https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/oct/19/fight-save-vulnerable-uk-children-school-exclusions-lawyers

❤️🙏🏻👍🏻

It’s part of what drove me out of the country in my thirties when I still looked like I was barely 20, at most, but was already considered too old on paper. Age discrimination is illegal in the Netherlands, but it’s still considered perfectly permissable to require someone’s DOB for a job application.

When I was in the US in the 1990s, I learned that your DOB and marital status had no place on your CV because they have nothing to do with your suitability for a job. The Dutch were later appalled to find that I had adopted that habit. Thirty years have passed, and little has changed in that respect.

Your way around such biases? Also racism etc? Be your own boss! If you are worth your salt, you can do it. Move abroad if you have to. Go where you are appreciated. Don’t stay where you may be merely tolerated either. You deserve better.

So RIFT (Renewable Iron Fuel Technology), a startup that works on developing the concept of iron fuel as an alternative source of energy, has just won 11 million euros in investments. Previously, it already received financing from Bill Gates’ climate fund.

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For the local flat-earthers: No, it’s not the only thing that I am really worried about but I have been dealing with this stupid issue and its disastrous effects for over 16 years. 😡

In fact, my recently purchased laptop turned out to be running AnyDesk. Why on earth would it be running AnyDesk?! I mistakenly thought it had only the install option sitting on it. I should have known better. (But that is not the point. This relentless pursuit of me, this remote obsession with me, needs to stop. I want my life back.) Maybe there is an innocent explanation for it. I hope so. But I started exploring when seemingly unusual things began happening.

“U ben gewoon aggelijk, mevrouw” does not resolve this. It does not help me in any way.

---

The place that I used to call home is pretty much under water, I guess. See the screenshots below from the CNN website. Tampa and St Pete got the worst of it. St Pete looks pretty much wiped out?

It’s rainfall though that’s the problem, not the storm surge (yet). A 1-in-a-1000-year rainfall event. Over 16 inches. That’s over 40 cm.

That said, about an hour ago, the water level in the Bay was dropping. That has to do with which quadrant of the hurricane that the Bay was in. The eye came ashore slightly south of the Bay. That water will slosh back in again.

So I have to assume that my last address there is surely flooded. I was a flight up at my other addresses there.

Ryan Shea. Never heard of him.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Oh, crap: https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/02/01/239624/the-transhumanist-diy-designer-baby-funded-with-bitcoin/

And Sam Bankman-Fried was involved in that transhumanist institute in Oxford that was just shut down, as was Elon Musk. Described as “eugenics on steroids”.

Ryan Shea: https://ryan.shea.io/

Speeds had briefly slowed down. I know that these things can suddenly change track right before they hit land, but this one appears to be so huge in size that it probably wouldn’t matter much.

You have this giant vortex of winds around the eye, so depending in which quadrant of that vortex you are, the wind direction is different. So when it passes, you can also have problems because of this change in direction. You can for example mistakenly believe that you’ve had the worst of it, when it can still push up waters and send a water mass your way, depending on where you are relative to water.

I’ve seen differing reports as to when it is supposed to hit land but apparently it is going to be this night Florida time. (Tomorrow morning, mostly?)

No, I can’t simply ignore this.

Even though I was about to heat some soup last night and then realized that my soup mugs are packed too, of course. I’m making a lot of progress, but I also must take care not to wear myself out physically and continue working on securing my future. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day in that respect.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-happened-when-a-man-signed-work-emails-using-a-female-name-for-a-week_n_58c2ce53e4b054a0ea6a4066

Update: I’m not the only earth scientist freaking out (see video at the bottom)

This was the thing that we all feared and planned for but that never happened. Until now.

OMG. OMG.

But apparently, it will be losing energy? Odd. Hurricanes usually do that over land and speed up over water.

I do know that they can change direction at the last minute, and where and how they hit land can make a big difference.

(Remember, I used to live there. I’ve prepared for a few but the only one that I experienced came from land and brought what I considered typically Dutch weather with a lot of rain. The university was closed, though, and so were many other places.)

18:43: CNN agrees

A reminder to innocent readers: Someone DID go into my apartment while I was in a meeting at the civic offices in August. (I had briefly wondered why that meeting had to take place THERE.) I did not dance to their tune – but they had incorrectly pegged me as a pushover, apparently, and had not expected that – and it got people to become so frustrated that they then revealed a little too much of their real sentiments. (Such as wishing me misery and suffering.) See also the essay that I published. It’s available from Amazon.

