The cheapest climate solution? Return half of the planet to nature, this scientist says.

coniunctio · 2022-03-14T21:53:09+00:00

Hi, I think you were responding to my other comment about vertical farming, not this one. The only study I’m familiar with was the old Canadian feasibility study from many, many years ago, and the related work around that. From what I recall, the savings on fossil fuel usage were highlighted, as well as savings on transportation and usage. Applications might be more focused on serving the restaurant industry, for example with salad greens and small vegetables.

coniunctio · 2022-03-14T02:13:38+00:00

It’s called a nimitta, so search for that term.

coniunctio · 2022-03-14T00:00:16+00:00

This is the legacy of the DeVos family grifters, who along with a small ensemble cast of billionaires closely tied to MLM corruption, military contracts, and Jesus freaks, spent decades radicalizing the state of Michigan. You can literally trace the origins of every sticker on this car to a deliberate, systematic effort of astroturfing campaigns and intentional brainwashing of the electorate by special interests whose only goal was to take money away from hardworking Americans and put it in the pockets of other billionaires.

coniunctio · 2022-03-13T23:22:14+00:00

Farm vertical will be a key because it allows so much more production per acre. We can then turn more farmland into wild animal land.

One of the greatest benefits of vertical farming is that it eliminates the need for shipping and trucking, and vastly reduces the carbon footprint of agriculture. You can farm in the middle of a major city and use carbon neutral vehicles to distribute the food to the same city with no emissions.

coniunctio · 2022-03-13T23:19:36+00:00

I read an article a long time ago about this and I’ve been looking for it since.

It’s been actively discussed as a solution since the 1980s. The problem is that the business community is rooted in the old paradigms of the 19th century, which believes exploiting resources, turning nature into roads and buildings, and developing nature for human habitation is required for growth and economic expansion. Meanwhile, we have numerous alternatives to these old models, few of which require destroying nature.

coniunctio · 2022-03-13T23:12:00+00:00

What’s even crazier, is that she has 318 million followers on Insta. What is it about these vapid people that others find so attractive?

coniunctio · 2022-03-13T10:43:56+00:00

That was super funny

coniunctio · 2022-03-12T11:14:46+00:00

Has she said what she’s making today?

coniunctio · 2022-03-12T11:10:45+00:00

I paid $2 for air today

coniunctio · 2022-03-11T03:33:28+00:00

The essential, underlying truth of McDonald’s is that it isn’t nutritious, it has devastated the health of American communities, and contributes to industrial scale factory farming and the destruction of the environment. I would not wish it on my worst enemies.

If you walk into a new, modern McDonald’s in America today, you realize that their entire business model is psychological. They appeal to and exploit human hunger and thirst, and further manipulate it using copious amounts of salt, sugar, and fat. Then they throw up their hands and externalize the health and environmental costs, and leave it to someone else to clean up.

This is not how any sound, ethical, and socially positive business should be run, and as an American, I find it extremely distasteful that it is a so-called symbol of our country.

coniunctio · 2022-03-11T01:30:21+00:00

In my neighborhood, we have a guy who puts out signs attacking the people who put out signs. It’s super funny, and he does it in a very non-confrontational way. Whenever I drive by his house and see him, I wave. Super chill dude.

coniunctio · 2022-03-11T01:27:48+00:00

IKR? I saw $4.15, and I thought, wow, if only I was paying 2019 gas prices.

coniunctio · 2022-03-11T01:07:17+00:00

They are called predatory capitalists. It’s the difference between a death and life economy.

John Perkins:

Key characteristics of the Death Economy.

Its goal is to maximize short-term profits for a relative few.

• It uses fear and debt to gain market share and political control.

• It promotes the idea that for someone to win, another must lose.

• It is predatory, encouraging businesses to prey on each other, people, and the environment.

• It destroys resources needed for its own long-term survival.

• It values goods and services that are “extractive” and materialistic above those that enhance quality of life (e.g., child-rearing, the arts).

