Another fascinating interview, Rachel. Thank you so much. It really is important work you are doing.
I think our government is perfectly aware of the extent to which anger is building in the climate movement and where it's heading.
I've just finished reading the new Global Risks Report 2024 by the World Economic Forum ,which makes for grim reading, but illustrates the extent to which climate pessimism is entering the mainstream. In a strange way it gives me some hope when insurance brokers and actuaries start taking severe climate risks seriously, because they belong to the same tribe as the likes of Sunak and Starmer. The WEF are not as easily dismissed as climate extremists as JSO and XR.
A really interesting piece that I feel is moving the debate on from 'what is' to 'how we change'. While you have always asked those 2 questions at the top this episode seemed to get into the 'how' in a much more meaningful way, bumping up against the vastness of the problem and the uncertainty of how to address it. It is arguable that, particularly with the sense of economic fear that is prevalent, XR's disruptive tactics allowed the government the space to tighten up on the right to protest. Action perhaps should be judged against how the tired and fragile population will be persuaded to see the urgency of our plight rather than the nearly or wholly converted. My experience of working with vulnerable populations is that doing something that improves their lot gains their interest and trust far better than battering them with information and disruption. Action on multiple fronts is necessary to find the weaknesses in the Death Star - political action to demonstrate popular support, economic action such as facilitating pension funds to invest in safer, growing green businesses, grass roots community building using the tools we would like to see nationally such as deliberative democracy and local food and energy generation. We have, in the global north, become complacent about the structures we rely on and as these structures become more degraded it will become more obvious and necessary that we can and should set up local alternatives. We might then have built a sufficient body of people who can see an alternative future and who are prepared to vote for it.
After listening to your conversation with Fabian, especially the bit you shared about coming home after your encounter with the vulture capitalists, I thought you might appreciate this discussion Rob Hopkins had with Aimee Lewis Reau and LaUra Schmidt, co-founders of the Good Grief Network and authors of "How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet". Here's the link https://lnns.co/QxHOS7BX-_R. Maybe you could invite them on Planet Critical? Thank you for all your good work.
Here's a substack on the clearest recent signs of that Sixth Mass Extinction, and that we are in serious imminent danger of it hitting us hard in our own lifetimes by creating a collapse of the world's oceans..
Nature Is Giving Humanity Our Final Extinction Crisis Warning
Just eight months after I wrote that essay, hundreds of dead sea lions & dolphins appeared on California beaches due to an unprecedented offshore algae bloom, signaling a possible mass ocean die off. Below is NOAA's report on the sea lion and dolphin deaths.
Note: A bit of hope in all of this is that the Tonga oceanic volcano explosion in early 2022 (which threw huge amounts of water vapor into the atmosphere) likely played a big role in our recent heat waves, and therefore may also have something to do with these die offs. The water vapor in the atmosphere triggering the spike in warming will dissipate in about 4 years.
NOAA: Toxic Algal Bloom Suspected in Dolphin and Sea Lion Deaths in Southern California
After listening to your conversation with Fabian, especially the bit you shared about coming home after your encounter with the vulture capitalists, I thought you might appreciate this discussion Rob Hopkins had with Aimee Lewis Reau and LaUra Schmidt, authors of "How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet". Here's the link https://lnns.co/QxHOS7BX-_R. Thank you for all your good work.
Every time I read an analysis of our current problems like this one by Fabian Dablander, an old Chinese pearl of wisdom lobs into my brain: "it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness". It's like we all follow each other around a circle of darkness, bemoaning our fate, whingeinge about everything in our world that is not perfect. In Australia we call that self-centred attitude "Poor bugger me"
I'd like to know how many alternatives someone like Fabian practices: does he go anywhere curtesy of fossil fuels, or does he ride a bike everywhere? Does he eat food that is grown within 10ks of where he lives? Has he built a community that practices sustainability? Has he adopted the mantra of "think globally, act locally "? The Chinese are right: our world is in desperate need of candle-lighters, not darkness-cursers. OK, recognise the darkness for sure; but spend most of your energy building the world of tomorrow, today.
XR was/is a phenomenon, but when the response required from the centre of power requires removal of that power, hundreds of thousands or even millions on the streets will be ignored. Witness Iraq, Palestine or even XR’s the big one. I’ll have to read Andreas Malm’s book, but I’m not sure about sabotage of infrastructure either.
