![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
This is a depressing post. You are warned.
It's been a week.
I've been trying to go to bed earlier, and in truth I climb into bed, read for about 15 minutes and then just about fall asleep. It might be the cold, it might just be general exhaustion.
Tonight, I turned on the gas heater; I've been trying not to, but it was just too damn cold in the lounge and I simply couldn't face it. I wish I'd set up my bedroom with a teeny tiny desk, because then I could carry my computer in there and sit and write, while warming up my room which would carry through to bedtime. As it is, each room needs to be individually warmed in order to spend any time in it. And it's still cold.
The lounge room was 11C before I turned the gas heater on - got it to 18C, then switched to the electric bar heater. But the house bleeds heat - or absorbs it in the summer. Hence the need for better insulation. The part I'm worrying myself sick about is the actual work and products required for it. Also: the fact that we knew this needed to be done years ago and I dithered about it until everything costs more.
I know, we can't change the past, we can only go on. The best time to insulate the house was seven years ago, the next best time is this year. And so on.
I read something last night that talked about why everything is looking bad for the Democrats in the US (and, really, it applies to all centrist groups across western democracies): people overall feel better about their individual situations, but they feel worse about where society is headed. And pessimism about the future means either disengagement or anger; disengagement where someone is less likely to act, and anger where someone is more likely to act - whether in revenge against the people perceived to have caused the loss of hope or in hope to make things better. But those likely to act in revenge are more than those likely to act in hope; it's easier to give in to the negative than to stake a future on the fragility of hope.
So we have inflation happening here in Australia, petrol (gas) prices rising, and energy (coal and natural gas) prices going through the roof just as an Antarctic front hits the south-eastern states. Our previous federal government (conservative) spent 9 years refusing to believe climate change was a thing, sabotaging any profits we as a country might have made off coal, gas, and oil industry, and now just as everything's at a turning point, a lot of people are going to freeze through the winter, many of them still homeless thanks to the 2019 bushfires and the 2022 floods.
The thing is, what the angry people want is forever lost to them. They want the times of prosperity and thoughtless pleasure back. They want the 'freedom' they imagined they had, never seeing the bill coming due. They don't want to think about how their land is stolen, their history was built on the broken backs and bodies of a million 'inferiors', their consumption isn't sustainable, their comforts have limits.
We've been lying to ourselves for decades now, putting our future on the 'never-never' as they used to say. So the lies are coming to roost, and when they do...
A lot of people are going to give up on the dream of the time of prosperity and thoughtless pleasure, they'll just fight and kill and destroy other people for the hope of a dream that's gone.
--
If I could say anything to our current government, I'd probably tell them:
It's been a week.
I've been trying to go to bed earlier, and in truth I climb into bed, read for about 15 minutes and then just about fall asleep. It might be the cold, it might just be general exhaustion.
Tonight, I turned on the gas heater; I've been trying not to, but it was just too damn cold in the lounge and I simply couldn't face it. I wish I'd set up my bedroom with a teeny tiny desk, because then I could carry my computer in there and sit and write, while warming up my room which would carry through to bedtime. As it is, each room needs to be individually warmed in order to spend any time in it. And it's still cold.
The lounge room was 11C before I turned the gas heater on - got it to 18C, then switched to the electric bar heater. But the house bleeds heat - or absorbs it in the summer. Hence the need for better insulation. The part I'm worrying myself sick about is the actual work and products required for it. Also: the fact that we knew this needed to be done years ago and I dithered about it until everything costs more.
I know, we can't change the past, we can only go on. The best time to insulate the house was seven years ago, the next best time is this year. And so on.
I read something last night that talked about why everything is looking bad for the Democrats in the US (and, really, it applies to all centrist groups across western democracies): people overall feel better about their individual situations, but they feel worse about where society is headed. And pessimism about the future means either disengagement or anger; disengagement where someone is less likely to act, and anger where someone is more likely to act - whether in revenge against the people perceived to have caused the loss of hope or in hope to make things better. But those likely to act in revenge are more than those likely to act in hope; it's easier to give in to the negative than to stake a future on the fragility of hope.
So we have inflation happening here in Australia, petrol (gas) prices rising, and energy (coal and natural gas) prices going through the roof just as an Antarctic front hits the south-eastern states. Our previous federal government (conservative) spent 9 years refusing to believe climate change was a thing, sabotaging any profits we as a country might have made off coal, gas, and oil industry, and now just as everything's at a turning point, a lot of people are going to freeze through the winter, many of them still homeless thanks to the 2019 bushfires and the 2022 floods.