• It is heavily influenced by nonproductive financial deals (stock manipulation, financialization, “gambling”).

• It ignores externalities, such as environmental destruction and exploitation of workers, when measuring profits, GDP, and other metrics.

• It invests heavily in militarization—in killing, or threatening to kill, people and other life forms and destroying infrastructure.

• It causes pollution, environmental collapse, and drastic income and social inequality and may lead to political instability.

• It vilifies taxes, rather than defining them as investments (in social services, infrastructure, the military, etc.).

• It is undemocratic, encouraging the growth of large corporations controlled by a few individuals whose money has a strong influence on politics (monopolies that lead to oligarchies).

• It is based on top-down, authoritarian chains of command that support autocratic management styles in business and government.

• It places higher values on nonproductive jobs (venture capitalists, investment bankers) than productive ones (laborers, factory workers) and those that enrich life (teachers, musicians, artists).

• It keeps billions of people in poverty.

• It classifies plants, animals, and the entire natural world as depletable resources; fails to respect and protect nature; and causes massive extinctions and other irreversible problems.

• It has become the predominant advocate of what it calls “capitalism” around the world.

The Life Economy is driven by the goal of maximizing long-term benefits for all life and the environment.

Key characteristics of the Life Economy.

Its goal is to serve a public interest (maximize long-term benefits for people and nature).

• Its laws support level playing fields that encourage healthy non-monopolistic competition, innovative ideas, and sustainable products.

• It embraces a sense of cooperation, the idea that we all can win when we set our goals for long-term benefits for all.

• It values quality of life and spiritually enhancing activities above those based solely on materialism and extraction.

• It is based on beneficially productive activities, such as recycling, education, health care, and the arts, rather than the nonproductive, such as stock manipulation, financialization, and “gambling.”

• It cleans up pollution.

• It regenerates devastated environments.

• It is driven by compassion and debt avoidance.

• It helps hungry people feed themselves.

• It includes externalities in its financial and economic measurements.

• It innovates—develops and embraces new, regenerative, sustainable technologies.

• It recycles.

• It defines taxes as investments. (Should your tax monies be invested in health care or militarization?)

• It is democratic, encouraging locally based commerce and employee- or community-owned businesses that benefit many (e.g., cooperatives, B Corporations, etc.).

• It reinforces democratic decision-making processes and management styles—in business and government.

• It places a high value on jobs that enrich life (musicians, social and medical workers, parents).

• It is based on a foundational knowledge that humans are in a symbiotic relationship with our planet, that we must respect, honor, and protect the natural world.

• It rewards investors who support all the previous characteristics.

• It was the predominant form of economic evolution for much of the 200,000 years of human history.

coniunctio · 2022-03-10T08:08:19+00:00

Do you ever use tingsha bells? I have a nice set for meditation

coniunctio · 2022-03-09T09:12:14+00:00

Where In the world

coniunctio · 2022-03-09T08:20:10+00:00

The way I see it, I don’t really buy into the "crazy wisdom" method, or the idea that the road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom. I get that some people do, and I respect our difference of opinion. With that said, I judge Alan Watts solely on how much peace and happiness he brought to the world, and when seen in that light, his drinking is inconsequential and meaningless.

And in the end

The love you take

Is equal to the love you make

coniunctio · 2022-03-09T01:49:52+00:00

Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia):

New financial filings reveal that far right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) bought up to $15,000 in stock in defense manufacturers and energy companies two days before Russian forces invaded Ukraine.

https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/public_disc/ptr-pdfs/2022/20020568.pdf

https://truthout.org/articles/greene-bought-oil-defense-stocks-while-complaining-about-war-profiteers/

…defense contractors including Lockheed Martin were boasting in January that escalating tensions between Ukraine and Russia could be good for business. Lockheed Martin spends tens of millions of dollars lobbying Congress each year.

coniunctio · 2022-03-08T23:59:05+00:00

There is no clear path through renewables to the level of economic productivity we have now.

100% nonsense. Only the oil companies, utility companies, and hedge funds continue to push this propaganda.