Rachel Donald, you are getting yourself tied in knots and feeling helpless for no good reason by:
1) You are not understanding that the problem is not remotely as hard to solve as you think it is. See the following images that show how small a land area is required to power the world on Solar or Wind power:
- Total Surface Area Required to Fuel the World With Solar
2) You are focusing far too much on national and global responses when it will be much more effective to simply start from the ground up by transitioning our own communities to renewables and transit. See the following PDF link for what we are pursuing in San Francisco, California for local energy. Any community can simply do this on its own *right now* without waiting for national or global governments..
- 100% Local Clean Energy & Climate Justice for San Francisco
1) Post a substack I wrote for the purposes of reinforcing with people that we need to be very alarmed about what is happening. That post was agreeing with and expanding on what you are saying about how bad the situation is. (If I was simply self promoting that would have been my only reply. It wasn't.) and,
2) as a 40 year full time climate activist who has succeeded in getting renewables rapidly built in California and other states, to explain that your focus on national and global responses to the crisis is putting you on a battlefield where we cannot win (and can only be frustrated) and that your efforts are better spent and will be a lot more successful, working to get local communities and states/provinces to build renewables, mass transit, walkable communities, etc.
We won't win fighting the UK or US, or Norway, or the IPCC, or at the bs COP meetings, but we *can* win at the local level.
As I watched your video I found it to be unrealistically pessimistic and I wanted to introduce some evidence for achievable change.
I'm actually a radical feminist, who, unlike yourself, actually understands what the word "Mansplaining" (excellently coined by Rebecca Solnit) means.
Mansplaining refers to a man, who is talking down to a woman on a subject around which the women has *more* knowledge than that man.
Since I have been working to reverse the climate crisis for four decades as the core of my full time job as an environmental and social justice activist and organizer (and am therefore an expert) it's pretty unlikely that Rachel Donald knows more than I do about the subject of the climate crisis.
Do you get that when you use the word "mansplaining" in gratuitous attacks on men that are not warranted, you engage in the equivalent of "the boy crying wolf" and you both denigrate and disempower the term, and alienate men and conservatives who we most need to understand their own patriarchal privilege and oppression?
What you have just done in playing the 'mansplaining' card without good reason, is very similar to Zionists calling people who criticize Israel 'antisemites' and is just as unacceptable.
Whether or not you know more, you evidently came here to self-promote. Do so more gracefully in future because frankly I consider this kind of behaviour extractive and patriarchal.
Jesus Christ get over yourself. I don't seek to make any money whatsoever from my substack. I am a full time environmental and social justice organizer as my job (making less than $20k per year because I live by voluntary simplicity).
I created my substack because I found myself on social media constantly having to rewrite the same explanations on environmental and geopolitical issues and needed to save myself time by publishing these explanations in one spot so I wouldn't have to keep retyping them.
I subscribed to your substack because I saw you had some really good observations about these issues as well. But that doesn't mean that you are some infallible, god's gift to the universe, who doesn't make any mistakes.
My original replies were to simply agree with *part* of what you are saying while also pointing out, based on my long work in the trenches on the climate crisis, where I assess you are getting it wrong. A lot of people read and watch your material, so what you get right or wrong *matters*.
Yet instead of simply listening, or even pushing back to say you disagree and explain why, your flex is to say "don't patriarchy me Bro!"???
No, I explained how you are being an insufferable, virtue signaling, faux #MeToo warrior against men as an obsession. Once I looked over your profile it became clear that you are addicted to it. Unfortunately blocking you somehow didn't work so I get to suffer more of your hyper-Karen bs.
How much damage caused by pollution and fossil fuels should we allow, before the transition of communities to renewable energy? It appears that many species will be lost, and there will be massive ecological damage before humanity transitions to green energy, at some future time.
Another fascinating interview, Rachel. Thank you so much. It really is important work you are doing.
I think our government is perfectly aware of the extent to which anger is building in the climate movement and where it's heading.
I've just finished reading the new Global Risks Report 2024 by the World Economic Forum ,which makes for grim reading, but illustrates the extent to which climate pessimism is entering the mainstream. In a strange way it gives me some hope when insurance brokers and actuaries start taking severe climate risks seriously, because they belong to the same tribe as the likes of Sunak and Starmer. The WEF are not as easily dismissed as climate extremists as JSO and XR.
