Well Hunted, Well Gathered directory excerpts #1: Existential Climate-related Security Risk plus Skeptical Science

For more information on the Well Hunted, Well Gathered directory of resources for climate and vegan(ish) activists visit this page.

Existential climate-related security risk

Dunlop, I. and Spratt, D. (May 2019) Breakthrough – National Centre for Climate Restoration, Melbourne, Australia. info@breakthroughonline.org.au

https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/148cb0_a1406e0143ac4c469196d3003bc1e687.pdf

excerpt: ‘…to sustain human civilisation, it is essential to build a zero emissions industrial system very quickly. This requires the global mobilisation of resources on an emergency basis, akin to a wartime level of response.’

Epic Tomorrows’ review: Includes a forward by Admiral Chris Barrie, a member of the Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change and Chief of the Australian Defence Force from 1998 to 2002. This report is concise, very readable and relatively free from jargon. The gist of it is that IPCC projections (key data for the Climate COPs, the latest being COP25 in Madrid) are way too conservative, excluding or downplaying extreme scenarios for the sake of political consensus on action.

When the end of civilisation is at stake, Dunlop and Spratt argue that conventional risk management as done by organisations etc, becomes irrelevant. Risk management by responding to possibilities (by scenario planning) rather than high probabilities, could be the best way forward.

A 2050 scenario is then sketched. Based on scientific data the report argues that we could be looking at the collapse of global civilisation by 2050, due to ‘high-impact low probability warming’ of 3 degrees by this date, with 2 more degrees of warming locked in. This is the projected scenario if global emissions don’t peak until 2030 (which by my reckoning doesn’t seem that unlikely, looking at the latest Climate COP in Madrid, and with one of the worst global emitters, the USA, poised to leave the Paris Agreement. Even the Paris Agreement relies on unproven technologies!). The 2050 scenario ultimate result…’a high likelihood of human civilisation coming to an end.’

In summary the report emphasises that security bodies (armies etc) are uniquely placed to mobilise and order the WWII level global infrastructure transformation that is needed to transition rapidly away from fossil fuel economies…Let us make sure that any military-led transformation of global energy infrastructures is decided democratically, with full co-operation of citizens globally, or what freedoms might be curtailed, and what human rights abuses may result?

external review: https://www.firstpost.com/tech/science/end-of-humanity-begins-in-2050-most-climate-change-models-too-conservative-report-6768451.html

activist strategy notes: Military and security force collaboration is key to the success of any revolutionary social movement, such as the one needed to force governments into WWII level mobilisation on the ecological and climate emergency. This could be a key text to persuade military personnel of the need for immediate action.

tactics: Try printing off this report and handing it to soldiers. I once trespassed into an army barracks with a megaphone to proclaim the climate emergency, but I didn’t have copies of this on me, unfortunately. Also try emailing this report to all military institutions in your country.

vegan dynamics: Consider what an urgent security forces-led mass transformation of agricultural systems from meat-based to plant-based would look like. Can you educate security forces now on plant-based agriculture as well as the ‘Existential….’ report?

life strategy notes: Bring a bit of ‘military organisation’ and toughness into your own life. Remain non-violent towards all life. (The window of a fossil-fuelled bank isn’t alive).

https://skepticalscience.com/

-Getting skeptical about global warming skepticism

https://www.facebook.com/SkepticalScience

excerpt: ‘Scientific skepticism is healthy. Scientists should always challenge themselves to improve their understanding. Yet this isn’t what happens with climate change denial. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports man-made global warming and yet embrace any argument, op-ed, blog or study that purports to refute global warming. This website gets skeptical about global warming skepticism. Do their arguments have any scientific basis? What does the peer reviewed scientific literature say?’

Epic Tomorrows’ review: The point is made on this site that genuine scientific skepticism is a good thing, and essential for the development of scientific understanding. However, man-made climate change denialism is not healthy skepticism. ‘Skepticism is a process, denial is a position’.

The Skeptical Science site is based on peer-reviewed science, and although started as a blog is highly professional and has won awards for communication in climate science. A year or so ago, I would occasionally have severe doubts about Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) after reading a particularly clever climate denialist paper. Returning to this site would always set me straight again.

The site is colourful, user-friendly and as light-hearted as possible whilst explaining serious science. It includes some graphics and pages that young adults may find fun (see the Best Sites for Young Adults list further down the page).

There is a regular feed of peer reviewed science articles on the front-page. The main climate myths (arguments used by AGW denialists) are listed conveniently down the left hand side of the front-page. There are ‘basic’, ‘intermediate’ and ‘advanced’ explanations of all myths.

Includes selected content in 24 other languages.

Key page on site: ’10 Indicators of a Human Fingerprint on Climate Change’

external review: https://thebulletin.org/2019/08/millions-of-times-later-97-percent-climate-consensus-still-faces-denial/ (not a review as such, but a good endorsement of the team at Skeptical Science).

activist strategy notes: It’s obvious that any social movement that is attempting to transform government and public opinion, must be based on the soundest science and must be able to communicate this effectively i.e. must have an excellent media & messaging strategy. Messy communication will lead to a messy understanding and thus diluted support for a movement. As an activist I would advise getting your main climate science information from just a few high quality, regularly updated peer-reviewed websites. Less is more.

tactics: Throughout this directory there will be many references to Extinction Rebellion (XR) -the only social movement I have had extensive experience of so far. XR is a useful reference point for movements attempting to respond to the global climate (and general ecological) crisis. As with any movement, there’s good and there’s stuff to improve on. Regarding climate science communication, I was dismayed to see XR jump on the IPCC Paris Narrative (!) bandwagon of saying ‘We have 12 (now 11) years to turn things around’. This vague rhetoric is a sloppy departure from the original hard-hitting talk of XR and a massive dilution of XR’s message and therefore call for support. It leads the public to believe that we will all be okay if we follow the IPCC’s recommendations, which is not actually XR’s position at all. Poor tactic!

vegan dynamics: https://skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global-warming.htm

life strategy notes: Don’t have too much science in your life. Get some art!

