s best-selling This Changes Everything. “I think young people have a particular moral voice that is just getting stronger and clearer, a combination of optimism and existential terror. There’s also a rage and rightful disappointment with the people who were supposed to protect their future.”

Like Prakash, Sara Blazevic, 26, is one of Sunrise’s cofounders... Blazevic wears a discreet nose ring, a trout tattoo on her inner arm, and projects an air of serene competence.

“Almost everybody in Sunrise has lived our entire lives in a world on the cusp of climate apocalypse,” she tells me. “That’s what drives them—just the sheer scale of the devastation on the horizon.” Meisenhelter, who grew up in a commune with goats in Portland, Oregon, routinely shares favorite fantasy or science fiction with her fellow Sunrisers. “Organizing is making science fiction real,” she says.. Though Harry Potter is her favorite of the genre—“Duh! Is that even a question...—and there are plans to name the conference rooms in the new D.C. Sunrise offices after Hogwarts houses...

Nineteen-year-old Munira Berhe, smiling and moon-faced and wearing a black hijab, says she is here because droughts in the Horn of Africa affected her family in Ethiopia. Like most Sunrisers, Berhe does not fit the environmental-movement cliché of the white, hacky sack–toting trustafarian. A rising sophomore at Minneapolis Community College, Berhe has nails painted neon yellow and clutches her iPhone emblazoned with a Glossier sticker (her favorite product is the Boy Brow)

.Before that night’s taco dinner, Emily LaShelle, a 21-year-old with a blonde Megan Rapinoe–esque coif, leads a song workshop. One of four daughters of a former Evangelical pastor from Bozeman, Montana, LaShelle explains that the unifying power of song in the church applies to movement building. Quartets cluster in the hall with the assignment to write a Sunrise-inspired verse to a classic song. ABBA’s Dancing Queen becomes

 “Gee N Dee/Saves the Earth and economeee/Oh, yeah. . . .” 
Three different groups rewrite lyrics to Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road: 
“AOC’s got our back/Markey is on trackBiden’s plan is whack/Elites feelin’ attacked.”

The mood is playful and sometimes astoundingly earnest (there is a gratitude Slack channel, and most Sunrisers ask permission before hugging each other in greeting). But taped to a wall behind a group presenting their parody of “Old MacDonald”—naturally changed to “Old McConnell”—there are savvy diagrams of how to stand during a protest for maximum visual impact. 

At the end of the debate Prakash looks up from her laptop, eyes blazing. “The folks in D.C. have just decided they are going to sleep out another night,” she announces to cheers and snaps. “Because fuck this bullshit! Nine minutes for the greatest existential threat to our existence? I’m pretty enraged! How are y’all feeling?”

VOGUE RENAISSANCE MAN TO HEAD UNITED NATIONS CLIMATE FASHION EMERGENCY WORLD HERITAGE SITE

Vogue’s Own Renaissance Man, Hamish Bowles, Shares the Backstory of This Years’ Green Carpet Awards

by LAIRD BORRELLI-PERSSO
Even among the splendor of the cloister-style garden created in the Piazza della Scala for the 2019 Green Carpet Awards, which celebrate the people and organizations steering fashion in a more sustainable direction, there was no missing Hamish Bowles, Vogue’s own multitasking Renaissance man, and the creative director of the event.

He was dressed in a lilac, flower-print Libertine suit,* a wardrobe staple that he decided to give another turn in the spotlight in the spirit of the evening...Sustainability, said Bowles,

“Has to be an essential part of the dialogue. The Amazon is on fire. We have seen what’s happening in the natural world and it is linked to forces that we can in many ways regulate, control, and mitigate against if we work very, very proactively and very, very, very fast... to regulate and be mindful about supply chains and sustainability and their imprint.”

Bowles’s creative fingerprint was there throughout the event, which this year also marked the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death.

*... a head-to-toe ensemble referenced the crustacean Dalí painted on a dress for Elsa Schiaparelli...A series of pieces hung with embroidered sardines and the odd brown trout was intended both as ... 

"an homage to sardines and sea life and our planet.”

DEATH BY SPINACH

WOULD JAMES DELLINGPOLE'S CARBON FOOTPRINT EXPAND OR CONTRACT IF GEORGE MONBIOT TOOK A VACATION?

Embarrassment of Riches

20th September 2019

For the sake of life on Earth, we should set an upper limit on the money any person can amass.

By George Monbiot, published in The Guardian, 19th September 2019 

It is not quite true that behind every great fortune lies a great crime. Musicians and novelists, for example, can become extremely rich by giving other people pleasure. But it does appear to be universally true that in front of every great fortune lies a great crime. Immense wealth translates automatically into immense environmental impacts, regardless of the intentions of those who possess it. The very wealthy, almost as a matter of definition, are committing ecocide. 

A few weeks ago, I received a letter from a worker at a British private airport. “I see things that really shouldn’t be happening in 2019,” he wrote. Every day he sees Global 7000 jets, Gulfstream 650s and even Boeing 737s take off from the airport carrying a single passenger...

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that when Google convened a meeting of the rich and famous at the Verdura resort in Sicily this July to discuss climate breakdown, its delegates arrived in 114 private jets and a fleet of megayachts, and drove around the island in supercars. Even when they mean well, the ultrarich cannot help trashing the living world. 

A series of research papers shows that income is by far the most important determinant of environmental impact. It doesn’t matter how green you think you are. If you have surplus money, you spend it. The only form of consumption that’s clearly and positively correlated with good environmental intentions is diet: people who see themselves as green tend to eat less meat and more organic vegetables.

