#ActForTheAmazon
#ExtinctionRebellion
#ExtinctionRebellion
#InstinctualRebellion
#FuckTheAlagorithm
#Plagued&Pestered
#AeraFixed
#DameNature
Léviathan stéthocephale** & Bill Gates (the culprit!) + Late Classic Maya Clown;
Haroldo de Campos + Samuel Beckett + Arara-canindé;
Dr. Strangelove/Stanley Kubrick, Peter Sellers: "An astonishingly good idea" (Youtube);
Africa, GMOs and Western interests: DW Documentary/Youtube [people are affraid of El Mollusc?! and what about Hell Gates?!!! he's already done much more harm... And there is no excuse for people in Africa to accept this! such things are obviously done with the collusion of local elites, which are much worse than Gates himself!! In the end of the video, they refer to a similar project done in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which has deleterious consequences for the environment and the local population][DW/Youtube is not showing this video anymore!];
Les Paysans, les pesticides et l'extinction de l'humanité (Blast, 2024);
Viaje a los pueblos fumigados (Fernando Solanas, 2018);
Péril Climatique: l'Impunité pour les riches doit cesser (Blast, Sept 2022);
Who owns water? (DW Documentary, 2022);
Time for a boost? [much more critical and honest news coverage on post-vaccine syndrome than usually available, this DW coverage considers also traditional medicine perspectives on long Covid infection] (DW, September 2022);
The Gates Foundation is Repeating the Errors of Mao (Nassim Taleb/Youtube, 2021);
Vandana Shiva on India's Farmer's Protests [this video became unavailable at Youtube in many countries] (Going Underground, 13/02/2021);
La croissance est-elle infinie ou insoutenable? (Philippe Bihouix, AuCoffre/Youtube, 2021);
Chaos économique, blanchiment bancaire? (Gaël Giraud/Thinkerview 2020);
Choc économique: Perspectives alternatives? (Isabelle Delannoy/Thinkerview 2020);
EarthDance 2020 - Vandana Shiva and Reclaiming the Commons (Sinergetic Press 2020);
Vandana Shiva: Corona Crisis (Cusanus Hochschule für Gesellschaftsgestaltung 2020);
Vandana Shiva and Pragya Tiwari on Slow Living (Roli Books 2020);
International Womxn’s Day Lecture: Dr. Vandana Shiva (Harvard GSD 2020);
Mary Robinson & Vandana Shiva: The Injustice of Climate Change (Oxford Climate Society);
'Bill Gates is continuing the work of Monsanto': Vandana Shiva tells France 24 (2019);
Conversation entre Vandana Shiva et Gaël Giraud (Centre Sèvres/Facultés Jésuites 2019);
Apprenons à partager les ressources pour sauver le vivant: Gaël Giraud (Tedx 2018):
Vincent Mignerot: Anticiper l'effondrement? (Thinkerview/Youtube 2017);
Vandana Shiva Calls War On Bill Gates: Valhalla Movement Network (2015);
Pink Floyd's Corporal Clegg (Youtube);
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and let me tell you Madam:
"Mon collègue Dominique Pestre, historien des sciences, a montré comment, dès les années 1970, après l’appel du Club de Rome sur l’avenir de la planète, les économistes de l’OCDE ont nié, ou en tout cas euphémisé, la question des limites écologiques. A mes yeux, le niveau actuel des inégalités ne peut se comprendre qu’en l’inscrivant dans un projet global où l’on admet que tout le monde ne pourra pas se développer, un monde où les riches concentrent des profits démesurés et se retirent dans leur gated community."
"En un certain sens, l’agriculture, l’élevage, la navigation à voiles sont plus industrielles qu’artisanales, dans la mesure où elles font appel à des forces qui ne dépendent pas de l’homme et viennent d’un réel dont l’ordre de grandeur dépasse l’échelon du manipulable. Ces opérations introduisent dans la même mesure le discontinu, elles sont, éventuellement, aliénantes, et peuvent donner lieu à un exercice magico-religieux de la pensée... L’effort humain doit tomber en accord avec l’acte cosmique, être chairon."