You can download it here: https://angelinasouren.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/household-debt-assistance-the-dutch-way-paperback-print_proof-23september2024.pdf

(For Stichting Humanitas: This is a later version than what I sent to you.)

They also said that I had not replied to this and that and I said that when I did that, I would either not get a reply, people would simply keep referring to each other and even sometimes say that they were not allowed to reply to me. And then I was told that this was because what I had written online about them (i.e. the Google review) and that I should be pleased that they were now still willing to talk with me.

Among other things, I told them that the way that they tend to treat the over55s is simply not on.

One of my cousins runs a large real estate outfit – worth over a billion – and just out of curiosity, I later checked how they deal with negative Google reviews. Very differently, I can assure you!

(I used to get along very well with that cousin, but I haven’t spoken with him in 30 years. We are not a close-knit family. I think that’s mostly because several of our parents died young, in our family, and it means that you socialize less. There’s a lot of cancer in my family, but it’s all different cancers, so there is not a massive hereditary factor. Or maybe we are not a close-knit family, period. Or maybe it plays and even bigger role that I am like my mother’s cousin Céleste, from the branch of the family that spells its name differently.)

I’ll be gone soon enough. (Of course!) No need to freak out. Stop playing stupid games that cause delays for me.

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This is in essence the same kind of nonsense as is going on here locally, but I doubt that these folks realize it.

Sigh.

Scud missiles. Chemical warheads. My friend who happened to be on a sabbatical working at the university there arriving at Schiphol Airport, the gas mask with her.

When are the Putins and Trumps (and the huppelkutjes met slaapmutsjes op) going to pack it in and pack up? When will they stop their stupid wars that affect real people but barely touch them in their ivory tower castles? When can I stop being angry because I have to, because how can I not be angry?

I’d like to be able to stop thinking of some men and women as ‘huppelkutjes”. Okay, I admit it’s the ring of the word and it’s also quite funny. (Youp van ‘t Hek came up with it?) They’re more like piranhas and snappers and snooks and groupers and catfish. Sharp-teethed civil servants with little real life experience but big agendas.

Agrochemical manufacturers and related companies are focused on maintaining and increasing their grip, according to the first speaker in this video, from Humboldt University. I can accept that. The use of simply more technology is often blindly touted as the roadmap toward greater sustainability. I can accept that too. Yes, that would be tunnel vision.

That said… Below is my running commentary while I was watching this video (so I don’t always know at the time of typing where the speaker is headed, but as you can see below, Angelika Hilbeck’s approach really started to concern me at some point).

Interestingly, I registered for this event, but I couldn’t get access when it took place. I kept receiving emails asking me to provide the organizer with more information, but I had already provided that. This meeting was announced on EventBrite, after all; it was supposed to be open to the public. I attend a lot of meetings, often because I genuinely really want to attend them, but sometimes out of mere curiosity, to see what new knowledge I might acquire from it. Learning that something is not of sufficient interest to me is also valuable knowledge.

