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Australian Fires -- Seminal Moment of Awakening?

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(@jeanne-mayell)
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These bushfires have loomed in my psyche as the seminal climate event that the world might begin to view with a wider lens than the usual empathy for those effected.  Yes, I watch these fires sobbing for that great land and the suffering befalling the Australian people and all those precious animals. 

But I also watch this news knowing that it signifies the future for the whole world. 

Then I wonder whether this catastrophe is waking people up.   Well this article that Rob from New Zealand sent me this morning shows that, yes, people are starting to wake up, albeit only in New South Wales. Based on the news in the U.S, I don't notice that previously denying people  in the U.S. have changed their awareness about climate change and what these fires mean globally. 

I have wondered for thirty years when people would start waking up about climate change. Bill McKibben wrote his first book (The End of Nature) predicting these times back in the 1970's.  A few more books predicting climate catastrophes began to emerge after that.  In the late 1980's while working as a writer for EastWest Journal I decided to write a review of two environmental books that were predicting a world on fire in the future. Of all the books I received at the time for review, these two jumped out at me so I wrote about them.

Over the next thirty years I wondered what it would take for people to awaken to where we were headed.  I never thought people would be so slow to wake up. I never thought people would need their own backyards to burn before they'd see the light. But apparently that is the way it works for many people. 

According to this article in the Sydney Morning Herald people in Eastern Australia are now waking up. 

Does this mean that awakening will happen only when climate catastrophes are in people's back yards? 

My thought is that it will  take a critical mass of awakening to drown out the voices of denial.  Once that happens work will begin in earnest to speed up sustainability. 

When I go to environmental meetings in my progressive town and hear plans for zero emissions by 2050, I shudder at how delayed that is. I look around the good people working hard to make change and wonder why people aren't in more of an emergency mode about this. I realize they have to deal with a lot of people, including our Republican governor, who live in denial.

I'm thinking that 2030 will be the time of shift. The Great Turning, which is already happening in many circles and among progressives, will begin fully then. It's hard to be patient once you yourself wake up to this issue.  But patience is one of the virtues I know I came here to learn. 


   
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(@laura-f)
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I hope you're right, Jeanne.

Unfortunately the dark forces (i.e., Rupert Murdoch et al), are trying their damnedest to spin the Australian climate crisis. They're putting out fake news after fake news story about how the fires were the result of arson or "camping accidents". Anything to deflect and detract from the truths of climate crisis. I'm seeing posts from people who should know better on social media, typically the headline reads "XXX People Arrested for Arson in Australia Bushfires".

As I said, people who should know better are falling for this.


   
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(@coyote)
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@jeanne-mayell

Right before the New Year, I was watching footage of people in coastal NSW sheltering on a beach in order to escape the inferno around them, and I got the same shivers I experienced three years earlier when I watched the videos coming out of Aleppo of people saying goodbye while Assad's bombs detonated in the distance: THIS epitomizes of our times. THIS is the Great Unravelling. Yes, I believe we're entering a period of epochal shifts in public perception about the climate emergency. Personally, I've been seeing the situation in the Southern Hemisphere as foreshadowing a brutal summer for the Northern Hemisphere: droughts, heatwaves, and wildfires like nothing else, and I know some of you have seen massive floods and record-breaking storms (hmmm, a line of thunderstorms tonight in the eastern US triggered tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings in the Carolinas, while here in New England, temperaturess have spiked to 60 degrees AT NIGHT IN JANUARY as the same weather system moves through.

@laura-f. I was thinking about the Murdoch problem yesterday while driving, and the words suddenly came to me "don't give him power he doesn't have." I got an immediate sense that the Murdoch empire, along with similar allies (such as the Kremlin's Internet Research Agency), is much more brittle and falling-apart than most people realize. The same can be said of individuals like Trump and Putin; political entities like the Chinese Communist Party and the Saudi royals; and all-encompassing institutions such as neoliberal free trade or debt bondage. All of these people and entities I've just listed are the product of stories, nothing more.

