For all you eco-aware fans of "Thelma and Louise"

[GliderGuider]

Here's another cutting blog by Tim Bennett, producer of the movie, http://www.whatawaytogomovie.com/">"What A Way To Go: Life at the End of Empire". It's a big, passionate blog post, full of outrage and insight.

Thelma, Louise and Six Degrees

So, if the question is why can’t we seem to get our shit together when it comes to climate change? then most of the answers I hear seem to fall into one of three categories. It’s because we (or our leaders) are:

• stuck in distraction and/or denial,
• greedy, unprincipled and maybe even psychotic or evil or
• just too stupid to go on living.

To me these are all reasonable explanations. Distraction and denial are surely in force, as are those other human possibilities: greed, psychosis, evil, and stupidity. If you view our movies, as I do, as the stories of Imperialism, which reveal how we view both the world and ourselves, then you’ll find overwhelming evidence to support these assessments. But I think I see something more at work here. Something more fundamental, perhaps, or more invisible. And invisible, maybe, because it just breaks too many rules, to speak about it.

Here’s what I see: our collective death wish at work.

Hang with me for a moment. I have no doubt that our egos have been left battered, bruised, and pretty much insane by the experience of being born into captivity in what Derrick Jensen calls “the culture of make-believe”. I’ve experienced that insanity intimately in my own life. And once I identified it, I could see it all around me, at work in the world. But I also have a sense that my true self, my essence, that good and beautiful being I came here as, has not been destroyed. My animal body senses, perceives, and moves through the world at levels above, below and beyond the warped and word-bound ego that thinks it is in charge. My essential self remains in close and constant connection with a reality that far exceeds any mental constructs my thinking might wish to lay on it.

What if, apart from the denial, stupidity, or greed to which our ego-bound thoughts and words are too often constrained, our bodies know exactly what’s coming down? What if the reason we’re not getting our shit together when it comes to climate change is because our essential selves are not buying a bit of what our egos are being told about how to address this “problem”? What if, in fact, at some deep level from which we cannot even speak, those parts of our being that have not been distorted, distracted or destroyed by the absurdities of Empire regard climate change, in some crucial way, not as a “problem” at all, but as a “solution”?

I wonder if we’re not getting our shit together when it comes to climate change because, at some level, we’re not buying it, just as Thelma and Louise didn’t buy it, no matter the assurances of the nice white guy in the suit, or the threats of the stern authority figure in the uniform. We’re not buying the notion that this predicament will somehow get “fixed” by any combination of carbon caps, emissions agreements, green shopping, alternative energies and new technologies under the sun.

Some months ago, the specter of 4 degree C temperature rise started bouncing around in the news. Just a few weeks back, there were new reports that we’re on our way to 6 degrees C if we keep going as we are. And another new study reports that global CO2 emissions have risen 29% in the past nine years, indicating our commitment to doing just that. Six degrees moves us into the realm of the End-Permian extinction event, during which roughly nine-tenths of the life forms on the planet said their last farewells.

It seems…. well… unlikely… that corrupt and insane leaders will have much say in such matters, as energy, environment and economy slip rapidly from our hands, as if they ever really were in our hands to begin with. Conquest, War, Famine and Pestilence seem now to have made their way up to the clubhouse. Hard to believe that that padlocked gate is going to hold.

There's lots more at the link.

[villager]

1. Kurt Vonnegut at a similar theory -- that we were letting the planet die

because, at some level, we were all "tired" of everything, and just wanted it to end...

[hunter]

2. We're not "letting the planet die," we're letting it kill us.

It could be a very dramatic moment in a movie:

Homo Sapiens: ( refusing to cooperate with Mother Earth ) We would rather suffer the destruction of our civilization a thousand times than accept that we have no dominion over Nature!

Mother Earth: As you wish.

And thus we become little more than a layer of trash in the geologic record, unremembered and unremarkable except perhaps for our utterly absurd claim of sapience.

[Terry in Austin]

3. "the earth plus plastic"

The ever-brilliant George Carlin:

It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new pardigm: the earth plus plastic.

...Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?” Plastic…asshole. So, the plastic is here, our job is done, we can be phased out now.

[stuntcat]

7. ooo

:think:

I'll try to remember this when I start getting so upset about all the other species we wipe out. Seriously, I need to laugh not cry lol

[pscot]

4. What difference does it make?

Greed, aggression, insanity or just plain dumb; we're on the eve of destruction. We're doing it to ourselves. We can't stop ourselves. And we're going to take much of existing life down with us. Trying to explain ourselves to ourselves seems rather pointless, given where we are. In the last few years, events have helped me to come to terms with the idea of my own death. I'm finding the death of life as we know a lot harder to deal with.

[tinrobot]

5. It's the pattern of an addict.

Some people deny that their actions have any effect on the environment and climate change. Other people deny that their excessive drinking has any effect on their personal lives and families.

It's basically the same thing - denial of an addiction. Some people are addicted to pills or booze. Our society is addicted to non-stop growth fueled by oil, consumerism, and greed.

Breaking an addiction is difficult and painful, most people would rather live with the addiction than change, so they deny they have a problem. Many have to hit rock bottom and lose everything before they wake up. Problem with our societal addiction is that, when we hit rock bottom, the fabric of society kind of falls apart. That's scary, and one more reason for many to live in denial.

[GliderGuider]

6. I just realized the enormous irony sitting at the center of all this.

The behaviour of all the people who don't want to "get this shit over with and move on" is what makes it inevitable.