"Les grands seigneurs sont presque les seules gens de qui on apprenne autant que des paysans: leur conversation s'orne de tout ce qui concerne la terre, les demeures telles qu'elles étaient habitées autrefois, les anciens usages, tout ce que le monde de l'argent ignore profondément."
Marcel Proust (le narrateur, Le Côté des Guermantes)
"Er is durchaus keine Krone der Schöpfung: jedes Wesen ist, neben ihm, auf einer gleichen Stufe der Vollkommenheit..."
Nietzsche (Der Antichrist)
"... they miss four out of the five kingdoms of life. Animals are only one of these kingdoms. They miss bacteria, protoctista, fungi, and plants. They take a small and interesting chapter in the book of evolution and extrapolate it into the entire encyclopedia of life. Skewed and limited in their perspective, they are not wrong so much as grossly uninformed."
"... le développement industriel de l'ensemble du monde demande aux Américains de saisir lucidement la nécessité, pour une économie comme la leur, d'avoir une marge d'opérations sans profit. Un immense réseau industriel ne peut être géré comme on change une roue... Il exprime un parcours d'énergie cosmique dont il dépend, qu'il ne peut limiter, et dont il ne pourrait davantage ignorer les lois sans conséquences. Malheur à qui jusqu'au bout voudrait ordonner le mouvement qui l'excède avec l'esprit borné du mécanicien qui change une roue."
Georges Bataille (La Part maudite)
Climatologist Michael E. Mann interviewed by Jonathan Watts/The Guardian (transplanted from England):
"Another development in the “climate war” is the entry of new participants. Bill Gates is perhaps the most prominent. His new book, How to Prevent a Climate Disaster, offers a systems analyst approach to the problem, a kind of operating system upgrade for the planet. What do you make of his take?
I want to thank him for using his platform to raise awareness of the climate crisis. That said, I disagree with him quite sharply on the prescription. His view is overly technocratic and premised on an underestimate of the role that renewable energy can play in decarbonising our civilisation. If you understate that potential, you are forced to make other risky choices, such as geoengineering and carbon capture and sequestration. Investment in those unproven options would crowd out investment in better solutions.
Gates writes that he doesn’t know the political solution to climate change. But the politics are the problem buddy. If you don’t have a prescription of how to solve that, then you don’t have a solution and perhaps your solution might be taking us down the wrong path" (see the whole here: "Climatologist Michael E. Mann"/The Guardian, 27/02/2021);
On the so-called New Conservation Science (NCS):
"In recent years, some conservation biologists and conservation organizations have sought to refocus the field of conservation biology by deemphasizing the goal of protecting nature for its own sake in favor of protecting the environment for its benefits to humans... many specific examples and points of evidence offered to bolster NCS positions are poorly supported or misleading... Conservation’s concern for biodiversity has always been accompanied by concern for human well-being and ecosystem services; these human-centered goals form one pillar of a diverse mix of motivations and strategies dating back at least a century to Gifford Pinchot and his predecessors... The NCS position, however, restricts the focus of conservation to the advancement of human well-being, which it frequently conflates with narrow definitions of economic development, and thereby marginalizes efforts to preserve diverse and natural ecosystems or to protect nature for esthetic or other non-economic benefits to humans..."
"The NCS argument caricatures the views of conservationists about pristine nature, while making the scientifically unsupportable claim that natural systems are almost infinitely resilient... conservation scientists have focused at least as much on nature’s resilience as its fragility. Although many environmental harms can indeed be ameliorated or reversed, others are virtually irreversible (e.g., extinction, climate change, mountaintop removal)... there is little basis for the assertion that a more narrow, anthropocentric conservation strategy would deliver better results, especially given the track record of poor management of natural resources in the past, including management of the parts of nature we economically value the most..."
"The stance that conservation progress should be driven by transient economic preferences rather than enduring values also hampers recognition of the possibility or even the need for structural and institutional changes to achieve and sustain conservation objectives. Finally, the assumption, and hence reinforcement, of only economic motivations for conservation ignores and may thus diminish the importance of political, scientific, philosophical, and religious motivations for conservation found across different nations and cultures... Recent polling in the USA also shows evidence that the public’s concern for nature is not weakening nor is support limited to the wealthy, white population... Hispanics, women, and young voters are currently among those most concerned with various conservation goals... Conservation has long been concerned both with sustaining human resource needs and with conserving nature’s intrinsic value – the right of species and other aspects of nature to exist for their own sake..."
