Questions Nov 2-4

GND -190

• The big question today, Nov.4, is of course: how do you feel? And how does the climate future look to you now?
• Are you ever called a "spoiled tree hugger who lacks a proper cause," or the like? What is (or would be) your response? 150
• Were you aware of carbon offsets as a form of "green colonialism" and "green human rights abuses"? Should carbon offsets be repudiated entirely? 152
• Do you agree that war, poverty, racism, and the climate crisis, and their remedies, are interconnected? 153
•  What's the best way to confront and counter stereotyping, "othering," and "orientalism"? 155

• Why don't we hear so much anymore about mountaintop removal? 156
• COMMENT: "Growth is our religion, our way of life." 158
• Is it a form of essentialism that lets capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy "off the hook" to label this era the Anthropocene? 158-9
• Is it enough to think seven generations ahead, to be a "good ancestor"? 

It's time for humankind to recognize a disturbing truth: we have colonized the future. In wealthy countries, especially, we treat it like a distant colonial outpost where we can freely dump ecological damage and technological risk as if there was nobody there... It could be hard to grasp the scale of this injustice, so look at it this way: There are 7.7 billion people alive today. That's just a tiny fraction of the estimated 100 billion people who have lived and died over the past 50,000 years. But both of these are vastly outnumbered by the nearly seven trillion people who will be born over the next 50,000 years, assuming current birth rates stabilize. In the next two centuries alone, tens of billions of people will be born, amongst them, all your grandchildren, and their grandchildren and the friends and communities on whom they'll depend. How will all these future generations look back on us and the legacy we're leaving for them? ...over the past decade, a global movement has started to emerge of people committed to decolonizing the future and extending our time horizons towards a longer now. This movement is still fragmented and as yet has no name. I think of its pioneers as time rebels. They can be found at work in Japan's visionary Future Design movement, which aims to overcome the short-term cycles that dominate politics by drawing on the principle of seventh generation decision making practiced by many Native Americans communities...How is it that other species have learned to survive and thrive for 10,000 generations or more? Well, it's by taking care of the place that would take care of their offspring, by living within the ecosystem in which they're embedded, by knowing not to foul the nest, which is what humans have been doing with devastating effects at an ever-increasing pace and scale over the past century... (transcript)

• Any COMMENT on the "aridity line," the "brutal landscape of the climate crisis"? 162
• COMMENT (with respect to the Paris Accords "lie," the "sacrifice zone mentality, and xenophobia generally):  "Home is everywhere on this planet." 165-168
• Do you like Klein's definition of a green job? 179
• Do you like Klein's reply to the charge that the Leap (or the GND) is too ambitious? 180
• When Klein says "attempts to sever [indigenous] relationships to the land were so systematic," including schools and missionaries, does this imply to you a deliberate conspiracy or an just an unacknowledged and unexamined prejudice? 189 

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GND -148

• Do the risks associated with any of the geoengineering ideas mentioned by Klein seem acceptable to you? 105
• At what point in the next decade should we decide that it's too late to "change our behavior"? 109
• Have we yet reached a point at which you think your being a "citizen" may soon require you to be arrested? 112
• What kinds of "radical and immediate de-growth strategies" have a chance of working in the US? 115
• How will we know that the current climate movement has become a "revolution"? 118

• Klein says the climate crisis was hatched at the end of the 80s, but wasn't it already on the horizon at the beginning of the 70s with the first Earth Day etc.? What do you think prevented the earlier ecology movement from forestalling the era of deregulated capitalism? 120
• Is there any way to free ourselves from being "trapped in the forever now" of social media (without actually giving up social media)? 121
• What part does shopping play in forming our/your identity, community, and self-expression? 122
• Is our culture still moving too fast for us to appreciate the urgency of climate action? 123
• Do you attempt to discover the "abusive conditions under which [your] clothing and gadgets were manufactured," or do you try not to think about it? 126
  
• Do you plan eventually to "stop somewhere" and really get to know it as your "homeplace"? 127-8

The concept of limitlessness is a fantasy, and so is the notion that we can have limitless economic growth. The concepts of enough and plenty have been replaced with “all you can get” and “all you can make.” The Thought of Limits in a Prodigal Age

"We don't have a right to ask whether we're going to succeed or not. The only thing we have a right to ask is, what's the right thing to do?"

• Any comment on "Germany's energy transition"? 130
• Is New York City on track to reach its 2025 climate goals?
• Do you agree that you cannot do anything, as an "atomized individual," to change the world? 132-3
• Have you supported a CSA program? What was your experience with it? 134
• "Think globally and act locally": is that wrong? 135
• Are all humans equally capable of "conversion," ecological or otherwise? 137f.
• Revisiting the question of "stewardship," do you agree that it's more rooted in duty than in passion and love? 142-3
• What does intersectionality mean to you? 148