Children stage mass walkout across UK in protest at climate change

Children stage mass walkout across UK in protest at climate change

https://metro.co.uk/2019/02/15/children-stage-mass-walkout-across-uk-protest-climate-change-8633009/

by Martine Berg Olsen

Thousands of schoolchildren have walked out of class to take part in a protest against climate change across the UK. The first ever UK wide School Strike 4 Climate is expecting to see thousands, potentially millions, of kids marching in over 60 locations across the country – from the Scottish Highlands to Cornwall. Youths as young as three are challenging the ‘alarming lack of Government leadership’ and demanding the UK to declare a climate emergency.

UK Student Climate Network’s Anna Taylor said: ‘We’re running out of time for meaningful change, and that’s why we’re seeing young people around the world rising up to hold their governments to account on their dismal climate records. Anti-terrorism officer, 38, 'raped girl, 14, after tracking her on Snapchat' ‘Unless we take positive action, the future’s looking bleak for those of us that have grown up in an era by climate change.’ The strike in London kicked off at Parliament Square at 11am, and urges children to ‘tell the Government you’re prepared to break the rules to make change happen’. The Facebook event said: ‘The world’s youth are waking up. Millions of young people are realising it’s now or never and are now taking direct action on the climate crisis and ecological catastrophe.’

Downing Street said that while it was important for young people to engage with issues like climate change, the disruption to planned lesson time was damaging for pupils. A spokesman for No 10 said: ‘Everybody wants young people to be engaged in the issues that affect them most so that we can build a brighter future for all of us. ‘But it is important to emphasise that disruption increases teachers’ workloads and wastes lesson time that teachers have carefully prepared for. ‘That time is crucial for young people, precisely so that they can develop into the top scientists, engineers and advocates we need to help tackle this problem.’

School leaders and education secretary Damian Hinds have warned students they should not miss lessons to take part in the strikes. Mr Hinds said: ‘I want young people to be engaged in key issues affecting them and involving themselves in causes they care about. ‘But let me be clear, missing class won’t do a thing to help the environment; all they will do is create extra work for teachers.’ The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) said it supports the right of young people to express themselves but it did not condone students being out of the classroom to take action

NAHT said in a statement: ‘While a school leader’s role is to ensure children attend school, are kept safe and receive a good quality of education, it is right that individual school leaders can decide how best to respond to any protest by students in their school on Friday.’ The movement started when Greta Thunberg, 16, a climate activist with Asperger who protest outside Sweden’s parliament every Friday urged urged the world to join her. It has already seen school strikes in Australia and European countries including Belgium and Berlin.

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2019/02/15/children-stage-mass-walkout-across-uk-protest-climate-change-8633009/?ito=cbshare

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Suffering is Optional, But Pain is Necessary

Suffering is Optional

But Pain is Necessary

Yesterday I started reading ‘The Uninhabitable Earth’ by D.Wallace-Wells and last night I re-watched  “Seven Years in Tibet”, the true story of a German mountaineer (Heinrich Harrer) who lived in Tibet during WWII and became good friends with the Dalai Lama. Then this morning I read a riveting and very discomforting article from the BBC news about the concentration camps [officially ‘re-education centres’] filled with Uighurs in western China [see the end for a similar previous genocide during the Qing dynasty]:

Up to a million Uighurs and other Muslims are believed to have been detained in detention centres that China says are for vocational training and necessary to fight terrorism. A young boy tweeted that he'd not seen his parents for more than 11 months and wanted China to "show me they are still alive". Uighurs in China's far-western Xinjiang region have come under intense surveillance by the Chinese authorities [ communist party officials live in their homes and all of their cell phone communication is monitored 24-7] Many Uighurs who live outside of China say they haven't spoken to their family members in years.

It was too much. Too much human created suffering. Too much pointless waste of human potential. Too much loss of joy. So, to refill my soul, I went for a walk in the woods behind our home with our puppy who happily frolicked through the waste deep snow as I trudged along with my snow shoes. It was excellent medicine.

What has this got to do with our theme of ‘what are you doing’? All of us, me and you included, are either increasing or decreasing the amount of suffering of others. Now to be clear, much of it is unintentional and even unconscious. Here is a simple concrete example. Two years ago my ’old faithful’ blackberry cell phone died and I went to Rogers for a replacement – they said the only phone that I could get for ‘free’ with my particular plan was a Huawei phone. While I wanted to not buy Chinese [for a long list of reasons] I thought that perhaps my not-buy Chinese paranoia had gone too far and that it was time to get ‘reasonable’. Stupid me. Six months later I read about the above mentioned ‘re-education’ centres and how Huawei cell phones are being used to spy on the lives of not only the Uighars but also the Chinese people through a new developed ‘social credit score’ program. It was sickening: the Orwellian nightmare come true. So I quickly ditched my Huawei cell phone and replaced it with a Samsung. That was doing.

