991 ER - Extinction Rebellion

and why are they blocking your commute to work?

How serious is the threat of climate change to humanity? Is it really all that dramatic that the talk of extinction can be justified? Well, Yes.

I have an essay THE FUTURE which deals with the odd circumstance that we cannot find any aliens in our galaxy, or indeed the universe.

Why would that be? Are we not looking hard enough? No, we have been looking for decades, and very hard. Maybe there are no developed alien civilisations.

Read the essay about the Five Filters, culminating in the Great Filter. The theory is that any alien civilisation that existed before us has self-destructed.

Probably they had weapons that were too effective and destroyed both the attacker and the attacked in their last war.

Probably they created Artificial Intelligence that built cyborgs who found their creators got in their way of self-development and had to be eliminated.

Perhaps they created climate change that got out of hand and destroyed their environment, before they could develop interstellar travels.

Whatever it was, it destroyed them and they never had a chance to be known to us, as we probably never will be known to anybody else ourselves.

Recently, workers in cities including Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane found their commutes disrupted by protesters bearing an image of an hourglass in a circle.

Extinction Rebellion demonstrations are taking place in more than 60 cities around the world in response to what participants say is inadequate action on the ecological crisis facing our planet.

They say while their actions are peaceful, they're nevertheless aiming to disrupt "business as usual" and are prepared to be arrested in order to send a message.

Extinction Rebellion, also known as XR, began in April 2018 when a small group of British activists met in Bristol to discuss how to achieve what one early member called "radical social change".

The movement wants to "halt mass extinction and minimise the risk of social collapse", according to its website.

In large part, the protest is about minimising climate change and the problems associated with it, from rising seas to food insecurity.

Sam Knights, who has been part of the movement from its inception and co-edited This Is Not A Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook, wrote in his introduction to that book:

"The challenge we now face is extremely daunting. Because the problem, unfortunately, is not just the climate. The problem is ecology. The problem is the environment. The problem is biodiversity. The problem is capitalism. The problem is colonialism. The problem is power. The problem is inequality. The problem is greed, and corruption, and money, and this tired, broken system."