LeftieBiker said:
I've been an activist all my adult life, and I'm familiar with the movements referenced. I have to disagree that the climate movement is especially brave, because they are one of the few large groupings that *isn't* considered especially Sinister by the establishment today. You want danger, look to the Civil Rights movement, or the Gay Rights movement. I spent a decade protesting our various wars, usually alone on a highway, and I'd much rather, from a perspective of personal safety, have been holding a sign that said "Stop Climate Change" than the one that said "War Is Not The Answer", especially during the initial popularity of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Also, please don't employ straw men, something I try to never do. You actually wrote that we have the right number of children in the world, while I never wrote anything that even half resembles a suggestion to kill half the world's population as an act of climate protection - or for any other reason, for that matter. Anybody can rebut something extreme that was never said.
First: chill. I'm not here to bust your chops - I'm responding to the rock you lobbed at me.
If you want a fight, you'll have to go elsewhere.
Second: I'm aware of the words I typed, thanks. Are you suggesting that you didn't intend an overpopulation message?
The climate movement is directly pushing back against the fossil fuel industry, not the government. It's very clear that the environmental movement has the carbon industry in fits. If you don't think that's so, come on down to Denton and look at the industry response to the city's fracking ban. Or visit a protest camp on the KXL route. During the protests against the srn leg of KXL, 70 year old land owners were slammed to the ground while standing on their own property and arrested by local cops working for Trans Canada on their days off. Protesters today are being tazed, shot with 12-gauge wooden or rubber slugs, gassed, and beaten. I've documented that on this site and will link them if you'd like.
Other parts of the 'climate movement' are reflected in folks working to expose big ag. Why? Because the total of agriculture - meat and industrial corn/soy - when put together, are the number one source of GHGs among plenty of other problems. When they're broken apart the way the EPA presents data, ag is number 2 between buildings and transportation. Activists and journalists are sued, threatened, shot at, arrested, and killed. They're not just holding signs.
My comment wasn't a straw man - what started our diversion was your suggestion that anyone that thinks we have enough kids is thinking with their reproductive organs.
The fact remains that while most of our current systems are not sustainable, and that clearly there's not enough of anything on the planet to support 10 billion people living and wasting as Americans do, there IS plenty of ability for 10 billion to eat and live if they make other choices. The young folks ARE making those choices in numbers that matter!
I didn't say that there are enough protesters today - there aren't. Especially in the US. Most Americans are on their ever-expanding butts updating Facebook and tracking the latest celebrity leak. Maybe that's why you were 'an army of one' on the side of the road?
The majority of the people protesting TODAY (not in the 1990s) and growing sustainable food, and teaching kids about food, and pushing universities to divest from fossil fuels, and developing collaborative systems that are completely replacing the unsustainable systems that have evolved till now, and that are foregoing car ownership, and fighting Japanese whaling, are NOT the 50-somethings - they're the kids.
If my data and observations are off, let's start a new thread where you can educate me. Thanks in advance.