I'm going to get off-topic here. There is ABSOLUTELY NO Illuminati, Big Brother, New World Order, or evil race of lizard people. Grandiose "theories" like these are just lame cop-outs that we come up with to remove our individual burdens of responsibility for the world (also, be mindful that these myths are one and the same with "Jews and queers want to take over the world!" hysteria). WE create consensus reality through the stories we tell, and every time we ascribe super-villain like cunning to Trump/Putin/Murdoch, etc., guess what? We actually make these men more powerful, when in truth, the dark forces we see in the world right now started out as (mostly) little boys, spiritually speaking. They saw the writing on the wall of where the future is heading, so they started to desperately and haphazardly form allegiances of convenience in order to maintain their arthritic grips on the reins of power. 

(back to topic)

As the climate emergency explodes exponentially this decade, the dark forces will lose control of the narrative. There will be too much happening all at once, and people will stop paying attention to the empty sound machines. Instead, normal, everyday people (99.9 % of the population) will be getting their hands dirty as they clean up the catastrophes that will be occurring left and right. Slowly at first, but then rapidly, the curtain will glide open, and we'll realize the emperor was never wearing any clothes (I think 2025 will be when this "reveal" culminates, but it's already happening). Then we can start crafting a new story for our world.

Excuse the zeal of this post. Everything past the middle of the second paragraph was automatic writing, and apparently I'm waking up to my inner shaman ? .


   
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(@jeanne-mayell)
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@coyote

I like the zeal of your post. It feels more authentic.  More channeled from a higher source.  More higher level synthesizing of the energies you pick up. You are coming out of yourself and I like what you are getting.

My daughter was a fine artist all her life.  Now she does improv six days a week. She feels her creativity is more accessible to her via improv because it just flows right out of her. It flows right from the ether to the world via words. 

When we let our posts flow right out of us, we pick up more of the higher energies flowing through the universe.  We pick up more truth. 

 


   
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(@michele-b)
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@coyote

Hahahaha. Loved this. Thank you for setting us straight (pardon the pun) on a number of strange conspiracy/mythological theories many of have read about for, well decades really. 

I always hoped I was a bird instead of a lizard ?

@michele-b

There is ABSOLUTELY NO Illuminati, Big Brother, New World Order, or evil race of lizard people. Grandiose "theories" like these are just lame cop-outs that we come up with to remove our individual burdens of responsibility for the world (also, be mindful that these myths are one and the same with "Jews and queers want to take over the world!" 


   
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(@five81993)
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“As the climate emergency explodes exponentially this decade, the dark forces will lose control of the narrative. There will be too much happening all at once, and people will stop paying attention to the empty sound machines,” Coyote

“I never thought people would be so slow to wake up. I never thought people would need their own backyards to burn before they'd see the light. But apparently that is the way it works for many people,”  Jeanne

It is astonishing though what it actually takes to get peoples’ attention. This should’ve been a top  priority decades ago. It’s sad too since, with the creation of the EPA in the Nixon administration, so much pollution was cleaned up and there was that hole in the ozone that GHW Bush’s VP Dan Quayle (remember potatoe?) incessantly mocked. But the hole in the ozone was fixed.

Climate change threatens the fossil fuel industry and capitalism itself. I hope that when the Great Turning takes place, the people at that time will see this and abolish that old hierarchical (and patriarchal) system for something more democratic…


   
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(@lovendures)
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Worry that Sydney's water supply( which was low to begin with) will now be contaminated.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/bushfires-trigger-fears-ash-debris-will-wash-into-sydney-s-water-supply-in-downpour


   
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(@dcd2510)
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I just wanted to post some of my thoughts. 

Firstly, I want to discuss the ecological repercussions.

1. I expect that by 2024/2025 every single state will have massive bushfires in summe.

2. I also feel that we will crack or almost crack 50 degrees in some cities or major regional areas.

3. I expect over 6 billion animals dead by this time, possibly anywhere to 10 billion or more. 

4. I expect ancient forests to come under even worse threat.

5. I expect Cities will start to be threatened by bushfires, yes, capital cities, and that we will have major issues with power supply as well, as renewables are forced to hold the load for ageing coal and gas fired power stations.

I want to note as well, that for the most vulnerable in society, including those who are homeless, or those who need Electricity such as for Aircons like the Elderly and disabled, things will get worse for now. Electricity prices will continue to rise, as the majority of the countries state Governments have sold off electricity. This means it's in corporate hands.

Next, the political repercussions.

