What are you doing for Earth Week? Extinction Rebellion has some suggestions.
I'm a little late with this. Didn't think to put it on the blog at the beginning of the week, then let it slip until after Earth Day. Sometimes life gets in the way.
Before we get to the major thrust of this entry, I'd like to share this bit of email I received today:
Before we get to the major thrust of this entry, I'd like to share this bit of email I received today:
Dear DAVID BRUCE COLLINS,
This letter is to inform you that on 04/23/2020 your candidate status in the Texas Election Administration Management (TEAM) system for the 2020 NOVEMBER 3RD GENERAL ELECTION was changed to Pending.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our office.
Yippee! I'm pending! I'm in electoral purgatory until the filing fee lawsuit against the Secretary of State gets resolved!
XR Earth Week Activities
Extinction Rebellion is urging environmentally conscious folks to spread the word, hassle politicians, and express their grave disappointment with Big Capital. They recommend ten different actions that you can take, and each weekday of this Earth Week gets a different focus.
Planet of the Humans
Executive-produced by Michael Moore; written, directed, partly filmed, and narrated by Jeff Gibbs (who is new to me, I must confess). I can't 100% recommend this flick: Josh (Gasland) Fox took to Twitter after watching it on YouTube, where Moore dropped it on Earth Day, to gripe about how Gibbs cherry-picks the most confirmation-biased bits to prove his point that big renewable energy projects are a scam and not as environmentally friendly as they're painted.
Extinction Rebellion is urging environmentally conscious folks to spread the word, hassle politicians, and express their grave disappointment with Big Capital. They recommend ten different actions that you can take, and each weekday of this Earth Week gets a different focus.
- Monday: Observe the 10th anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig explosion by telling BP to finish cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico.
- Tuesday: Consider the intersections of the climate and COVID-19 crises. No, this is not to say that the novel coronavirus evolved as a result of changing climate (although we don't know that it didn't either).
- Wednesday: Solidarity with the Wet'suwet'en people of British Columbia, yet another First Nations people battling yet another pipeline project due to cross their land without their permission.
- Thursday: Hey, that's today. Move your money out of banks and insurance firms that finance or assure dirty energy projects. Some of the biggest offenders are Chase, Wells Fargo, CitiBank, Blackrock, and Liberty Mutual.
- Friday: I'm in love. Hah, no, it's the day to get on Twitter to remind the nation that we're aware of our alleged president's environmental crimes, including stopping the EPA from enforcing its regulations, despite the blanket news coverage of the ongoing pandemic.
Planet of the Humans
Executive-produced by Michael Moore; written, directed, partly filmed, and narrated by Jeff Gibbs (who is new to me, I must confess). I can't 100% recommend this flick: Josh (Gasland) Fox took to Twitter after watching it on YouTube, where Moore dropped it on Earth Day, to gripe about how Gibbs cherry-picks the most confirmation-biased bits to prove his point that big renewable energy projects are a scam and not as environmentally friendly as they're painted.
I just had the unfortunate displeasure of watching PLANET OF THE HUMANS the #Earthday freebie irresponsibly put out by Michael Moore @MMFlint.
— Josh Fox EndFossilFuels (@joshfoxfilm) April 22, 2020
The film is an unsubstantiated, unscientific, poorly made piece of yellow journalism which attacks proven renewable energy and science..
All that said, I believe Gibbs's film makes some worthy points about how (a) biomass plants do not deserve the "green energy" designation and how Big Capital has co-opted environmental advocacy groups. He clearly has no love for Bill McKibben and less than none for Al Gore. But the way he paints McKibben as a villain uses the same tricks that Moore has used for 30 years. The portrayal doesn't pass the sniff test, even though McKibben is by no means perfect: He takes a lot of heat within Deep Ecology circles for his silence on the carbon footprint of animal agriculture.
As a longtime Green and Green New Deal supporter, experience tells me that we cannot magic our way out of our current mess and expect to maintain our current consumption habits. Thinking that we can is naïve at best. We need to start curbing our planetary appetite, the sooner the better, preferably immediately. The sooner we can, the less we'll have to rely on totalitarian measures that force an ever grimmer austerity on us all. Despite Gibbs's sincere environmentalism, he has edited his interview clips in such a way that it nakedly gives ammunition to anti-environmentalists, which to me is the film's most dangerous peccadillo.
As a longtime Green and Green New Deal supporter, experience tells me that we cannot magic our way out of our current mess and expect to maintain our current consumption habits. Thinking that we can is naïve at best. We need to start curbing our planetary appetite, the sooner the better, preferably immediately. The sooner we can, the less we'll have to rely on totalitarian measures that force an ever grimmer austerity on us all. Despite Gibbs's sincere environmentalism, he has edited his interview clips in such a way that it nakedly gives ammunition to anti-environmentalists, which to me is the film's most dangerous peccadillo.
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