Renewed our vows
Lizzie and I have made up. She agrees that "a change in attitude is needed". And I said that it was the panic of steering the whole Crude ship on my own for two weeks that caused me to overreact (was that an apology?). Anyhow, we've renewed our vows to get the fucker finished.
A good thought from the Guardian. Think there may be the replacement Crude title somewhere in the
idea of "like there is no tomorrow":
That freedom to go on consuming like there is no tomorrow, surely the most self-fulfilling prophecy ever formulated by the reckless accountants of the calculus of permanent growth and expansion.
It is not the salvaging of the social and economic system that should be at the heart of the current emergency, but a reassurance that the resource base upon which all systems depend will be conserved, so that it may provide a secure sufficiency for all humanity for an indefinite future.
This cannot be assured by horror stories about the monetary cost, by technological fixes, by faith in conquering other worlds, by belief in the redemptive capacity of science, or the ingenuity of humanity to promote limitlessness in a bounded world. It requires an alternative and convincing story of survival, an energising myth that will inspire collective action, a narrative that tells of a different kind of emancipation; just as capitalism once promised undreamed of wealth that would cure the ancient human scourge of poverty, and as Marx told the workers to unite since they had nothing to lose but their chains. These old myths have served their purpose, and no longer carry a plausible guarantee of liberation. This age awaits its empowering ideology, its renewal of hope, its fable of deliverance.
It is not the know-alls, experts, scientists, or the brains swimming in the aimless circularity of high-powered thinktanks that will rescue us. It is, however, just conceivable, that a modest myth, which speaks of a joyful frugality, an austere delight in the rediscovery of the riches of human resourcefulness allied to restraint in the use of material resources, might do so. But that would require an act of faith to transcend former ideologies of hope, which have been reduced by events into the gloomiest counsels of despair. This is, of course, scarcely the province of bureaucrats, however worthy. It belongs to the transforming power of faith in ourselves to rise to the urgency of what now stares us in the face.
In other news: Al Gore won the Best Documentary Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth and several squillion people have now seen it. Fantastic that he's warming up the global audience ready for Crude.
Whereas the BBC still have climate sceptics on Newsnight. What are they playing at?
And don't even get me started on Channel 4's Global Warming Swindle programme, which has put the fight back at least ten years. Even my best friends are saying "thank god that climate change business was a con, eh?". Seriously. Of course everyone so desperately wants to believe it's true - that climate change isn't happening - that it only takes one wildly inaccurate and almost criminally irresponsible TV programme to undo the work of thousands of climate scientists and convince the lemmings that it's OK to fly to Greece for the weekend after all.
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