For the love of winning: An open letter to Extinction Rebellion

via For the love of winning: An open letter to Extinction Rebellion

?You Gather? Vegan and Climate Activism (for Heroines and Heroes) #9

Heroines and heroes, radical climate and vegan activists and others, things are really coming to a head. In the positive sweep of global history, we are reaching a pivotal moment. Either we evolve to the next level, as a species, or we go down in flames (or possibly a mixture, depending on our location). Everything is to play for, and we need appeal only to the highest virtues and traits, deities and questers. Today I appeal to Athena, Ancient Greek goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration and strategy, amongst other things.

I am only a little embarrassed to report that after a meeting with my ‘work coach’ at the government job centre the other day, I am now bound to provide evidence of business sales at my next appointment on 29th April, meaning I have to move my launch date (again!) forward to 22nd April. During that launch week I need to make sales. This means I have to step back from XR afterall. It means I can’t be directly involved in the International Rebellion in London mid-April.

You may think I am involved in some Climate / Extinction denialism, to think like this. Quite the opposite. My personal view is that Extinction Rebellion will achieve great things this April, but not (yet) the stated aim of a national citizens’ assembly to work alongside the government to deal with the ecological crisis. I did want to be directly involved anyhow, but heigh-ho.

You may ask, how can I be a capitalist (a business person, an entrepreneur) when I know that neoliberal capitalism is responsible for the sixth mass extinction event, including climate breakdown, as well as entrenched social injustice within the human species?

For me it’s simple: I want peace. For someone who wants peace, and has studied (a little) the inevitable decline of global capitalism and the inevitable relocalisation of culture, a period of managed decline, including ‘Transition capitalism’ or what I call ‘ecopreneurial Descent economics’ (eDe) is needed to help mitigate the chaos and social unrest that always occurs between civilisational epochs. More on this another time, but essentially what I advocate for is a decade of private enterprise, the main purpose being to further global activism for system change (the end of capitalism), by dismantling large corporations and redistributing wealth. The way this private enterprise is conducted is just as important as the end goal of redistributing profit and using it to break up corporations. By ‘the way it is conducted’ I mean, what the substance of the business is (what is being sold) as well as how the business is resourced, owned, staffed, and directed. The business must play a clear and sustainable role in global system change, and have obsolescence designed into it (a planned disintegration phase as we move into the next post-capitalist stage of global civilisation).

My first product is the Well Gathered workbook -spreadsheets of useful websites for activists. In other words, curated lists. They include cross-referencing and suggestions for how to use the information. The information will always be free to those who can’t afford to pay.

It is absolutely vital that as activists in an over-complex world of competing forms and articles of knowledge, we build up a coherent picture of what is going on in the world, in order to act from a place of reasonable certainty. Ignorance holds us back, and it is only by being aware of the shifting whole, that we allow the whole to evolve to heal. This is a principle of Gestalt Therapy. What we deny (in ourselves, and on Earth) will sabotage our efforts at global transformation.

The serious stuff: if you want a free copy of the first sheet in the Well Gathered workbook, contact me. The first sheet is a curated list of climate science and climate news sites. I would like your views on it. How can I improve on it? If you help me out, you will get a free copy of the final product, and free product updates for life. Email address at the bottom of the post.

In my attempt to keep things light, I’m integrating my love of music into Epic Tomorrows. (Because activism should have a great soundtrack!). I finally interviewed Queen Left the other day. It was a really great interview, and you can listen to it on the Epic Tomorrows Soundcloud channel. Please skip through the first ten minutes of silence and mumbling (whoops!) I haven’t worked out how to edit it yet.

So tell me what you think of Queen Left.

This brings us to my recommended Rebel listening for this week. ‘U.N.I.T.Y.’ by Queen Latifah, because Q.L. likes this track as much as I do, and because it’s partly where Q.L. got her name from.

By Queen Latifah and Athena, I strive onwards!

As always, feel free to comment or contact me with your vegan and climate activist dilemmas on epictomorrows@gmail.com. Also email me to get your free spreadsheet of climate science and climate news websites, with some suggestions on how to use the info. (The vegan sites will be coming soon.) I am doing my best to find answers for you. Also feel free to sign up to my posts by email, by clicking the button in the Epic Tomorrows sidebar. Finally, if you would like to order your copy of the Well Gathered workbook, let me know. Thanks.

#devonindies #devonindiecreator #supportindiecreators

?You Gather? Vegan and Climate Activism (for Heroines and Heroes) #8

‘!Hello you lovely activists, you heroines and heroes! Today’s post is dedicated to Medea, the sorceress who was the true power behind Jason of the Argonauts, the woman who enabled him to plough a field with fire-breathing oxen, defeat a band of skeleton warriors and the dragon that protected the golden fleece. In the original myth, Medea was not scorned by Jason, and so did not poison him. And they all lived happily for a while…!

Okay, it’s all about the climate this week folk…It’s been just over two weeks since my last post. I’ve been struggling with my own skeletal adversaries, and don’t even ask me about that slumbering dragon -I’m not ready for that!

