Wow - myself and Mrs Morningsider walked into and through town around that time, including along a chunk of Thistle Street, and had no inkling that a demo was happening.
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Dealing with Climate Change & Justice
(1302 posts)- Started 2 years ago by chdot
- Latest reply from neddie
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Posted 1 year ago #
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OK, to be fair, the march seemed to gain momentum going up the Mound. The entirety of Market St was occupied, from New St right back to the Mound. Probably at least 2000 protesters.
Posted 1 year ago # -
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How do you feel watching Cop27?
I feel like Greta [Thunberg]. I feel it’s blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you’re the prime minister of this country, if you’re president of the United States, and you don’t address it, you’re part of the problem. One of the things that has to stop overnight is motorsports, you know, motorcycles going around the racetrack, cars going around the racetrack, travelling all over the globe. It’s a crime, not a sport. There’s no place for it in a world where the climate is under threat. That’s something that you can start by doing today.
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Posted 1 year ago # -
Thread divert klaxon
"PG tips at the climate march, peddling his anti-semetic nonsense"
I think are reaching peak MCC with the current debate about how it should should complain to Cllr Day about Cllr Arthur’s snub to PGtips by refusing a meeting with him in it, whilst desperately trying to avoid getting into his unpleasant views.
Especially galling is the push to include reference to the "insult and injury to his feelings"...
Posted 1 year ago # -
Good mental health is a fragile thing for sure
There is a certain increasingly frequent presentation of this within persistent complainers
Bizarrely public bodies seem toothless to prevent persistent complainers with poor mental health,
Posted 1 year ago # -
Popper's paradox of tolerance says that a tolerant society must reject intolerance (e.g. Nazis, antisemites), as paradoxical as that may seem. Otherwise the intolerant people will destroy the tolerant ones.
Posted 1 year ago # -
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Pure Electric’s Adam Norris: ‘Climate change is the biggest problem facing our species’
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Posted 1 year ago # -
Meanwhile high street chain Evans Cycles has begun to offer e-scooter products, as more and more cycling distributors are adding e-scooter brands to their portfolios. But does the bike industry need to welcome this new mode of transport?
“I don’t really care,” said Norris. “It doesn’t really affect me whether the bike industry does or doesn’t. The answer is: progressive people will. Do they need to? I think there’s still going to be lots of people who enjoy cycling, but fundamentally for a lot of people in an urban environment, scooters are better than a bicycle.”
Yes and many scooter buyers probably don't care about providence of their scooter either. Low cost commodity market = use and recycle or dispose - whichever's cheapest. Segway can maybe get more as brands command premium. Recycling should be part of sale.
Bike Works have inners for scooters but they get rid of most maintenance issues and allow users to avoid excercise and keep oil off their clothes. Easier to park too. Not so easy to carry shopping but users probably would fold and use a taxi.Posted 1 year ago # -
@neddie Hnnnng, I'm going to regret this I'm sure, but that particular bit of cod philosophy really grinds my gears. It's a very truthy idea, but it's almost exclusively deployed as a justification for limiting people's speech, and falls apart once you distinguish between intolerance of ideas & speech and intolerance of behaviour, ie, there's no logical necessity to be intolerant of intolerance, merely intolerant of the *outcomes* of intolerance. And proponents of the idea know that, it's why in recent years they've begun stretching the definitions of words like "harm" and "violence" to the point they're almost see-through.
It also runs into a lot of problems around definitions. Would you say criticising the actions of the state of Israel makes you an antisemite? Some would. Would you argue the sentiment I expressed above about Popper's ideas makes me a Nazi? Because despite stuff like political compass putting me further to the liberal-left than the Scottish Greens, I've been called that before for expressing that view.
IMO it's always worth resorting to debate over repression, with two caveats; you have to be good at debate - and not in the punch & judy university debating society/"balanced" BBC panel way, but the actually-persuasive to normal people way - and you have to do it in a public venue. Because even if you're arguing against a crackpot or a committed bigot who you have no hope of reaching or persuading, the *real* best way to combat intolerance is to expose it and its proponents, to have them reveal themselves to everyone and make those watching ask themselves "do I really want to be that guy?!". IMO to argue otherwise, to insist we need to resort to being intolerant of free thought and free expression, is to believe that a majority of humanity are, deep down, irredeemably hateful and beyond persuasion, and tbh if I believed that I'd book myself in at Dignitas because who'd want to live in a world like that?
Posted 1 year ago # -
@Yodhrin.
That seems like a valid refinement. What I would say is that ideas & speech influence behaviour - we've seen that with the hate language used in the media against cyclists, cyclists now threatened on the road because other, normally moderate, people think it's OK to do so...
So the problem is that ideas / speech and behaviour are intertwined - I'm not sure they can be separated so easily...
Posted 1 year ago # -
“I'm going to regret this I'm sure“
Personal choice of course…
CCE is (that is to say its members/posters) mostly ‘liberal’ and generally tolerant and can be up for a debate/argument. Occasionally this has gone too far.
One problem with ‘the world’ is some people insisting their view is ‘right’ based on ideology/politics/religion/vested interests - personal/commercial/national/class etc. (Also ‘personal experience’ as in ‘all cyclists go through red lights’.)