The thing is, what the angry people want is forever lost to them. They want the times of prosperity and thoughtless pleasure back. They want the 'freedom' they imagined they had, never seeing the bill coming due. They don't want to think about how their land is stolen, their history was built on the broken backs and bodies of a million 'inferiors', their consumption isn't sustainable, their comforts have limits.
We've been lying to ourselves for decades now, putting our future on the 'never-never' as they used to say. So the lies are coming to roost, and when they do...
A lot of people are going to give up on the dream of the time of prosperity and thoughtless pleasure, they'll just fight and kill and destroy other people for the hope of a dream that's gone.
--
If I could say anything to our current government, I'd probably tell them:
"You've inherited a shit-show. The time to degrowth was ten years ago when you last lost power, but since you're here now, we've got a lot of work to do.
Our world - our society - is failing. We had 50 years of good times, growth, technological advances - all the good stuff. But that's not going to continue forever. Of the eight key environmental indicators that need to be kept stable to keep environmental catastrophe from taking over us, six have been breached and it will take decades to wind them back - if they even can be. All indicators are that two failing are a bad thing for humanity.
Basically, our society is going down, care of Mother Earth. We killed the goose that laid the golden eggs, and now there's no golden eggs and no goose.
Your options are to prepare or to ignore.
If you prepare then Australia has a half-fighting chance. Half. We'll still lose a lot of people, we'll still end up with vastly uninhabitable spaces and no-longer-arable land, but some of us will have a slight chance. Some of them might even be the people who can carry us forward into the future.
If you prepare and you're lucky, the wave will hit us while you're still in power, and it won't be great, but we'll be more prepared than we would have under the other lot.
If you prepare and you're unlucky, the wave will hit us after you leave power, and the other mob will take credit - but we'll still be more preapred than we would have been if the other lot had been in power all this time.
If you don't prepare and you're lucky, the wave will hit once you leave power, and the other mob will be left carrying the can. But you and yours and all the country are screwed.
And if you don't prepare and you're unlucky, the wave will hit in the next couple of years. And then you'll have to lead with no idea of what's going to happen, no plan, nothing in place. We'll be screwed and you'll be screwed and your party will be screwed.
The last three years have shown Australians that the wave is coming. Bushfires, then COVID, then supply chain issues; now flood, inflation, and energy crises. We want to believe that the good times can come back, that we can grow and grow and grow.
We can't. It's not mathematically, scientifically, practically possible.
Look, I know the feeling - the terror. I was born into the good times, the growing times, the times of prosperity and wealth and technology and hope. I know what I thought was my birthright and it was, at best, gilded lead. Painted wood eaten by termites beneath the surface.
We need to replace the lies with something that can hold. We need to do it now. And we may need people to sacrifice their political careers for something bigger than them.
Do you remember Tim Fischer? I don't, actually, I only know him as a name. He was before I took any interest in politics, back when I thought that politics didn't matter. You probably know him, though. He was the National Party leader who tanked his political career for the sake of saving lives. He supported the Australian gun ban and talked others of his party, of his ilk, around to agreement.
There is no bodycount of the living. I say that a lot. Basically, "we don't know the disaster that's been averted because it's beeen averted". And Tim Fischer doesn't know how many lives he saved when he made it super-difficult for your average Australian to get hold of a gun. I don't know. I'm not Cassandra. But I remember my sister's friend in kindy, who lived down the road, and died when her dad lost his job and decided his life was no longer worth living - and since his family was a subset of him, he took them with him - with a gun.
How many Sara's have been saved in the twenty-five years since Tim Fischer supported the gun ban? I don't know. But one would have been enough.
Tim Fischer did what was right in that situation. There are no days dedicated to him, no flags in his honour. I'm sure he did awful things as a National Party leader, things that I would fiercely disagree with. But given the way that the world has tended, I'd say more people in Australia owe their lives to him today than to any other Australian. There but for the grace of God.
Dear Mr Albanese, do the right thing. Do the hard, difficult thing - prepare our country, our companies, our corporations, our land, our people for what's coming. Because it is coming. I had no hope of the last government; they piled cruelty on iniquity on defiance on stupidity. I am hoping that you have some of that left-winger commie socialist left in you: the young mullet-sporting man with the ciggie in his mouth, staring into the camera. He may not be the kind of leader that the corporations and Murdoch and the money-changers of our generation want, but I think he's the kind of leader that Australia needs. I hope you'll be that leader.
Tags:
no subject
no subject
no subject
Definitely.
no subject
no subject
We had an assault weapons ban as law, but it had an expiration date, and the Republicans refused to renew it. (NRA money supports most of the Republicans.) So we are now having mass shootings every week. Some just take out four or five, some take out 21 or more.
We need a Tim Fischer in the Republican party, because the Democrats cannot do it alone.
no subject
no subject
Here's hoping against hope.
no subject