I was due to interview the political rapper Queen Left last night. She was stuck in traffic in her home city of Atlanta, Georgia, USA and I was tired, so we postponed. But having the very human email exchange that we had has only given me more enthusiasm for the upcoming interview. Respecting these postponements, these flows of life…

I’ve been playing some more games with time recently. A few days ago I had a message from my solicitor to say that Devon and Cornwall Counter Terrorism Unit had gotten back in touch with her. I had instructed her to hold fire when they last contacted her, to see how long it would take them to chase it up. She was keeping my written response ready to send. They wanted to talk to me about a blog post I wrote for the Extinction Rebellion blog, where I mentioned that I would probably get myself arrested again in April, non-violently in the streets of London along with many other XR rebels. The CTU are attempting to scare me a little it seems, or make an example of me. But they are only responding to me making an example of myself. 🙂 A message for the police and the CTU (if you are watching me even here on my own blog) and I mean this kindly: We’re going to win chaps, one way or another, so give up now. If you have children and you want their future safety assured, take off your uniforms and join XR. And please do carry on reading to learn something about climate science.

I’m almost done with trawling through climate science websites! Literally and emotionally! I hope I’ve saved you heroines and heroes some time though. After extensive searching over several weeks I’ve dismissed the most deceptive and misleading of so-called ‘climate sceptics’ / deniers’ arguments over ‘hockey stick’ tree-ring proxy data, the related ‘Climategate’ and other controversies. I’ve discovered how massive, fragmented and often profligate the nature of modern knowledge is, and how hard it is for any of us, including us activists, to have an accurate overview of the truth of what is going on in the world in one small subject area at any given time, let alone to try to maintain an overview from week to week as data and conclusions grow and shift.

The area of climate science is no different, despite the urgent imperative that we respond coherently to climate breakdown as a species. In my online search I have also been reminded of how our egotistical tendencies, natural desires for social recognition and a secure knowledge of the universe and our place in it, give rise to bias and an unwillingness to maintain an openness to complex, ever-changing data and the variety of conclusions that can be drawn from them. It takes a certain kind of intellectual rigour and moral courage to be able to continually occupy a place of ‘I’m not really sure’, rather than identifying with a clear position of ‘believer’ or ‘denier’. It’s nice to see initiatives like Berkeley Earth which was set up in 2010 to scientifically deal with the valid concerns of so-called ‘climate sceptics’. Reassuringly for some of us, the first Berkeley report of 2012 concluded that the concerns of the sceptics were ultimately unfounded -though it took a fair bit of rigourous investigation to reach that point.

Without the openness of initiatives like Berkeley, we give so-called ‘climate change deniers’ -or alternatively, anyone with an outlying opinion on climate science at either end of the spectrum- too much power by not engaging with them properly and reasonably, and I might add, with compassion for their insecurity -an insecurity that we all feel.

As I think is implied by The Science of Doom, although it is not always useful to polarise people between anthropogenic climate change ‘believers’ on one side and ‘deniers’ on the other, it is sometimes a convenient and almost unavoidable way to frame the debate. But we must understand that there is a diversity of debate between the extreme positions of claiming to ‘prove’ that climate change is not predominantly human-caused, and claiming to ‘prove’ that humanity will all but have disappeared from the face of the Earth in under five years from now.

The truth is somewhere inbetween. Yes, of course the warming in recent decades is predominantly human in origin. But predicting the future is notoriously difficult. Nevertheless, after my extensive online search of climate science / news sites for the Well Gathered workbook I can confidently say that there is a reasonable likelihood of civilisational collapse before the end of the century as a result of climate breakdown, unless we reduce greenhouse gas emissions (mainly CO2) to near zero by around 2030 -not 2050 as the IPCC suggests. Ideally we should be looking at 2025. With a war-time effort it is possible. For the sake of my nieces and nephews, it is a no-brainer: the precautionary principle simply must be used here -human civilisation, perhaps even human survival (beyond a few thousand breeding pairs anyway) is at stake.

This is why I support Extinction Rebellion. Here is one of our recent actions, ‘Blood of our Children’, that made headline news.

Okay, so this week’s rebel listening is a clear choice. Keith Flint, prodigy frontman, died just a few days ago. No I’m not going to link to an article on his untimely death. Suffice to say that I’ve had The Prodigy playing many a time during intensive work periods for Epic Tomorrows.

So feel free to sign up to my posts by email, by clicking the button in the Epic Tomorrows sidebar. And if you would like to order your copy of the Well Gathered workbook, let me know. Cheers ~

#devonindies #devonindiecreator #supportindiecreators

Extinction Rebellion isn’t about the Climate

A re-post from my friend Stu of Extinction Rebellion (XR). Many of the subjects covered relate to Epic Tomorrows.

Stuart Basden

Originally published on Jan 10 2019 on Medium.

Yes, yes, I know. The climate is breaking down. It’s urgent. An emergency. We’ve only got a few years left to ‘fix’ it.

Indeed, we won’t fix it. Weather patterns will become increasingly unstable and unpredictable, and the effects it will soon have on how humans around the world grow food will be devastating, likely causing harvests to fail across entire continents and food prices to sky-rocket. Millions have already suffered due to the amplified instability. We’re facing imminent societal collapse (whatever that means), both around the world and in the UK. All of our lives are soon going to radically change.

None of this is particularly controversial. When a bus is driving with a certain momentum towards a person, it gets clearer and clearer that it will hit the person. After a certain point, it’s inevitable. And that’s where we stand now, with regards to the momentum of climatic change. The bus is about to hit us. Our lives are about to change. It’s not clear whether or not we’ll survive (as a species). Many species have already been run over. Two hundred species each and every day go extinct.

