Carbon Footprint of War

Industrialized consumption and industrialized warfare are two sides of the same coin.  

We can't have one without the other. It's a package deal. 

They get insane profits from endless war, and we get McJobs, cheap TVs, and the choice to heat, or eat.

What I want to know is what the carbon footprint of WWIII will be.

"The stark figures," The Guardian reported in 2021, "are supported by Brown University's "Costs of War Project", which in 2019 said the US military was "the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world". 

Do all concerned eco-politicians really want to go net zero? 

Electric tanks anyone? 

If they performed as dismally as the electric cars they expect us all to buy, they might as well just surrender right now.

Or are the sacrifices only for the little people? You know, the ones that are called up to fight in all the endless wars.

Why should we be banning gas stoves, farming, and internal combustion engines, when we could just ban the industrial military complex and the wars it enables, encourages, and needs to survive?

Why aren't we banning industrialized state murder, for you know, the climate emergency. 

Or is it not that much of an emergency? Because you aren't acting like it is when you plan on sustaining one of the largest GHG sources indefinitely.

Which kills more, the war machine, or climate change?

A fringe benefit of ridding the world of the scourge of the industrialized murder complex, would be to help keep millions of innocent civilian victims alive, which is also a priority, isn't it? 

It should be.

The war industry and the industrial consumer complex, even if we do nothing at all, are doomed to failure in the upcoming years.

Here is why. 

The growth in global oil production is approaching its end, before a terminal decline sets in.

Neither industrial war nor industrial consumerism is desirable, or sustainable, and therefore, their days are numbered.

As Albert Einstein told us, WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones.

That should lower warfare's carbon footprint (and death count) considerably.

"Military carbon emissions have largely been exempted from international climate treaties dating back to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol after lobbying from the United States."

- Democracy Now

 

Be A Love Activist

It seems like there is a lot of anti-love going around, and it appears to be growing. But so is the anti-anti-love. 

Loving acts are equality in action, responses that can stand up to their opposites, and unite us all. 

That is how Nature works.

Love, love, love. It is all you need.


Be A Love Activist

1. Administer love liberally to create tolerance and acceptance.

2. Recognize that love optimizes community health, then maximize!

3. Love grows wherever it is planted, so plant freely at all times.

4. Promote love in all you think, say, and do.

5. Work together to spread the benefits of love to all, especially the vulnerable, the oppressed, and those who are missing love in their lives.

6. Involve children - if they not have learned hate yet (something that can start immediately after birth), they will share their natural and inspiring message of love and inclusion.

7. Speak out wherever the love is gone. Ignoring its absence will only make the problem fester and grow.

8. Always direct attention toward the goal - Unity. A united community is a loving community.

9. Use love like a strong light, and send its beam into the dark corners of life. It is a potent disinfectant against the virus of anti-love. 

10. Be a Love Activist. First, root out your biases and stereotypes, and take responsibility for your own ignorance and fear. Then, meet every act of anti-love with an equal and opposite act of love and unity.

We love you. 

All of you. 

Yes, even you.

Compassion For All.

Who Would MLK Hate?

On April 4th, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed while in Memphis, Tennessee. King will be remembered not only for his commitment to the cause of equality for African Americans but also for his attempt to unite all oppressed peoples wherever they may be.

"Black Power" was somewhat acceptable to the elite, but "Poor Power" was too much. That made many people in high places very afraid, that threat of a united front aligned against the status quo.  

They feared and hated him so much that they orchestrated his assassination, and America has never fully recovered from the loss.

But who would MLK Jr hate?

“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. 

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. 

Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”

- Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love

Nature Is My True Business

Like Henry David Thoreau turning his “face more exclusively to the woods”, I am better known amongst the trees around my home than among the folk of our nearest town.

To me, the woods are a locale of self-salvation. Here, surrounded by Nature, I find respite from the brutality of the human world. The woods are full of beauty and interest and mystery, and draw me in to the comforting embrace of friendly boughs and limbs.

Within the mystery of the woods, I am never afraid. I am where I belong, and I can feel it in every cell of my body.

Here, I am carrying out my true business - living without the silly self-imposed separations inherent in the human world. Buckminster Fuller called it “categoryitis”, and it is the great separator that prevents collective action toward our common challenges.

Fuller warned that our illogical obsession with questions like “What is your race”, or ”nationality”, or “religion”, or anything else that artificially separates us, will be our doom. “By the twenty-first century,” he said, “it either will have become evident to humanity that these questions are absurd and anti-evolutionary, or humans will no longer be living on Earth.”

No such separations exist in nature. Naturalist Hal Borland described perfectly when he said, “You can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion, or challenge the ideology of a violet.”

I love the simplicity of that state of being. In Nature, things just ARE. Why can't we be that way?

One day we will join together as One with, and in support of, Nature. When that happens, we will see Earth for what it was meant to be - our collective peaceful paradise.

A Revolution of Forgiveness and Love

Loving everything will change everything.

Our very existence is in peril. It is an easy time to dispense blame, and harbour resentment. We hate this person and that person - they are "part of the problem." Any plan or movement based on hate is doomed to produce more of the same, rather than the changes we need.

Some say, "People are destroying the world, and these people have addresses." Is the plan to go out in pitch fork mobs, round 'em up, and make 'em pay? In this scenario hating them is just punishment for their evil doing, and once they are collected up and punished to the full extent of the law, everything will be fine.

It is difficult not to hate perceived wrong doers. It almost feels automatic, which says a lot about our culture. It feels like you are doing something. And you are.

What we do by harbouring hate, and allowing resentment to reside in the heart, is hurt ourselves. It is eating poison and expecting your enemy to die. And if you want to reform your adversary, hate is hardly the tool to get that done.

Author Madame de Stael wrote, “To understand everything makes one tolerant, and to feel deeply inspires great kindness.” In other words, the more we know, the easier we forgive, and the kinder we are toward others. This is because the more we understand, the more we can see that the objects of our hate are mostly just like we are.

In their place, with their experience, would we do anything differently? We think we would, because they are "bad" and we are "good". But sit down with them, and find out they are actually quite human, maybe even nice. The neat boundaries of good vs bad start to get blurry.

If accusation and hate are the problems, then forgiveness and love are the solutions. That does not mean we can't dislike certain situations, but let's propose solutions that come from a different place, and maybe we will get different, more positive results.

We can only do that through practicing forgiveness and love until it becomes our natural default reaction to all situations and people.

Overcoming Resentment and Hate

• visualize the object of your hate. Send them love.
• think about the futility and harm that results from taking the poison of hate.
• real victories come from being understanding, even tempered and loving.
• don't like someone? Ponder their good points, something you admire about them.
• develop your patience, quick to listen, slow to judge.
• forgiveness allows us to enjoy a more pleasant world with less conflict and a more fulfilling experience of those around us.

If your revolution is a "fight" or "war" against someone or something, count me out. If your revolution does not include joyful playing, dancing and singing, count me out.

If your revolution is not coming from a place of forgiveness and love, again, I'm out.