Rebellion Required...

Why is every day such a fucking struggle? It's not like any activist or campaigner I know is asking for the bad stuff or the impossible stuff or the inhumane stuff. We're protecting the safety and quality of the very stuff we need to survive - our air, water, soil, oceans, creatures. We're trying to keep the dangers at bay. We're trying to fight injustice. We're striving for a safer, fairer world where all the people are heard and heeded- not just those with money/power/influence. What is so wrong with what we are doing? Why does it warrant sustained suppression and attack by State? Why is it the 'norm' for our police force to be used to stop protest and to silence discontent in communities that rise up and question decisions by State? What happens when we're right? REAL CRIMES ARE HAPPENING and being facilitated by those with the power to control our lives through our police force, armed forces, courts, councils. I heard a phase "breathtaking environmental vandalism" and I think it just touches the surface of what the greed of corporates and industry has brought about... what is being committed is ecocide... ...where GENOcide is the 'intentional action to destroy a people'- ECOcide is the 'destruction of the natural environment, especially when deliberate'. And how can what is happening NOT be deliberate? We have the facts, we have the science, we have the evidence, we have the deaths, pollution, environmental refugees, toxic landfills, poisonous industries, impossible to breathe cities, extinctions and increasing shrinkage of green spaces that could help to heal us and our vile air... those with the power to stop the harm, KNOW what is happening just as we do - so YES this IS ecocide and criminals are committing it. WE CAMPAIGNERS/ACTIVISTS ARE THE GOOD GUYS at this time - yes we disrupt, we get angry, we may get worse... but what else can we do but just keep challenging and becoming (as a result) ever-more 'criminal' by our essential actions? No-one has the answers and it'll take a whole lot of us working from the same motivation, to find them. We KNOW the solutions or at least how to ease the harm and create less damaging futures but what we don't know... is how the hell to take back power! ... In our world today it was announced that we humans are responsible for wiping out 60 percent of vertebrate wildlife since 1970. Rising up is essential, to do anything less would be criminal. We may not all agree every item on each other's agenda or the practices each take to achieve goals - the autonomy of activism is essential though to ensure we each only do what we feel is right for us and that there is not responsibility for another's actions. I can't get to the action tomorrow by Extinction Rebellion but offer full support and solidarity to all who do xxx

Stop The Start - Don't Frack The Climate

Mad Enough Yet?

Are we mad enough yet? Any of the headlines about the report by the IPCC on our damaged environment on this planet... could just have easily have read:

"CHILDREN WILL NOT SURVIVE THE FUTURE WE ARE CREATING FOR THEM"

We look first of course to our own selves and the choices we make that have negative impacts... what we eat, what we buy, how we power our lives and all the other day-to-day things of existence in our bit of the world. And yes... we need to do so much more BUT as I look to the 'choices' I am able to make, I find those choices for the most part - are a matter of choosing between the least damaging of damaging things and that the rare neutral or good-for-the-planet things, are beyond affordability for the many.

THEN... I read of the scandals about manipulated emissions tests in car/van/truck engines (making them seem a better choice than they are) and the weakness of the Regulators in finding this out or when they did, doing anything worthwhile about it... I hear fighter-jet engines overhead in exercises by UK Defence... witness the evolving frack site on the A583 in Lancashire... catch the news of nuclear-mud dumping in our waters and I truly despair; all of this impacts so much more than any one of us - yet it just carries on. YES it is our 'demand' that causes cars to be built, fuel created, farming to take over rainforests for meat etc BUT we aren't really DEMANDING this, it's roughly all there is on offer! Safe cycle lanes over vast distances, decent, affordable, non-harming public transport, affordable quality food etc. just aren't being adequately pursued.

So yes, WE need to make better 'choices' but more importantly and far more urgently - we need to make our governments change the systems that give tax breaks to polluters, that invite industry to have too much power over decisions and to STAND UP for the people by honestly facing facts and dealing with reality - this isn't about who gets to be in power for 5 years at a time - it's about our children now and in the future and the decisions today - mean hell or hope for them.

SYSTEM CHANGE is the only way - not simply Party change. We bailed out the banks when they were 'too big to fail' - we now need to redirect our money and time to the environment that is 'too essential to fail'

#EnvironmentBailout