I’ve been with Extinction Rebellion (XR) from the start. I was one of the 15 people in April 2018 who came together and made the collective decision to try to create the conditions that would initiate a rebellion. I was a coordinator of one of the original five working groups, and I’ve been organising with XR day-and-night since then (frugally living off my savings so I don’t have to work, having quit an industry that paid me £1000/week). And I’ve been in RisingUp (the organisation from which XR has emerged) since the first RisingUp action in November 2016. I’m a RisingUp Holding Group member, and a member of the XR Guardianship Team.

And for the sake of transparency: that previous paragraph is all about me ‘pulling rank’ — I’m trying to convince you to listen to what I have to say…

And I’m here to say that XR isn’t about the climate. You see, the climate’s breakdown is a symptom of a toxic system of that has infected the ways we relate to each other as humans and to all life. This was exacerbated when European ‘civilisation’ was spread around the globe through cruelty and violence (especially) over the last 600 years of colonialism, although the roots of the infections go much further back.

As Europeans spread their toxicity around the world, they brought torture, genocide, carnage and suffering to the ends of the earth. Their cultural myths justified the horrors, such as the idea that indigenous people were animals (not humans), and therefore God had given us dominion over them. This was used to justify a multi-continent-wide genocide of tens of millions of people. The coming of the scientific era saw this intensify, as the world around us was increasingly seen as ‘dead’ matter — just sitting there waiting for us to exploit it and use it up. We’re now using it up faster than ever.

Euro-Americans violently imposed and taught dangerous delusions that they used to justify the exploitation and reinforced our dominance, while silencing worldviews that differed or challenged them. The UK’s hand in this was enormous, as can be seen by the size of the former British empire, and the dominance of the English language around the world. There is stark evidence that everyday racial bias continues in Britain, now, today. It’s worth naming some of these constructed delusions that have been coded into societies and institutions around the world:

The delusion of white-supremacy centres whiteness and the experience of white people, constructing and perpetuating the myth that white people and their lives are somehow inherently better and more valuable than people of colour.
The delusion of patriarchy centres the male experience, and excludes/hinders female assigned people from public life (reducing them to a possession or object for ownership or consumption). Patriarchy teaches dominating and competitive behaviours, and emphasises the idea that the world is a place of scarcity, separation and powerlessness.
The delusions of Eurocentrism include the notion that Europeans know what is best for the world.
The delusions of hetero-sexism/heteronormativity propagate the idea that heterosexuality is ‘normal’ and that other expressions of sexuality are deviant.
The delusions of class hierarchy uphold the theory that the rich elite are better/smarter/nobler than the rest of us, and make therefore better decisions.

There are other delusions. These delusions have become ingrained in all of us, taught to us from a very young age.

None of these delusions have ended, although some of the arguments that supported them (e.g. phrenology) have been dispelled. They continue to play out through each of us, in our ways of relating, regardless of our identity. The current pride in the history of the British empire, or the idea that the USA is on the side of ‘good’, continues to enable neo-colonialism in 2019, taking the form of palm-oil plantations, resources wars, and the parasitical financial sector, to name but a few. The task of Extinction Rebellion is to dispel these delusions. We need to cure the causes of the infection, not just alleviate the symptoms. To focus on the climate’s breakdown (the symptom) without focusing attention on these toxic delusions (the causes) is a form a denialism. Worse, it’s a racist and sexist form of denialism, that takes away from the necessary focus of the need for all of us to de-colonise our selves.

My ancestors are European, some of whom claimed to ‘own’ people as slaves. There are black people with the name Basden in the Americas, and I have begun to mobilise my (white) family to make contact in order to seek to pay reparations.

However, my own accountability cannot be fully paid through this. The insanity* of the mind of the coloniser continues today. It continues in the extraction of fossil fuels, minerals and water from the earth. It continues in deforestation and industrial agriculture. It continues in a callous culture of consumption, which intensifies each Christmas. It continues in evictions and deportations. It continues in the ways of relating to those around us that perpetuate separation and division.

The result is isolation, pain and suffering. The result can be felt at the individual level — in the endemic levels of loneliness and mental-health illness. It can be felt at the community level — in the theft of land for plunder and profit by largely-European-and-US-based banks and corporations. And it can be felt at the global level — in the polluting of our air and oceans.

So Extinction Rebellion isn’t about the climate. It’s not even about ‘climate justice’**, although that is also important. If we only talk about the climate, we’re missing the deeper problems plaguing our culture. And if we don’t excise the cause of the infection, we can never hope to heal from it.

This article is calling to all of those who are involved in XR who sometimes slip into saying it’s a climate movement. It’s a call to the American rebels who made a banner saying “CLIMATE extinction rebellion”. It’s a call to the XR Media & Messaging teams to never get sloppy with the messaging and ‘reduce’ it to climate issues. It’s a call to the XR community to never say we’re a climate movement. Because we’re not. We’re a Rebellion. And we’re rebelling to highlight and heal from the insanity that is leading to our extinction. Now tell the truth and act like it.

* I use the term ‘insanity’ carefully, with the intention of highlighting the need for healing. Indigenous First Nation people helpfully taught me to see the mindset of the coloniser as a sickness. In no way do I intend to marginalise or discredit the experience of people who have been labelled ‘insane’ by a normative system, nor who identify as being ‘insane’.