20:23 Shouldn’t these lock-ins become regulated – and in part prohibited – as was introduced for for example Windows computers in the past? Why aren’t they?
30:00 Hear hear. More of the same is not the answer. Digital technology has passed the point up to which it helped us speed things up; after that, it started to slow us down simply because of everything that became possible and then humans started to cater to it instead of the other way around.
31:30 There is greater awareness of these complications in particularly the bioethics world and also among others who look at applying technologies like CRISPR on humans.
36:00 You seem to state on the one hand that we don’t know how genome-editing works out in real life, yet then you proceed to say that CRISPR has been around for 10 years and that it is problematic that there is no CRISPR’d food at the supermarkets. That appears to be in contradiction. (You say that we shouldn’t rush this and then you seem to criticize the developments for going too slowly.) There have also been patent battles and decisions and the matter of whether countries allow CRISPR’d foods. (One solution for our exploitation of non-human animals, for example, is lab-grown meat, but some countries and states are banning that.)
In 2018, the USDA said that it was not going to regulate CRISPR’d foods. (Doesn’t that mean that we don’t know whether there are CRISPR’d foods in our supermarket basket, in the US?) https://www.wired.com/story/crisprd-food-coming-soon-to-a-supermarket-near-you/
The European Commission only tabled a proposal for a regulation for NGTs (plants, food etc) as recently as 5 July 2023. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2023/754549/EPRS_BRI(2023)754549_EN.pdf Just a quick web search gives me the impression that most of us are all still in the middle of figuring this out and thinking about how we should proceed.
37:50 Here you are quoting a stock analysis firm… https://seekingalpha.com/ I think it is important to keep in mind that in that world, all sorts of messages get spread that do not necessarily hold a lot of value. I would do my best to find at least one reputable source for the information first, if I found myself contemplating whether it might be a good idea to short – or buy – the stock. (Something similar goes for Bonitas Research at 39:33. Apparently, it’s a short-seller.)
I also find it a little odd that you seem to find it worrisome that Calyxt and Cibus decided to merge and concentrate on what they felt that they were better at. (If you are a hairdresser but then discover that you are not a great hairdresser and are much better at creating shampoos, it could be logical to focus on creating shampoos.) But… I am still listening and I still don’t quite know yet where this is going.
39:17 The phrase “Trait Machine” as used by Cibus is a red flag, in my view, but maybe this kind of language goes with the field of agriculture. At this point, I am taking a look at the transcript, scan a little bit ahead, and it appears that this may be an example of a bad company? (I’m not familiar with Cibus or Calyxt.) Such things happen. There are other examples. I didn’t follow the early developments with Elizabeth Holmes but when the fraud came to light, I was astonished that people had fallen for it, with the benefit of hindsight, admittedly. There also was the case of Nikola and its founder. These are just two examples. (But that is not quite what this was about…)
Okay, 39:33 is the point at which I have serious doubts as to whether I want to listen to the remainder. (I will, later.)

Hilbeck – of whom I had never heard before – had lost her credibility as an academic researcher by this point in the video, in my view, even though she used to be based at ETH Zürich (retired now). I can’t take her seriously any longer. I will listen to the remainder of these presentations, but only later. It is always good to see how seemingly reputable sources can lead to misinformation and even conspiracy theories. this can happen in all sorts of ways.

Update 2 September: I may be having other unusual payment issues too all of a sudden. (Too early to tell.) I’m having trouble accessing PayPal, among other things.

UPDATE 29 August 2024: I just logged into my bank account to check, on my computer, and indeed, that scheduled VGZ payment had NOT gone out. (As you can read below, I decided to make a manual payment, but that usually takes VGZ ten days to two weeks to process, if not longer.)

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I just found a sticker on my electric kettle. On the back.

(See photo at bottom of post. Where does it come from? Does anyone recognize it?)

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It’s related to otherization and also to the focusing illusion.

I think that this is something you often see in small, relatively isolated municipalities but also in certain other situations and organizations. Individuals are no longer supposed to form their own opinions but follow the group think.

Groups like 4chan suffer from it too. They may engage in massive negative action without even spending a thought on the immense damage that it may do. Collectively, they decide on an opinion and take action on the basis of what is often a completely unfounded mere opinion or myth.

If you speak with such people as an outsider, they can come across rather robot-like and it’s almost impossible to have a proper dialogue with them.

Being and a Trolling State of Electronic Hive Mind: (1) Organically Emergent/Evolved Troll Groups and (2) Created/ Instrumented Troll “Armies” (PDF)

In England, an example of municipal group think is the opinion that Travellers constitute a danger and must be chased away asap. Nobody ever questions this in such a setting.

He was targeted for years, with arson and bombs, instead of supported was banned from living in his own home repeatedly. The stress got to him and his heart gave out. That’s not unusual in stalking cases either.

His age, you ask?

45

But guess what? He’s gone but there has been more malicious activity at his home. (Two arrests made.)

That makes it likely that this comes from 4chan/8kun.

It’s like Pizzagate – lees hier, Dutchies: https://decorrespondent.nl/7938/de-zaak-pizzagate-of-hoe-nepnieuws-en-complottheorieen-hun-weg-vinden-naar-een-breed-publiek/f3960fbb-6232-0b39-3607-9bf871c74fec – where they went after a random pizzeria in NYC with rumors about child sex abuse rings, causing someone else to turn up with a gun, even, or like this:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/your-online-secrets/201409/internet-trolls-are-narcissists-psychopaths-and-sadists

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886917304270

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10004561/

Why nobody can figure this out even if police officers etc are monitoring communications? Because whoever this is uses innocent-sounding code words.

