#Global Warming Contradiction

[familythings]

Unpredicted Cooling of Atlantic Ocean - What are Consequences in North America & Europe

The Atlantic Ocean, a crucial player in regulating global climate patterns, is currently experiencing a baffling and unprecedented cooling trend. While the global climate crisis has predominantly led to rising temperatures, especially in the oceans, the dramatic drop in temperature in specific Atlantic regions has both astonished and alarmed scientists. This unexpected cooling, occurring while…

[chronostachyon]

Oh how quickly we forget about the ubiquity of the Che Guevara t-shirt. The truth is that anarchism has only just now recovered in social acceptability to the point that ML reached 20 or 30 years ago.

Btw we've had two big budget studio literal children's movies back to back with the anarchist symbol in them so can we stop acting like anarchism or at least the toothless Be Gay Do Crime Hope is Punk AF I'm Gonna Eat Your Shoes version of it is something capitalists take seriously at all

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ilana Berger at MMFA:

Google is allowing right-wing propaganda organization PragerU to run climate-denying ads on its search engine even though the tech giant previously committed to prohibiting ads that feature claims that contradict the “well-established scientific consensus” about climate change. In 2021, Google updated its ad policy to prohibit ads for or on content that “contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change.”  Yet, nearly three years later, Google is still profiting from ads that contain climate change misinformation.  When Media Matters searched for phrases like “climate change,” “global warming,” and “climate crisis” on Google Search, the search engine returned PragerU ads that promised its website reveals “the truth about climate change” — or what it calls the “fake climate catastrophe.”  “Climate policies are causing inflation and keeping poor countries trapped in poverty,” the ad-description text read. “Get the facts with our Climate Change and Energy playlist.”

[...]

PragerU is deeply rooted in climate change denial

Along with the Daily Wire, PragerU is financially dependent on generous donations from fossil fuel billionaire Farris Wilks.  Recently,  PragerU Kids, a PragerU offshoot that produces conservative “educational” content targeted at school age children, has partnered with five different states to bring right-wing propaganda into public school classrooms.  Media Matters reviewed PragerU Kids’ ”educational” content and found it was rife with misinformation about climate change. In one video, a cartoon narrator explains why embracing climate denialism is akin to participating in the Warsaw uprising, when Polish Jews attempted to liberate Warsaw from German occupation during WWII.  

Google profits off of right-wing propaganda factory PragerU's climate change denialism ads.

[patriottruth]

The 2024 U.S. Elections Weren't The Only Time donald j. trump Worked With Russians Against United States' Interests: COVID-19, USA Patriot Act Sabotage, The Massive Russian SolarWinds Hack of the U.S. Government and Private Sector, and Russian 2024 Election Day Interference (compiled from Wikipedia):

In November 2019, a security researcher notified SolarWinds that credentials to a third party FTP server had a weak password of "solarwinds123", warning that "any hacker could upload malicious [code]" that would then be distributed to SolarWinds customers. The New York Times reported SolarWinds did not employ a chief information security officer and that employee passwords had been posted on GitHub in 2019.

December 1, 2019: COVID-19 pandemic: First known human case of Coronavirus disease 2019, in Wuhan, Hubei, China.

December 5, 2019: Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi asks the House Judiciary Committee to begin drafting the articles of impeachment against U.S. President Donald Trump.

December 9, 2019: The World Anti-Doping Agency votes unanimously to ban Russia from international sport for four years for doping offences, meaning it will be excluded from the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

December 10, 2019: Democrats in the United States House of Representatives announce formal charges against President Donald Trump, accusing him of abusing power and "obstructing Congress"; he becomes the third U.S. president in history to face impeachment.

December 18, 2019: The U.S. House of Representatives approves two articles of impeachment against President donald trump, making him the third president to be impeached in the nation's history.

December 29, 2019: The Taliban's ruling council agrees to a temporary cease-fire in Afghanistan, opening a door to a peace agreement with the United States.

In January and February 2020, U.S. intelligence agencies delivered over a dozen classified warnings in the President's Daily Brief about COVID-19, including its potential to inflict severe political and economic damage. President Donald Trump typically did not read daily briefs and often has "little patience" for oral summaries, The Washington Post reported. Each brief was also shared with other officials in the administration. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which produces the President's Daily Brief, denied that there were repeated mentions of COVID-19.

On January 8, 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a health advisory regarding an outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, which was being caused by a yet-unidentified virus.

January 16, 2020: The first impeachment trial of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, begins in the U.S. Senate.

On January 27, 2020, Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, predicted that "things are going to get worse before they get better". Three days later, Fauci stated that the COVID-19 outbreak "could turn into a global pandemic".

On February 10, 2020, Trump stated that "a lot of people think that [COVID-19] goes away in April with the heat … Typically, that will go away in April" (later, on April 3, he denied ever having given "a date" for the departure of the virus)

On February 13, 2020, CDC director Robert Redfield contradicted Trump, saying that the "virus is probably with us beyond this season, beyond this year". Redfield also predicted that it "will become a community virus at some point in time, this year or next year".

On February 16, 2020, Anthony Fauci warned that it was not necessarily true that COVID-19 would "disappear with the warm weather."

February 25, 2020, was the day that the CDC first warned the American public to prepare for a local outbreak. That day, Nancy Messonnier, head of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said that "We are asking the American public to work with us to prepare for the expectation that this is going to be bad." Messonnier predicted that "we will see community spread in this country", and it was only a matter of time. As a result, "disruption to everyday life might be severe". Messonnier stated that the CDC is preparing, and "now is the time for hospitals, schools and everyday people to begin preparing as well."

On February 25, 2020, Anthony Fauci declared that given how COVID-19 was spreading in other nations, it was "inevitable that this will come to the United States" as well. On February 26, CDC Director Robert Redfield said it would be "prudent to assume this pathogen will be with us for some time to come".

On February 26, 2020, Trump contradicted Messonnier, stating: "I don't think it's inevitable" that a U.S. outbreak would occur, "It probably will, it possibly will … Whatever happens, we're totally prepared." Trump additionally declared that the number of infected was "going very substantially down, not up".

