[MCN] Do. Not. Read. This. [Updated]. Message: 'tis the season to be jolly

[Lance Olsen]

~~~~~~~~~~ !!     S E A S ON S    G R E E T  I N G S      !! ~~~~~~~~~~

Why We Should Stop Celebrating Consumerism <https://news.google.com/articles/CBMiYGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmZvcmJlcy5jb20vc2l0ZXMvam9zaHVhYmVja2VyLzIwMTkvMDkvMTcvd2h5LXdlLXNob3VsZC1zdG9wLWNlbGVicmF0aW5nLWNvbnN1bWVyaXNtL9IBZGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmZvcmJlcy5jb20vc2l0ZXMvam9zaHVhYmVja2VyLzIwMTkvMDkvMTcvd2h5LXdlLXNob3VsZC1zdG9wLWNlbGVicmF0aW5nLWNvbnN1bWVyaXNtL2FtcC8?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen>
Let's continue to admire success. But it is time to stop celebrating consumerism. Our society is longing for people who can tell the difference.

Forbes magazine
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuabecker/2019/09/17/why-we-should-stop-celebrating-consumerism/#25c3d1a142b4 <https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuabecker/2019/09/17/why-we-should-stop-celebrating-consumerism/#25c3d1a142b4>

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The Church of Stop Shopping doesn't pull punches on its ... <https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/27/reverend-billy-church-of-stop-shopping-black-friday>
 <https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/27/reverend-billy-church-of-stop-shopping-black-friday>
Nov 27, 2015 - Reverend Billy Talen and his group are returning to New York City this Black Friday to deliver a simple message to Americans: resist consumerism

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/27/reverend-billy-church-of-stop-shopping-black-friday <https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/27/reverend-billy-church-of-stop-shopping-black-friday>

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"The big challenge is still to deliver emissions reductions at the pace and scale needed, especially in a world where economies are driven by consumption.”

Sonja van Renssen.The inconvenient truth of failed climate policies.
 
Nature Climate Change  MAY 2018  Published online: 27 April 2018 
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0155-4 <https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0155-4> 

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“I just want it to be clear that the mainstream environmental movement has been asking very little of people for decades,” said Bea Ruiz, also an organizer with the U.S. national [ Extinction Rebellion ] team. “There’s no element of, ‘We are in an emergency. We all need to do more than what we’re doing.”

Extinction Rebellion’s radical philosophy
July 22 2019
https://thinkprogress.org/the-radical-philosophy-of-extinction-rebellion-5857d3955b57/ <https://thinkprogress.org/the-radical-philosophy-of-extinction-rebellion-5857d3955b57/>

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“In the late 1700s British abolitionists, especially women, boycotted sugar and other goods produced by slaves in the West Indies.”

https://www.economist.com/business/2019/12/12/green-with-shame <https://www.economist.com/business/2019/12/12/green-with-shame> 

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“What we are witnessing is a temper tantrum against the mere suggestion that there are limits to what we can consume.” 

Naomi Klein
https://theintercept.com/2019/09/15/trump-straws-plastic/ <https://theintercept.com/2019/09/15/trump-straws-plastic/>

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“Consumer expectations of ever-higher living standards were fuelled by more lenient and readily available bank lending, …. 

“Social status and identity became closely associated with consumption, in particular with the concept of luxury. 

"Identifying oneself with the good life meant being able to live beyond traditional understandings of basic needs. Debt was the price one paid for the joys of being part of a hedonistic consumer culture.”

Kenneth Dyson. The Morality of Debt. Foreign Affairs. May 3, 2015
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-05-03/morality-debt <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-05-03/morality-debt>

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“The ecological systems upon which humans rely for life support are in crisis, 
and human behavior is the root cause.”
 
Elise Amel, Christie Manning, Britain Scott, Susan Koger

Beyond the Roots of Human Inaction. Science 21 April 2017
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6335/275 <https://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6335/275>

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“The American way of life is not negotiable.”

George H. W. Bush. 1992

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"We are not able even to think adequately about the behavior 
that is at the annihilating edge."

R. D. Laing. Introduction, The Politics of Experience. 
1967, New York. Pantheon Books, a division of Random House

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A recent Ambio article by some heavyweights in climate science sets out the situation well enough. 

A team including the likes of Will Steffen, Paul Crutzen, Veerabhadren Ramathan, Johan Rockstrom, Marten Scheffer and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber begin the abstract of their article <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3357752/> by saying “Over the past century, the total material wealth of humanity has been enhanced …”  

They end it saying,“we risk driving the Earth System onto a trajectory toward more hostile states from which we cannot easily return.”
**************

Greta Thunberg boils the basics down to just 5 words: “… and it will get worse”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhQVustYV24 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhQVustYV24>

She says so because, as she knows, climate scientists had made the same point; e.g., ….

Camilo Mora: “ ….  our choices for deadly heat are now between more of it or a lot more of it.”
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1161/circoutcomes.117.004233 <https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1161/circoutcomes.117.004233>

Michael Mann: ““A new normal makes it sound like we have arrived in a new position, and that's where we're going to be. But if we continue to burn fossil fuels ... we are going to ... get worse and worse droughts, and heat waves, and super storms, and floods, and wildfires.”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/climate-change-is-making-wildfires-more-extreme-heres-how <https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/climate-change-is-making-wildfires-more-extreme-heres-how>

Kate Marvel: “The whole idea that everything’s going to work out isn’t really helpful because it isn’t going to work out ” said Kate Marvel a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Climate change is going to worsen to a point where millions of lives, homes, and species are put at risk she said. 
https://newrepublic.com/article/151608/case-against-climate-pessimism <https://newrepublic.com/article/151608/case-against-climate-pessimism>

My own view, in 5,000 words: <<https://mountainjournal.org/why-rising-temps-mean-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it>>

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