DENAYAFELLA NO SAVVY WARMING KLIMATSTRAAK TEKEM BIGFELLA AX LONG HIMFELLA HEAD, BUGGERIMAP FINIS

  IN EXTINCTION REBELLION DISCOURSE, WAR CLUBS  SIGNIFY THE CONTINUATION OF CLIMATE COMMUNICATION BY OTHER MEANS

FOR REASONS UNFATHOMABLE, 350 PACIFIC  KICKED OFF 
ITS  TWITTER CAMPAIGN FROM ONE OF THOSE RARE COMMUNITIES THAT
OWE THEIR CARBON FOOTPRINT TO AN UNDERWATER VOLCANO

THE SOLOMONS STAR REPORTS:

The submarine volcano known as Kavachi, located near Vangunu in the World Heritage listed Marovo lagoon, Western province has reportedly caused fear to people in the Marovo Lagoon. Gregan Siliva from Telina village in Central Marovo told Solomon Star yesterday people in Marovo are living in fear as debris of the submarine volcanoe made its way through the lagoon.

He claimed there some signs of volcanic activity being visible in the lagoon which villagers to live in fear and that the volcano is making shifting...

When contacted yesterday the ministry of mines and energy spokesperson Thomas Toba said, ministry wasn’t aware of the situation. 

He said maybe what happened in the lagoon is related to climate change and not volcanic activity. 

“But the ministry would not rule it out, we would make an attempt to investigate this concern,” Mr Toba said. 

He urged people in the lagoon to report any suspicious activity about Kavachi to them. 

THE TWADDLE PRECEDENT: MANN V. BALL YAWNED OUT OF COURT

TO HEAR WATTS TELL IT, 2019 BCSC 1580:     Michael Mann  Plaintiff  And Timothy ("Tim") Ball Defendants, ENDED UP LIKE THE SCOPES TRIAL. 

AS USUALLY THE CASE WITH THE WORLD ACORDING TO WATTS,THE REALITY WAS VERY DIFFERENT :

A MORE DISINTERESTED  TITLE MIGHT BE: 
AFTER EIGHT YEARS, THE LAW DISFAVORS THE UNSWIFT

Before: The Honourable Mr. Justice Giaschi

Oral Reasons for Judgment In Chambers
Counsel for the Plaintiff:
R. McConchie

Counsel for the Defendant, Timothy (“Tim”) Ball:
M. Scherr
D. Juteau

Place and Date of Judgment:
Vancouver, B.C.
August 22, 2019

[1]             THE COURT:  I will render my reasons on the application to dismiss....

[2]             The defendant brings an application for an order dismissing the action for delay.

[3]             The plaintiff, Dr. Mann, and the defendant, Dr. Ball, have dramatically different opinions on climate change. I do not intend to address those differences. It is sufficient that one believes climate change is man-made and the other does not. As a result of the different opinions held, the two have been in near constant conflict for many years.

[4]             The underlying action concerns, first, a statement made by the defendant in an interview conducted on February 9, 2011. He said, “Michael Mann at Penn State should be in the state pen, not Penn State.” This statement was published on a website and is alleged to be defamatory of the plaintiff. The notice of civil claim also alleges multiple other statements published by Mr. Ball are defamatory.

 It is not necessary that I address the many alleged defamatory statements...


There have been at least two extensive periods of delay. Commencing in approximately June 2013, there was a delay of approximately 15 months where nothing was done to move the matter ahead. There was a second extensive period of delay from July 20, 2017 until the filing of the application to dismiss on March 21, 2019, a delay of 20 months. Again, nothing was done during this period to move the matter ahead. The total time elapsed, from the filing of the notice of civil claim until the application to dismiss was filed, was eight years. It will be almost ten years by the time the matter goes to trial. There have been two periods, of approximately 35 months in total, where nothing was done. In my view, by any measure, this is an inordinate delay.

Counsel for Dr. Mann submits that the delay was due to his being busy on other matters, but the affidavit evidence falls far short of establishing this...
In contrast, the defendant refers me to Hughes v Simpson ‑Sears,1988...where Justice Twaddle, writing on behalf of the Manitoba Court of Appeal, stated that:

...Freedman, J.A. said that the overriding principle in cases of this kind is “essential justice”. There is no doubt that that is so, but it must mean justice to both parties, not just to one of them.

[11]         Additionally, based upon the evidence filed, the plaintiff and his counsel appear to have attended to other matters, both legal matters and professional matters in the case of the plaintiff, rather than give this matter any priority. The plaintiff appears to have been content to simply let this matter languish.

 Accordingly, I find that the delay is inexcusable... the defendant intended to call three witnesses at trial who would have provided evidence going to fair comment and malice. Those witnesses have now died. A fourth witness is no longer able to travel...

    Turning to the final factor, I have little hesitation in finding that, on balance, justice requires the action be dismissed. The parties are both in their eighties [SIC] and Dr. Ball is in poor health. He has had this action hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles for eight years and he will need to wait until January 2021 before the matter proceeds to trial. That is a ten year delay from the original alleged defamatory statement. Other witnesses are also elderly or in poor health. The memories of all parties and witnesses will have faded by the time the matter goes to trial.

 ... I wish to note that the materials that have been filed on this application are grossly excessive in relation to the matters in issue. There are four large binders of materials filed by the plaintiff on the application to dismiss, plus one additional binder from the defendant. The binders contain multiple serial affidavits, many of which are replete with completely irrelevant evidence. 

In my view, this application could have been done and should have been done with one or two affidavits outlining the delay, the reasons for the delay, and the prejudice.

[18]         Those are my reasons, counsel. Costs?

[19]         MR. SCHERR:  I would, of course, ask for costs for the defendant, given the dismissal of the action.

[20]         MR. MCCONCHIE:  Costs follow the event. I have no quarrel with that.

[21]         THE COURT:  All right. I agree... Then, we are concluded and you shall have your materials back, which are these binders. Thank you, gentlemen.