On February 27, 2020, The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, who helped to write the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA), which forms the framework for the federal response, warned a private group of his constituents that COVID-19 is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history, and is probably more akin to the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. "There will be, I'm sure, times that communities, probably some in North Carolina, have a transmission rate where they say, 'Let's close schools for two weeks. Everybody stay home,' We're going to send a military hospital there; it's going to be in tents and going to be set up on the ground somewhere, It's going to be a decision the president and DOD make."

On February 27, 2020, Trump said of the virus: "It's going to disappear. One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear. And from our shores, you know, it could get worse before it gets better. Could maybe go away. We'll see what happens. Nobody really knows." Also on February 27, Trump declared that the risk to the American public from COVID-19 "remains very low".

February 27, 2020 stock market crash: Triggered by fears of the spreading of COVID-19, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) plunges by 1,190.95 points, or 4.4%, to close at 25,766.64, its largest one-day point decline at the time. This follows several days of large falls, marking the worst week for the index since the 2007–2008 financial crisis.

On February 29, 2020, Trump said that "additional cases in the United States are likely", but "there's no reason to panic at all." When a reporter asked Trump: "How should Americans prepare for this virus?" Trump answered: "I hope they don't change their routine".

February 29, 2020: A conditional peace agreement is signed between the United States and the Taliban. The U.S. begins gradually withdrawing combat troops from Afghanistan on March 10.

On March 4, 2020, donald trump appeared on Fox News's Hannity by phone, where he claimed a 3.4% mortality rate projected by the World Health Organization (WHO) was a "false number", and stated his "hunch" that the true figure would be "way under 1%". Trump also predicted that many people infected with COVID-19 would experience "very mild" symptoms, "get better very rapidly" and thus they "don't even call a doctor". Thus, there may be "hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work—some of them go to work, but they get better."

From March 6 to March 12, 2020, donald trump stated on four occasions that the coronavirus would "go away". On March 10, Surgeon General Jerome Adams stated that "this is likely going to get worse before it gets better."

March 2020: The nightmare of empty grocery shelves begins. Stores capping/limiting purchases.

By March 11, 2020, the virus had spread to 110 countries, and the WHO officially declared a pandemic. The CDC had already warned that large numbers of people needing hospital care could overload the healthcare system, which would lead to otherwise preventable deaths. Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci said the mortality from COVID-19 was ten times higher than the common flu. By March 12, diagnosed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. exceeded a thousand. Trump declared a national emergency on March 13. On March 16, the White House advised against any gatherings of more than ten people. Three days later, the United States Department of State advised U.S. citizens to avoid all international travel.

The USA Freedom Act, which became law on June 2, 2015, reenacted the expired USA Patriot Act sections through 2019. However, Section 215 of the law was amended to disallow the National Security Agency (NSA) to continue its mass phone data collection program. Instead, phone companies will retain the data and the NSA can obtain information about targeted individuals with a federal search warrant.

On August 14, 2019, the outgoing Director of National Intelligence sent a letter to Congress stating the Trump Administration's intention to seek permanent extension of the provisions of FISA that under the terms of the USA FREEDOM Act are scheduled to expire on December 15, 2019, namely the "lone wolf" authority allowing surveillance of a suspected terrorist who is inspired by foreign ideology but is not acting at the direction of a foreign party, the roving wiretap authority regarding surveillance of a terrorist who enters the United States and the authority to allow the Federal Bureau of Investigation to obtain certain business records in a national security investigation, as well as the call detail records program undertaken by the NSA. In reference to the latter authority, the letter announced that "The National Security Agency has suspended the call detail records program that uses this authority and deleted the call detail records acquired under this authority."

Jurisdiction over the reauthorization of the expiring FISA provisions is shared by the Judiciary and Intelligence committees in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives; the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Senate Committee on the Judiciary held separate public hearings on the reauthorization in September 2019 and November 2019, respectively. Opposition to the call detail records program has led to some Congressional demands that the authority for the program not be renewed. Additional complications hindering reauthorization arose from a report of the US Department of Justice Inspector General finding fault with certain FISA applications in connection with the 2016 presidential campaign, which led some members of Congress to insist on reforms to FISA as a condition of reauthorizing the expiring USA FREEDOM Act provisions.With Congressional attention focused on dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States in 2020, the House of Representatives passed a long-term extension of the USA FREEDOM Act on March 11, 2020, just four days before the scheduled expiration of the Act on March 15, 2020, by a wide, bipartisan margin that kept the protections of the Act largely the same. Two months later, in May of 2020, the Senate passed an extension of the Act by an 80-16 vote that expanded some privacy protections, but the Senate version did not include protection of Americans’ internet browsing and search histories from warrantless surveillance, which was proposed by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and failed by one vote.

According to former KGB major Yuri Shvets, donald trump became the target of a joint Czech intelligence services and KGB spying operation after he married Czech model Ivana Zelnickova and was cultivated as an "asset" by Russian intelligence since 1977: "Russian intelligence gained an interest in Trump as far back as 1977, viewing Trump as an exploitable target." Luke Harding writes that documents show Czechoslovakia spied on donald trump during the 1970s and 1980s, when he was married to Ivana Trump, his Czechoslovakia-born first wife. Harding writes that the Czechoslovakian government spied on donald trump because of his political ambitions and notability as a businessman. It is known that there were close ties between Czechoslovakia's StB and the USSR's KGB. Harding also describes how, already since 1987, the Soviet Union was interested in Trump. In his book Collusion, Harding asserts that the "top level of the Soviet diplomatic service arranged his 1987 Moscow visit. With assistance from the KGB." Then-KGB head Vladimir Kryuchkov "wanted KGB staff abroad to recruit more Americans". Harding proceeds to describe the KGB's cultivation process, and posits that they may have opened a file on Trump as early as 1977, when he married Ivana. "According to files in Prague, declassified in 2016, Czech spies kept a close eye on the couple in Manhattan, … [with] periodic surveillance of the trump family in the United States."

donald j. trump and His Republican Allies Allowed the USA PATRIOT ACT/FREEDOM ACT to Expire on March 15, 2020 and They Didn't Reinstate It until May of 2020.

