Links tagged “mckibben”

Francis Menton: I can’t say that I am surprised at all to learn that 350.org is permeated by “white supremacy dominance culture.” The simple truth as to what’s going on is that the people who run and fund the place are wealthy, guilty white liberals who have somehow convinced themselves that they can alleviate their own guilt by further impoverishing low income people and members of minority groups. Of course when push comes to shove they “treat [b]lack people like shit.” What I can’t understand is how the DIE activists think that they can make common cause with these people. Unless, perhaps, DIE itself is just another form of meaningless window dressing for public penance of some other wealthy white people.

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There is a "deep need of wealthy people to expiate their guilt over their sins of economic success and comfortable lifestyle." 

Politico: The group that revived a slumbering environmental movement by focusing on big targets was flying high. It was no longer just a plucky collection of friends from a Vermont college and their luminary founder, Bill McKibben. It was a global force. The $800,000 retreat at a five-star luxury resort in Killarney, Ireland in March 2019 proved it. The rise for 350.org had been meteoric. The crash would be, too. ... 

The fallout would lead to mass layoffs, departures, exhaustion, distrust and a protracted labor battle that exists to this day, according to internal documents, third-party audits and communications obtained by POLITICO — which made an attempt to contact all parties referenced in this story — in addition to interviews with 18 current and former staff members, most of whom were granted anonymity to speak candidly. The organization saw its U.S. program office fall from nearly 50 people in 2019 to nine entering this year. ... 

The cutbacks put new stresses on the remaining workers, leading to more departures, including among some people of color who had joined the staff only recently.

JEFF GOODELL of Rolling Stone: "West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin just cooked the planet. I don’t mean that in a metaphorical sense. I mean that literally. Unless Manchin changes his negotiating position dramatically in the near future, he will be remembered as the man who, when the moment of decision came, chose to condemn virtually every living creature on Earth to a hellish future of suffering, hardship, and death."

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Also see: Bill McKibben: Manchin’s no vote on budget bill will alter Earth’s ‘geologic record’ – ‘Most consequential actions ever taken by an individual Senator’

McKibben: "Manchin plans to gut Biden's climate plan, and with it the chances for swift global progress. This is high on the list of most consequential actions ever taken by an individual Senator; you'll be able to see the impact of this vain man in the geologic record."

Michael Mann: “Joe Manchin just launched a hand grenade at Glasgow,” Michael Mann, a distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University, tweeted. “W/out a clean energy standard in the reconciliation package, Biden admin cannot meet pledge of 50% reduction in U.S. carbon emissions by 2030. And international climate negotiations begin to collapse.”

The Sunrise Movement, a youth movement to stop climate change, said in a post on Twitter that “Joe Manchin and the fossil fuel industry don’t care if we make it out of this climate crisis dead or alive. This is #PeopleVsFossilFuels.”

Also see: Rolling Stone: ‘Joe Manchin Just Cooked the Planet’ by not supporting Biden’s massive federal spending bill — ‘Condemned virtually every living creature on Earth to a hellish future of suffering, hardship, & death’

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board wrote Jan. 20 that “[t]he Obama State Department found five separate times that the pipeline would have no material impact on greenhouse gas emissions since crude would still be extracted.” When you choose to be a fanatic about eco-extremism like McKibben, facts that don’t support your preexisting dispositions tend to fall by the wayside.

The Journal proceeded to note that “[k]illing Keystone won’t keep fossil fuels in the ground.” It continued: “It will merely strand billions of dollars in Canadian investment and kill thousands of U.S. jobs while enriching adversaries and alienating an ally.” 

By Steven W. Mosher's review of "Planet of the Humans": "By the midpoint of the movie, Moore has already revealed that each and every form of green energy is a fraud, surviving on popular naivete, government subsidies and the products of industrial civilization. ... If he were to have stopped there, his sins against his fellow eco-leftists might one day be forgiven. But he doesn’t, instead going on to argue that the fraud extends to the very top of the green-energy movement itself.

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Then he moves on to the big boys. He exposes the massive funding that the Sierra Club, 350 and other environmental groups receive from the energy industry, and exposes the connections between leading environmentalists like Al Gore and Wall Street financiers. ...

If you do tune in, bear in mind that Moore is no friend of free markets or individual liberty. His “solution” to reducing humanity’s use of energy is a throwback to twentieth-century population control."

Directed by environmentalist Jeff Gibbs, the film examines the crony capitalism, corruption and outright deceit and fraud being perpetrated by green energy billionaires, politicians and their spokespeople, like Bill McKibben who is prominently featured. ...

The film presents so many examples of green energy fraud and folly: e.g. the insanely low output of wind and sun, corporate green washing, more fossil fuels being burned to prop up green energy systems, false promises of green energy being free and free and clean, all the toxic waste they produce, the mass destruction on precious biotopes, the solar panels are made of sand, biomass is clean and sustainable, to name a few. ...

Renowned figures like Al Gore and Bill McKibben and Sierra Club – once revered as environmental heroes –  suddenly now come across as swindling villains.

In Lansing Michigan, tonnes of concrete and steel were installed to support a football-field size solar panel system that can supply energy for whole 10 homes for a year. In 20 years it’ll be a field of litter, a monument among many of the Gore’s green energy folly. ... 

Also in Vermont hectares of mountain forest were removed as the entire Lowell Mountain ridge was blasted to make way for thousands of tonnes of steel and concrete and 21 monster wind turbines which show up for work only one day a week on average. Gibbs says he is supporter of green energy, but painfully had to admit: “Everywhere I encountered green energy, it wasn’t what it seemed.” The many green energy examples he presents in fact cannot operate without traditional energy sources. “Green energies are not even replacing fossil fuels.”