RADIO ECOSHOCK 91 Radio Stations and Growing!Faint Hope Amid Rising Despair
Posted on April 25, 2019, by Radio Ecoshock
NASA scientist Peter Kalmus explains how he slashed 90% of his personal emissions. Senior South American reporter Sue Branford warns the Amazon rainforest, the lungs of the planet, is not just dying. It is being murdered. Then we hear 16-year-old Greta Thunberg‘s speech to the European Parliament.
We live in times of faint hope amid darkening despair. Last week an ancient cathedral burned, a criminal politician got away with it, a climate lawyer super-glued herself to Shell headquarters. Last week we pumped millions of tons of global warming carbon into the air, more species staggered toward extinction, and a 16 year old girl tried to wake Europe and the world. I’m Alex Smith. This is Radio Ecoshock.
► PETER KALMUS – PERSONAL ACTION IS POSSIBLE
► A FEW OF MY NOTES FROM PETER’S BOOK “BEING THE CHANGE”
► MOST CLIMATE SCIENTISTS HAVE GRIEVED ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING…
“I used to see the future as more, I now see it as less.”
► WE SUFFER FROM THE DISEASE OF WANTING
► SUE BRANFORD REPORTS ON THE
MURDER OF THE AMAZON
► GRETA THUNBERG KEEPS TELLING US LIKE IT IS
► MY SMALL CONFESSION
Lately I am discouraged. After 13 years of helping to communicate climate danger directly from the world’s great scientists, we are still drifting toward the black hole of a super-heated world where most species perish. Climate programs are still a niche on the fringe. I’m chronically broke, chronically sore, and wonder why I carry on.
Of course, we are not alone. This story from ClimateHomeNews says a lot: Farhana Yamin, quote: “is a legal expert who has advised various developing countries in climate negotiations… On Tuesday, she told Climate Home News that the Paris Agreement, which she helped negotiate in 2015, was “not delivering”.
“I thought that was my story,” she said. “I thought that the law and science and speaking truth to power worked. That we would be able to act with kindness and in time and on the basis of the precautionary principle and all these lovely ideas that we enshrined in law in the early 80s and 90s.
“And we haven’t done that and that’s because these guys [Shell] knew and have stopped it. It’s not some random delay, this delay has been planned in the system, it’s been financed, it’s been lobbied for. So that’s why today, I feel totally comfortable and I wish I’d done it sooner, had woken up to the power dynamics and not been so naive.”
That is also how I feel about the failure of American Democracy to defend itself against a takeover by big money and foreign governments. I thought there might still be some justice left. Now I feel naive, again.
But remember, while mainstream media carries us on through each country’s passion play of politics and corruption, we humans fill the skies with millions of fuel-laden airplanes, we operate billions of oil and gas engines. We suck up the wild spaces and fill every living belly with plastic.
That is the real cathedral burning down daily, the cathedral of life.Let our prayers for salvation be our actions, large and small.
I’m Alex Smith. Please help support my on-going work with your donation, large or small. Thank you for being brave enough to keep listening to Radio Ecoshock.
We go out with a bit from
Eliza Gilkyson’s fine song,
“The Great Correction”. It fits so well.
“People ’round here don’t know what it means to suffer at the hands or our American dream
turn their backs on the grisly scene, chasing frivolous stunts
They got their God, they got their guns, got their armies and the Chosen Ones,
But we’ll all be burnin’ in the same big sun, when the Great Correction comes.”📢 Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (57 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)