March 2020: SolarWinds's Orion software hotfixes were released to 33,000 Orion customers.Hackers acquired superuser access to SAML token-signing certificates. This SAML certificate was then used to forge new tokens to allow hackers trusted and highly privileged access to networks. The attack used a backdoor in a SolarWinds library; when an update to SolarWinds occurred, the malicious attack would go unnoticed due to the trusted certificate. APT29, aka Cozy Bear, working for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), was reported to be behind the 2020 attack. Victims of this attack include the cybersecurity firm FireEye, the US Treasury Department, the US Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, as well as the US Department of Homeland Security. Prominent international SolarWinds customers investigating whether they were impacted include the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Parliament, UK Government Communications Headquarters, the UK Ministry of Defence, the UK National Health Service (NHS), the UK Home Office, and AstraZeneca.

December 13, 2020: SolarWinds begins notifying customers, including a post on its Twitter account, “SolarWinds asks all customers to upgrade immediately to Orion Platform version 2020.2.1 HF 1 to address a security vulnerability.”

December 15, 2020 SolarWinds Victims named and timeline moves back — Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Commerce and Treasury Departments, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the National Institutes of Health, and the State Department were all affected. Various security officials and vendors expressed serious dismay that the attack was more widespread and began much earlier than expected. The initial attack date was now pegged to sometime in March 2020, which meant the attack had been underway for months before its detection.

December 17, 2020: New SolarWinds victims revealed — The Energy Department (DOE) and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, were publicly named as victims of the attack.

On December 21, 2020, Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence all agreed that Russia was engaged in “a significant and ongoing cybersecurity campaign” against the United States. Russian asset, donald j. trump, immediately replied: “The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality,” Trump wrote. “I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!).”

March 16, 2020: stock market crash: The the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) falls by 2,997.10, the single largest point drop in history and the second-largest percentage drop ever at 12.93%, an even greater crash than Black Monday (1929). This follows the U.S. Federal Reserve announcing that it will cut its target interest rate to 0–0.25%.

On March 19, 2020, donald trump told journalist Bob Woodward that he was deliberately downplaying the risk when communicating with the public. "I wanted to always play it down," Trump said. "I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic."

On March 24, 2020, donald trump argued that: "We lose thousands and thousands of people a year to the flu … But we've never closed down the country for the flu." On March 27, he stated: "You can call it a flu. You can call it a virus. You know you can call it many different names. I'm not sure anybody even knows what it is."

On March 24, 2020, donald trump declared that "we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel"; a day later the U.S. surpassed 1,000 COVID-19 deaths.

Throughout March and early April, several state, city, and county governments imposed "stay at home" quarantines on their populations to stem the spread of the virus. By March 26, The New York Times data showed the United States to have the highest number of known cases of any country. By March 27, the country had reported over 100,000 cases.

From March 30 to April 7, 2020, Trump stated on four occasions that COVID-19 would "go away".

On March 31, 2020, contradicting his many previous comparisons of COVID-19 to the flu, Trump said: "It's not the flu … It's vicious". When reporters asked him if his initial dismissive comments on the virus had misled Americans, he replied: "I want to give people a feeling of hope. I could be very negative … You know, I'm a cheerleader for the country." Asked further if he had known—despite his claims that the outbreak was under control—that the situation would turn out so severe, Trump replied: "I thought it could be. I knew everything. I knew it could be horrible, and I knew it could be maybe good."

On November 5, 2024, during the official Election Day, several non-credible bomb threats that originated from Russia briefly disrupted voting in two polling places in Fulton County, Georgia. Both re-opened after about 30 minutes. Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Russian interference was behind the Election Day bomb hoaxes. In a statement, the FBI said it was aware of non-credible bomb threats to polling locations in several states, with many of them originating from Russian email domains. The bomb threats were solely made against Democratic-leaning areas. On the same day, U.S. federal officials again reported that Russian sources were actively engaged in "influence operations", citing disinformation in specific videos that falsely claimed Kamala Harris had taken a bribe and false news stories about the Democratic Party and election fraud in Georgia.

On November 8, 2024 it was reported that one of the Russian email addresses behind Election Day bomb threats was used in June 2024 bomb threats targeting LGBTQ+ events in Massachusetts, Minnesota and Texas.

[noneedtofearorhope]

i go out of my way to avoid plastics a lot more than the average soomer, but some people get into such a crazed panic about it that they just spread lies like 'plastic doesn't keep you warm' and 'natural fibers don't pill'. they even contradict themselves by saying that plastic fibers are cheap and dont last long but in the same breath they'll turn around and say plastics last forever and frame it as bad. they'll talk about how plastics are used because they're cheaper and the manufacturers can make more profit by selling it at the same price as natural fibers, but then tell you that it's worth spending more to buy things made with natural fibers.

i mean, i do sympathize. this world as it is is a crazy making sorta place. there is so, so very much to be done, such a monumental task ahead of us. but running around back and forth like a chicken with its head cut off isn't helping any. it's admirable to take to heart the idea of 'think global, act local' and try and convince those around you and in your circles to try and do more, but you gotta realize that sometimes the extent of the 'local' you can act on is yourself, and if you gotta resort to fabrication of 'facts' to convince others to take action your not gonna get very far.

[quasi-normalcy]

Here are some New Types of Guy that I’ve made up for you to be angry at:

Guy who thinks that trans women are valid but trans men aren’t because manhood is a gift from God and you can refuse it, but you can never acquire it for yourself

Guy who heard that putting sewing supplies in biscuit tins is POC culture, so now he thinks it’s appropriation when he sees white people doing it

Guy who converted to atheism just so he can feel powerful when he tells children that there’s no God

Guy who likes to slip Christmas cards into the mailboxes of people he’s never met because he gets horny at the thought of them feeling embarrassed and ashamed at having forgotten him

Guy who’s liberal but supports removing classic literature from schools because he thinks that everyone should be “focused on the future, not the past” (He always says it that way, too)

Guy who supports the Western Canadian separatist movement because he thinks it will lead to decolonization

Guy who isn’t Muslim but only eats halal because he likes imagining the animals being slaughtered by hand

Guy who thinks global warming is a good thing because it will induce humanity to colonize other planets

Guy who starts shouting at his math professor because he thinks proof by contradiction is Orwellian brainwashing

[fanfic-obsessed]

Historical choices

This idea starts on Kamino. Well before the time of the prequels. 

As with all my ideas, ignore any part of canon that contradicts it. 

Tipoca City became the capital of Kamino after the flood. It was never meant to be the Capital city. In fact it was not built to be a city at all. Tipoca was built as a remote research station, long before the flood. It was the first genetic research station for the Kaminoans.  