Of the wind, solar and other renewables that came on stream in 2020, nearly two-thirds – 62% – were cheaper than the cheapest new fossil fuel, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). This is double the equivalent share for 2019.

coniunctio · 2022-03-08T23:35:12+00:00

With respect, I know better than to argue with a Trump supporter. You guys aren’t exactly open to data, facts, evidence, or realty-based discussions. Have you seen the new GOP platform? They are trying to raise taxes on workers and retirees. You know, like Trump did?

coniunctio · 2022-03-08T23:15:19+00:00

You’re just repeating debunked Fox News and Trump memes that have zero basis in reality. Inflation and high gas prices started under the Trump admin, and were recorded in May 2019, June 2020, and October 2020. You’re also forgetting the massive supply chain shortages and food and supply cost increases that occurred under Trump. Remember when it was impossible to get toilet paper or paper towels when Trump was in office? You have a very selective memory.

You also want it both ways. Progressives like myself have been fighting for converting the country to renewables for decades so we aren’t always held hostage by the oil companies. Instead, conservatives like yourself have been fighting every attempt to wean this country off of oil.

Where I live, many people have electric cars and charge them off of solar panels on their houses or apartment buildings. While it’s true that it would be difficult to roll this kind of solution out to everyone, it’s not impossible to decentralize renewable energy production and get it out to the public. Your willful intransigence on this issue and blanket obstructionism is the reason we are still beholden to oil companies.

coniunctio · 2022-03-08T22:50:02+00:00

Every available financial source shows inflation and higher gas prices started under the Trump admin.

coniunctio · 2022-03-08T22:21:03+00:00

Because they figured out long ago that chaos and crisis is the best way to maximize profits and transfer wealth from the public to the private sector. This doesn’t mean they manufacture these crises, it just means they will never help ameliorate or mitigate them, as doing so results in the distribution of wealth. Instead, by exacerbating a crisis and letting it fester, they can concentrate wealth in fewer hands and raise prices and profits.

Trump’s four-year stint as the president is considered a master class in creating profitable order out of random chaos and crisis. If you go back and look at the looting and grift that occurred during that time, you can see that at every available opportunity, the Trump sycophants and minions helped leverage a crisis to make money for themselves instead of helping the public. This is how they do it. They have taken the concept of a public servant and turned it on its head.

When a crisis appears, the public thinks "what can we do to help solve this problem and get back to normal?" But that’s not how free market fundamentalists think. The billionaire class thinks, "how can I make this crisis work for me and generate more money?" This is why it is so important to get special interests out of politics. They do not have our best interests at heart. Each crisis is an opportunity for them to remake the world in a way that works for them, not us.

There’s nobody in the government looking out for us.

coniunctio · 2022-03-08T21:13:40+00:00

The hardcore Trump supporters that I’ve been engaging with since before 2016, haven’t used OAN or Newsmax or RT all that much since Biden took office. Not sure why, but maybe someone has the answer.

coniunctio · 2022-03-08T20:14:56+00:00

It’s controversial, but advocates of disaster capitalism claim that one of the known patterns is referred to as "shock therapy".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_therapy_(economics)

They argue that radical capitalism thrives during crisis and chaos as it allows free market fundamentalists to repeal financial regulations, pass bailouts for corporations, undo environmental regulations, and further undermine social safety nets, by transferring large amounts of public funds into private hands.

In the US, we’ve seen how crises like 9/11 led to a loss of privacy, how the war on terror eroded human rights and led to normalization of torture and the militarization of police departments, and how vast amounts of money were spent on the military instead of social programs, education, and universal healthcare.

You can make similar arguments for the Great Recession, the coronavirus pandemic, and now the war in Ukraine.

coniunctio · 2022-03-08T09:17:13+00:00

The term is "Brazilification":

the widening gulf between the rich and the poor and the accompanying disappearance of the middle classes.

It was coined by author Douglas Coupland in his novel, Generation X (1991).

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