In a previous post, I listed mostly illegal things that individuals are likely to do unless serious action is taken on climate change – very soon. The actions listed here are things we all need to be doing to prevent getting to the stage where people are desperate or angry enough to become destructive or dangerous.

Here are useful, worthwhile things you can do right now to be the difference we need.

1. Set an example

Gandhi said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world,” and “My life is my message.” Both are still true, and this is the most important thing you can do. We are social animals, and your example will push us toward a social tipping point.

Before the tipping point, there is much resistance and it seems change is impossible, or at best far away. Afterward, when everyone is doing it and a new social norm has been set, it seems impossible we would ever go back to the old way. Think recycling: Now it is shameful not to recycle in Canada and some parts of the United States. Or single-payer health care: there is enormous and well-funded resistance to it in the United States, yet nobody in their right mind in Canada or Europe would consider moving to a U.S.-style private-only system.

When it comes to setting an example, go as far as you can within your circumstances – then push a bit further.  Use some of the ideas below to expand yourself and be a better example. Continue reading →

To some, this seems ridiculous. To others, however, it is eminently reasonable. Let me explain why the charges are justified, and why Rex Tillerson.

The Case for Prosecution

In a post on Celsias.com, I laid out the case:

If climate change can reasonably be expected to cause severe consequences, including large-scale loss of material goods, wealth, land, livelihood, and life; and

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us?
Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

Friedrich Nietzsche

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We do not need a continuous growth, Bubble Economy; I explained the Stable Economy simply and concisely in a previous article. Given that we don’t need continuous growth, why on earth do we have a growth economy?

Capitalist theory requires that businesses grow and grow and grow forever. The reasons are to prevent takeover and to take advantage of economies of scale. However, the first of these is really a subset of the second, which is itself not necessarily true. Continue reading →

There live among us people with a very different and very dangerous morality: they are Predators. They see people as divided into Predators and Prey, and their morality may be summed up as Might Makes Right.

Might Makes Right

Predators believe that your might determines your rights. All con men are predators, as are the banksters, most CEOs of large corporations, and religious leaders and politicians at the highest levels. All believe that, essentially, if they can do something then they have the right to do so. Whether conning an elderly couple out of their life savings, collecting a huge bonus while running a company into the ground, or invading Iraq, predators do not see anything wrong with this. They consider themselves the wolf culling the weak from the herd; they see this as natural and good. Continue reading →