Wednesday 19 March 2014

Cross your legs, the time for crossing fingers has long passed!

Cross your legs, the time for crossing fingers has long passed!
The 97% of climate scientists who agree global warming/climate change is real and catastrophic without massive intervention have got to take to the streets. And us with them. We have to occupy not just Wall Street but our own offices, our own factories, our own laboratories and churches and universities and schools and parliaments. Stop sex!! occupy your beds, for Pete's - er, just the Planet's - sake!! Sex/love partners: if ever there was a time for the Lysistrata 'crossed legs' protest, this is it! (and it may even work - there are plenty of examples of success in history)
Nothing less will do. Nothing less will do. Nothing less will do.
Grand gestures and even good campaigns like the Global Climate Convergence for People, Planet and Peace over Profit  (GCCPPPOP!! a catchy acronym would help!) are nowhere near enough. Short-term political structures cannot cope with the radical nature of the changes we need to implement immediately, if not sooner. Appeal to the scientists: "You know how bad things are, you must do more than simply produce more reports. Occupy your labs, your universities, committees, and set up camp at the gates of power: the transnationals, especially the oil companies, the banks, the 'news' media. Make sudden incursions into radio and television stations to make 'pirate' broadcast, hack into company/government/church/union/NGO and other websites to state your message in the starkest possible terms, get us all to flood Twitter and Face Book and all the rest over and over and over again. We will join you." (And cross your legs, the time for crossing fingers has long passed!).
A current (relatively modest) example: Scotland has an upcoming referendum on independence from the UK. Here's a quote from an article in The Guardian. It gives an idea of how people across the board are organizing for 'Yes', and outlines some key practical steps. If a stand-alone tiny little Scotland is such a passionate issue, what does that make the survival of life on Earth? Really like the last paragraph - just transpose.
"Finally, a new Yes Scotland campaign will be launched in late March: Generation Yes, known as Gen Yes, which will aim to capture that other independence-leaning demographic, the young voter. Its small group of founders are targeting some 800,000 voters under 30. Every Gen Yes member will be set five tasks, including a target to convert nine of their friends to the cause. Photogenic youth "ambassadors" will be sent out to win converts, spread the word.
Generation Yes has been modelled on an Irish campaign of the same name set up to campaign, successfully, for a yes vote in Ireland's 2009 Lisbon treaty referendum.
Saffron Dickson is, at 16, already a veteran campaigner. She went on her first demo aged six, against the Iraq war, with her mum. She is one of the small group of Gen Yes founder members.
Still at school, Dickson is unfazed by the campaign facing her: "I would give up every weekend for the next six months. The next six months determine the next 80 years of my life. I'm fine with that."
Failing to act, she believes, will help the no vote win. "I could spend the next 80 years of my life thinking what life could've been like, what an independent Scotland would be like and how fabulous it could have been," she said.
Nationalists say Labour supporters, young people and middle-class women are flocking to yes vote
THE GUARDIAN|BY SEVERIN CARRELL
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