** Climate Justice refers to the injustice that those who are affected first and worst by extreme weather events (the people in the poorer countries, the majority of whom live in the Global South) are not likely to be the ones who caused the climate emissions (the people who consume the most, including the pathologically wasteful cultures of Europe and Turtle Island (aka North America), and the rich who live/travel around the world).

?You Gather? Vegan and Climate Activism (for Heroines and Heroes) #6

!Heroines. Heroes. Activists. Are you having a legendary time?

Forget about Valentine’s Day -we have work to do!

I’m starting to write this post with a burning in my writing hand. This can only be a good sign. The real reason for it is the young stinging nettles I picked from the hedgerow earlier to break my half day fast. (Come on vegans, learn how to forage in the coming climate chaos!!!) In my mythic imagination though, I can fantasise that the gods have instilled this burning in my being to bring out a communicator of heroic proportions. Let me be Metis, the Titaness of wise counsel!

Ah, how I love the play of synchronicity through my everyday life! As I search for an image of the goddess Metis online, a different meaning of the word Metis appears. The Metis Nation of Western Canada are a Nation of mixed indigenous and Euro-American ancestry. Their symbol, the featured image for this post, reminds me of both the mathematical symbol for infinity, and a super-heroine’s mask.

The Metis language ‘Michif’ is a mix of Cree and French. This brings me to another synchronicity. About a week ago I received a friend request on Facebook from ‘Daphnee’, a French-Canadian who is the co-ordinator for XR (Extinction Rebellion) Prince Edward Island in the northeast of Canada. Here they are. We started chatting online, resulting in agreeing to have a videocall (we haven’t yet) and Daphnee provisionally agreeing to be another editor on XR Blog I founded XR Blog for Extinction Rebellion and am now a co-editor on the blog with an increasingly international team.

I started messaging Daphnee from an off-grid wooden cabin in the middle of a young woodland in mid-Devon, where I go sometimes to take a break from modern technology (so it didn’t quite work this time!) and do some nourishing physical work. Worried as I am about the food and energy security of my future, it’s nice to know I can still split wood with wedges and a sledgehammer. During my couple of days in the woods I received a vision related to Daphnee, which I haven’t told her all about yet. I’ll let you know next time. Suffice to say, I am not a superstitious kind of person, but when I occasionally receive these visions I take them very seriously.

Anyway, I suppose you’re looking for news on how it’s going with developing my Earth-saving heroic informational product, designed with vital (but perhaps slightly impatient) vegan and climate heroines (and heroes) like you in mind??? Well, I can tell you that the Well Gathered Workbook is progressing nicely thank you!

In the last couple of weeks I have actually got round to starting the product building (yes, I know, it’s a bit late after all the fuss I’ve been making). I am starting with a spreadsheet within the Well Gathered Workbook which focuses on online climate science resources. I have been finding in my own exploration of these complex resources that, in my opinion, guidance for activists is definitely needed. I came across this site, which is a great resource (and I will be listing it), and yet, some of the links are out of date (possibly because the sites no longer exist) and there is not enough assessment of quality of the sites. In the Well Gathered Workbook climate science sheet I will be assessing quality of sites, including my ‘best picks’ from the sites listed on the site linked to above.

One such best pick is this staggeringly useful website, which includes this database of climate disinformation, comprehensively listing information about individuals and organisations involved in the climate breakdown denial industry (there are a surprising amount of them!).

I’m also thrilled that two people got in touch to reserve their copies of the Well Gathered Workbook (okay, so one of them is a friend!).

In other activism related news (from my life!), I got back from a therapeutic day out the other day on a ‘Play Day’ (see Christie Animas’ amazing ‘Fooling’ here) to find a hand-written note pushed through my letterbox. For the second time in a few months, the Counter Terrorism Unit of Devon and Cornwall police wanted to talk to me to ‘discuss my interest in environmentalism.’ Yeah right.

I was unsettled, but not too much so. I contacted the excellent people of XR Exeter and they offered support. The next day I also phoned Green and Blacks, who offer advice for activists and free services from lawyers affiliated with them. Soon enough I had an email written for me by Kelly’s solicitors in Brighton addressed to Devon and Cornwall CTU, warning them off. The great result, which I was cc-ed into, is that for the time being I will be left alone. The attention was due to the action I related in this post.

If you are a hardcore front-line non-violent arrestable activist, I encourage you to sit through the fear induced by police visits like the ones I have received. Urgent climate and ecological breakdown demand that we be brave and sit through the scare tactics. I’m a very sensitive guy, and I’ve suffered from my fair share of mental health difficulties, but I can assure you that resilience in the face of the cops, like anything, gets easier over time.

However, this resilience will only be developed if you have robust self-care practices in place in your life. For myself, living alone in a flat and physically isolated for most of the time, these practices are particularly important to keep up. So I walk in Nature, I have enough phone-calls with friends, especially empathic activist friends, and I connect with family. I can’t tell you how nourished I felt the other day when I visited my sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew. My bro-in-law is an excellent chef and cooked some amazing vegan meals -I mean seriously mouth-watering, from this book. Okay, so I know we don’t all have a great biological family. So which friendships can you cultivate to the point that they feel like family?

So I really feel like I am starting to gather well. ‘Gathering well’ is a mission that all modern people are called to upon to do, especially activists. And sometimes it takes a fair amount of heroism. Sitting through the scary stuff. You and I are increasingly called upon to gather our influences, our families, the practices that we know are good for us and the information that we know could be useful to us. Most of all we need to gather our courage and strength, so that we may begin to face the bumpy (to say the very least) transition to post-carbon, post-globalised humanity, on a soon-to-be vastly warmer world which in the not-too-unlikely worst case may reduce our population to a few thousand breeding pairs.

