Apocalypse Averted With Collective Juddering
The vast majority of people worldwide, as well as millions in the UK, do not have their needs met – let alone live lives of luxury from which air travel and weekly shopping sprees could be painlessly stripped out and replaced for example with dance lessons.
Why, yes, I am reading the Guardian. How could you tell?
The paper’s leader writer, Susanna Rustin, is very much troubled by thoughts of impending catastrophe and is keen for your routine shopping – for groceries and maybe a pair of shoes – to be replaced, “painlessly,” with forms of “artistic expression and creativity.” Like dance lessons. It would, of course, be “a reordering of society.”
When so many of the pleasures that we take for granted in the west, and that are desired by billions of people who do not yet have them, are so carbon-intensive, it is surely incumbent upon us to think very hard about the things in which we take joy and meaning that are less demanding of energy and resources.
Because “dancing and singing could be part of the solution to the climate emergency.” It says so here.
If capitalists, politicians and scientists have so far not found the answers – and the global mass movement of people called for by Greta Thunberg and others is, despite recent progress, still proving elusive – could the creative arts possibly provide one means to break the impasse? If the climate emergency is seen as the consequence of a failure of imagination, then this would seem to make sense.
We will save the planet with our expertise in jive, quickstep and Viennese waltz.
this would seem to make sense.
Though presumably we may have to gyrate without shoes.
Because “dancing and singing could be part of the solution to the climate emergency.” It says so here.
Peak Guardian?
Though presumably we may have to gyrate without shoes.
MAGA: Make America Gyrate Again
Peak Guardian?
I’m not convinced there’s any upper limit. See the ‘Classic Sentences’ tag.
I can’t help thinking it’s rather telling just how often Guardian columnists assume that “we” all fly continually – rather than very occasionally, if indeed at all – and that “we” indulge in “weekly shopping sprees,” a phrase with connotations of gratuitous abandon, as if “we” all spent our afternoons wafting around jewellery stores, looking for that umpteenth pair of earrings, or wildly searching for things we don’t actually want, let alone need.
As opposed to the rather more humdrum weekly shopping that most of us actually do.
Recent acceleration in carbon emissions is due to Asia, and that is going to continue for at least the next few decades. The 4.4 billion people there are not likely to think interpretative dance is a satisfying substitute for consumer goods. The people of India, for example, have tried living off of their culture, and they seem to prefer a more modern approach. Rustin is free to try to convince them otherwise.
The vast majority of people worldwide, as well as millions in the UK, do not have their needs met
Wow, what kind of third world pest-hole are you guys running if “millions in the UK do not have their needs met”? They must be starving in the streets and lining up to leave. Why, the flood of refugees from the UK must be overwhelming Europe. Oh, wait, none of that’s happening and that claim about “millions in the UK” must be fresh off of the San Francisco sidewalk.
This seems to be a combination of make believe solidarity with the less fortunate and a kind of fantasy distopia the writer dreams of. The question of what needs are not being met and how to meet them is neglected in favor of considering how to replace the writers fantasy distopia with a swinging, upbeat distopia with dancing.
Why, yes, I am reading the Guardian.
Why?
Though presumably we may have to gyrate without shoes.
In a cold room, huddled around a flickering candle.
Why?
I suffer, heroically, to bring you wonders from afar.
That, or it’s brain fever.
” . . .all those people and organisations that believe that human fulfilment can be found in artistic expression and creativity – in making things . . .”
. . . without resources like tools and materials.
Because “dancing and singing could be part of the solution to the climate emergency.”
Also part of the solution, ethically harvested gold¹ and sustainable diamonds².
Next up, free range botox and cruelty free silicone from the climate panic in the streets experts in the celluloid game.
1. WTF ?
2. Ibid.
A bunch of idealistic kids defeat climate change through the power of dance. This sounds like the best terrible made-for-TV movie ever
I’m slowly memorizing the CAGW numbers, mostly from wattsupwiththat, for the purpose of arguing with my proto-communist relatives. It boils-down as follows:
1) atmospheric CO2 is 0.04 of one percent (4/10,000ths) of the atmosphere – water vapour is by far the most prevalent greenhouse gas.
2) humans contribute 5% of atmospheric CO2 – ants contribute twice as much as we do.
3) it is creeping-up slowly, which is likely our fault – it’s increasing at 2 parts per million, per year.
4) the Earth is visibly greening; botanists call CO2 “nature’s best free fertilizer”. CAGW alarmists are at great pains to deny this.
5) it has been MUCH, MUCH higher in the past.
6) recent studies suggest that the Earth will soak-up all the CO2 we choose to throw at it, at 4-times higher rates than the UN IPCC credits it with.
7) the Sun set a new record last year for days with no sunspots – well over half the year – and we may be heading into another ice age. It is this that has me worried; I HATE being cold.
