For the rant averse, this blog post will definitely be a rant and what’s worse a lefty rant.
I am reading the most amazing book, Naomi Klein – This Changes Everything, Capitalism vs The Climate. I went to her book launch and I do think this is a truly important book.
A few people have mentioned that I have not blogged recently and that is essentially because AJ is doing very well and there is not much to report. We have had a lovely Spanish guy, Dani, staying with us for a couple of months and he and AJ have formed a beautiful bond. They spend hours just giggling manically at each other. Dani is supposed to be learning English but I suspect he loves spending time with AJ as she is not very linguistically challenging.
AJ & Dani, she is dressed a jester, he looks like he is from the video for “What did the fox say?”
Anyway enough of that, she’s fine! On with the rant…
Naomi Klein has written a number of interesting books challenging the way things are. She is very campaigning, very anti-corporate, No Logo took apart companies like Starbucks years before we realised that they were not actually a bunch of friendly neighbourhood cafés.
Her latest book This Changes Everything looks at the environment. She ties together the economic system that lauds growth above everything with the destruction of the planet.
There is so much in the book that I find that I want to scream about. So poor old Fo has to put up with me telling her about trade rules that allow countries to sue each other for implementing environmental protection laws, when she’s trying to watch Downton. So I thought I might just put down some of the things I most want to scream about in my blog and anyone who wants to read on can do so.
So about those trade laws, that is true, Ontario was sued by Japan and the EU for trying to implement a locally sourced policy as part of a green initiative. And we are about to implement a load more legislation of this kind in the form of TTIP, which is terrifying and far better and more amusingly explained in this link by Russell Brand (bit of a knob but quite funny) and George Monbiot (Guardian environmental journo, what could be better than that!! Top bloke!)
The Alberta Sands…
What the fuck?
(I wonder if I can render that phrase in the way I am saying it to myself via the medium of punctuation and styling)
WHAT THE FUCK!?
WTF?????!!!!
Whaaaat… theeee… fuuuuck?!
What the…,
What the…,
What the…,
FUCK!?
(I need an interrobang – a combination of ? & !)
So the Alberta Tar sands is where they scrape the top layer of earth off somewhere the size of England, squidge it all up with a load of toxic stuff and extract a little bit of oil out of it. Things are generally the size of Wales, but this will be the size of England – a proper country!! It only vaguely makes sense because oil has been at an artificially high price for various reasons – war, Chinese hyper-growth. This last week it has been announced that oil prices have fallen steeply, which will mean that the Alberta oil will be more expensive to extract than its value. By all estimates of climate scientists, we should be doing all we can to try to keep the carbon that is still in the earth right there. The land where this is happening is utterly devastated, they have had to build the world’s second largest dam to contain the toxic water by-product.
So somehow we have come up with a plan to create a wasteland to expensively extract a fuel we shouldn’t be burning, which will contribute to destroying the planet where we all live.
And presumably a bunch of intelligent people spent a long time talking this through and it seemed like a sensible plan.
wtf?
So expect more of this over the months ahead, I will probably take quite a while to read the book, I have had a few evenings of going from Naomi Klein to Bernard Cornwall, which is quite a nice balance of very serious, stat heavy head fry to vikings looting and burning! But every so often I might need to vent my spleen when I read something particularly irksome.
Misliterature 
HI Luke – hope you are all very well. As ever I love your blog, marvellous stuff and I look forward to reading this book which is completely up my street. Just out of curiosity really why do you bang about being a lefty when this sort of thing appeals to all persuasions (or am I a lefty in disguise – God I hope not!) I sort of feel that bracketing oneself as ‘right’ or ‘left’ is a pointless exercise when trying to save the planet as it immediately puts people with differing opinions off topic. Discuss… Electric car on the way – solar panels and biomass being installed, at least I’m in the lucky situation to try and keep my side of the street clean and put my money where my mouth is – not sure how MC feels about all this! Take care Lots of love E
Edward Erith
Great comment Eddie, thanks.
I agree that saving the planet should not be left/right thing. I think that is something inherently conservationist about conservatism. But unfortunately the climate-change deniers are almost universally of the right, from our own dear Nigel Lawson to the tea party wing of the republican party.
Noami Klein’s book is most certainly of the left, she is very squarely blaming capitalism for the plight of the environment. She has a very interesting chapter about speaking to climate change deniers from the Republican party and big business. She thinks they understand better than anyone the absolutely fundamental changes we need to make to the way we do things. This is why they are denying it all so much because it would mean the end of their stranglehold on the wealth of the world and they’d rather see the planet burn than let go of what they think is theirs.
Lefty enough for you? 😉
But the really important thing is for all strands of society to pull together. Klein has some really interesting ideas for how to redirect the economy so that it works for more people than it currently does while at the same time saving energy and helping repair the damage to the climate. There will be losers – oil, car, freight related for e.g. who, not uncoincidentally, are the ones lobbying hard against climate change protection measures.
Well said…the whole world is mad save…?! WTF