"We do not believe that it is quixotic, misanthropic, or short-sighted to protect nature based on its own value. Moreover, we acknowledge that this position is a statement of values and hope that, as the NCS debate continues, all parties will be clear about where the science of their arguments stops and starts. There are now unprecedented demands on natural resources across the globe, and there will never be a shortage of advocates for human use of these resources. The question is whether conservation scientists and practitioners should make promoting economic prosperity their primary mission as well. As conservationists are already acutely aware, the effects of human industry are felt throughout the world, and we must plan conservation strategies that address coupled human and ecological dynamics."
Other News (Scrapes & Difficulties):
"The students who demonstrate and occupy against the US-Israeli genocide do not identify themselves with Hamas, obviously. They do not expect any brilliant future, any socialist future, any social emancipation from the Palestinian resistance. So what kind of identification, what kind of expectation can we see in the present wave of protest? In my opinion students are identifying with despair. Despair is the psychological and also cultural trait that explains the wide identification of young people with the Palestinians. I think that the majority of the students today are consciously or unconsciously expecting the irreversible worsening of the conditions of life, irreversible climate change, a long lasting period of war, and the looming danger of a nuclear precipitation of the conflicts that are underway in many points of the geopolitical map. This, in my opinion, is the main difference in comparison with the 1968 movement: no reversal of the rapport de force is in sight...
In the culture of 1968, the idea of divestment did not exist; the perception of the environmental catastrophe was likewise very weak. Nowadays these concerns may give way to a movement of transformation of the relation between knowledge, production, consumption, and economic choice. In the last fifty years students have been the most interesting political actors because they are not only students, but also prospective cognitive workers. But we have been unable to transform the political mobilization of students into a social subject, into a permanent process of transformation of the relation between knowledge, technology and production."
"The EU’s nature restoration law will only work if it is enacted in partnership with farmers, a group of leading scientists has said, after months of protests have pushed the proposals to the brink of collapse. In an open letter, leading biodiversity researchers from across the world said that efforts to restore nature are vital for guaranteeing food supplies – but farmers must be empowered to help make agriculture more environmentally friendly if the measures are to succeed. The letter, signed by researchers from the University of Oxford, ETH Zurich and Wageningen University, reads: 'At no point in history has there been more pressure on farmers. They are responsible for feeding an ever-growing population. And now we want them to save us all from the global climate and biodiversity crises, at the same time as market forces keep making the financial situation harder. We desperately need land to support a resilient agricultural sector. We need our policies to empower farmers to be the heroes we need them to be. But to do this, we are also going to need to save space for nature. The EU’s nature restoration law, which has been two years in the making and aims to reverse the catastrophic decline of nature in the bloc, appears to be on the brink of collapse after months of farmers’ protests across Europe against some of the proposals. Several member states have withdrawn support for the legislation..."
"... billionaire class assertions that they are philosopher kings and climate-conscious investors who know better than the original caretakers are little more than ruses for what amounts to a 21st century land grab – with big payouts in a for-profit economy seeking “green” solutions. Our era is dominated by the ultra-rich, the climate crisis and a burgeoning green capitalism. And Bill Gates’ new book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster positions himself as a thought leader in how to stop putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and how to fund what he has called elsewhere a “global green revolution” to help poor farmers mitigate climate change. What expertise in climate science or agriculture Gates possesses beyond being filthy rich is anyone’s guess."
"Like wealth, land ownership is becoming concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, resulting in a greater push for monocultures and more intensive industrial farming techniques to generate greater returns. One per cent of the world’s farms control 70% of the world’s farmlands, one report found. The biggest shift in recent years from small to big farms was in the US."
"The land we all live on should not be the sole property of a few. The extensive tax avoidance by these titans of industry will always far exceed their supposed charitable donations to the public. The “billionaire knows best” mentality detracts from the deep-seated realities of colonialism and white supremacy, and it ignores those who actually know best how to use and live with the land. These billionaires have nothing to offer us in terms of saving the planet – unless it’s our land back."