A really interesting piece that I feel is moving the debate on from 'what is' to 'how we change'. While you have always asked those 2 questions at the top this episode seemed to get into the 'how' in a much more meaningful way, bumping up against the vastness of the problem and the uncertainty of how to address it. It is arguable that, particularly with the sense of economic fear that is prevalent, XR's disruptive tactics allowed the government the space to tighten up on the right to protest. Action perhaps should be judged against how the tired and fragile population will be persuaded to see the urgency of our plight rather than the nearly or wholly converted. My experience of working with vulnerable populations is that doing something that improves their lot gains their interest and trust far better than battering them with information and disruption. Action on multiple fronts is necessary to find the weaknesses in the Death Star - political action to demonstrate popular support, economic action such as facilitating pension funds to invest in safer, growing green businesses, grass roots community building using the tools we would like to see nationally such as deliberative democracy and local food and energy generation. We have, in the global north, become complacent about the structures we rely on and as these structures become more degraded it will become more obvious and necessary that we can and should set up local alternatives. We might then have built a sufficient body of people who can see an alternative future and who are prepared to vote for it.
Rachel, can you share the name of the book you referenced?
How To Blow Up A Pipeline by Andreas Malm!
Thank you!
I think two books were mentioned. “How to blow up a pipeline” by Andreas Malm and “The Invention of Nature” by Andrea Wulf.
Thank you, Tim!
Ooh! Timestamp?
After listening to your conversation with Fabian, especially the bit you shared about coming home after your encounter with the vulture capitalists, I thought you might appreciate this discussion Rob Hopkins had with Aimee Lewis Reau and LaUra Schmidt, co-founders of the Good Grief Network and authors of "How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet". Here's the link https://lnns.co/QxHOS7BX-_R. Maybe you could invite them on Planet Critical? Thank you for all your good work.
Here's a substack on the clearest recent signs of that Sixth Mass Extinction, and that we are in serious imminent danger of it hitting us hard in our own lifetimes by creating a collapse of the world's oceans..
Nature Is Giving Humanity Our Final Extinction Crisis Warning
https://ericbrooks.substack.com/p/nature-is-giving-humanity-our-final
Just eight months after I wrote that essay, hundreds of dead sea lions & dolphins appeared on California beaches due to an unprecedented offshore algae bloom, signaling a possible mass ocean die off. Below is NOAA's report on the sea lion and dolphin deaths.
Note: A bit of hope in all of this is that the Tonga oceanic volcano explosion in early 2022 (which threw huge amounts of water vapor into the atmosphere) likely played a big role in our recent heat waves, and therefore may also have something to do with these die offs. The water vapor in the atmosphere triggering the spike in warming will dissipate in about 4 years.
NOAA: Toxic Algal Bloom Suspected in Dolphin and Sea Lion Deaths in Southern California
https://fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/toxic-algal-bloom-suspected-dolphin-and-sea-lion-deaths-southern-california
Meat is not a problem and hence veganism is no kind of answer. How do people still believe this?
After listening to your conversation with Fabian, especially the bit you shared about coming home after your encounter with the vulture capitalists, I thought you might appreciate this discussion Rob Hopkins had with Aimee Lewis Reau and LaUra Schmidt, authors of "How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet". Here's the link https://lnns.co/QxHOS7BX-_R. Thank you for all your good work.
Very good speaker - how do we highlight the points Fabian made to a wider audience. Does he have publications etc that we can access?
I particularly like his point - "we need to end this, before it ends us..."
Every time I read an analysis of our current problems like this one by Fabian Dablander, an old Chinese pearl of wisdom lobs into my brain: "it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness". It's like we all follow each other around a circle of darkness, bemoaning our fate, whingeinge about everything in our world that is not perfect. In Australia we call that self-centred attitude "Poor bugger me"
I'd like to know how many alternatives someone like Fabian practices: does he go anywhere curtesy of fossil fuels, or does he ride a bike everywhere? Does he eat food that is grown within 10ks of where he lives? Has he built a community that practices sustainability? Has he adopted the mantra of "think globally, act locally "? The Chinese are right: our world is in desperate need of candle-lighters, not darkness-cursers. OK, recognise the darkness for sure; but spend most of your energy building the world of tomorrow, today.
XR was/is a phenomenon, but when the response required from the centre of power requires removal of that power, hundreds of thousands or even millions on the streets will be ignored. Witness Iraq, Palestine or even XR’s the big one. I’ll have to read Andreas Malm’s book, but I’m not sure about sabotage of infrastructure either.