My role for Epic Tomorrows is to save you time (yes I know you’re busy heroically fighting the multi-headed monsters of the carbon industry and the industrial meat industry). Whether it’s gathering insight from my experiences as a front-line arrestable activist, or collecting and recording the in-depth insights I’m gaining from developing as a highly discerning surfer of the net, I trust that I will start to save you a little time. Obviously, the Well Gathered Workbook is my way of saving you time whilst (just beginning) making a living for myself.

So before I wind up, my recommended rebel political listening for this week is ‘Why We Build The Wall’ by Anais Mitchell. Let us make as many international connections as possible and refrain from building unnecessary walls out of fear, as the global situation deteriorates, as it likely will (overall) for some time to come.

By the way, for those of you who were expecting the Queen Left interview on 14th of February, Queen somehow didn’t get some emails of mine, so we are postponing the interview for a few weeks now.

So with my fingers still pleasantly burning from the nettles, I want to tell you to forget about Eros, that silly love-struck boy. Think of Metis the wise counsellor, gatherer of wisdom, who preceded Zeus chronologically in the Greek pantheon. Metis who caused Athena, fully armoured, to be born from Zeus’ forehead.

Today is the day that School Strikes for Climate are launching across the UK, including in my home city of Exeter.

Heroines and heroes, go forth!

As always, feel free to comment or contact me with your vegan and climate activist dilemmas on epictomorrows@gmail.com. I will do my best to find the answers for you. Also feel free to sign up to my posts by email, by clicking the button in the Epic Tomorrows sidebar.

#devonindies #devonindiecreator #supportindiecreators

?You Gather? Vegan and Climate Activism (for Singles) #4

!Hello you lovely activists, heroines and heroes! Are you rested after the ‘Christmas break’? Are you full of beans or your choice of protein (less of the animal protein please) and ready to go? Or are you still a little fatigued, like I am? Still a little overwhelmed and stressed out at the state of the world, as I am? Still a little sad at the way the world seems to be going, as I am?

And yet, I have so much joy in my heart, and yes, there is a growing energetic spirit within me, despite this nasty ongoing cold and cough I have. It is the joy of courage and determination that being part of the wonderful movement of Extinction Rebellion (XR) has given me. It is also the joy I have gained from getting back in touch with Nature recently, albeit a Nature artificially divided up into industrialised beef, lamb and milk pastures. In the leaf-mouldy footpaths in-between the fields, where edible succulent leaves grow from the shades of Devon banks (yes even in January), and where I imagine up fairy stories about the souls of extinct animals, my soulful strength returns.

The past couple of weeks for me has been dominated by XR once more, and yet I trust that the experience is also giving me valuable insight into activists and what would help us be more effective. My Well Gathered spreadsheet is addressing this question. (It will be given free to committed XR people).

Well Gathered will launch for sale to most of you on 29th March. I have put forward the launch date by a few weeks for about the fifth time, but I have the best possible reason this time -my government employed business adviser thinks that this is giving myself the best chance in terms of government benefits I can receive. I can receive Jobseekers Allowance payments at £70 for 12 more weeks before signing on to the reduced £60 per week New Enterprise Allowance payments for a further 13 weeks. During all this time I don’t have to look for work, and any business money I make doesn’t affect my benefits.

I have been wondering today whether I should narrow down my audience more to ‘climate activists’ rather than ‘vegan and climate activists’, especially as I am struggling a little to get my head around the different attitudes towards veganism and plant-based diets of different people who identify with these diets (sorry, vegans, ways of living), as well as the attitudes of meat and dairy eaters towards vegans and vice versa.

Just a couple of days ago I had a long chat with a fellow XR volunteer over the phone (the first time we had spoken) about the potential difficulty of encouraging urban vegan activists to de-stress themselves and recuperate by staying in the countryside and learning about land use and land-based livelihoods. We agreed that WWOOF could be a better used resource for urban activists to de-stress, and links could be made between WWOOF and XR.

But for vegan activists (and there are many vegans in XR) there is a potential barrier, in that Permaculture growing systems (established by some good WWOOF hosts) incorporate animals to be most energy-efficient, e.g. by rotating their grazing to prepare vegetable beds and use their manure for food growing. This is a standard energy-saving traditional farming technique (as opposed to modern industrial farming). It arguably kills many less living beings than mass-grown (polyculture) plant crops in a single large field requiring imported fertilisers, even if the animals are eaten near the end of their long lives. (Think of all the animal deaths indirectly caused by fertiliser production and transportation).

I identify as vegan myself for approximately 95% of the time (or does that make me ‘plant-based’, I’m still not sure?). Yet I have enough understanding of sustainable land use to know that some compassionate animal husbandry can be part of the answer for long-term relocalised food systems. And we do need to relocalise the whole of society. Flying around the world, whether people or food, is fucking up the atmosphere.

Speaking of fucking things up, I was arrested for graffiti-ing the front of Barclays Bank in Exeter (southwest England) the other day for an XR action. But it’s Barclays who are really fucking things up. Read this article, if you dare. So this occasion counted as in the 5% of the time that I am not vegan, as I accepted the cheese slice and then the biscuits that were offered to me in the police cell after the action. When I was released at 11pm I did have a fully vegan sandwich in Exeter’s 24 hour Subway, but that would have been more than cancelled out by the general ecological destruction entailed by any large multinational corporation, especially one as massive as Subway.