"Together, the three men [Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos & Bill Gates] have an estimated wealth of $466bn and some of the biggest personal carbon footprints on the planet. They are also emblematic of a Davos-centric worldview that sees free markets and technological advancements as the answer to an existential emergency already upending the lives of millions of people."
"Once one of the world's most ruthless businessmen, Gates has spent the last 20 years using his fortune to tackle big issues including poverty, disease and climate change... Among those investments is a plan to convert seawater into microscopic particles to be sprayed into clouds, increasing their whiteness and therefore their ability to reflect more sunlight back into space, reducing global warming. The geo-engineering scheme could fundamentally change the planet, whitening skies and changing weather patterns and ocean currents. He also has investments in new nuclear power plants and more traditional “green” tech like solar and wind."
"Gates has many, many ideas and is a tireless advocate for the net zero cause. But his big ideas may not pan out – or prove politically acceptable. Even someone of Gates’s wealth and influence may struggle to change the global political landscape. And, again, his advocacy of the free markets that did so much to create the crisis we now face undermines his legitimacy."
"Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and six other tech titans made more than $360 billion during the pandemic, which may finally shatter the myth of the benevolent billionaire."
"... the staggering rise in their gains contrasts with the economic devastation of millions of Americans, amid soaring unemployment and evictions, drawing attention to issues of inequality and distribution of wealth. In fact, the $360 billion increase in top billionaire wealth approaches the $410 billion the U.S. government is spending on the latest round of $1,400 stimulus checks, passed with the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package this week."
"The scrutiny of tech billionaires’ wealth is also driven by the role their companies played during the pandemic. Social media including Facebook appeared to make the situation worse because it was used to spread disinformation about covid-19 and the vaccines, undermining efforts to control the virus. Musk railed against stay-at-home mandates and reopened Tesla’s factory in defiance of local orders, arguing that Tesla should be allowed to continue building cars during California’s shutdown."
"In Bezos’s case, profits were possible in part because Amazon hired more than 500,000 workers to stow, sort, pick and pack goods in 2020, even as warehouse workers sounded alarms about safety and nearly 20,000 Amazon employees in the United States tested positive for the coronavirus by October."
"Tech billionaires invested comparatively little of that increased wealth back into the public sphere for the pandemic. Bezos donated $150 million, or roughly 0.26 percent of the profits he accrued during the pandemic, to covid-related causes, “while also having his workers work in Dickensian conditions,” said Tompkins-Stange, the University of Michigan professor. Musk reportedly gave $5 million, or 0.004 percent of his newfound gains, to covid-19 research, in addition to donating ventilators built to help patients with sleep apnea."
"Bill Gates, a co-founder of Microsoft, was the most influential philanthropist on the global response to the pandemic. He shifted much of the focus of the foundation he runs with his wife, Melinda, to address the pandemic, donating $1.75 billion in pandemic-related philanthropy, or 7.3 percent of the $24 billion he added to his net worth... Gates had warned about the potential for a pathogen-spread pandemic since 2015, in a TED Talk, lectures and medical journal articles. Since the coronavirus emerged, Gates has appeared on news programs, late-night talk shows and a global charity event to push for science-based solutions."
"Artificially cooling the planet carries potential threats — and so does allowing tech billionaires to monopolize the research efforts."
"There’s conflicting research on whether the most common proposal to geoengineer the planet ― spraying reflective sulfur aerosols into the stratosphere ― might inflict worse droughts and storms in different hemispheres, potentially exacerbating inequities between rich northern countries and poorer nations south of the equator. Then there are fears of how climate controls could be weaponized for war."
"... skeptics who question the wisdom of even studying geoengineering say the proposal takes broad leaps beyond what the National Academies first outlined in its initial report in 2015, and that it endangers hope of crafting international agreements to guard against rogue deployments by sketching out a national program. Some argued that simply carrying out the research has jeopardized long-overdue efforts to eliminate climate-changing emissions in the first place ― efforts that are finally taking shape in the United States, Europe and China."
"A 2013 study in the journal Nature Climate Change found that spraying aerosols in the Northern Hemisphere, such as over the United States or Japan, would likely reduce rainfall in areas closer to the equator, including the drought-parched Sahel, the semi-arid African region that includes Algeria, Mali and Sudan. A 2017 study in the journal Nature Communications determined that solar geoengineering in the north would shift the position of the tropical jet stream south, and vice versa, potentially unleashing powerful cyclones and hurricanes on whichever region misses out."