A strategy I’d be interested in is disrupting the sources of misinformation...a certain network which George Monbiot talks about in that episode.
Rachel Donald, you are getting yourself tied in knots and feeling helpless for no good reason by:
1) You are not understanding that the problem is not remotely as hard to solve as you think it is. See the following images that show how small a land area is required to power the world on Solar or Wind power:
- Total Surface Area Required to Fuel the World With Solar
https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127
- Powering the World with Offshore Wind
https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/77315
2) You are focusing far too much on national and global responses when it will be much more effective to simply start from the ground up by transitioning our own communities to renewables and transit. See the following PDF link for what we are pursuing in San Francisco, California for local energy. Any community can simply do this on its own *right now* without waiting for national or global governments..
- 100% Local Clean Energy & Climate Justice for San Francisco
http://our-city.org/100_Percent_Local_Clean_Energy_Buildout_Sign-On_2022.pdf
Did you come here to tell me a) how I feel and b) that I don't understand the problem whilst promoting your own substack?
I replied to:
1) Post a substack I wrote for the purposes of reinforcing with people that we need to be very alarmed about what is happening. That post was agreeing with and expanding on what you are saying about how bad the situation is. (If I was simply self promoting that would have been my only reply. It wasn't.) and,
2) as a 40 year full time climate activist who has succeeded in getting renewables rapidly built in California and other states, to explain that your focus on national and global responses to the crisis is putting you on a battlefield where we cannot win (and can only be frustrated) and that your efforts are better spent and will be a lot more successful, working to get local communities and states/provinces to build renewables, mass transit, walkable communities, etc.
We won't win fighting the UK or US, or Norway, or the IPCC, or at the bs COP meetings, but we *can* win at the local level.
As I watched your video I found it to be unrealistically pessimistic and I wanted to introduce some evidence for achievable change.
I'm actually a radical feminist, who, unlike yourself, actually understands what the word "Mansplaining" (excellently coined by Rebecca Solnit) means.
Mansplaining refers to a man, who is talking down to a woman on a subject around which the women has *more* knowledge than that man.
Since I have been working to reverse the climate crisis for four decades as the core of my full time job as an environmental and social justice activist and organizer (and am therefore an expert) it's pretty unlikely that Rachel Donald knows more than I do about the subject of the climate crisis.
Do you get that when you use the word "mansplaining" in gratuitous attacks on men that are not warranted, you engage in the equivalent of "the boy crying wolf" and you both denigrate and disempower the term, and alienate men and conservatives who we most need to understand their own patriarchal privilege and oppression?
What you have just done in playing the 'mansplaining' card without good reason, is very similar to Zionists calling people who criticize Israel 'antisemites' and is just as unacceptable.
What an outrageous and egregious conflation.
Whether or not you know more, you evidently came here to self-promote. Do so more gracefully in future because frankly I consider this kind of behaviour extractive and patriarchal.
Jesus Christ get over yourself. I don't seek to make any money whatsoever from my substack. I am a full time environmental and social justice organizer as my job (making less than $20k per year because I live by voluntary simplicity).
I created my substack because I found myself on social media constantly having to rewrite the same explanations on environmental and geopolitical issues and needed to save myself time by publishing these explanations in one spot so I wouldn't have to keep retyping them.
I subscribed to your substack because I saw you had some really good observations about these issues as well. But that doesn't mean that you are some infallible, god's gift to the universe, who doesn't make any mistakes.
My original replies were to simply agree with *part* of what you are saying while also pointing out, based on my long work in the trenches on the climate crisis, where I assess you are getting it wrong. A lot of people read and watch your material, so what you get right or wrong *matters*.
Yet instead of simply listening, or even pushing back to say you disagree and explain why, your flex is to say "don't patriarchy me Bro!"???
What a joke..
Unsubscribing now..
No, I explained how you are being an insufferable, virtue signaling, faux #MeToo warrior against men as an obsession. Once I looked over your profile it became clear that you are addicted to it. Unfortunately blocking you somehow didn't work so I get to suffer more of your hyper-Karen bs.
You and Alyssa Milano need to get a room..
How much damage caused by pollution and fossil fuels should we allow, before the transition of communities to renewable energy? It appears that many species will be lost, and there will be massive ecological damage before humanity transitions to green energy, at some future time.