And the mayor of Vlaardingen nicely played into their hands.

It’s all likely arranged through a combination of digital communications and IRL meetings (or paper post). It’s a mistake to assume that 4chan and 8kun types never interact in real life.

They can also communicate by just having someone walk past someone else and say something to him or maybe even just whistle a tune. They can do things like place empty bottles in front of someone’s home or draw some innocent looking thing such as a stylized bird on a wall.

It’s also a mistake to think that all these folks are unemployed “losers”. They might work at your bank, your post office, your insurance company or your internet provider. You can’t tell.

(Me, as of roughly yesterday, my location’s been Malta again, btw, after first briefly Ireland again.)

Instead of helping him, people vilified Ron van Uffelen. They said that he was into drugs and god knows what else.

In my case, it wasn’t explosives and stuff. In my case, the locks were picked for over 13 years. The weapon of choice in my case was IT along with manipulation. Just about everything I did was sabotaged. I’ll stop there. I’ve said it plenty of times before.

Just like with Ron’s case, instead of helping me, people victimized me further. This kind of thing isn’t even possible without the profound otherization of the victims.

Because nobody got killed or seriously injured, the police couldn’t justify I investigating what happened to Ron van Uffelen properly because that would have been very expensive.

I know how this works. I know what this feels like. I wish that Ron van Uffelen’s last years didn’t need to have been what they were like.

In my case, one of the potential outcomes was my suicide. It was part of the game. Eventually, it became the only solution but eventually I also got so determined because of my immense powerlessness that I promised myself that I wasn’t going to do that.

It doesn’t matter what people think of and about you once they have made clear that they are not going to help you and instead vilify you and victimize you even more.

They become pawns in someone else’s game, but they can’t see it.

Olga: “I moved to the Netherlands after having lived in Germany with my husband for three years. Together, we’re raising our three children and I work as a freelance writer. But Dutch people have made it clear that they will always see people from countries that formerly found themselves behind the iron curtain as second-rate Europeans. When my eldest daughter was two and her sister only a baby, a Dutch woman called the police because she heard me speak Polish to my children. Later, a daycare nanny asked the three Polish children in the group, including my eldest daughter, not to speak their own language to one another.”

Joyce: “The political climate for international students over the past year (I’ve been here for four years, but I feel like the situation has been especially tense since parties began their election campaigns) has been extremely bleak. The Tory government and Reform leader Nigel Farage demonised international students in their bid to win votes in the election this summer.

Farage and some Conservative ministers implied we are the driving force behind surging immigration (a byword for “bad” for all parties this election season) – even though it is debatable whether students actually contribute to net migration to the UK. Many countries, including the US and Canada, choose not to count international students in their figures because most of us are temporary migrants who will return home after course completion.”

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Scientists Discuss How to Study the Psychology of Collectives, Not Just Individuals

Yep. Check this out.

“Parochial Empathy Predicts Reduced Altruism and the Endorsement of Passive Harm” in International Journal of Social Psychology (2017, open access)

In my inbox today, from Global Citizen

By Victoria MacKinnon

August 8, 2024

The fight against the climate crisis has sparked a host of ambitious ideas, some seemingly straight from science fiction. From technologies that directly capture carbon dioxide from the air to the planet-bending goals of geoengineering, no idea seems too far-fetched in the race to cool down our burning planet. With good reason: the accelerating climate and biodiversity crises impact the world’s poorest countries hardest, and urgent action is necessary.

But what if the answer to climate change was as simple and timeless as nature itself? That’s the philosophy at the heart of nature-based solutions. If supported properly, nature could hold the key to stabilizing the climate, all while addressing socio-economic challenges such as food security and pandemic prevention. 

That’s why supporting them is a key part of Defending the Planet. Let’s dig into the concept so that we can identify the solutions that will work best to protect people and the planet. So, what are nature-based solutions, and how can we unlock their full potential?

Let’s Nail Down the Basics: What Exactly Are Nature-Based Solutions? 