1. This will be a turning point. No longer will the majority of politicians get away with saying Climate Change isn't real.

2. The Greens will have MASSIVE gains in the 2020s in my opinion, firstly, after the 2019 election where they stayed stagnant on 10.40% of the vote, we then got polling a few months after, the first since the elction that put the Greens on 11%, then 11% again, then 12% then 13%. Then the fell to 12%, 12% again and then 11%. The first poll of 2020 has put them at 12%. This is good. For 2020, 12% will be their new 10%, which is great. By the end of the decade they will either be in government or a part of it.

3. The state and territory elections this year. Firstly, the ACT election will see the return of the Labor/Green Government that has been in since 2008 or earlier. The Greens will gain representatives, letting them push Labor to be bolder. This is an area without many rural areas though. In the Northern Territory which is mostly rural, the Greens could gain their first ever seat, or come close. In QLD, following on from their great result of getting their first MP in 2017, they will get possibly anywhere from 2 to 10 seats by the end of it, but I am thinking 3 or 4 or 5 or 6, including the seat they currently have. 

4. In the WA State election in 2021, the Greens could get their first lower house MP.

5. In the SA State election in 2022, the Greens could get their first lower house MP. In the Victorian State Election in 2022, expect to see more Greens, possibly increasing their lower house seats to anywhere up to 10. In the Tasmanian State election, there might even be a Green Government.

6. In the 2022 Federal election, The Greens could get up to 12 senators, up from the current 9. They could also get anywhere from 2-10 lower house MPs. I don't know whether Labor or Liberal will form Government, but there will be some progressive victories, mostly through the Greens.

By the end of the 2020s, Australia will be ready for bold plans, and will elect a Government who can make it happen.


   
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(@lovendures)
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I could put this article under many different places but thought perhaps it should go here.  

I do think this is a  seminal moment of wakening.  They are paying attention.  But I also think there will be others.  People will wake more with this one, the next one they will realize this is the world we are now living in. 

I noticed on in Social Media back in November when I was doing early posts about the fires, I was the only one in my circle.  People had no idea this was going on.  As I kept posting more and more began to take note.  Then, soon, many were posting .  We need to step away from Trump 24?7 and move to covering MANY important issues around the world.  

The Wollemi Pines are located in Australia in a remote area.   They are prehistoric trees which were only discovered in the 1990's and are kept secret and hidden from the public for their protection. .    They are the only such know trees to exist in the World. There are only 200 in existence.   When the fires were approaching the trees, hidden in a canyon, a full court press by firefighters to save the trees went into effect.  They did everything they could do to save them, and the did which is amazing.  

'Large air tankers dropped fire retardant around the pines. Firefighters set up an irrigation system around the trees to keep them wet. Specialist teams winched from helicopters down to the forest floor to make sure it stayed wet.

"If the fire did go through, we wanted it to be a cool burn as opposed to a hot burn to give them the best chance of survival," Kean said.

The fire did sweep through the canyons, and through the groves where these trees have somehow survived for millions of years.

For a few days, the smoke was so thick that it wasn't clear whether the plan had worked. "We all waited with bated breath," Kean said.

At last the smoke abated.  A few trees had been charred by the flames, and two died. But the efforts had paid off. "Finally," Kean said, "we were able to get in there and see that, thank goodness, the trees were saved."

 

https://www.npr.org/2020/01/16/796994699/aussie-firefighters-save-worlds-only-groves-of-prehistoric-wollemi-pines


   
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(@jeanne-mayell)
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Here's a video of an Australian fireman calling out their conservative PM who denies climate change and was vacationing in Hawaii when the fires began. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DweZi38mWoI&feature=youtu.be. The fireman ha become somewhat of a folk hero in Australia. I believe we will be seeing more reactions like his towards the climate denying conservatives in power around the world. 

 


   
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(@herondreams)
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Another inspiring video that lays out the essence of this "Great Turning" we've been discussing on various threads. (Here with a fire metaphor.): https://nowthisnews.com/videos/news/naomi-klein-on-how-strongmen-leaders-perpetuate-the-climate-crisis


   
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(@jeanne-mayell)
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@herondreams Wonderful video, thank you!  Naomi Klein is a powerful writer whose message is true. Hoping more people will watch this video and take it into your soul! 


   
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