Category Archives: climate change

2 Post-blizzard Texas Exposés from WSWS

‘Half of Texas without clean water as state and federal governments look the other way’, Chase Lawrence, Feb. 19, 2021  (w/permission, large excerpts)

waiting in line for propane in houston

“More than 14.6 million Texans, about half of the population of the state, remained under a boil-water advisory Friday, according to Texas Commission on Environmental Quality spokeswoman Tiffany Young. This encompasses more than 1,225 water supply systems and 63 percent of Texas counties following the record winter storm which hit the state last weekend.

In a press conference Austin Water Director Greg Meszaros stated that “we know that there are tens of thousands of leaks,” and that the Austin Fire Department responded to “thousands upon thousands of burst pipes.” In Houston, the fire department received almost 5,000 reports of burst pipes.

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X Rebellion scientists v Jem Bendel’s Deep Adaptation

for your consideration….

Excerpts from Robert Hunziker’s July 17, 2020The Sky Is Falling – Yes – No’, counterpunch.org

“The sky is falling is one of the more disturbing thoughts in society today, as to whether climate change is on a fast track collision course with doomsday amidst a collapsing society.

In that regard, according to the details of a scathing review by ScientistsWarning.org (“SW”) of Jem Bendell’s wildly popular “Deep Adaptation” the answer is no, not yet. Society is not ready to keel over, as postulated in Bendell’s paper.

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Connecting the Dots

This is an op-ed by John Steppling from Dec. 21, 2019 at off-guardian.org for your consideration.  We’d been discussing both capitalism and climate change recently, and although this all seems so utterly beside the point now given the ever-increasing US threats to increased war on Iran (now even nuclear war).  But I’d said I’d post it, so I am; I’ll offer a couple things at the end.  As John’s kindly given me permission to republish all that he writes, I’ll post it all.


Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps.”
Lenin – Letters from Afar
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Two reTweets for your consideration

First, from the Extinction Rebellion newsletter’s ‘Drones Are Changing Asymmetrical Warfare, September 18, 2019, Max Wilbert, deep green resistance news service

The following scheme is deranged, dangerous, and as disgusting as any thing I’ve heard promoted in a long time.  In fact, after having worked on this for a couple days, before bed last night I’d tossed my cookies when the images flashed in my mind like a neon light again.  It’s also insanely cavalier given how much of the world depends on oil for heating, cooling, and cooking through no fault of their own, and how many economies are based on oil.  Whose refineries does Wilbert imagine drone bombing next?
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terrifying numbers of fires ablaze in the Amazon rainforest


‘Wildfires rage throughout the Amazon rainforest’,
Bryan Dyne, 23 August 2019

“Satellite imagery reveals that at least a quarter of the Amazon rainforest is on fire or covered in soot and ash across the four Brazilian Amazonian states: Amazonas, Rondônia, Mato Grosso and Pará.
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a Marxist critique of the Green New Deals and Extinction Rebellion

‘Selling Extinction is a short introduction to the capitalist notion of a “Green New Deal”, the NGOs that support it and the recent Extinction Rebellion protests in London.’

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Venezuelan Ecosocialism

Featuring the following essay works well for me, as the triple themes I hold near and dear to my heart are represented: the coup against Nicolás Maduro (and past ones against Hugo Chavez), media bias, and ecosocialism.  Rather than bring some of the ghastly news in the next-generation attempts to overthrow his regime, I’ll focus on this and bring the rest another day.  And happy π day to all.

‘The Path to Climate Justice Passes Through Caracas’, March 9, 2019, counterpunch.org, David Schwartzman & Quincy Saul

In their Fighting the Media War section, the authors quote Karl Marx calling it “the war of calumny undertaken by the lying power of the civilised world,” and extras, describing the media war against the International Workingmen’s Association, which later became known as The First International.
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Scurrying Fascist Cockroaches

…is the title of a recent essay of John Steppling’s, and I contacted him at his website  (http://john-steppling.com/) to ask if given its length and breadth if I might use more of it than is strictly Fair Use as neither the Café nor c99% are for profit.  He wrote back and kindly said, “Use what you want from any of my writings”.  So I’ll most all of his Feb. 25 essay at DissidentVoice, although there’s a version at Counterpunch as well.
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Green Capitalism Aglow

There seem to have been quite a number of past iterations of Ocasio-Cortez & Co.’s #GreenNewDeal, as she now indicates, and offers her ‘Submitted’ One (text version is here).  This is Senator Markey’s Resolution (pdf) with ten cosponsors.

But here’s the main thing: the GND doesn’t confront the fossil fuel industry, but enables it instead.  Ecosocialists first came on my radar while covering the Rio 2012 sustainability conference.  Indigenous groups from Mexico, Central and South America had caravanned to the global elite conference, but weren’t allowed inside, so they held their own remarkable side conferences.  The Bolivian 2010 Peoples Agreement of Cochabamba was presented (as well as other heady Indigenous documents); it was the day I’d first understood the true evils of capitalism.  From their metaphorical second cousins the Indigenous Environmental Network:
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a current climate chaos compendium: Part III: water

This part will be full of horrifying facts and news, but my theory is ‘it’s better to know than to not know’.  Given its intensity, you may want to begin by wrapping your spirits and psyches in some sort of protective bubble that you’ve found helpful in the past.  Many readers will prefer ‘hope’ to ‘hopelessness’, and more on that at the bottom, but I did stick in a music video at the end that might be a bit of a tonic.
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a current climate chaos compendium: Part II

subtitled: They have apps for that! 

(part I is here (café version), (c99% version))

Our Climate is Changing Rapidly; It’s Time to Talk about Geoengineering’, futurism.com, Jan. 12, 2018.  The author discusses several high-tech methods afoot, deconstructs most of them as to the dangers of unintended consequences, costs, and what the actual bio-chemical science of some of the ‘solutions’ would wreak. To save quoting extensively, I’ll borrow their graphics, then bring a few lines from a 2017 piece at the Guardian as explanations.
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a current climate chaos compendium: Part I

First, from Robert Hunziker’s  “State of the Climate – It’s Alarming!’, counterpunch, ‘June 15, 2018, (in which  he actually does explain his use of the exclamation point in his title.)
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Ecomodernism v Ecosocialism (Ian Angus’s version)

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the 100% ‘renewable’ energy capitalist climate saviors


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#tracking irma on twitter

Stay safe, Café denizens in FL and the Carolinas.  But oh, those island folks will be feeling the hell of Irma for certain.

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Scientactically-Told Truths

Raining capital in nineteen words:
They used to dub the leaders Great. Not because they were good guys & gals, but because they achieved the extreme. On horses. Call that ancient history along with the mid-twentieth century, but it’s not just recently that words like “marvelous” have been taken for “wonderful” and almost never WTF?! Such simple choices, little turns of phrase, sound uttered self-consciously if you listen really closely, as if there’s an ambiguity-minimum dishonesty requirement set forth in The Really Real Book of the Law somewhere. At any rate, quality propaganda requires retail twisting of truth as well as wholesale dissemination of dubious modern mythology. It’s when words matter most.

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Don’t worry, be happy! The Dems™ are on the Climate Change Case!

(Note Obama’s campaign logo on their ‘protest’ signs)
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A Contrarian’s Take on the Earth Day Marches and the Mythology of Science

by anthony freda
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holy hell! neil is ann gorsuch’s son!

reagan-button
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Voices of Changes from Standing Rock; the Efficacy of Peaceful Prayer, Direct Action as Prayerful, and more

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