I went to see Anna Rose talk at the Wheeler Centre on Thursday and I posed a question: Do we need to make a choice, on the one hand, between convincing doubters about the climate science and, on the other, shifting the debate towards the solutions - necessarily leaving some Australians behind?

On this question, Tristan Edis of Climate Spectator is spot on:

http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/time-give-minchin-and-palmer

Having done the Beyond Zero Emissions presenter training (to present the Zero Carbon Australia plan - a fully-costed, ready to implement plan to have Australia’s stationary energy 100% renewable within 10 years) it struck me that most Australians probably aren’t ‘denialists’ but rather despondent, cynical and even afraid. They’ve been bashed over the head with climate science and predictions to the point of despair - but they’ve been given very little information on what they can do. I mean solid, meaningful and effective action that will start to destroy the current paradigm in which vested interests in dirty industries somehow prevail. Something as simple as a) knowing that the Zero Carbon Australia plan exists (and its a crime that so few people do) and b) showing their local representative that they want action on this plan that will double existing jobs in the mining and energy industries and make Australia a leading exporter of renewable technology (in addition to the obvious benefits for our climate).

Think about it - if you tell someone they have a potentially fatal illness and they need to do something about it if they want to live, but you don’t tell them what realistic treatment options they have, they’re very likely to, first, be scared shitless, then depressed, then go into denial and pretend nothing is wrong at all. If instead you tell them they’re sick and then tell them what they can practically do about it, they’re pretty likely to immediately jump to action. A question was asked at the Wheeler Centre on Thursday exactly along these lines - that no-one is bridging the gap between the problem and the solution. Australians just don’t really know how to get there.

Perhaps we need to shift momentum away from freaking the shit out of people and towards getting on with the job. I agree with Tristan Edis that putting the spotlight on denialists like Minchin and Palmer is a waste of bloody time and potentially counter-productive. It misleads the general public that a minority of community leaders and businesspeople are somehow the pulse of the nation. Consider the impact of airtime to denialists in light of John Maynard Keynes’ comment on public opinion:

It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of one’s judgement, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligence to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be.

These denialists (and its important to note they are DENIALISTS not SKEPTICS - the two are very different) will never change their mind. But that’s okay - because we don’t need them to. Rather we need the despondent and confused, politically moderate and relatively sensible majority of Australians to shift their money and their votes away from the coal and gas industry and towards renewable energy. As Edis says -

Instead the marketing campaign needs to be focussed on the Cautious and the Disengaged. If the clean energy sector can move these people towards the concerned column, they’ve got the electorate on their side. Also efforts concentrated at persuading these two groups may actually rub-off on some of the Doubtful. 

And they are far more likely to do this if your process isn’t ‘Hey, we’re all fucked if we don’t do something - here’s a vague idea of what we can do - but really, just think how screwed we are if we don’t’ - but rather - ‘There’s a problem, here’s a realistic, practical solution, and here is what you can do.’ In a campaign/presentation/workshop sense, that might look like: climate science and predictions + solutions (BZE presentation) + actions (what the average person can do).

And then the important question of HOW this engagement happens. People can be resistant to change but this resistance can be even stronger when change is introduced by outsiders to a group or community. This attribute of community was captured in the play ‘Australia Day’ at the Arts Centre this week – a local bloke, Wally, is inherently reluctant to engage in conversation on climate change with new community member (and local Greens representative) Helen because he feels she ‘looks down her nose’ at him and the rest of the community. 

Perspective is half the game – the Cautious and Disengaged will, I believe, be more receptive to conversation with their neighbours than a flash-mob by outsiders they do not know and who they perceive have no comprehension of their community context. There is a place for this kind of campaigning, but perhaps we need to question whether it has limited capacity for impact on those we most need to empower to action. In a time where denialists are trying to paint climate activists as radicals of the far left, a flash-mob or demonstration can be easy to stereotype and dismiss.

So what might effective community engagement with the Cautious and Disengaged look like? This is where the conversation needs to happen. I would suggest the following as a starting point:

1) Identify members of a community most open to the issue – the Alarmed, The Concerned and the most concerned of the Cautious

2) Equip them with the knowledge and tools they need to engage with their own community – your advocates have to be locals

3) Make your content local and practical:

a) The Problem: Climate Science and Climate Change in a local context

Basically ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ but on a local scale – not images of the flooding of Bangladesh, but explanations of the impact on local livelihoods, agriculture and health

b) The Solution: BZE presentations on the Zero Carbon Australia Plan 

c) Actions: Practical actions for individuals – from divesting their superannuation and shares from unethical funds and investing in Australian Ethical Superannuation, to petitioning their local representative to advocate for the Zero Carbon Australia Plan, to investing in a community owned windfarm – actions which chip away at the economic and political basis for dirty industries and make way for renewables.

4) Support locals in community to continue this advocacy and show the government what they want.

Be prepared for change to be slow moving at first – accept that people want a genuine conversation, for their questions and concerns to be answered respectfully and to move at their own pace to acceptance and action.

Most of all, do not accept the falsehood the denialists have created to divide, frighten and weaken - that this is a debate to which we must respond with more complex, outrageous and dramatic actions.

It is, after all, just a conversation that has to be had. And all great paradigm shifts have been initiated, essentially, by the very modest, very simple, but very powerful tool, of a conversation between people.

