Feb 2019, Week 2
In the Reader-Submitted issue of The Lee Camp Ledger we highlight the opinions and stories of the community. If you want us to publish a short opinion of yours or an explanation of something in the news that you think is important then send an email with a few paragraphs and a link to LeeCampLedger@protonmail.com.
Please read previous submissions to get an idea of what we’re looking for. We will edit your writing, but only up to a point.
K. Jeffers Tracy, Millenials: A Climate Lifetime
If you're 30 years old, your parents increased CO2 in Earth's atmosphere 65% since 1990. It was their main activity throughout your lifetime.
These atmospheric changes which would normally take the Earth thousands of years, happened over three generations.
Your parents inherited a structure designed to maximize the use of fossil fuels, until every part of their lives, from driving you to lessons, to where they bought your food, to clothing you in synthetic fabrics, to pleasing you with plastic geegaws shipped from the opposite side of the world — accelerated global CO2 emissions.
Their parents, your grandparents, had memories of life in the first decades of 1900, way back in their childhoods, when many regular life activities did not add to excess CO2 emissions.
For example, public water fountains were more prevalent. Our local library added a water-bottle-filling station, and to date it has saved over 6,000 plastic water bottles from the landfill. Good on us, but our Grandfathers would have seen that as — "well, duh!" obvious solution, as water fountains used to be a normal essential of civilized life.
Can you think of structural changes our society could choose to make, which would allow you the freedom to live a fossil free lifestyle, today? Could you propose any of those to your city or town?
Discuss this with a friend, please, to raise consciousness on Climate, or go to KarenClimate.blogspot.com to comment.
B. Kowalczuk, “World Peace Game” - entry for the UN SDG Action Awards
In the 1960's Buckminster Fuller proposed a “great logistics game” and “world peace game” (later shortened to simply, the “World Game”) that was intended to be a tool that would facilitate a comprehensive, anticipatory, design science approach to the problems of the world. The use of “world” in the title obviously refers to Fuller's global perspective and his contention that we now need a systems approach that deals with the world as a whole, and not a piece meal approach that tackles our problems in what he called a “local focus hocus pocus” manner. The entire world is now the relevant unit of analysis, not the city, state or nation. For this reason, World Game programming generally used Fuller's Dymaxion Map for the plotting of resources, trends, and scenarios essential for playing. We are, in Fuller's words, onboard Spaceship Earth, and the illogic of 200 nation state admirals all trying to steer the spaceship in different directions is made clear through the metaphor - as well in Fuller's more caustic assessment of nation states as “blood clots” in the world's global metabolism.
Read his whole submission here.
E. Flame, The Peaceful Revolution
How can we fight back against people who control a vast military, financial, information, and surveillance machine?
-Fiona Jenkins, via Off-Guardian
The problem is even worse than you suggest. Not only do they control a vast military, the whole financial apparatus, a massive and invasive system for information indoctrination and narrative control, and a sprawling inescapable system of surveillance, but, in addition to all this, we the people are entirely dependent on their system for our very survival. As it stands right now, there is no safe place in the world for anyone to escape this system. You are absolutely right to wonder, what can we do?
I disagree however with your proposal that a potentially viable solution is the one expressed by Moti Nissani in his article The Al-Sabbah Brigade. Anyway, his solution is not my solution. I will say, however, that his formulation of the problem we are facing is excellent. His analysis of the situation we find ourselves in is very good, and I encourage anyone who doubts the claims that a revolution is necessary to read the piece. I disagree with him mostly, almost exclusively, on his proposed solution to the problems we are facing.
Read the whole blog post here and if you liked this then also read “Conflict Is Inevitable” by the same author.
Mankh, A Shout-Out To Some Animated Peeps (poem)
Pepé Le Pew claimed he is president of France.
Boris and Natasha claimed they’re the presidents of Russia.
George of the Jungle claimed he is chief of the Amazon rainforest.
SpongeBob SquarePants claimed he’s the boss of the Ocean.
Mr. Magoo claimed he’s the head of the Federal Reserve.
Bart Simpson claimed he is president of the US.
The Jetsons claimed they are in charge of NASA.
Popeye claimed he’s the head of the USDA.
Betty Boop claimed she’s the spokesperson for the #metoo movement.
Alvin the Chipmunk is simply the cutest.
What Gumby and Pokey claimed is between them.
Batman confessed to having nocturnal emissions.
Juan Guaidó claimed he is president of Venezuela.
~ Mankh (Walter E. Harris III)