The very first project…how to prevent Force Sensitivity in their own people. For many reasons, all based on superstition and bigotry, the Kaminoan government decided that having Force sensitivity was undesirable and wanted it stopped.  The initial project, lost to the tides of time, took all the Force Sensitives they could get their hands on (though there were many adults captured, unfortunately Force Sensitive children and babies were easier to source) and began to experiment, with all the horror that that entails. 

By the time the scientists had a ‘breakthrough’ many decades later, everything that subjects endured had sunk into the location, darkening the Force as only that kind of pain and horror can. 

The scientists called it a breakthrough, removing Force Sensitivity from the Kaminoan genetic code and generations later the project had been forgotten, and it is assumed that Kaminoans simply were not Force sensitive. This is not quite true. What those initial scientists did was make Force Sensitivity above a specific threshold, well below the level to actually be considered Force Sensitive, toxic to Kaminoans. 

The funny thing is that after the genetic treatments to ‘remove’ force sensitivity, miscarriages among the Kaminoan population (which at that point was still reproducing, not cloning) shot through the roof, often including the death of the mother/carrier (I have no idea what the Kaminoans called the egg producer). At the same time the Force is not simply in sentients, it is also a vital part of the lifeblood of the planet.  There is a careful balance that the Force maintains which was utterly fucked by the mass death, and continued death, of any Force Sensitive Kaminoan.  While the connection is never made, these imbalances are the cause for the global warming that eventually floods the planet, also the violent frequent storms.  It is this and the birth rate issue that caused the Kaminoans to start cloning and genetic experiments to survive (All the while they kept including the genetic code that turned Force Sensitivity toxic). 

Even as their reputation as cloners grew, they never cloned sentients other than themselves (And there were no Force sensitive Kaminoans now). So they never realized that The Force on Kamino (in particular Tipoca City, but across the planet) had grown dark, violent, and feral. It is noted that animals cloned on Tipoca city tend to be more aggressive than normal, but that is not really noticeable given the contracts they were getting.

Not until the cloning of Jango Fett begins.  The Clones are near human and, though Jango Fett is not particularly Force sensitive, they are the first sentients since the treatment was completed for whom being touched by the Force was not lethal (since the Kaminoans no longer remember that the particular piece of genetic code was artificial, then never think to add it to the Fett clones).  The Force on Kamino curls around the clones, it loves them with desperation and the long lasting memory of the last time its children walked the surface. The Force ensures that every Fett clone is Force sensitive. 

To the trainers and Jango Fett there are a number of spots on Tipoca City that feel…deeply haunted. The more superstitious refuse to enter some of the oldest parts of the city, including where the growth tubes are located (no one is left alive to know but the growth tubes are placed in the oldest labs, where the subjects of the first scientist endured horrors beyond imagining).  

To be clear, the Force on Kamino is of the dark side. It is corrupted.  It is suffering and horror and despair leaching like poison into groundwater. It is a beaten, hurting animal biting anyone who comes close to prevent being hurt again. It is a feral thing that can not distinguish between friend and foe. And the Clones belong to it. 

This comes to a head when the majority of the CC batches are six.  One of the trainers spits out that the Jedi would also think the clones were just useless meat droids. And the Force on Kamino may have been a feral thing, a thing of suffering,  but it was also connected to the rest of the Force and it knew that the Jedi would love its children. 

It whispered this to the children, curling around them. One of the children, who would one day be Fox, glared up at the trainer and spat out that the trainer was lying.  The trainer, reacting more to the tone than the words, struck CC-1010. 

The Force on Kamino reacted. It had suffered the trainers to live because they were making it’s children strong. There had been no decommissioning or reconditionings because the Force was working to ensure its children performed exactly as they should.  But now the trainer had hurt one of its children, and not for training, but for speaking.  The barely leashed violence broke free and roared through the clones. The clones, empowered and driven by the Dark, this vicious protective energy built of the suffering from long before, took the city. It did not matter that the oldest of them were barely physically 8. Within 4 hours there were not any trainers left in Tipoca City (Jango Fett had been off planet on a bounty). Within 6 hours there were no Kaminoans either.  Within three days the Clones were the sole living sentients on Kamino.

Jango Fett came back three weeks after that to a very changed landscape. He is allowed to land because Boba (the toddler that he still is) does consider him a father.  The children, and they are all still children, have not eaten anything solid in two weeks (The Force is sustaining them, also the Force does not know what are good child rearing practices for near humans-it has existed long enough that it can’t even really tell the difference between child and adult in near humans).  The clones are now clearly something OTHER and very unsettling besides, but they all call him dad and he gets the creeping sensation that Jango was not allowed to deny them (Very much ‘oh no these ARE your children (threat)’).  The Force start playing with Clone ages (trying to figure out the best age for each clone to be for ‘their’ Jedi, the Kamino Force is invested in the Clones getting whatever they want and knows some Jedi will love the Clones dearly). 

Jango makes it another 6 months before he ‘sneaks’ away to make a panicked call to the Jedi Temple (He knows he screwed up), trying to make it their problem instead of his. Prior to this he made several attempts to call Dooku but none went through. He is chased down and told that The Force (called Buir/Protector by the Clones) allowed him this far because it knew that he would call the Jedi, but that it is time to return home now. 

There was a wandering Jedi, Master Faye, closer so she came to Kamino and was immediately given the feeling that she would care for the clones or else.  The Force on Kamino is still a wild, feral thing and the Clones are that much more aggressive for their connection to it. However the innocence of the clone children, now that they are not being trained for war any longer, has also been bringing balance back to the Force on Kamino. As they behave as children do, they have begun to drain away the leftover suffering, bringing light back to the Force. 

Some of the storms have even begun to ebb. 