I must admit, I felt pretty heroic on this action. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. I bet there will be many activists reading this who like to get in touch with the heroic too. Indeed, in these extraordinary times of climate and ecological crisis, we need to call on the heroines inside all of us. We need to call loudly, firmly, to call inwardly to ourselves and outwardly to society.

You are heroic. I know what efforts you put in as an activist. I really do. With the activism-related information I gather as part of my efforts for Epic Tomorrows, I sincerely hope that I will save you some legwork. Damn, you’re busy! I know you are!

Being a rural activist. I’m lonely. XR activists are spread all over the country and now the world, but it’s in the towns and cities they gather. My life is full of paradox, as living alone, I do get lots of work done, including work for XR and Epic Tomorrows. I also communicate daily with other XR activists working in all the different departments, especially the Regenerative Culture (including well-being) team of which I am a member, and the Media and Messaging team. Yet when the communications stop, when I close the laptop after spending too much time (again) online, I can feel suddenly isolated, even depressed. It’s a common story.

Nevertheless, something positive is starting to happen. Something that I remember writing about in a post a while back. Something about how online communications can eventually result in greater human connection than ever was possible before the internet, if these communications are pursued wisely. I refer to a long-term vision, not yet realised, of the deep connections formed in activist circles becoming more manifest in geographically based communities. Sure, it happens, but nowhere near enough, or not quite in the way I would like to see it. You’ll have to bear with me a few years on that one.

So now I find myself starting to have conference calls and phonecalls with my new XR friends that previously I may have only emailed. This in turn has encouraged me to get out into my village, and start to see again those old friends that were waiting for me to call round all along.

And I received quite a shock when the building developer putting up some flats across from the row I’m in, came round to measure my porch (to measure against the new porches across the way), and informed me: ‘My wife’s joined Extinction Rebellion’.

In more ways than one, XR is helping me gather myself socially, and I’m getting more grounded with it.

When it comes to dating, most of the time I am quite happy being single. Every few days I do get overcome by waves of loneliness, but I watch them pass. Very recently my phone informed me that ‘Zara has joined Signal’ (name changed to protect Zara’s identity). Signal is a secure messaging service, highly recommended for activists to say the least. I struggled for a second to remember who Zara was, and then I remembered she was a contact from the Ok Cupid dating site, from a couple of years back.

So now XR Namibia may be starting up. You think I’m joking. Wait and see. There’s no symbol on this map of XR groups over Namibia yet, but check it in one month’s time. Admittedly, that would have been an impossibly long-distance relationship…

Single activists probably get more done, I think, and now is a very urgent time to get things done in terms of the global climate breakdown and ongoing ecological catastrophe (surely you agree with me if you’ve read this far?). I am starting to meet lots of lovely women through activist conference calls and phonecalls. For now I am happy to admire from a place of detachment -I have my hero quest to pursue!

How about you?

For an audio representation of some of this content i.e. me rambling on, visit Soundcloud.

As always, get in touch with your vegan and climate activist dilemmas, and I’ll try to help, or at least signpost you to some good information. Info gathering is what I have a knack for afterall. Email me on epictomorrows@gmail.com

Existence is Revolution #1: Cosmic Inflation and The Big Bang

Existence is Revolution: A Regenerative Theirstory of Our Universe

by Matthew Azoulay

Okay, so I am no longer into XR. This post, and the conception of a series of posts following from this one, needs some drastic re-working. Including the integration of this.

One: Cosmic Inflation and The Big Bang

The Big Bang -or rather, the cosmic inflation that is now known to have preceded the Big Bang- could have been the original act of rebellion. This was the rebellion of Existence against the Nothing that came before, or for religious people, perhaps this could be described as the rebellion of God against Nothingness or even, the rebellion of God against the unity of Theirself. In the mysterious and unlikely context of this Something, or this Creation, coming out of Nothing, criticisms that the Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement won’t succeed suddenly seem utterly ridiculous. If the Cosmos exists, seemingly without reason, and if ‘life’ as we know it exists, against all odds, then against lesser odds, XR can succeed.

Yet, if time began at the beginning of the cosmic inflation, then there can have been no ‘before’ the inflation…so the inflation has always existed. If this is the case, there was no rebellion against Nothing, but there was still this massive rebellion against everything that came after. Everything that came after the cosmic inflation was dependent on it, whereas the cosmic inflation was dependent on nothing. The inflation then, whatever the case, is conceptually a rebellion against the Big Bang and everything afterwards. Just as XR is a rebellion against the supposed inevitable extinction of humankind and many other species.

Am I making any sense? No? Good, then I’ll go on…

The cosmic inflation and everything that came ‘after’, in short, the whole of Existence, is also a rebellion against Non-Existence in a different way. In other words, whether there was a beginning of time or not, a starting point to the cosmic inflation or not, everything we know is a rebellion against what could have been, or what could never have been, or what we can’t imagine, or the complete absence of an everything which includes both Nothing and Something.

With me so far? No? Don’t worry, here comes a simple instruction:

Support Extinction Rebellion.

Why? Because you already do. You are already a rebellion against extinction, by your mere existence. Why not manifest that more fully, by rebelling, by existing more fully, now, while you have the life for it? Merely existing is no rebellion against the likely untimely deaths of your grandchildren and their pets.

?You Gather? Vegan & Climate Activism #3

Happy New Year? Maybe. How was your festive period? Mine was very low key. Time for me to reflect, read books, do some writing, and finish the first version of my business plan for Epic Tomorrows, which was finally signed off by my government-employed business adviser yesterday (the 28th). Funnily enough, the British government are funding me to develop informational resources which challenge the British government. Email me at epictomorrows@gmail.com if it would be useful for you to have a copy of the plan. Especially if you are vegan or a climate activist. 2019 is a great year to start a business themed around veganism or climate activism. My own flagship business product is explained here.