As I was reflecting upon my cell phone saga I was praying about this human induced suffering in Asia and this question came to me: What about pain? Is it different than suffering? If so, is there anything positive to be found in either?

While I am not officially a Buddhist I feel a great affinity for this path of life. I find many of its teachings very helpful as I struggle with the seemingly unnecessary sufferings and injustices that we create and then impose on each other.  Although the title is ‘Suffering’ it might have been better to call is ‘Joy’, as my experience is that joy and suffering go hand in hand, like up and: one without the other seems impossible. As a Franciscan I consider the greatest gift of all a conscious life lived joyfully and to its full potential. However, this gift is often squandered and taken for granted - with the resultant suffering that we see all around us and suffering that we have also probably experienced personally.

A young Dalai Lama saying good-bye to Heinrich Harrer, the German Mountaineer

I have this to propose to you as a way to see both the positive and negative ramifications and differences between pain and suffering. I will label as suffering all ‘unnecessary, chronic and man-made’ actions that have no redeeming qualities. On the other hand pain, which is its sister, is ‘acute and built into all life as a survival mechanism’ and is thus ultimately (at least in potential) life saving and life affirming. How can I make such a bold claim? It is based upon understanding garnished from this particular disease: anhidrosis, or CIPA — a rare genetic disorder that makes her unable to feel pain. This is what a mother says about her daughter who never feels pain: “Some people would say that’s a good thing. But no, it’s not. Pain’s there for a reason. It lets your body know something’s wrong and it needs to be fixed. I’d give anything for her to feel pain.”

So, it turns out, like all the paradoxes of life, that pain the very thing we seek to avoid is necessary for survival. In other words, with a 20,000 foot view of life, it is a good thing. Suffering has no such redeeming qualities.

So, what are to do with this perspective? First, learn about ways that you are unintentionally causing suffering [eg. Buy fair trade] and use your greatest power: - your money, to change the world. Secondly, when you see a friend in pain help them, because I know from time I have had in pain that sharing time with others when in pain [usually] reduces the pain because the distraction of another person and their compassion helps you experience that life is also capable of joy. Third, by joyful, be positive, crack some bad jokes and all those around you will experience less suffering, less pain and more joy – joy that should be the norm in this brief life we have. So, given that this article is about doing something I leave you now with a very silly joke I learned recently that you can try on your friends – enjoy!

A bus driver and a priest died and went to heaven

St. Peter greeted them both and led them to their new homes in heaven. They went to the bus driver's home first, and saw a large mansion. When the priest saw this, he was very excited because he was sure that he'd get a grander house, because clearly, he had done me good in his life than the bus driver. However, when they reached his new home, all he saw a small cabin. He asked St. Peter, "why is my house smaller than the bus driver's? I have served God all my life!" St. Peter responded, "well, the way you were preaching, everyone was sleeping. But the way the bus driver was driving, everyone was praying!"

We make ourselves either happy or miserable – the amount of work is the same.

-          Carlos Castaneda

An 18^th century Genocide in central Asia

The Qianlong Emperor led Qing forces to victory over the Dzungar Oirat (Western) Mongols in 1755, he originally was going to split the Dzungar Khanate into four tribes headed by four Khans, the Khoit tribe was to have the Dzungar leader Amursana as its Khan. Amursana rejected the Qing arrangement and rebelled since he wanted to be leader of a united Dzungar nation. Qianlong then issued his orders for the genocide and eradication of the entire Dzungar nation and name, Qing Manchu Bannermen and Khalkha (Eastern) Mongols enslaved Dzungar women and children while slaying the other Dzungars.^[5]

The Qianlong Emperor then ordered the genocide of the Dzungars, moving the remaining Dzungar people to the mainland and ordering the generals to kill all the men in Barkol or Suzhou, and divided their wives and children to Qing forces, which were made out of Manchu Bannermen and Khalkha Mongols.^[6][7] Qing scholar Wei Yuan estimated the total population of Dzungars before the fall at 600,000 people, or 200,000 households. Oirat officer Saaral betrayed and battled against the Oirats. In a widely cited^[8][9][10] account of the war, Wei Yuan wrote that about 40% of the Dzungar households were killed by smallpox, 20% fled to Russia or Kazakh tribes, and 30% were killed by the Qing army of Manchu Bannermen and Khalkha Mongols, leaving no yurts in an area of several thousands li except those of the surrendered.^[11] During this war Kazakhs attacked dispersed Oirats and Altays. Based on this account, Wen-Djang Chu wrote that 80% of the 600,000 or more Dzungars (especially Choros, Olot, Khoid, Baatud and Zakhchin) were destroyed by disease and attack^[12] which Michael Clarke described as "the complete destruction of not only the Dzungar state but of the Zungars as a people."^[13] Historian Peter Perdue attributed the decimation of the Dzungars to an explicit policy of extermination launched by Qianlong, but he also observed signs of a more lenient policy after mid-1757.^[9] Mark Levene, a historian whose recent research interests focus on genocide, has stated that the extermination of the Dzungars was "arguably the eighteenth century genocide par excellence."^[14] The Dzungar genocide was completed by a combination of a smallpox epidemic and the direct slaughter of Dzungars by Qing forces After perpetrating wholesale massacres on the native Dzungar Oirat Mongol population in the Dzungar genocide, in 1759, the Qing Dynasty finally consolidated their authority by settling Chinese emigrants, together with a Manchu Qing garrison.