It is still a bit of a horror show that Jedi now have to deal with, also children (who may be more than a little eldritch) who committed at least one Genocide. But there is hope.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Over the long 20th century, mainstream Marxism tended to neglect ecology, if not been downright hostile towards it. From Marx and Engels’s belief in the progressive nature of technological development under capitalism to the extractivist zeal of the Soviet Union, the mainstream of the Marxist historical tradition would seem to make for unlikely environmentalists. In a famous passage from his Critique of the Gotha Program (1875), Marx argues that, for example, after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, [it is then that] the narrow horizon of bourgeois right [can] be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs! The logic seems clear: if technological development under capitalism is inherently progressive—by his own account, a “historical necessity”—and if humans need to dominate nature in order to bring about “a higher phase of communist society,” then the critique from environmentalists is certainly warranted. Saito pins this “ecomodern” Marxism back to the idea that technological development under capitalism is a necessary and progressive stage in history—a precondition for emancipation as capitalism falls under the weight of its own contradictions. But when Marx wrote those words, it was at least reasonable to suggest that productive capacity was premature for the advent of socialism. It is harder to say that now: in terms of aggregate capacity, we produce enough food to end world hunger, generate enough energy for everyone to use a sufficient amount, and have enough wealth to end poverty. And yet, 150 years after Marx penned Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, we are no closer to global socialism than when our collective productive capacity was a fraction of what it is today. There, too, we are deadlocked. In fact, as Andreas Malm has argued in Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming (2016), or Timothy Mitchell in Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (2013), the transition from hydropower to fossil fuels or coal to oil was a means of concentrating power in the hands of capitalists, concrete evidence that a transition from an “older” technology to a newer one does not, as such, represent definitive historical progress (especially when that technology threatens to undermine earth’s life-supporting systems or functions to intensify power over workers and the rest of nature). Too many Marxists still suffer from the same scarcity mindset, believing we lack the productive capacity and resources to provide everyone a good life within the means of the planet. But while we can’t fault Marx and Engels for not knowing more about climate change—or for not having the kind of ecological consciousness the 21st century has gifted us with—today’s ecomodern Marxists have no such excuse.

[queering-ecology]

Chapter 3--Penguin Family Values: the nature of planetary environmental reproductive justice by Noel Sturgeon

Sturgeon’s article opens in a discussion of the award-winning nature documentary The March of the Penguins and how the animal was simultaneously adopted by “right-wing fundamentalist Christians in the United States as an inspiring example of monogamy, traditional Christian family values, and intelligent design” & was becoming “a symbol of the naturalness of gay marriage”  to others(102)—Tango Makes Three (a children’s book based on ‘gay’ penguins at the Central Park Zoo who raised an egg—naturalness and success of gay marriage for raising children). “Queer families turn out to be just the same as straight families. […] they’re determined by nature” 117

Another example of penguins and reproduction in media—Happy Feet—singing/dancing and themes of normalcy. Homosociality and references of homosexuality but “always flavored with the kind of liberal tolerance covering over ultimate rejection that is  thin veneer for heterosexist anxiety”. And ultimately, the main character’s differences are settled when he ends up ‘happily ever after’ in a heterosexual and successfully reproductive nuclear family.

“Penguins (along with polar bears) became popular symbols of what we would lose to global warming. Relatively invisible in the public cultural arena in contrast, were the growing and unequal effects of the pollution of our atmosphere on marginalized human beings such as indigenous peoples in the Arctic regions, who are struggling to preserve their cultures and societies in the face of rapid climate change” (102).

The author uses the term “Environmental Reproductive Justice” as a way of connecting environmental issues with social justice issues. This builds off insights by feminists of color and Global South feminists who tend to argue for the term ‘reproductive justice’ over ‘reproductive rights’—not just the ability to control pregnancy but also the need for childcare, health care, prenatal care, freedom from coerced sterilization, healthy environments, clean air, food and water, adequate housing, etc (103)

Living environmentalism-reproduction as necessarily about the intertwined reproduction of the environment, communities, and individuals (Giovanna Di Chiro, 2008)

How we reproduce—whether we are reproducing people, families, cultures, societies, and/or the planet—is politicized in several layered and contradictory ways (103). Gender and sexuality are often ignored as part of explanations when examining contemporary political and economic systems. I.e. when exploring the contradictions inherent in the right-wing—“far right conservatives have been able to mobilize low-income people on their side even though the political and economic policies working-class people are asked to support are contrary to their own class interests” (frank 2004)—gender roles and reproductive labor are not oft explored as ways they've been able to inspire feelings of fear, anger, oppression=abortion, ‘vulgarity’ in popular culture, homosexuality (I would also add transsexuality/transgenderism now), family values…all centered around gender expectations, driven by changes in economic practices in a globalizing economy (104)

“The politics of gender are often both the politics of reproductions and the politics of production—the intertwined ways that people produce more people, manage bringing up children, figure out how to do the work at home at the same time as the work that brings in a paycheck, decide how and where to buy food, clothing, shelter, and transportation, take care of elders, and create and maintain all of the social institutions that surround this work. And all of this is central to whether or not our ways of living cause environmental degradation.” (104)

“Heterosexual culture achieves much of its metacultural intelligibility through the ideologies and institutions of intimacy…First, its conventional spaces presuppose a structural differentiation of ‘personal life’ from work, politics, and the public sphere. Second, the normativity of heterosexual culture links intimacy only to the institutions of personal life, making them the privileged institutions of social reproduction, the accumulation and transfer of capital, and self-development…intimate life is the endlessly cited elsewhere of political public discourse, a promised haven that distracts citizens from the unequal conditions of their political and economic lives, consoles them for the damaged humanity of mass society, and shames them for any divergence between their lives and the imitate sphere that is alleged to be simple personhood” (Berlant and Warner, 1998 553) (105)

Heterosexist arguments are binary (homosexuality vs heterosexuality, ‘opposites attract’, ‘men are from Mars, women are from Venus’) and normative (heterosexuality is better, more natural, more moral, more normal, more wholesome, better for parenting). So social institutions are structured in a way that privileges heterosexual sexual practices and solidifies what a family should look like; who does the domestic work; how women/men should act, look, behave; how life should be maintained (producing heterosexuality) (105) These heterosexist arguments are usually about preserving and reproducing particular forms of family, social power, and economic practice.