An additional problem is the internet driven ‘fake news’ and consequent creation/hardening of binary divisions.
In the context of this thread the problems with “balance” not least the BBC method of finding a climate sceptic/denier to ‘debate’ with someone outlining the known facts and possible consequences.
There seems to some evidence that ‘the worst’ might be coming sooner than predicted, meanwhile there are those resisting/obstructing changes for financial or political reasons.
Things change, there is no ‘normal’ to go back to - whether that’s the (alleged) ‘certainties’ of the 1950s or just how it was before Covid (or Brexit!)
Words and definitions matter but are open to interpretation and change -
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"Don't be evil" is a phrase used in Google's corporate code of conduct, which it also formerly preceded as a motto.
Following Google's corporate restructuring under the conglomerate Alphabet Inc. in October 2015, Alphabet took "Do the right thing" as its motto, also forming the opening of its corporate code of conduct.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil
Posted 1 year ago # -
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The world’s poorest people will bear the brunt of the destruction wreaked by drought, melting ice sheets and crop failures. To shield these groups from the loss of life and livelihoods will require money. Developing countries, says one influential report, need $2tn annually to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and cope with climate breakdown.
Rich countries account for just one in eight people in the world today but are responsible for half of greenhouse gases. These nations have a clear moral responsibility to help. Developing nations should be given enough cash to address the dangerous conditions they did little to create – especially as a global recession looms.
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Posted 1 year ago # -
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The 1.5C climate target is dead – to prevent total catastrophe, Cop27 must admit it
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/12/climate-target-cop27-breakdown-fossil-fuel
Posted 1 year ago # -
Nope. We must never give up on 1.5, because as soon as we do we might as well give up entirely - this plays exactly into the hands of the FF industry...
Posted 1 year ago # -
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Given the existential threat posed by global heating, the concept that growth is good is being seriously challenged by those who say policymakers should be aiming for zero growth or even degrowth economies, ones that are shrinking. Make no mistake, it is a good thing that the accepted wisdom is being questioned. The idea that faster growth is the solution to every problem is no longer tenable.
There is nothing new about the current debate. Thomas Malthus predicted eventual famine once population growth exceeded food supplies. John Stuart Mill’s comment, that the “increase in wealth is not boundless”, paved the way for what became known as steady-state economics. Herman Daly, who died last month, long championed the idea that the constraints of the natural world imposed limits to growth. Robert Kennedy famously said that gross domestic product measured everything except that which makes life worthwhile, and his words resonate now even more strongly than when he uttered them in 1968.
That said, achieving a steady-state economy or degrowth is not going to be easy. Far from it, it will be hellishly difficult.
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Posted 1 year ago # -
Suggested 30 years ago of course.
With FM backing this (since COP26) there is little hope that rUK might join in. Yesterday saw the UK keep overseas aid at 0.5% of GDP.
In Pakistan there are 30 million people affected by recent floods. Viewforth store owner can't bear to hear news from families there.Posted 1 year ago # -
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Cop27 failed on keeping global heating to just 1.5C, Ed Miliband says
Ed Miliband, the shadow secretary for climate change and net zero, told MPs that the Cop27 failed on the key issue of keeping global heating to just 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. In his contribution to the urgent question, he said:
We should be clear, on the crucial issue of 1.5 degrees, this summit failed.
We already see the disastrous effects of one degree of warming. And, rather than tackle this crisis, too many leaders are fiddling while the world burns. And, as a result, we are currently on track according to the UN for a catastrophic 2.8 degrees of warming.We should tell the truth. Unless we do something different and fast, we will leave a terrible legacy. With this backdrop, no country can be patting itself on the back. And as a country that considers itself a climate leader, we have a responsibility and opportunity to set the pace in the year ahead and our moral authority in the negotiations depends on it.
Miliband also criticised the UK government for “indulging in a dash for new fossil fuel licences which won’t even make a difference to bills”.
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Posted 1 year ago # -
The 'Loss and Damage' fund is I suppose another mitigation measure but reminds me of the 'plant a tree' approach.
As widely reported the offer here was set at £1 per person (meaning Scotland offered £5 million to offset its fossil fuel exploitation).
If multiplied up then Europe's (unknown €) actual fund would be only 500 million or so.Not saying it's bad that the dialogue took place. I do wonder if the participants assumed (wrongly) that a senior politician here would have some influence in London. The PM only had to commit £50 million to amplify Britain's voice but chose not to for whatever reason.
From National:
Mike Robinson, chair of Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, said that campaigners who lobbied the Scottish Government to pay up for loss and damage should be proud as the country showed “much-needed moral leadership” by being the first to commit funds to the cause.
He added: “However, with failure to make any progress on phasing out all fossil fuels since the talks in Glasgow last year, the debt owed for Loss and Damage will continue to increase, and the lack of commitment to doing everything possible to keep temperature increases below 1.5 degrees is incredibly worrying.
“It means the world remains on track for catastrophic warming of 2.8C.”
There was support voiced for fossil fuel phase-out by the UK, US, and EU at the closing plenary of the summit, Robinson added, but this must be followed by action – including cancelling over 100 new licenses for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea.
Posted 1 year ago #
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