"A 2019 study in JGR Atmospheres showed that solar geoengineering risks disrupting rainfall in South Asia and much of Africa, which would threaten the only irrigation system on which billions of poor farmers rely. A 2020 paper in Geophysical Research Letters backed up the idea that geoengineering in any form would throw jet streams out of whack, possibly adding novel changes to the climate in tropic regions where half the world’s population lives."
"Absent an international agreement, policies overseeing geoengineering could become Balkanized. But another risk could be that the research remains in the control of the unaccountable private actors who are currently backing most research."
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Brazil's edible plants (from a paper by researches of the University of Leiden):
"Piso indicated that roots [tubers] of S. tuberosa deserved special attention, because of the way they developed underground and their use as a refreshment [water reservoir] for feverish patients and exhausted travelers, as he experimented himself. He and Marcgrave also described how its fruits were valued as food... Currently S. tuberosa, known as Umbu or Umbuzeiro, is an important economic and subsistence food resource for rural communities in semiarid regions of northeast Brazil. Its specialized root system (xylopodia) bears tubers that store liquids, sugars and other nutrients and allow the survival of the tree during the dry seasons of the caatinga and central Brazilian savanna, where this species is endemic. The water or sweet juice of these xylopodia is still used as an emergency thirst quencher in extreme arid areas of the Brazilian sertão..."
"Several rainforest trees were highly valued for its edible fruits or seeds, such as Hymenaea courbaril L. or Lecythis pisonis L., of which the 'seeds (also called chestnuts) were eaten raw or roasted' and 'were considered aphrodisiacs.' The fruit of Macoubea guianensis Aubl. was 'appreciated for its sweetness by the indigenous peoples to eat during their travels, while Europeans used it to treat chest affections.' The fruit of Swartzia pickelii Killip ex Ducke was 'not eaten unless it was cooked, from which the inhabitants made a wholesome delicacy for the stomach called Manipoy.' The same applies to the tomato-like fruits of the African eggplant Solanum aethiopicum L., which were 'eaten cooked, after seasoning with oil and pepper; it has lemon taste'..."
Degradation of Brazilian's flora (from a paper by researches of the University of Leiden):
"In the past centuries, the Atlantic Forest and savannah regions of northeast Brazil have been severely affected by habitat loss and degradation due to the expansion of urbanization, intensive agriculture, farming and logging. Several plant species that were abundant enough to be noted by European artists around 1640 are not common anymore today. According to the IUCN Red List, eight species in the Libri Picturati, seven in the Theatrum and one in the LP are currently experiencing population decline or are at risk of facing extinction. Several endemic plants from the northeast Atlantic rainforest and caatinga biomes appear in the illustrations. Four species in the Libri Picturati are currently CITES-listed and restricted to trade: the cacti Brasiliopuntia brasiliensis (Willd.) A. Berger, Cereus fernambucensis Lem., Epiphyllum phyllanthus (L.) Haw. and Melocactus violaceus subsp. margaritaceus N. P. Taylor. The latter is an endemic cactus of the coastal sand dunes’ ecoregion in the Atlantic rainforest known as restinga, which is severely threatened by agricultural expansion and urbanization."
"Some endemic species are classified as Least Concern by the IUCN or the CNC Flora (12 species), while others (13 species) have not been evaluated yet. The MC does not contain threatened species, but includes two endemic trees: Attalea compta Mart. and Eugenia cf. brasiliensis Lam., which are only found in the biodiversity hotspots of the Atlantic rainforest and the cerrado, both greatly affected by habitat loss. The mangrove vegetation along the Brazilian coast has been severely affected by urbanization, pollution by industrial and domestic waste and climate change, threatening the populations of the mangrove trees Avicennia schaueriana Stapf & Leechm. ex Moldenke and Laguncularia racemosa (L.) C. F. Gaertn. The occurrence of anthropogenic impacts and the lack of available data call for the implementation of more in-depth and continuous studies on the conservation status of these vulnerable populations."
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See also:
And also (with the whole of it):