Pro-life/pro-family—not just about preventing abortions, but about the reproduction of a certain historically and culturally specific idealized family form; father is authority; mother is helpmate and childcare provider; several children living in a framework of Christian, religious, patriarchal, heterosexual, nationalistic, U.S. and nuclear—right-wing. “The family acts as a miniature welfare state, modulating consumption, curbing excess desires, improvising child care and providing social security—[…]it is the dreamworld conveyed in the…’serious’ media…where the conservative variant of the neoliberal utopia is attributed to the biologically fixed ‘nature’ of desire (Lancaster 2003, 336) (106)

Fear of allowing women (especially young women, especially women of color, especially poor women—ESPECIALLY young, poor, women of color) have access to choices and support for their own reproductive decisions and thus forming families that do not adhere to the right-wing model…..divinely created=natural, normal so all else is unnatural and opposite of divine

This particular family model especially when located in a suburban, consumer economy dependent on extremes of global inequality, might be an important origin of our present environmental problems. (107)

Nuclear family model relies on women’s unpaid domestic labor (childcare, eldercare), using nonrenewable fuel-intensive transportation such as cars and long-distance shipping of consumer products, women as shoppers/consumers—these stores are part of globalized production and distribution chains dependent on exploitation of the labor of the poor (global south and often women) (107)

Environmental health is centrally important to reproduction as well as production (107) Reproduction is a materialist and a planetary issue—all reproduction comes with consequences for the global environment, economies and social practices.

Planetary reproduction and environmental reproductive justice

Deconstructing Polar Opposites: Endangered Peoples, Endangered Cultures, Endangered Natures

Missing from the conversation is the immediate threat to numerous groups of people especially vulnerable to climate change by reason of geography, poverty, or political discrimination (documentaries that use images of penguins and polar bears to dramatize the consequences of melting polar ice fail to mention the impact on Arctic Indigenous peoples…)

Indigenous people are not penguins, endangered tribal cultures are not endangered species—racist and the parallel trope of the ‘disappearing Indian’ discounts and obscures the struggle of real indigenous peoples to exist and successfully transform their cultures strategically for survival. Arctic indigenous tribes may be threatened by climate change but they are resilient and experienced in resisting threats to their people… (119)

“We’ve adapted in the past, which is why we are still here” (Chickaloon Grand Chief Gary Harrison, 2005)

Arctic Indigenous peoples have been addressing the problem and suggesting solutions for many years because they knew the threats they faced were early warnings for the people around the world.

“All of this will have a profound impact on the viability of indigenous cultures throughout the North and further afield. Everything is connected in nature; what happens in Alaska will affect all other places of the world as a cascading effect, as scientists call it, will occur” (Cochran 2007) (120)

The possibility of losing indigenous knowledge along with the animals and ice….Subsistence living is part of cultural survival and an important method for keeping the world in balance (Harry Bower Jr. 121) The environment is part of a larger universe with moral and cultural aspects that are maintained by the practices of indigenous peoples who have lived on the land for thousands of years (121)

The expansive knowledge [indigenous people have] about sustainable practices, whether it was supported by scientific expertise or traditional experience, was knowledge that arose from a particular way of life, one that needed to be respected and maintained. It was not knowledge gained from the mystical identity of being Ecological Indians, but was rather sophisticated information needed now by all those, Indigenous or not, trying to understand and address climate change (121)

The reproduction of industrialized economic systems, particularly by the United States and other Western countries, has consequences for planetary ecological workings on a global scale as well as on the scale of communities, families, and species, determining the ability of animals, families and cultures to reproduce in healthy and sustainable ways (122)

Too Many People, Too Few Penguins

The concept of over-reproduction and over population are inherently problematic. Human reproduction (especially that of the poor, immigrants, and people in the Global South), is depicted as a major environmental problem…some environmentalists argue against having children at all.

The “Other” population is portrayed as the central problem environmentally and socially whereas “Our” society (developed industrialized societies) are made invisible.

We encourage ‘other’ societies to engage in family planning, education for women, birth control access among other things while ignoring how the US often prioritizes abstinence only programs rather than birth control for their own population, among failing to provide support for women when they do become pregnant (this article was written prior to roe v wade being overturned. But I bet that would be in this article now…)

“When environmentalists sound warnings about overpopulation, they are usually expressing fears over the reproduction of (poor) nonwhite people, not of white people, whose populations in all Western countries are in decline (but whose consumption habits generally are not). Calls for educational fixes to inform ‘populations’ about why they should want to bear fewer children advance an imperialist cultural agenda that demands that nonwhite people adopt the cultural, social, and economic practices and systems of organization dominant in Western countries (e.g. the prototypical nuclear family), while blaming the ‘foolishness’ of Third World men and women (since the solution is Western education) for environmental degradation. (Gosine 2005, 80-81) (126)

Environmental Justice Family Values

“We are not outside the earth looking down upon it. Instead, we are inside specific biosystems and complex relationships with other biological entities; we impact and are impacted by the interrelationships of those entities. Responsibility to these ecological niches, networks and dynamics can be brought into view only if we understand ourselves as animals among other animals, with varied sexualities, complicated family relationships, complex political systems, and multiple desires. Perhaps we are peculiar animals with astounding abilities, but we are still part of an interconnected world and thus answerable to it” (129)

[pppeonies]

For the first time on record, global warming has exceeded temperatures of 1.5° celsius over 12 months. This is an abject failure and the blood of every living thing is on the hands of the governments, politicians, billionaires, and people passionately against scientific truth that have refused to accept the reality and take the health of the climate seriously.

We have been warned by specialists for decades that this was going to happen if we didn't make drastic changes and here it is. Escalating conflict and funding genocide and endless wars only exacerbates this problem.

An acidic ocean cannot support life. An atmosphere full of co2 cannot support life. It will eventually reach a point where it is a positive feedback loop and we cannot undo any damage that was done.

This is where we are heading. The normal that we are desperately clinging onto does not exist anymore and it hasn't for a while.

WE DO NOT HAVE UNLIMITED TIME TO MAKE THE CHANGE WE NEED. THIS IS BEYOND WHAT ELECTORAL POLITICS CAN DO.

WE NEED URGENCY. WE NEED RADICAL, REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE THAT CANNOT BE ACHIEVED BY "VOTING BLUE NO MATTER WHO" OR "THE LESSER EVIL"

OUR LIVES AND THE HEALTH OF THE PLANET QUITE LITERALLY DEPEND ON IT.

Which brings me to my next point:

Democrats and Republicans are the same party with different faces. That is why, no matter how many promises sither party makes, nothing changes. Reject bourgeois "democracy." Believing there's a meaningful choice between different flavors of fascism and neoliberalism is a fallacy. Furthermore, the idea that voting for a third party as a meaningful act of resistance against the establishment is fundamentally misguided.

