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It’s Not Just Australia – We Are All F*cked [1]

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Date: 2022-11-29

Random screen grab from one day this past hellish summer... or the one before... won't be the last, though...

On November 26, DK’s own Pakalolo posted a blockbuster story here with the eye grabbing headline Australia is f#cked.

With 953 recommendations and 664 comments, it was more engaged with than easily 90% of all other stories on this site that cover our rapidly deteriorating climate.

In that piece, Pakalolo quoted Johnathan Franzen, so I will as well:

Today, the scientific evidence verges on irrefutable. If you’re younger than sixty, you have a good chance of witnessing the radical destabilization of life on earth—massive crop failures, apocalyptic fires, imploding economies, epic flooding, hundreds of millions of refugees fleeing regions made uninhabitable by extreme heat or permanent drought. If you’re under thirty, you’re all but guaranteed to witness it.

I started posting on DK in 2015 — almost exclusively on climate — and while I do not have Pakalolo’s depth of understanding, drive, or ability to create such masses of amazing content, I do know a climate communications HERO when I read one. Pakalolo is a giant and, for me, a role model. I could only hope to add just a little bit to what they and the other amazing stalwarts (Meteor Blades, angmar, boatsie, Lefty Coaster, and others I am leaving out — my apologies!) were contributing to the conversation here.

But that Australia story excepted, the “tips and recs” for climate-focused stories seem always to be small compared to many other contributions on many other topics. There are several climate-focused groups here, and their incredible work seems to consistently grab fewer eyeballs. I hope that expressing that will not be perceived as a “whine.” It’s just – the case.

Today, when mikeymikey posted Pakalolo/ re: “Australia”/ Thank You! Your efforts are not wasted and you are not alone! this paragraph resonated with me (and my reply to that story became, at the author’s suggestion, the story you are reading now):

Trying to post the suggestion that, just maybe, DailyKos and it’s readership were in denial about this, either elicited absurdities like, “this is a politically oriented site” or comments from readers helplessly bemoaning the fact that it is true. At the time, the latest U.N. I.P.C.C. Report had received fewer that 40 recs, but, nevertheless, I was assured that “we do read these posts”.

I, too, have been counseled that “this is a political site” and “we’re here to elect Democrats — that’s our focus,” and “what do you expect when you’re all about gloom and doom,” and I suppose I get that. But if this community of strong Democrats, lefties, tree huggers, and progressives are not consistently engaged and supportive of the climate-focused work — and spreading it to their other social media networks and their real lives* — that’s more than just very dispiriting. That’s a huge fail. And on whose part, I do not know.

Alas, it’s gonna take more than voting now.

Combine that with what I strongly suspect was engagement based more on Pakalolo’s fiery headline (featuring an F bomb!) that reeled folks in with the promise of something juicily tragic, and not a general thirst for information on the climate crisis, and I wonder if the battle we are fighting is not much more uphill than I had previously suspected.

I recently came back to DK after an entire year where I focused more on engaging via Twitter and Mastodon with Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, and others, and continued working in my community with the few IRL climate protesters I could find. I was itchy for a long-form outlet (one that someone might read – not a sure-to-be unseen substack or personal blog) and decided to come back and post.

The DK community does not need me, a non-scientist, telling you the science. That is being done here brilliantly by so many others. What I plan to contribute are ideas for concrete solutions that we can insist our leaders take to immediately bend the emissions curve, ideas for community building, and general exhortations for shoe leather, IRL activism on a larger scale than is currently underway.

It might not be the right place, but I’ve got a profile already set up, there are eyeballs to grab here, and I am so amazed at the work that continues to be done on this site that I refuse to think it’s all been shouting into the void.

I suspect that the hard work and committed excellence of the folks listed above and many others here has advanced the dialogue and has helped to firm the resolve of some readers that the climate crisis is THE existential issue of the entire history of our species. If that suspicion is true, then all our work has been worth it.

That said, I can’t help but think that we have moved past the voting and marching phase when it comes to the climate emergency. The time has come to shift into the next gear. As citizens and voters, our dreams of our government taking some immediate and meaningful action on climate are largely being thwarted by a business-as-usual mood in DC, and the nefarious self-dealing machinations of politicians in the pocket of Big Fossil Fuel.

It's time for a de facto climate revolution. It’s time for massive, non-violent direct action to bring our demands to the representatives, senators, and president we have elected. Not dozens of us. Not a handful of protesters targeting art galleries. Not 3 or 4 scientists at a time. Not even hundreds of us. No – it is time for hundreds of THOUSANDS of us, all at once, to occupy public spaces and not leave until we are heard, and changes are made.

Writing here, I hope, will help build consensus around that concept as a next step.

If not us – who? If not now – when?

Asking did not work.

Voting did not work.

Marching did not work.

Emissions keep going up.'

Our leaders have failed us.

#ClimateRevolution

Thank you for reading.

-Kira Thomsen-Cheek

Twitter: @KiraOnClimate

Instagram.com/climaterevolutionary

*(which they may be — I have no way of measuring that)

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/29/2139048/-It-s-Not-Just-Australia-We-Are-All-F-cked

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