Christopher Monckton of Brenchley (the Heartland Institute) sums it up thus. Australia brought-in a carbon tax in 2010, intending it to run from 2011 to 2020 (a new government cancelled it in 2014), to reduce their CO2 emissions by 5%. Australia contributes 1.2% of human CO2 – so if the program was completely successful, it would reduce Earth’s temperature by 0.000038 degree Celsius, at an all-in cost to the taxpayer of $130 billion Australian dollars.
– The GOOD news is that you can buy a wine from the northwest U.S. called “The Denier” – 95% of the non-water weight of a grape is from atmospheric CO2, and grapes could not live without CO2. Nor could we for that matter, because our little blue-green planet is outside the Sun’s liquid water band; without greenhouse gas there’d be a 30-to-55 degree Celsius drop in temperature, and we’d have a little white planet. The story behind “The Denier” is fascinating; enjoy! https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/09/14/washington-winery-releases-wine-called-the-denier/
idealistic kids
For which, read grown woman.
ethically harvested gold
Redistributed from the homes of Millionaire Marxists like her.
A bunch of idealistic kids defeat climate change through the power of dance.
Imagine the Hollywood musical version: “Hey look, an abandoned factory. Let’s put on a show!”
“Imagine the Hollywood musical version: “Hey look, an abandoned factory. Let’s put on a show!””
That’s actually a great idea, and I hope Hollywood does it often. All those holes in the floor covered by rotting plywood, and pits of deep, green, oily water, and collapsing ceilings, and asbestos dust all over everything… The raw footage would be delicious – I feel a new drinking game coming on!
Been there. Done that: Capitalist Coca-Cola was first, decades ago. Remember?
“I’d like to teach the world to sing in three-part harmony. I’d like to buy the world a Coke to keep it company. It’s the real thing.”
That makes just as much sense as everyone taking dance lessons because carbon footprint.
I thought for a while about “sustainable” diamonds, and I figure the most sustainable of the lot are alluvial diamonds from the charming quarters of Angola and West Africa (Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea). These deposits are, if only slowly – yeah, real slowly – refreshed from the erosion and redeposition of hard-rock diamonds from kimberlites in the upland. To wit, the “Blood Diamonds” Leo Dee brought to the silver screen.
Peripherally to this thread, one is compelled to warn of the consequences of kimberlite mining, as noted by Bruha and Johnson in a 1987 paper in the distinguished geological journal (goak here) Tectonica Anathemata, titled “The extraterrestrial origin of kimberlites and their role in stopping lithospheric subduction”. Thumbnail: kimberlites from outta space nail tectonic plates together, and if you mine too deep – into the next cratonic layer – the plates aren’t nailed together any more and start to drift apart.
(Explanation for the Rustins, Fondas and De Caprios of the world: Bruha and Johnson were joking, and they knew it.)
I don’t see what’s not to like. When all the lefties swap flying for dancing and singing for shopping, it will mean cheaper flights and more shiny shiny for the rest of us, right?
@pst314 – I really like the idea of trinkets made with gold ethically harvested from Hollywood mansions in the dead of night. I’d even pay a premium for gold cufflinks, if the raw material had been sustainably recycled from the Rolex Spike Lee was wearing on Oscars night, for example.
Talking of the Oscars, the vacuous shits who lectured us plebs from the podium got to walk away with $215k of unearned and untaxed goodies:
https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/what-is-in-the-2020-oscars-swag-bag-find-out-what-215k-worth-of-goodies-celebs-get.html/
…shopping sprees could be painlessly stripped out and replaced for example with dance lessons.
Arts Council grants for everyone.
I’m feeling generous.
“stripped out and replaced for example with dance”
Saw “strip” and “dance”…
Yeah, I’m a guy. So there.
Gay man may not be gay enough for gay voters:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/11/pete-buttigieg-gay-democrats-poll-reaction
*headdesk*
*headdesk*
So, we’ve reached a point where a candidate’s “sexual orientation barely registered with voters,” and this is supposedly a problem now, at least among the competitively woke, for whom a gay candidate must be “radically queer,” which apparently means being a narrow identitarian cartoon and a monomaniacal bore.
In short, as messed-up and ludicrous as they are.
If the climate emergency is seen as the consequence of a failure of imagination, then this would seem to make sense.
This is Christoper Chantrill’s reductive Three People Theory in action. To wit: those called to be “creatives” are many, but few have the talent, drive, and luck to be chosen, and instead write articles for the Guardian that remind you that there is a whole spectrum of intelligence between genius and medically-certified mental retardation.
OT: Amber Heard joins the Hollywood elite on a conference call of sorts. I could not stop laughing, brilliantly done.
(Sadly, comments attached to Ms. Rustin’s commentary are closed, but this is what I would have written.)
