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Editor: Dr. G.G. Parikh | Associate Editor: Neeraj Jain | Managing Editor: Guddi
On October 31, 2018, a select group of UK scientists launched a Declaration of Rebellion against the UK government at the Houses of Parliament: “For criminal inaction in the face of climate change catastrophe and ecological collapse.”
According to the scientists, now is the time to act as a planetary emergency is already upon us.
Nearly 100 British scientists, academics and writers are willing to go to jail to make their point that anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change is a surefire provocateur that’s already starting to decimate ecosystems.
Additionally, these scientists also launched ExtinctionRebellion, an international movement that will use mass civil disobedience to force governments to immediately establish a WWII-type effort to fight climate change.
Yes, civil disobedience is the way forward, as the group promises: “Repeated acts of disruptive, non-violent civil disobedience” if the government does not respond seriously to demands, and they anticipate “there will be mass arrests”.
Similar in tone to early American rebels like ‘Give me Liberty or Give me Death” Patrick Henry of American Revolution circa late 18th century, these rebel scientists are willing to make personal sacrifices, to be arrested, to go to prison, as they firmly believe it’s proper to start a planetary emergency global effort in the UK where the industrial revolution commenced. Essentially, full circle back to the beginnings of the fossil fuel era.
According to ExtinctionRebellion the sixth mass extinction is already strutting its mettle in spunky fashion. For example, a recent Worldwide Fund for Nature report claims a wipeout of 60% of animal populations has already occurred over the past 50 years alone.
All of which begs the provocative question: What does it imply for the next 50 years as climate change / global warming indicators firmly crank up to rapid-acceleration mode, in some cases exponentially? Thus, the next 50 yrs zoom-zoom will be supercharged. What then?
For example, an extremely alarming new study, ‘Climate-Driven Declines in Arthropod Abundance Restructure a Rainforest Food Web’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals a mind-boggling cataclysmic falloff, up to 60-fold, of the “food web” in tropical rainforests with temps up 2.0-to-2.5°C over baseline, indicative of an ecosystem in early stages of disintegration.
A falloff of “up to 60-fold” is extremely difficult to fathom. It’s almost like an out of body experience from far above, watching rainforests, over time, crumble into thousands of piles of grey dust in a dark nightmarish dream sequence.
The climate is changing much faster than nature normally functions because human-charged climate change works against the regular flow of nature, leaving it choking /gasping / disintegrating in the dust.
Ecosystems from the Arctic to Antarctica are starting to crumble right before our eyes, but nobody lives where it happens. So, nobody sees it first-hand, as for example:
Signatories to the Declaration of Rebellion include established names in academics like Professor Danny Dorling of University of Oxford and Dr. Ian Gibson, former chair of Parliamentary Science and Technology Select Committee. Green Party MP Caroline Lucas is also a signatory. Other backers are probably better-known for their achievements beyond science, including the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, now the Master of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge, and the journalist George Monbiot.
Cry of desperation
Another supporter is Andrew Simms of the New Weather Institute. In an interview, he stated: “This is almost a cry of desperation. People are bewildered. But almost every profound change in British society, from the abolition of slavery to the improvement of shipping safety, has involved people risking arrest.
“The signs I am getting from the UK government now are that it is a reckless administration putting its own people and others at risk by putting climate change virtually nowhere.
“The Declaration alone won’t bring about change: we’ll need people working practically to make change happen on the ground. But we need ExtinctionRebellion as part of the mosaic of responses to the extremely precarious situation we now find ourselves in.”
Simms, convinced that an entirely new potential for rapid societal change now exists, says: “We know what’s needed, and the resources to do it are there. ExtinctionRebellion is one example of how new ideas can spread quickly and rapid shift—and radical action—can come closer.”
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Janata Weekly is India’s oldest independent socialist weekly.
Ever since its founding in 1946, Janata has voiced its principled dissent against all conduct and practice that is detrimental to the cherished values of nationalism, democracy, secularism and socialism, while upholding the integrity and the ethical norms of healthy journalism. For more than seventy years now, week after week, it has continued to analyse the changes taking place in the country and the world from a socialist standpoint, and thus promote the spread of socialist ideology in the country.
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