Instead of focusing on the election, CHANNEL YOUR TIME AND ENERGY INTO ORGANIZING. Organize with your community!! Radicalize the people around you. Help them understand that together we can make real, meaningful, lasting, change!!

The Amerikkkan political landscape is at a critical juncture and as the contradictions of capitalism increase exponentially, it's extremely important that we prepare for the impending collapse.

We are witnessing the sacrifice of all life in pursuit of maintaining capitalism and the west's rule over the world. What does power mean or hold when everything is dying? What does it matter that you have amassed wealth beyond comprehension when the cost is this big?

NOTHING is worth the needless death and suffering we are facing.

I do encourage you to vote locally, when you know it will matter, for things that will improve the quality of life for you and your community (WHILE ORGANIZING!!).

BUT!!:

NEVER BE DECIEVED INTO BELIEVING THAT OUR CAPITALIST OPPRESSORS WILL ALLOW YOU TO VOTE AWAY THEIR POWER.

[starseedpatriot]

Scienctific paper challenges with facts the ‘climate change’ narrative and calls for the cessation of ‘Net Zero’ policies around the world:

“Thus, in our scientific opinion, any government or other analysis advocating “Net Zero” regulation, policy or other action is scientifically invalid and fatally flawed science if it:

A. Omits unfavorable data that contradicts conclusions, for example, on extreme weather events such as heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires and droughts.

B. Relies on models that do not work and thus would never be used in science.

C. Relies on IPCC findings, which are government opinions, not science.

D. Omits the extraordinary social benefits of CO2 and fossil fuels.

E. Omits the disastrous consequences of reducing fossil fuels and CO2 to “Net Zero.”

F. Rejects the science that demonstrates there is no risk of catastrophic global warming caused by fossil fuels and CO2.

We urge all government agencies involved in “Net Zero” regulation, policy or other action, including USGCRP in its final version of the 5th National Climate Assessment, to apply the scientific method and

• Delete any reliance on and citation to IPCC government-controlled findings.

• Delete any reliance on and citation to CMIP models and any other models unless they have been proven to work.

• Delete any reliance on methods other than the scientific method, such as peer review and consensus.

• Include and analyze the enormous social benefits of CO2.

• Include and analyze the enormous social benefits of fossil fuels.

• Immediately stop all efforts to eliminate fossil fuels to avoid massive human starvation in the future.”

https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Challenging-Net-Zero-with-Science-digital-CO2-Coalition.pdf

https://t.me/LauraAbolichannel

[hummus-birb]

Been obsessively working on an idea for a Splatoon and partially DnD based magic system, thought I’d share it! If anything is disorganized, contradicts, or repeats itself, it’s because most of it has been written at midnight throughout the past week

v Everything under the cut! v

Random Important Stuff

Music is canonically magical

Zap fish and Power eggs give power (magical in nature?)

Ink based magic

Since splatoon is post-apocalyptic, ancient humans had cool technologies or smth

Ancient sea gods (variants/take inspo off of splatoon bosses? King salmonids might be magic imbued/ just actual gods?)

Splatoon “demons” have something to do with story mode voices? Or ancient human ghosts?

“Plant” magic includes coral now

Training grounds and schools to connect with magic are sprinkled throughout

Monk abilities are now squid roll and super jump because yes

Fairies are like sea butterflies???

Global warming caused extreme weather conditions (maybe take inspo off of that Pokémon concept by lockstin & noggin?)

Music mind control definitely exists (maybe Octavio/-like uses it? Or Tartar?)

Sanitized and fuzzy ink is a little wackus bonkus (made from dead bits and aliens and stuff, so it interacts with world differently due to magical/ technological properties)

Ancient clans confirmed w/ examples being Shiver, Frye, and Big Man

Weapons help concentrate ink magic

Other races can have magic, but it’s off a different type (since no ink)

^^^ Music, Memories (mem cakes do be like that), coral and other plants, control of minor sea creatures, abilities directly based off of species, etc.

Main pillars of magic are rooted in Song, Ink, Color, and Memories. Based on Deep cut and other characters, we can assume most if not all species have ink

Ink color is important, not necessarily magic in and of itself, but a manifestation of it (slightly edited this fact later on, don't worry about it)

No fey realm :( but they do have a magic realm of sorts. It’s a realm manifested of pure color, ink, and music, as well as human memories mixed in there. Maybe also nuclear, who knows. (For simplicity I’m calling it a fey realm though)

Rain is dangerous, Rain World style

Transient water/ink pools to other dimensions?

Nuclear based hell circles?

Maybe nuclear power is the “demonic” side of magic? And Cephalo-etcs are semi-resistant to it, and learned to control it like a form of dark magic?

Poisonous/venomous species assassins are fairly common, there’s whole cults/underground schools dedicated to the art of it

Jellyfish hive mind do be like that???

Frying permanently “fries in” a food based magic (like Crusty Sean might have a now-permanent run speed up)

Zapfish are along the same lines as king salmonids, just more respected due to them acting as a big friendly traveling energy source

8 is seen as a “magic number” of sorts to Octarians

Magic Specific Details

Like I said before, main pillars/sources are Music, Colors, Memories, and Ink!

Nuclear magic, while “natural,” is looked down upon, and generally considered evil. Fairly dangerous for both users and target

Use weapons as focuses most of the time! Especially ink based weapons, while being useful physically also allow for ink based manipulation. Song based weapons work as well, and while memories don’t have a focus, they can be compressed into memcakes

Sanitized, Fuzzy, and [side order] ink is all modified technologically, magically, or nuclearly, and is all highly dangerous and illegal. The main reason why creatures get permanently affected by it (mind control, becoming furries, etc.) in the first place

Jellyfish can use telepathic sort of magic, it’s main source being Memories

Zapfish are a siphon of electrical energy and magic, helping spur technology and link the gap for many different races as a pseudo-magic. Also some sort of more powerful being, sort of like a dragon

Respawn anchors are a mix of Ink and Memory technology, powered by the Zapfish

Salmonids have different magic customs, using more nuclear magic, as well as different types of song and technology

Super Jump, squid roll, etc. are all movement spells, many species can use them

Temporary drink and food-based magic is their form of alchemy/potions. Temporarily enhances abilities

Salmonid excel in food magic due to their whole thing with being eaten after death

Color chips include technologically engineered magic [side order please give me lore]

Color is a type of magic usually coinciding with emotions. “Fey” use it regularly, and their realm is a pure collection of it and song

Ghosts are manifested and affected by Memories, and they live in a sort of ghost realm similar to the void with human tech and stuff. Bits and bobs of memories and artifacts floating around

Song music is really strong, and does a lot of mind related stuff. (Ex: Jellyfish get their telepathic power from song) (and color)

Species abilities includes: Bioluminescence, venom/poison, electricity, regeneration, spitting insides out at you, seeing more colors (giving stronger color magic), cold/ice magic, etc.