I’ve also been enjoying continuing my work for Extinction Rebellion (XR) albeit in a more relaxed and sparse way than I have been in recent months. We have a good regenerative culture building within XR, e.g. we encourage each other to take time out and recuperate. I have been enjoying reading about the recent XR BBC blockade action in London. I couldn’t be there myself, but I did take part in the now infamous November 2018 bridge blocks, at which I was arrested. It’s amazing how XR have managed to create atmospheres around their actions which are both edgy, facilitating non-violent direct actions which end in arrests, and also family friendly, often with children contributing to the debate on the microphones. I put this down to the discipline of non-violence which prevails, drawing on the traditions of Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

I hope that those of you who are non-vegan but are considering a more plant-based diet will try out ‘Veganuary’ i.e. going vegan for the whole of January. This simple exercise in self-restraint is itself a type of activism and has value on many different levels, from the personal and political to the commercial and environmental. Here’s a website to help you do it.

When it comes to vegan educational resources and campaigns, Viva! are one the forefront organisations (in case you didn’t know).

If you really want to go for it with climate activism in 2019, we are in such a dire emergency now that I would advise you join one of the more radical climate activist groups that have formed in the past two years. For the UK, a good bet is XR. Internationally there are also the options of ‘By 2020 We Rise Up’, ‘This Is Zero Hour’ and ‘We Don’t Have Time’. There are many more resources for vegans and activists which I will be gathering together all in one place in my Well Gathered spreadsheet.

I’m a romantic person, and you could say I have quite a romantic idea of what could happen in 2019 for vegan and climate activists, and hence for the whole of society. We really are in the cow-shit when it comes to climate breakdown and ecological collapse, and unfortunately our short-sighted democracies are just not equipped to take the radical and far-reaching economic, technological and social restructuring measures required. These measures are required to avert an otherwise likely global temperature rise of 4 degrees by the end of the century, a 4 degrees which some scientists and complex systems theorists say is ‘incompatable’ with organised human civilisation as we know it. Does that scare you? It should do! Look here for some good science.

My ‘romantic’ vision is one of massive planetary change, but I dare not go into too much detail here, because all our visions are different, and we need a shared vision of change, for any significant change to happen.

Speaking of romance, I hereby make a call-out to lovely, polyamorous, vegan, climate activist entrepreneur women to even notice me in 2019 and ask me out on a date 🙂 Or if I’m being too fussy, vegetarian, climate activist, polyamorous, and female would be okay. And lovely. I live in the southwest of England. Near Exeter. And sometimes Bristol. Maybe near you sometimes. If you want.

As always everyone, please get in touch with any of your vegan activist and / or climate activist dilemmas. If you are seeking information or advice you can’t find, maybe I can help you (for free I mean). Respond to this post or drop me a line at epictomorrows@gmail.com or send me a voice recording (that would be extra nice, audio content is more human).

To hear my vocal rendering of the spirit of this post, visit Epic Tomorrows on Soundcloud.

?You Gather? Vegan & Climate Activism #2

The last few days has been family time. My family are not vegan and they are not activists, but I love them all the same. My mum is proud of my direct action climate activism with Extinction Rebellion (XR). She said something about wishing she had engaged in such activism, but not feeling able to, and being therefore glad that I am engaged instead.

I’m in Somerset, Hatch Beauchamp -the village where my mum and step-dad live. I have a stinking cold. I’m looking back over a year of turbulence. Turbulence in my own life but also in the field of climate science and the politics that is affected by that science. Every now and again I have doubted the mainstream consensus view on anthropogenic global warming, but every time I have read even more deeply into the subject and come out with a renewed conviction that yes, we are (almost) fucked, and yes, it is almost certainly our own doing and therefore yes, we should be rebelling against our governments until they take appropriate action. I’m glad I’m with XR.

Here is an article about a recent piece of information gathering which may be of interest to you, regarding so-called ‘climate tipping points’.

As I gather my thoughts, and gather information for my product-in-development, the Well Hunted, Well Gathered directory for vegan and climate activists, I realise something. It is this: as climate breakdown is a global issue more urgent than any other, affecting absolutely everyone, the response must be a radically inclusive one, which means a non-binary one.

This means that as radical climate activists we must build bridges between all opposing ideologies, identities and groups, in the name of saving humanity itself and the many other species in danger of extinction. This includes building bridges between the religious and the non-religious, between the different religions, between opposing political viewpoints and between vegans and meat-eaters.

It may be up to those of us who are vegans to take the initiative in building bridges with our meat-eating human brethren. I urge all militant vegans to look at the bigger picture here -if we can work together as a species to tackle climate breakdown, then naturally more meat eaters will go vegan. On a scientific level it’s well established that humans need to switch to a more plant-based diet for a sustainable future on Earth, including in response to global CO2 emissions and the paucity of carbon sinks worldwide, with forests cleared by the agricultural industry -particularly meat and dairy- and the growing threat of forest fires.

Practically speaking, the bridges will be built more quickly if vegans set a great example as non-violent direct action activists at the forefront of the climate rebellion -that rebellion that includes XR, that is gathering momentum daily now. As XR has demonstrated, non-violence is the key to success, which includes non-violence in communication. Partly this means, if you want to assure a future for humanity in the long-run alongside a diversity of other species, it’s best you don’t pick fights with meat-eaters (or anyone).

Vegans and climate activists all, it’s time we got our shit together.