Climate Denial Makes Sense when you Understand it is the First Step in the Dying Process

Climate Denial Makes Sense when you Understand it is the First Step in the Dying Process

Denial is the first of the five stages of grief. It helps us to survive the loss. In this stage, the world becomes meaningless and overwhelming. Life makes no sense. We are in a state of shock and denial. We go numb. We wonder how we can go on, if we can go on, why we should go on. We try to find a way to simply get through each day. Denial and shock help us to cope and make survival possible.  https://grief.com/the-five-stages-of-grief/ 

Yes, climate denial makes sense, for it is the first stage of the death process.

Given that there is a lot of dying going on, and more to come, to not go through a stage of denial would actually be abnormal. 

However the most helpful way to look at this dying is that it is about our way of life, our values, what we think is 'right and true and important' - all these cultural artifacts are dying. And good riddance to them.

We can say good bye to the illusion that we are all separate, that we act and think as we please without the realization that this affects others, that 'others' always includes all the plants and animals and bacteria that are part of who we are, that each of is 'our brother's keeper', that there is no "I" without a "Thou" [Martin Buber] and that for me to survive and thrive I need you to do the same.

However, we have to get through this denial stage to be able to confront the death that is coming - this cultural death. What comes after denial? Anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The problem is that if we cannot eventually come to a state of acceptance we will have real, physical death. Death of many species, death of the coral reefs, death of millions of people, death of entire ecosystems that cannot adapt quickly enough to the changes now happening before our eyes.

Some of us have our eyes open and have moved beyond denial. Perhaps you are angry - that is OK, as long as you can move on. The trick is not to be judgmental of those who are stuck in denial [or anger, or depression] but rather your mission is to help them move on, to see death not only as the end of one thing but the also the beginning of another. In this case, the beginning of a potentially better human society that sees that all of us, and once again I emphasize, by 'us' I mean all life, are brothers and sisters.

Nomination meeting for Carleton march 5 @ Manotick Library

Dear members of the Green party in Carleton: mark you calenders for March 5!

Please join us on Tuesday, March 5th to select the Carleton Green Party candidate for the 2019 federal election!

What: Official GPC candidate nomination meeting
When: Tuesday, March 5th, 7pm
Where: Manotick Public Library (5499 South River, Ottawa, On, K4M 1J3)

We will use a ranked ballot with the following nominees:
Gordon Kubanek
John Redins
None Of The Above

All current members residing in the Carleton riding are eligible to receive a ballot at the nomination meeting. Lapsed members will have their voting rights reinstated immediately upon reactivation of their membership (this includes at the beginning of the meeting). New members must activate their membership by February 3rd in order to be eligible to vote (30 days prior to the nomination meeting).

Schedule
7:00 arrive and welcome

7:15 - 7:25pm Speeches from the nominees. 

7:25 - 7:40pm Questions from members

7:40- 7:45pm Vote

7:45-7:55pm Results and Speech from winner 

end by 8pm

Good News: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Trucks Coming Our Way Soon

 Long Haul Trucking Powered by Hydrogen Fuel Cells as made by Nikola Motors

In response to widespread interest from European customers, Nikola Motor Company has created a hydrogen-electric truck for European markets. The Nikola Tre has 500 to 1,000 HP, 6x4 or 6x2 configurations and a range of 500 to 1,200 kilometers depending on options. By 2028, Nikola is planning on having more than 700 hydrogen stations across the USA and Canada. Each station is capable of 2,000 to 8,000 kgs of daily hydrogen production. Nikola’s European stations are planned to come online around 2022 and are projected to cover most of the European market by 2030. 

At the April 16-17 Nikola World in Phoenix, attendees will witness the Nikola Two in action pulling loaded trailers along with a prototype display of the Nikola Tre. Hydrogen filling will also be shown at the event at 700 bar or 10,000 PSI. Nikola’s powersports division will provide customer rides throughout the day and show off pre-production units of the Nikola NZT off road 4x4. To date, the company has approximately eleven billion dollars in pre-order reservations. 

https://nikolamotor.com/press_releases/nikola-launches-stunning-truck-for-european-market-53