Hi Helen and everyone,
All of these are good and thank you! I do worry about focusing on the PM;
I think this is a problem that's world-wide and all of us, all of our
"leaders" all of ourselves, are responsible as well. We're reaping the
whirlwind, almost literally.
The fauna deaths in Australia are far worse than believed; ABC is now
covering them. I taught for a year in Tasmania; they're hit, even there,
which has been a far more moist environment.
I'd also urge people - somehow - to put this, and our lives, in
perspective; I've become close to suicidal, many other people the same,
and we don't help things that way. Australia is the focal point in a way
for our hatred of Trump, but the phenomenon is global, global, global, and
T. and Xi and god knows who else don't give a damn. We have to act on all
fronts, but I'm not even sure what that action is. Even places like our
West Virginia are being destroyed (coal and fracking there). And we're all
part of the problem; even this laptop I'm writing on has a lot of
plastic..
Best, goddess help us, Alan
On Sun, 5 Jan 2020, Helen Varley Jamieson wrote:
hi alan,
it is truly devastating & catastrophic what is happening in australia, &
outrageous that the government there continues to be so fucking stupid. i
heard that scott morrison (the prime minister, who chose to have a hawaiian
holiday in the midst of it all) would fly out to china to discuss trade
negotiations, including coal mining, immediately after meeting with fire
chiefs. his inability to make the connections is staggering.
i have many family and friends in australia and everyone is affected in some
way; some have lost property, everyone is affected by the smoke, my family &
friends in new zealand are also seeing and breathing the smoke. yes, an
estimated half a billion birds, animals & insects have died. and the fires
are still burning, many out of control, and no end in sight. this level of
catastrophe has been predicted - but not for another decade; everything is
accelerating.
what can we do? suzon posted this list of donation
links:https://www.abc.net.au/classic/read-and-watch/news/bushfire-donations/11823
676 - there are plenty of places to make financial donations & if you are
in australia there are practical things you can do to help.
we can write to scott morrison (@scottmorrisonmp on twitter) and other
australian politicians, urging them to take the climate emergency seriously
(australia is one of the worst countries in the world in terms of climate
policy:https://www.sbs.com.au/news/australia-s-climate-change-policy-ranked-57-out
-of-61-countries)
a related campaign that is well worth supporting is the long struggle
against the adani coal mine - is a major fossil-fuel extraction project
which will contribute massively to global warming as well as being totally
unethical. the queensland government illegally rescinded native title to
allow the mine to go ahead, & the wangan & jagalingou indigenous people have
been bankrupted trying to stop the mine.
https://wanganjagalingou.com.au/pledge-to-stand-with-us/
https://www.acf.org.au/email_siemens_global
it's hard to wish a happy new year in the face of all of this (not to
mention the tragic zoo fire in germany, 30 primates killed thanks to
someone's carelessness) but i can only hope that the scale of devastation
will force politicians to accept that they must act, urgently, and that we
will enter into a decade of positive change ...
h xx
On 03.01.20 20:26, Alan Sondheim wrote:
(Apologies for a 2nd post today; I think the situation warrants
it. How do we, as a community, respond to this? To the approx.
480m killed? To a Ballard future collapsing around us? How do we
stop from harming ourselves, how can we act intelligently with
this like this - on top of all the other horrors? Because this
is going to spread of course; the ash on NZ glaciers
accelerating melt. What do we do? What do we do as a community?)
Fires in Australia
http://www.alansondheim.org/Victoria.jpg (map)
http://www.alansondheim.org/Victoria.mp3 (radio)
In Pennsylvania, we had house-destroying floods, mine fires,
highly polluted air. We went back and explored the area (around
Wilkes-Barre/Kingston) last April. I've had my own things
destroyed in floods several times, oddly including a storage
container in Los Angeles, a closet in Providence, my parents'
house in Kingston. But nothing, ever, like this. Reading
Ballard,
the world's future is spelled out as a scenario for now.
Teaching
"The Year 3000" back in the early 70s, I was face-to-face with
the statistics. I've continue to talk and write and think about
this. I was influenced by post-modern geography, and by the
collapsed flora of the Carboniferous/Pennsylvanian, which I
collected. I grew up negative. I've been following the fires and
started interviewing a few people by Skype, people from eastern
Australia. I'm trying to make sense of this, trying to find
optimism in a situation which I see as the beginning of
something
problematic, horrifying. (I'll send the interviews out to the
lists.) I listened late last night (here) to the radio - a short
segment is above. The map gives some indication of locations.
There was a report that 480 million animals have died in the
fires. It's inconceivable, as is the number.
Best, hopefully, Alan
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helen varley jamieson
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http://www.creative-catalyst.com
http://www.upstage.org.nz
web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 347-383-8552
current text http://www.alansondheim.org/ws.txt
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