Cat Stephens

5/5/12

unicorn farting a rainbow - anon

just one of innumerable graffiti gems in the Sydney College of the Arts toilets 

here’s another (a collaborative work from four different artistes):

“I pissed on the seat but didn’t clean it”
“I pissed on your heart but didn’t mean it”
“I pissed on your mum - she fucking loved it”
“I masturbated into a sock and thought of you”

i agree.

nathaniel russell is great 

www.nathanielrussell.com

When I was about 16 I was absolutely obsessed with Judy Garland. Not so much her films but her life. It began with a viewing of Cabaret, the classic Liza Minnelli film, then the realisation that Judy Garland was her mother, then a reading of extended biographies of the lives of both women.

It seemed an alien idea to me that the young girl who played Dorothy in Wizard of Oz - a film I watched countless times on VHS at my grandmothers growing up - went through so much agony at the hands of her mother, film studios and Hollywood generally.

I felt myself wish her back into her Dorothy role, safe in the land of Oz forever. She lives on there, in that film, as an innocent child for generations to come. I feel the same about other greats of the literary and cinema world, individuals who lived out lives of trauma, but nonetheless created a place for themselves to live unscathed, almost a parallel universe where they went on, as another version of themselves, to live happy lives, suspended in time.

I feel the same way about Sylvia Plath and her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar. While Plath took her life at age 30 in 1963, her ‘alter-ego’ or fictional self from the Bell Jar, Esther Greenwood, did not take her life but emerged from institutionalisation with a new perspective and, I think, strong prospects for a life long lived.

Its almost like the concept of Horcruxes in Harry Potter - these women installed a piece of themselves in something - be it a film or a novel - and in this way they never really died, and perhaps even lived out, on some transcendental plain, a much more peaceful existence.

Men and Women: What is patriotism? Is it love of one’s birthplace, the place of childhood’s recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naivete, we would watch the passing clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not float so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one “an eye should be,” piercing the very depths of our little souls? Is it the place where we would listen to the music of the birds and long to have wings to fly, even as they, to distant lands? Or is it the place where we would sit on Mother’s knee, enraptured by tales of great deeds and conquests? In short, is it love for the spot, every inch representing dear and precious recollections of a happy, joyous and playful childhood? If that were patriotism, few American men of today would be called upon to be patriotic, since the place of play has been turned into factory, mill, and mine, while deepening sounds of machinery have replaced the music of the birds. No longer can we hear the tales of great deeds, for the stories our mothers tell today are but those of sorrow, tears and grief. What, then, is patriotism? “Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels,” said Dr. [Samuel] Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our time, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment in the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the honest workingman… Indeed, conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others. The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that from early infancy the mind of the child is provided with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition… An army and navy represent the people’s toys. To make them more attractive and acceptable, hundreds and thousands of dollars are being spent for the display of toys. That was the purpose of the American government in equipping a fleet and sending it along the Pacific coast, that every American citizen should be made to feel the pride and glory of the United States. The city of San Francisco spent one hundred thousand dollars for the entertainment of the fleet; Los Angeles, sixty thousand; Seattle and Tacoma, about one hundred thousand… Yes, two hundred and sixty thousand dollars were spent on fireworks, theater parties, and revelries, at a time when men, women, and children through the breadth and length of the country were starving in the streets; when thousands of unemployed were ready to sell their labor at any price. What could not have been accomplished with such an enormous sum? But instead of bread and shelter, the children of those cities were taken to see the fleet, that it may remain, as one newspaper said, “a lasting memory for the child.” A wonderful thing to remember, is it not? The implements of civilized slaughter. If the mind of the child is poisoned with such memories, what hope is there for a true realization of human brotherhood? We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations. Such is the logic of patriotism. …Thinking men and women the world over are beginning to realize that patriotism is too narrow and limited a conception to meet the necessities of our time. The centralization of power has brought into being an international feeling of solidarity among the oppressed nations of the world; a solidarity which represents a greater harmony of interests between the workingman of America and his brothers abroad than between the American miner and his exploiting compatriot; a solidarity which fears not foreign invasion, because it is bringing all the workers to the point when they will say to their masters, “Go and do your own killing. We have done it long enough for you.” …The proletariat of Europe has realized the great force of that solidarity and has, as a result, inaugurated a war against patriotism and its bloody specter, militarism. Thousands of men fill the prisons of France, Germany, Russia and the Scandinavian countries because they dared to defy the ancient superstition… America will have to follow suit. The spirit of militarism has already permeated all walks of life. Indeed, I am convinced that militarism is a greater danger here than anywhere else, because of the many bribes capitalism holds out to those whom it wishes to destroy… The beginning has already been made in the schools… Children are trained in military tactics, the glory of military achievements extolled in the curriculum, and the youthful mind perverted to suit the government. Further, the youth of the country is appealed to in glaring posters to join the Army and the Navy. “A fine chance to see the world!” cries the governmental huckster. Thus innocent boys are morally shanghaied into patriotism, and the military Moloch strides conquering through the nation… When we have undermined the patriotic lie, we shall have cleared the path for the great structure where all shall be united into a universal brotherhood — a truly free society.

http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/emma_goldman_patriotism.html

WHY ARE WE YELLING!!?!?