8 minute Space Flight ≥ World Population’s Carbon Emissions in a Lifetime | Let your Conscience Decide | What Can You Imagine?
January 12, 2022 Leave a comment
Let your conscience decide. But before you can make a decision, you need to be informed. After all, this affects you. While we’re busy progressing through (or digressing from) our life’s daily activities and responsibilities, there’s a truth blazing right in front of our eyes. Hint: It’s not a comet.
That’s right, An 8 minute space flight is equivalent to 1 Million people’s carbon emissions in a lifetime.
I participated in a 2 hour informational meeting organized through members of the Boston XR chapter 1/11/22. The Extinction Rebellion talk was about taking hold of your democratic right to have your voice heard. The topic of the meeting, non-violent direct action; pressing the political body and the media to tell the truth to the public. Non-violent direct action has been around for a long time; such as what Mahatma Gandhi, Henry David Thoreau and Rosa Parks did. They too, did not feel that the powers that be, were listening.
Given that neither US political party nor the corporate media give much attention or time to honest communication about Ecological Breakdown and the Climate Crisis.
While we’re busy, enmeshed in our own worlds, a lot of information of critical importance that affects all of us, is sort of, glazed over. Several years ago when I lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I hitched up to the ski basin and a former climate scientist who worked for the California government gave me a lift. He mentioned that in 1991, he was instructed NOT to release his findings in a report, that incriminated the oil industry clearly as being culpable for our heating planet. I was shocked. This wasn’t something to blame on our then current buffoon in the White House. Instead, it reveals a systemic and systematic non disclosure of information; the government and institutions bowing to the industries that feed them with green, and I’m not talking about marijuana. Oh yeah, even the former Speaker of the House during the Obama administration, the guy with the long unsmiling face, John Boehner, who continually voted against legalizing marijuana, now has invested $$$$ in the industry; which is being groomed into a large-scale corporate controlled industry with strict licensing – cutting out the small growers. Boehner has his talons in this one. “John Boehner Was Once ‘Unalterably Opposed’ To Marijuana. He Now Wants It To Be Legal”
In the meantime, the pharmaceutical industry billionaires, along with the tech ones, have also been willingly not disclosing information, as they looked at their sky rocketing accounting books as a burgeoning mass opioid epidemic was happening. They kept quiet, because they were seeing massive profits.
This systematic cover-up and looking the other way while one’s bank account fattens, has already been in place.
Noam Chomsky talks of this in his interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now regarding the current Anti-Science evangelical movement and Neo-Liberalism in the United States of Amnesia.
I had to look up ‘the scopes trial’. to see what he was referencing. In 1925 in Tennessee, a teacher was tried for having the audacity to teach evolution theory.
He talks of the evangelical, anti-science minions of Trump today who are misguided through a strong media. Chomsky says
“It is our responsibility to turn the country to sanity.”
He talks about the trend of Neo Liberalism in the last 40 years and its transfer of wealth from the working and middle class (90%) to the very rich. The religious right is healthy and strong.
And with his quote in mind, that’s why we can all rebel against extinction, and decide to actually work and act and play together. And say, I wanna hear more?
What is it that is blazing before our eyes? Well, it was well-covered by the network television stations. I heard the statistic from one of the people in the zoom meeting.
“Jeff Bezos Got as Much Morning Show Coverage in a Day as Climate Change Got All Last Year”
While governments and industries and corporate stories are about pride, conquering, staking one’s territory and profiting from one’s investments.
Our stories are more about surviving, and surfing the net. We might have similar ambitions nestled in quiet achievements and joys about conquering our own fears and losing bad habits. In the meantime, we need to guard from being Zucked by our boy billionaire, who wants to conquer our inner space. Mark would like (with our purchase of his software and hardware) for everyone, to ‘switch’ from life, to a fantasy. From being sensorily in touch with our own bodies, the turning of the planet, the changes of seasons and some semblance of connection to the living systems of our earth and to each other face to face. To instead, buy into Meta. Rather than walking and driving while staring down at our phones, that’s old school. We can instead meet (anyone) and go (anywhere) in Meta, without even having to get dressed or brush our teeth. We can put on any mask or costume we like, to hide behind. A fantasy world that you, yes you, can create. You don’t have to bother to leave your house or couch. Now we’re talking zombi land, for real. We can all say ciao, see ya later, while merging into being mesmerized in our goggles, wired to a virtual universe.
Why spend time being concerned about nature, if you can ‘be there’. If there are no tigers anymore, who cares? We can visit with them while sitting on the toilet with our googles on and bluetooth.
While the billionaires are shooting off rockets to conquer and profit from space flight – Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Richard Branson – they are ignoring a glaring part of the equation.
One 8 minute rocket launch is equivalent to 1 million peoples carbon output in a lifetime.
“How the billionaire space race could be one giant leap for pollution” (not for mankind)
“One rocket launch produces up to 300 tons of carbon dioxide into the upper atmosphere where it can remain for years.”
These are educated intelligent guys, uh, chaotic weather systems from global warming? extinction?
One Space Trip Emits a Lifetime’s Worth of Carbon Footprint ”That’s pretty messed up.”
This statistical analysis of carbon emissions relative to income and wealth levels globally, clearly indicates where accountability lies 2022 World Inequality Report
Regarding Global Carbon Inequality
I had to look what MENA stood for. Middle East/North African countries consisting of Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
We are in the midst of an environmental extinction crisis and global heating climate catastrophe whose main driver is fossil fuels and industrialized well, ‘everything’.
Rather than the world’s wealthiest men orchestrating and paying for the seeds for a worldwide participatory tree planting movement, or putting money and incentivizing people to participate in realizing the recently deceased biologist EO Wilson’s Biodiversity foundation and his Half-Earth project, or mobilizing the world’s population to collect plastic and rubber tires and make renewable building materials from them.
Instead, they perform a virtual drag race (eerily close in time to one another), launching their mechanical penises into the sky, in a salute to endless technical expansion; symbolizing their desire to financially occupy and profit from the skies. Before space junk comes crashing down from failed missions…
Corporate media gave more hours of coverage to the wealthiest men in the world, who rather than saving rainforests, or driving a collective planetary undertaking committed to not building walls and paving every piece of earth, but weaving together habitats and nurturing the earth’s systems: wetlands, forests, rain forests, oceans.
In light of the fact that business enterprises rule and money speaks, XR realize that the only way to pressure change organized from the top down, is to share information and messages to the public and media, to influence those who can coordinate and facilitate major action.
I can imagine a really delightful more peaceful and beautiful environment, with people interacting and taking the time to build new paradigms in action and interaction, as we physically re-invent life that is not car-driven. I see public parks, gardens, car-free cities, and more care going into education and empowerment. Clean, efficient and pleasant train travel. Bicycle infrastructure everywhere.
What can you imagine?
Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook and music composition. The PayPal donation button functions in Safari and Firefox, however is broken in Chrome.
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