Simply put, a nature-based solution is a project that works in harmony with the natural forces of an ecosystem to strengthen it, creating positive ripple effects for people and the climate. When successful, these projects protect, manage, and restore the environment. While nature-based solutions can take many forms, they all share a core principle: by working with the Earth rather than against it, we can build a more resilient and sustainable world. That’s why Global Citizen is calling for $1B in investments to protect and restore the Amazon, including investing in regional Indigenous-led, nature-based solutions. 

Projects that focus solely on minimizing human impact, like recycling or conserving water, are not considered nature-based. Instead, nature-based solutions encompass a more proactive, holistic approach to enhance a healthy ecosystem, like land conservation or wildlife habitat restoration.  

Why Have I Been Hearing So Much About Them Lately?

The truth is, nature-based solutions are far from new. Indigenous communities have successfully safeguarded the Earth’s ecosystems for centuries using conservation methods that work with nature; today, Indigenous people protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity. Now, more and more countries are incorporating nature-based solutions into their national climate, biodiversity, and restoration goals.

Nature-based solutions have gained momentum in both the public and private spheres. Companies have recognized that integrating them throughout their supply chains offers not only environmental and economic advantages, but also reputational benefits. This is significant, as private investment will be needed to secure the additional capital to bridge climate financing gaps.

Can You Give Some Examples of Nature-Based Solutions?

Here are just a few inspiring ones we love: 

Bringing Nature into Cities

Creating green spaces in cities moderates heat waves and improves air quality, which is critical for the health of an increasingly urbanized world where an estimated 4.2 million premature deaths can be attributed to outdoor air pollution. Megacities are incorporating more green infrastructure projects, such as Mumbai’s initiative to create a 3.2-acre urban forest to mitigate its urban heat island effect. These green spaces also offer additional and much-needed recreational space for residents. 

Restoring Coastal Wetlands

Wetlands provide many services such as flood protection and water filtration, and deliver an estimated $47 trillion in economic benefits annually. For example, a lake and marshland restoration project in Chennai, India, boosted the city’s water storage capacity​​, offered residents flood damage prevention, and improved water quality for native wildlife. 

Natural wetlands are also cost-effective: Restoring wetlands naturally can be 2 to 5 times cheaper than building artificial barriers, like sea walls, against wave impact. 

Mangrove wetlands are also superstars for cheaply and effectively preventing storm surges and sequestering carbon. In the Seychelles alone, they store about 2.5 million tons of CO2 (the equivalent of removing 500,000 cars from the planet for an entire year). 

Although the rate of mangrove loss is declining, more than half of all mangrove ecosystems are still considered vulnerable to collapse by 2050. But there are reasons to be hopeful — in some countries, such as Pakistan, the number of mangroves are increasing after successful widespread community planting and conservation efforts took root. 

Planting Trees

It may sound simple, but ambitious tree-planting programs are critical in ensuring the world’s forests can continue to function as a carbon sink. 11 countries across Africa are backing the “Great Green Wall,“ a regional initiative to expand arable land in the Sahel and reduce desertification. As an added benefit, it’s projected to create 10 million local jobs by 2030. National-level projects include this one in Burundi, where intentionally built tree terraces combat soil erosion on steep hillsides, reducing landslides while improving carbon storage and local agricultural productivity. 

Are There Any Drawbacks?

Like any intervention, nature-based solutions need to be designed thoughtfully to avoid unintended harm. Researchers and activists have raised alarms about greenwashing, arguing organizations might exaggerate these solutions’ benefits without properly monitoring their actual impact.

For example, without careful planning, large-scale tree-planting initiatives could actually harm native ecosystems and local communities. This happened in Somaliland after fast-growing, drought-tolerant mesquite trees from Central America were introduced in the 1980s to combat deforestation. The program worked a little too well: the foreign species outcompeted local vegetation, spreading quickly and depleting water sources across the country. Now, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and other groups are working to reverse the damage by assisting local communities in managing these trees at more sustainable levels.

How Can We Best Support Nature-Based Solutions?

We can’t hope to halt and eventually reverse global warming without embracing natural climate solutions. If used to their full potential, nature-based solutions could cut carbon emissions by 12 gigatons each year (the estimated equivalent of all coal-fired power plant emissions). 

Delaying investments in nature will only diminish its capacity to heal and recover over time, yet many countries have only slowly integrated them into their climate plans. Rapidly expanding nature-based solutions to fight climate change requires site-specific assessments to best identify community needs and the leadership of local and Indigenous people to steer planning and implementation. 

