Rebecca Solnit on Climate

" ... we must fight the climate crisis with the same urgency with which we confronted coronavirus. She says: "My hope for a post-pandemic world is that the old excuses for doing nothing about climate – that it is impossible to change the status quo and too expensive to do so – have been stripped away." This piece comes within weeks of us reporting that carbon dioxide emissions must fall by the equivalent of a global lockdown roughly every two years for the next decade for the world to keep within safe limits of global heating.

Twitter to Rob Mayor

 I like your "got to think positively", Andrew. About Covid and about Climate/Ecology/Nature crisis, too. But that one means positive action, too - somewhat more challenging but I'm trying and my wife, too in setting the best example we can! Lockdown for Climate, too.

Universal basic income

5 April 2020

If we can give everyone a basic income to provide food, shelter, clothing and a life free of disease, the present state of quiet roads, cleaner air and less economic activity would be quite appealing to me!  Green or ecosocialism.  Equality from fair shares for all.  Levelling out = levelling down for the rich and levelling up for the poor = sustainable or ecosocialism.

Lockdown is meaning a slow down of greenhouse gases and, hence, ecocide.  But many are suffering.  Even more so with resource depletion and a stir crazy climate.  But we have to spend less and get green, ecological growth to reverse ecocide.

LEADERS GETTING THEIR PRIORITIES IN ORDER

LEADERS GETTING THEIR PRIORITIES IN ORDER

It does seem that nothing was done between December (start of the outbreak in Wuhan, China) and midnight on 16 March (start of lockdown) to plan, prepare and buy in products in case the virus arrived in the UK.

Similarly, when compared with the urgency and importance of responding to the climate crisis, virtually nothing was done from the foundation of the IPCC in 1988 to the present.  In 32 years, no response.  And still to this day.  Instead, the exact opposite was and is still being done:

1. with major carbon intensive infrastructure projects like High Status 2 train line for £106 billion of greenhouse gases to compete with internal UK plane flights - just stop them and use existing and unused intercity railway lines like the 120 Kms Black Country Railway that must be finished;
2. Work on the other 23 railway projects that need finishing, improving, modernising.
3. Midland Metro trams replacing buses and trains to make for more road and railway congestion and slower public transport journeys (more changes and more traffic lights);
4. Crossrail 2 for more travel and less working from home;
5. £15 billion to 2040 for West Midlands underground and overground tram projects.

All are concrete intensive, so carbon intensive, so very high greenhouse gas emissions.  Therefore, scrap them.  The Chancellor's economic package to help the economic lockdown/turndown/depression sufferers, is so colossal that that alone should cause them all to be scrapped immediately.

INSTEAD:

• The hundreds of billions would be better spent on basic income for all (the rich sharing their wealth with the less rich);
• fare free public transport for all (not intercity, however);
• working from home using broadband rolled out to remaining urban and all rural areas to discourage working in an office and to allow more shopping on line;
• fossil fuel rationing or carbon allowance for each individual in the UK.

What do you think, Bob?

Tim

Get level with nature

If we can give everyone a basic income to provide food, shelter, clothing and a life free of disease, the present state of quiet roads, cleaner air and less economic activity would be quite appealing to me!  Green or eco socialism.  Equality from fair shares for all.  Levelling out = levelling down for the rich and levelling up for the poor = sustainable or eco socialism.

Lockdown is meaning a slow down of greenhouse gases and, hence, ecocide.  But many are suffering.  Even more so with resource depletion and a stir crazy climate.  But we have to spend less and get green, ecological growth to reverse ecocide.

Lockdown to Unlock Nostalgia - and a story of a lock out.

Armchair hill walking in lieu of the real thing.

I enjoyed reading chapter 10 in 'More Wilderness Walks' by Cameron McNeish and Richard Else.  Called 'Beinn Dearg and Easter Ross - a mountain odyssey'.  Odyssey is a lovely word, meaning a long journey or a spiritual quest.  "An extended adventurous voyage or trip."

I read with my map that I used when I climbed the Munros and Munro Tops first in the 1980s, 90s and 00s and the Corbetts from 2008 to 2019.  I remember visiting the Croick church that saw, in 1845, the local people sheltering from the wind and rain on the eastern side of the church after they had been cleared off their land to make way for sheep.  There are tragic messages scratched on the glass of the east window.  They believed they were not allowed in the church building, even in torrential rain.  Or, were they locked out?

from http://www.croickchurch.com/churchatcroick.htm
" ... they were allowed to shelter in Croick churchyard, exposed to the elements, wishing, as it is recorded, that death would come to allow them to join there forefathers beneath the sward. They were helped only by the minister, who did all in his power to ease their condition.

"As the people passed the weary days among the tombs someone among them, scratching idly on the diamond-shaped panes of the east window, left a short pathetic message for posterity. In the unhurried copperplate writing of last century we can still decipher some of the names: "C. Chalmers" "John Ross, Shepherd, parish of Ardgay" and others and, bowing meekly to what was accepted by a God-fearing people as Divine chastisement – "Glen Calvie people, the wicked generation" "Glen Calvie people was in the churchyard here May 24^th 1845" – The words "Church Officer" also appear under the name "Ann McAlister", but it is probable that the designation refers to an illegible name scratched below. It is highly unlikely that a woman be acceptable as Church officer in the middle of the last century, in a community such as this one.

"Why were they not allowed to shelter inside the Church? I suggest that the answer is simple. In those days this would have been regarded as desecration of a holy place, and even under such necessity, and if invited by the minister, they would probably have refused."