Booyah magic is real, and primarily based on sound (Music)

Splatfest law is actually somewhat true, sometimes things are manifested by the memories of it, as well as predicting future events

Power eggs give energy similar to the strength of a singular mini Zapfish. Golden power eggs are super strong magic conductors, and control and siphon energy as well.

Super sea snails have a sort of magic randomizer imbued in them

Kraken magic is gotten from colors, ink, and extreme emotions

While some creatures don’t have ink magic, some still do, such as eels, sharks, mantas,

Main Mythological Creatures

Great Zapfish - gives energy, lawful good, invested in Song slightly more. My man powers the entire three cities, I’m proud of him. Popular god among most city-dwellers

Huge fry - Reincarnated god, shows up only in Salmonids. Chaotic Good, fights for justice but will destroy a city (oops)

Horrorboros - Reincarnated nuclear empowered god of salmonids, most popular among them as a result. God of life, death, and reincarnation. Huge Fry is kind of like a child or champion of sorts

Cohozuna - Nuclear empowered king of salmonids, similar to Grizz in that he’s not exactly a god, though he didn’t cause his own nuclear shenanigans. Treated like a god though, and has special cool abilities

Grizz* - He basically made himself a “god” with his fuzzy ooze.

Goldy- Minor god/creature, controls glowfies. Kind of like pestilence or something? Very popular among salmonids, usually the leaders of the troops they are in

Minor gods based off of Deep Cut’s families (shark, eel, and manta)

Nessie - Canonically exists!

Space - Not a creature, but space is important to almost all creatures. Radio waves for the Splatfest come from there, Horrorboros is said to have come from there, Huge Fry is often depicted in outer space, etc. (Grizz is also related to space, but again, he’s a self-made god)

Kraken (creature) - Major god to many Octolings, the Kraken is somewhat of a magic common ancestor, and/or gifted it’s magic to cephalopods (color and ink)

Ink vampires - They exist. Not exactly dead, but a deficiency in ink or color can cause vampirism. Not to be confused with the vampire squid species

[tearsinthemist]

DENVER (AP) — Exxon Mobil’s scientists were remarkably accurate in their predictions about global warming, even as the company made public statements that contradicted its own scientists’ conclusions, a new study says.

The study in the journal Science on Thursday looked at research that Exxon funded that didn’t just confirm what climate scientists were saying, but used more than a dozen different computer models that forecast the coming warming with precision equal to or better than government and academic scientists.

This was during the same time that the oil giant publicly doubted that warming was real and dismissed climate models’ accuracy. Exxon said its understanding of climate change evolved over the years and that critics are misunderstanding its earlier research.

Scientists, governments, activists and news sites, including Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, several years ago reported that “Exxon knew” about the science of climate change since about 1977 all while publicly casting doubt. What the new study does is detail how accurate Exxon funded research was. From 63% to 83% of those projections fit strict standards for accuracy and generally predicted correctly that the globe would warm about .36 degrees (.2 degrees Celsius) a decade.

The Exxon-funded science was “actually astonishing” in its precision and accuracy, said study co-author Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard science history professor. But she added so was the “hypocrisy because so much of the Exxon Mobil disinformation for so many years ... was the claim that climate models weren’t reliable.”

[colorisbyshe]

my mom in canada is the same re. the forest fires. thinks they are caused by arsonists not global warming.... sending you good vibes in solidarity against the truly gullible people we are both dealing with 🩷

thanks! the thing is my stepdad isn’t even gullible cause he’s not even like… reading this anywhere

he just makes it up on the spot and then would rather die than believe anything that contradicts it. truly insane. like… he just decides what reality is and then will get angry if you question it. very fun

[elsquibbonator]

Eco-Tainment: Alexis Rockman

So far, in my quest to review various items of environmental media, I’ve covered books, movies, TV episodes, and even video games. But one thing I haven’t covered, is paintings. And when it comes to paintings with environmental themes, it’s hard to top the works of New York-based artist Alexis Rockman. Many of Rockman’s works defy direct description; if they can be said to be anything at all, they are surreal and unmistakable. Rockman doesn’t waste time talking down to people with moral platitudes. You won’t find any hackneyed “Save The Rainforest!” messages in his work-- at least, not the kind you’re probably thinking of. Instead, his art is designed to make you think, both about humanity’s uneasy relationship to the natural world and about the things in it we take for granted.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in his magnum opus painting, Manifest Destiny. In this eight-foot-by-twenty-four-foot piece, viewers are treated to a future New York City submerged underwater thanks to global warming. Yet nature has reclaimed the city, and the waters teem with fish, seabirds, and even whales. At first glance, this seems to contradict the stated environmental message of the piece-- if the icecaps have melted, and the coasts are underwater, but nature is thriving regardless, why should we humans care what happens? 

But that is precisely Rockman’s point. Instead of just rubbing your nose in the problem, he goes for something more complex. Climate change is a long-term disaster, something that people can’t see happening in real-time, which is why it’s so hard to get them to care about it. And nature, as it has in the past, will surely adapt to a changing climate. What Rockman produces, then, is a philosophical protest that does far more than say “pollution is bad”. To do so would be short-sighted and reactive-- the very mindset that brought us to this dire state in the first place. 

In his Wonderful World series of paintings, Rockman again paints a deceptively beautiful picture of a devastated future, one where wilderness has been entirely replaced by farmland and genetically engineered crops run rampant. Again, the setting is presented in an idyllic light, which only serves to underline how nightmarish the future it portrays is. Alexis Rockman’s environmental artwork is a beautiful warning for our times, one that we can ill afford to ignore.

In Alexis Rockman’s visions of the future, nature reclaims the ruins of humanity’s civilization, but humans themselves are not so lucky.