Well, Ms. Susanna Rustin, YOU FIRST.
It’s always a good idea for those who make the “law” to live by them, no?
…it is surely incumbent upon us to think very hard about the things in which we take joy and meaning that are less demanding of energy and resources.
I will note that the Graudian consumes something in the neighborhood of $290,615,000 annually to produce a midden for middle-to-upper income coprophagists.
Coprophagia (/ˌkɒprəˈfeɪdʒiə/) or coprophagy (/kəˈprɒfədʒi/) is the consumption of feces. The word is derived from the Greek κόπρος copros, “feces” and φαγεῖν phagein, “to eat”.
For those of us not as smart as Squires over there.
Also part of the solution, ethically harvested gold¹ and sustainable diamonds².
As the son of Vietnam vet (Army medic, 1970-71), I will be sure to applaud Hanoi Jane for her conspicuous ethics.
Jane Fonda turns out to be staggeringly tone deaf.
Didn’t Ricky Gervais warn Hollywood celebrities about conspicuous virtue signalling as if they were the nobility of Panem lecturing the twelve districts?
“[So] many of the pleasures that we take for granted in the west, and that are desired by billions of people who do not yet have them, are so carbon-intensive…”
Now there’s an interesting line. She’s effectively saying that billions of people in the world must not aspire to improve their circumstances in order to save the planet.
It probably hasn’t even occurred to her that any global crusade against climate change needs all nations on board (precisely why it’s a nonsense of course: by what authority do you tell sovereign states what they can and cannot do?) and thus needs those “billions of people” to accept their lot.
Considering previous “artistic” efforts featured here before, which involve people (often of extra avorduopois) causing everyone to need some eye bleach, maybe the title of this post has an extra letter. It should be:
Apocalypse Averted With Collective Uddering
Apocalypse Averted With Collective Juddering”
So Naomi and Wynonna are back together?
But what if you already know how to dance. What then? I suggest go shopping.
Don’t dancing & singing increase respiration rates?
dancing and singing could be part of the solution to the climate emergency.
If it is an emergency, we could always call on Ann Margret.
It mightn’t work- but I think it is worth a try.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=270KKGpvqTU
By what authority do you tell sovereign states what they can and cannot do?
By force of arms, ultimately. Eventually our self-ordained betters will run out of ways talking around that fact, at which point they’ll have to confront some tough choices.
“Team Trump is highly motivated…by their burning hatred of Democrats.”
https://www.salon.com/2020/02/11/primary-day-in-new-hampshire-but-whatever-happens-this-isnt-the-end/
I don’t know about Team Trump, but I hope he wins because of my burning hatred of educated fools.
J-West: You could go shopping for dancing shoes.
Grandson sent me this and there is some interesting self-loathing in it. Especially seeing who made it in the first place.
there is some interesting self-loathing in it.
So a Scandinavian airline wants Scandinavians to believe that they have no discernible culture, no indigenous sensibility, as distinct from, say, the Congo or Somalia. And, implicitly, nothing to protect. And likewise, the BBC wants its younger viewers to believe that their ancestors were merely pilferers and invented nothing of consequence (except, of course, unmentioned, half the modern world).
It’s all rather degenerate, a sign of cultural rot.
headdesk
As Homer Simpson said, as an American I like my beer cold, my TV loud and my homosexuals FLAMING!
I like my beer cold, my TV loud and my homosexuals FLAMING!
Heh. And from that same episode:
But it seems we’re expected to go backwards and be thrilled about it.
Team Trump is highly motivated…by their burning hatred of Democrats
“…built up after years of right-wing propaganda demonizing liberals.”
Hmmm, yes that’s definitely the cable news history of the last 4 years.
And likewise, the BBC wants its younger viewers to believe that their ancestors were merely pilferers and invented nothing of consequence…
Regarding that CBBC (Children’s British Brainwashing Corporation) show, a reply of note.
wants Scandinavians to believe that they have no discernible culture, no indigenous sensibility, as distinct from, say, the Congo or Somalia. And, implicitly, nothing to protect.
That.
Also not originally British creations, but brought over from this side of the pond jazz and…
But it seems we’re expected to go backwards and be thrilled about it.
It’s certainly a Queer Theory.
Also not originally British creations, but brought over from this side of the pond jazz and…
Why, oh why did I click? I knew better, yet…
And, implicitly, nothing to protect.
Award winning “diversity” …
Incoming!
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/358039/
Incoming!
We need more coasters, stat.
Pelican: “By force of arms, ultimately. Eventually our self-ordained betters will run out of ways talking around that fact, at which point they’ll have to confront some tough choices.”
Not least of which is the basic self-contradiction: Any military apparatus capable of enforcing a low-carbon lifestyle on the rest of the world would in and of itself be so carbon-intensive as to render the endeavour pointless in the first place.
We need more coasters, stat.