More funding for these solutions is also needed. Policymakers tend to favor resource-intensive engineering projects — in 2022, less than 10% of climate adaptation funding in least-developed nations went to nature-based solutions. 

The good news? Nature can be forgiving. We’ve seen how when given the chance, rewilding can reverse the damage caused by pollution and human activity. Governments must prioritize what’s good for the planet by incentivizing investment in nature — before it becomes too little, too late.

Apparently, there was a lot of rioting about people like me again in the UK. While there’s definitely a particularly strong resistance against people of color and people who appear but don’t even need to be Muslims, the main sentiment behind this shit is anti-immigrant and anti-foreigner. It’s part of the cultural makeup.

I received this in my inbox from the IAPG, a few days ago.

Link to the IAPG post: https://www.geoethics.org/post/a-wider-perspective-on-chemistry-and-sustainability-by-enrico-cameron

Link to the original article: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2024/sc/d4sc00099d

I just went to see if I could find an extra (used) VGA cable. Instead, I found three books (in English), to my delight, two of which are related to bioethics. One involves infertility and a sperm donor and the other one a couple who are trying to avoid a serious genetic disorder and end up at a veritable “designer” of babies.

Interesting coincidence.

The third one is a detective (Adam Stubo).

The rest on the shelf was non-fiction.

Some years ago, Dutch political party D66 raised the worrisome idea of euthanasia for people who are old and fed up.

It infuriates me because the feeling that life is no longer worth living is too often the direct result of being treated as if your life is no longer worth living and you no longer hold any value.

• I too am over 55 these days and soon I will be over 75, which is the age limit in that proposal.
• Yes, I often really feel like giving up on life too.
• This happens when I am being (mis)treated as if I am no more than trash that is in the way, when my life is rendered devoid of meaning and substance when I am marginalized, shoved away, as if I am no more than trash that is in people’s way! It’s atrocious!
• Heck, I was in my 30s when Dutch people already started telling me that it was time to make way for younger folks, professionally. Up to that point, I often got overlooked (dismissed) because I looked so much younger than I actually was.

Wijngaarden, Els van, Leget, Carlo and Goossensen, Anne (2015) Ready to give up on life: The lived experience of elderly people who feel life is completed and no longer worth living. Social Science & Medicine 138, 257-264. Available at https://ac.els-cdn.com/S0277953615002889/1-s2.0-S0277953615002889-main.pdf?_tid=80f432e0-edcd-11e7-993c-00000aab0f26&acdnat=1514685434_0b38f23b28ec70c2cd53776218c61c43

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2819894

I lean toward applauding any move that seeks to address ableism. Biases – with regard to any property, whether it is a physical difference, poverty, age, skin or hair color or anything else – do so much damage.

Partly at work is the focusing illusion:

• Someone is of a certain age, “hence” probably has dementia.
• Someone has a physical disability, “hence” is already in bad health and does not deserve the same level of care and consideration as others.
• Someone has a physical disability, “hence” is miserable all the time.
• Someone is of a certain age, “hence” is no longer interested in anything and needs to be warehoused, wither away and be enabled to pass away out of sight of the rest of society.
• Someone is black, “hence” is extra-ordinarily strong and does not need the same level of healthcare as whites.
• Someone does not talk, “hence” is of low intelligence.
• Someone is poor, “hence” is genetically flawed and/or mentally impaired.

And so on and so forth.

All other aspects of someone’s life and personality are casually dismissed, usually not even looked at.

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/18/five-just-stop-oil-supporters-jailed-over-protest-that-blocked-m25

Whether you agree with their approach or not, our future on the planet is very uncertain and these are the kinds of protests that I’ve heard about since my teenage years.

Back then, it was mostly missiles (and apartheid) that people in my native country were protesting against, I remember, and back then… because of the OPEC Oil Crisis, we actually had Sundays with complete DRIVING BANS! Emergency services excepted.

Rollerskating and cycling in the streets was so much fun on those days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car-free_days

Isn’t it crazy that we insist on ruining our own future on the planet for the sake of making money?

No, I am not planning any protests, no worries. But I often shake my head at the foolhardy stupidity of humankind and am also astonished to have to admit that I didn’t used to see either that the way in which we are living and behaving in the west is pretty crazy.

It’s not just about oil. It’s just about everything.