Douglas

Mood

There’s something truly beautiful about this scale and extent of dystopia

Super strong 'B-roll exposition from a dystopic future where we failed on climate' energy.

Predicted demand for EVs "seems not to have materialised" and it's all petrol SUVs instead. The Markets heard our prayers but did not answer, guess that's that, gg all

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Seems like has been very little coverage of protests happening in the U.S.--not necessarily an intentional media blackout (although possibly), but the result of a longstanding stance in legacy media that protests aren't worth covering, activists aren't credible sources (but somehow CEOs are), etc.

“The 2050 target is legally binding. If the country misses it because consumers don’t do their part, the government is subject to lawsuits”

*stirring music plays, patriotic sentiment swells*

Good piece to be clear but god I miss social movements and non-consumer citizenship. 2017 energy…

BP to slash renewables investment and ramp up gas and oil production. The energy giant will announce its strategy later after rivals also rowed back on green energy plans.

"Shell and Norwegian company Equinor have already scaled back their plans to invest in green energy"

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This whole trend (see also banks de-greening) seems to be so brazen and obvious that no one's scandalised. But like... this is really, really, really bad right?

Chad/saint behaviour, mad respect

Finding the 'pessimism of the intellect' part much easier than the 'optimism of the will part' rn 🙃

What if worsening climate disruption doesn't act as a wake up call?

An emergent feature of the new climate reality: anger at the failure of incumbent parties to protect us from climate disruption is benefiting political forces that deny climate change and delay action

But we can break this loop 🧵

Full solidarity with Andrew, I have so much respect and gratitude for what he does

The PM's personal attack against him is appalling - Andrew is one of the most selfless, altruistic and giving campaigners I've ever met, to accuse him of being virtue signalling or in it for himself is ludicrous

P.S. for ideas on Anthropocene-ready politics/narratives please see @tadziomueller.bsky.social, @rupertread.bsky.social, @rogerhallam.com, @justcollapse.bsky.social, @materialistjew.bsky.social, @jksteinberger.bsky.social, @meadwaj.bsky.social, @charliejgardner.bsky.social

Bit of a chestunut but that Gramsci line feels almost literal today: "The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters".

Solidarity to all of us facing this storm; may our dread give us strength.

(11/11)

#stormEsso

Probably none of this is surprising; but it is different first-hand.

To feel it in your body, see it in your city, as our limp neoliberal/Holocene routine is eclipsed by the looming reality. To feel the yearning lack of a collective narrative/politics that meets the situation's needs (10/11)

Cover of Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle; also a very good book!

There's wry wisdom in the meme "Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it". Spectacle all the way down.

Maybe one day we'll finish filming and start doing something?
(9/11)

And by failing to join the macro dots, they fail to produce/invite much of a social reality. Per neoliberal SOP our collective experience is of passive, isolated spectators: i.e., barely collective at all. We're asked to be a patient audience and wait until this all blows over.

But it won't.
(8/11)

Labour MPs ordered to sink landmark climate and environment bill Exclusive: Supporters of bill say Labour has already insisted on removal of clauses requiring UK to meet targets agreed at Cop and other summits

I've barely seen a whisper that today's *disruption* might have any relevance to Labour overriding legal protections to ram new airports through, or their spineless U-turn on the Climate Bill which is, insanely, happening TODAY(!!!)

(7/11)

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

All this rolling coverage of downed trees, blackouts and wind-speeds is like reporting on a war with no mention of the aggressor (not that that would ever happen...)

They're methodically depoliticising, decontextualising, essentially laundering what is in truth a glaringly political reality (6/11)

The cover of Charlie Hertzog's Spinning Out - awesome book, go read it!

Per Charlie Young, globally many victims of 'natural disasters' understand them as 'acts of god'.

This system of meaning doubtless has its upsides, but one big con is that it excises the causes and indeed the culprits of these horrors. Our 'extreme weather' narrative is frankly no better. (5/11)

IPCC infographic showing how Zoomers and Gen A are getting horribly screwed in comparison to older generations

This is especially apparent in that central "once in a generation" line. At once a worthy warning and completely bonkers, verging on outright denial. Which generation would this be, the Flappers???

In their efforts to assure, our institutions demonstrate their refusal to face the reality (4/11)

But the response still feels profoundly insufficient: unable to reckon with what this storm represents, our media class is just recycling obselete Holocene tropes.

The script presents extreme weather as 'exceptional', in what feels almost like of an act of will to conjure the 'normal' (3/11)

It could be worse. Highlight was 4.5 million of us receiving aptly alarming 'code red' alerts by phone last night. Real Scottish Anthropocene milestone.

And this is backed up by all the sensible news soundbites you'd expect: 'threat to life', 'once-in-a-generation', 'do not go outside' etc. (2/11)

Picture of some trees and clouds in windy Edinburgh, calling to mind that Bible(?) bit about how you can't see wind except through its effects

#StormEowyn feels like my (and Edinburgh's) first direct taste of climate breakdown. Watching crazy, hurricane-force winds outside my windows rn - feeling a strange sense of disconnect...

This isn't do to with the weather (genuinely frightening) but the way the whole event is being mediated (1/11)

Currently sitting in the middle of #StormEowyn and taking ecocidal indifference from Labour more personally than usual

Normally wary of 'as bad as Trump' talk, but think it actually lands here.

Proscribing "excessive" legal challenges, with reference to this enemy within of "blockers" "using our court processes to frustrate growth”.

Straight up conspiratorial rhetoric; this is poison to democracy

screengrab first paras of FT article

Unsurprising, but still, wow.

Donald Trump halts more than $300bn in US green infrastructure funding
www.ft.com/content/fcaf...

Stop the cuts to active travel in Scotland The Scottish Government is slashing more than £30m from next years’ active travel budget. But there’s still time to act. Ask your MSPs to oppose the cuts👉

heartbreaking to see a government which I generally respect a lot backing down on such an important and frankly self-evident priority. Please don't stifle this potentially utopic - and ecologically indispensable - progress!"

Gratitude to @edi.bike for sharing action.cyclinguk.org/page/162181/...

Every time I leave the house I feel deeply conscious of the ways in which car-centric policies diminish our individual and collective experience, naturally for some much more than others. If we're building a better, fairer, nicer world it has to start with streets, and honestly I find it ...

Copying my actual letter here if nothing else as an artefact of the weird behaviours car-centricity produces in otherwise-very-cool 29-year-old cynics:

"Active travel is the single thing that most defines my experience of citizenship...

Continually amazed how active travel has radicalised me to the extent that I'm contacting elected representatives(!). Feels incredibly retro and painfully earnest, not least in a context of macro political madness, but here I am getting misty-eyed about walking and biking for my MSP's inbox...