And covers for the sofa. You never know where they’ve sat…
Dancing is traditionally associated with increases in the population. Which increases the overall carbon footprint.
That Salon piece that Lady CK linked to is just so perfectly Marcotte. My favorite was her squeeing over Liz Warren:
Truth is, if Warren were a man, Marcotte would absolutely loathe him. The rock star aura and adoring crowds would be evidence of just another Trumpian demagogue, and the “next-level analysis” would be the worst kind of mansplaining. She’d tear him to pieces for repeating “I have a plan for that!” every time a policy question was put to him.
It’s amazing to me that her hatred of the male sex has so completely blinded her, to the point where she cannot see just how facile her political analysis comes across. Okay, maybe not amazing, but a perfect encapsulation of La Marcotte.
I can’t wait for her next 2,000-word essay explaining how Klobuchar getting twice as many votes as Warren is further proof of the systemic sexism keeping Warren down…
Obama White House Mean Girls
Note that all gynocentric complaints and issues will include gratuitous references to lady’s stinky bits and clothes. It always boils down to who’s wearing what. Always.
H/T Instapundit, completing the circle.
Truth is, if Warren were a man, Marcotte would absolutely loathe him.
That.
My wife – a primary school teacher – happened to stumble into politics while chatting with a co-worker who told her unironically and earnestly that she wasn’t political, per se, but rather she automatically voted for the women candidate because “they are underrepresented”. The conversation unfortunately ended there without the opportunity to explore this lady’s thoughts on Sarah Palin, or a hypothetical genocide-supporting female candidate, or a choice between two women, etc, and robbing my wife of the thrill of shorting out an NPC.
if Warren were a man
Sorry, best segue I could come up with. Chicago in winter is simply not safe, even for wypipo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV_0u2l4k6Q
Atempdog:
” fresh off of the San Francisco sidewalk ”
Stolen!
Also needs to go viral.
I can’t wait for her next 2,000-word essay explaining how Klobuchar getting twice as many votes as Warren is further proof of the systemic sexism keeping Warren down…
Don’t hold your breath. Years of Mandy being wrong doesn’t mean she ever takes a moment of self-reflection. Her hands are on the wheel and there are more people to run over in front of her. No rearview mirrors.
Darleen, so what you’re saying is …
Uma,
Ah! You got my reference 😀
Darleen; saw the movie when I was a spratling. That line never left me.
And covers for the sofa. You never know where they’ve sat…
David, you might be interested in a recent news item about a robot that disinfects hospital rooms. That might be enough to handle all those Instapundit riff-raff.
He’s not wrong, you know.
Re Obama White House Mean Girls … Sam, I confess to being gobsmacked. I had no idea the Obamas were enforcing some kind of sumptuary laws — I thought all that went with the wind come the rise of the middle class. Silly me.
robbing my wife of the thrill of shorting out an NPC.
Well, if a person’s political noises are determined largely by wishing to seem a certain way and signal in-group status, then internal consistency won’t be a priority. And can’t be a priority. The result tends to be a patchwork of poses with little, if anything, holding them up. Their pronouncements are borrowed wholesale, subject to changing fashion, and are rarely load-bearing. Which may explain the anxiety and prickliness that so often greets any hint of demurral, especially when it becomes apparent that someone else isn’t playing the same game and may not care to be dishonest in order to fit in.
I see our good friend “Slowthai”, of severed head and mindless oikophobia fame, is in the news again. This time for attacking a member of the audience while accepting his NME “Hero of the Year” award.
I see our good friend “Slowthai”, of severed head and mindless oikophobia fame, is in the news again.
In news that will doubtless shock, I’m not overly familiar with the world of low-forehead chav rap. But yes, based on what I’ve seen, my expectations of the type were not confounded.
But yes, based on what I’ve seen, my expectations of the type were not confounded.
Seeing the name is enough. They seem to be generally quite effective signals.
Don’t jive, me, bro!
An interesting article on what intersectional politics has in store for us. The best parts are near the end.
Pelican: “By force of arms, ultimately. Eventually our self-ordained betters will run out of ways talking around that fact, at which point they’ll have to confront some tough choices.”
Perhaps the climatista crowd haven’t considered whether it might take an actual warfighting coalition to impose their will globally? I’ll bet very few of them are ready to volunteer to invade China and India. And I doubt there are many sailors, soldiers and airmen out there anywhere prepared to put their lives on the line just to keep the global temperature down a notch.
Stephen J.: “Any military apparatus capable of enforcing a low-carbon lifestyle on the rest of the world would in and of itself be so carbon-intensive as to render the endeavour pointless in the first place.”
Yes. “We had to destroy Gaea to save her”, as it were.
“dancing and singing could be part of the solution to the climate emergency”
I thing we’ve already gotten more than enough song and dance from the left.