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Greta Thunberg sailing La Vagabonde
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
I saw that Greta is hitching a ride with my favourite YouTube vloggers Elayna and Riley across the Atlantic to the climate summit in Cadiz. I don’t know if you know them but they are a young couple who have been sailing across the world in their catamaran for the last five years, posting up regular video’s to YouTube so that us less adventurous folks can follow them. They’re a lot of fun, I hope Greta enjoys the trip and maybe we get to see a video!
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...And if Jeremy Clarkson has any criticism of this trip, he can go F*** himself.
This is the most recent video the La Vagabonde couple posted, of their trip to the Annapolis Boat Show in the US. Elayna and Riley and their baby son Lenny have about 1.1m youtube subscribers. They are now all together somewhere mid Atlantic en route to the Azores.
They’ve now reached Lisbon, it seems to have been a pretty swift crossing.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/03/greta-thunberg-arrives-in-lisbon-cop25-after-three-week-voyage-from-us
Absolutely Fabulous ...
Meanwhile ...
Complete article advice here ...
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/climate/letter-how-to-advise-a-teenage-daughter-on-climate-change/
It does raise a serious issue, who actually bears responsibility for climate change and biodiversity problems? You could say the companies who clear the forests and create new insecticides, but in a way we are also responsible individually for buying what they supply.
However getting the bulk of the population to go vegan and eat organic veg has proved to be an unsuccessful avenue to change, and we must change if we want to keep animal populations and wilderness and sustainable fisheries. It seems the policy of creating national parks has failed to work because the land comes under sustained attack from developers.
For some things you have to hold people accountable. For example what’s going on in the Amazon basin in Brazil is just criminal, people are burning the forest in order to get more cultivatable land. And for other things you have to legislate with very strict penalties, for example the various pesticides with neonicotinoids in them. Companies will not do the testing properly unless you force them, and even then they try to get away with it, look at the ‘clean diesel’ scandal with Volkswagen.
I think it’s a really good thing we are now seeing some concerted effort in the media, such as the pieces in the BBC’s Seven Worlds, One Planet series about conservation and the difficulties faced while filming like poaching and loss of wilderness habitats. This provides motivation for activists to go out and protest.
It seems the only sensible way left to get the change our planet needs.
I have stated, and have always stated, that for every Yin, there is a Yang, for every good Action we perform, something, somewhere, suffers the adverse effect.
Vegans refuse to have anything to do with animal derivatives, by-products or consumables.
That means they also refuse to wear anything that is made from an animal, such as leather, or wool...
I for one, fully intend to carry on wearing wool for a start, because I do know from an extremely reliable source that not shearing sheep isn't going to help them at all. Quite the contrary.... but the cotton industry has some very negative effects, both on workers and the environment.
And what's the alternative to leather.
Vegan leather.
Oh shut up.
It's not 'Vegan Leather', fer chrissakes. it's plastic.
And we all know something negative about plastics, don't we?
You’re right of course, personally going vegan is not necessarily the right answer to things. But consuming things with awareness has to start somewhere. I’m sorry for all the farms where animals were looked after in the right way of course, but changing some of that land dedicated to livestock back into ground for cultivating delicious vegetables seems a positive change.
^^ And what of those animals? Are they set free? Euthanised? Re-homed? Setting a domesticated animal free into the wild assures it's death - either by starvation, attack or other demise. Re-homing livestock seems unlikely if we're taking back farmed land. Euthanasia is self explanatory and unnecessary if the animal is healthy.
"Positive change" takes some serious planning....
It also takes time. What people fail to remember is that farmed animals are intensely bred for productivity. If people became vegan, that productivity would stop, animal numbers would rapidly decrease, and eventually, stocks would dwindle and die out from natural causes, to a sustainable level. If Animals are gradually acclimatised to natural living, numbers would balance out, and the ecology wouldn't suffer.
Yes, unfortunately there are rarely perfect solutions. We are most often stuck with trade offs. Want more renewable energy and electric cars to reduce our use of fossils fuels? Okay, we have less CO2 emissions but now are mining large areas for lithium batteries and other heavy metals for solar panels, birds being killed by windmills, etc. Want everyone to eat organic? Great now we've put an area of land the size of California into agricultural production to make up for lower yields.
I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything nor make some of these trade offs. I'm trying to say living is a balance that constantly needs rebalancing according to the current needs, rather than the pursuit of a perfectible ideal.
It seems there hasn’t been much of an end-result to the summit in Madrid
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/14/un-climate-talks-drag-on-as-rifts-scupper-hopes-of-breakthrough
Yes, people will bicker about what's in it for them, rather than look at the bigger picture and realise WE'RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER!
Greta still in the news...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/30/greta-thunberg-climate-activism-has-made-her-very-happy-says-father
Well most of the land used by agriculture is used for animals, so if we eat less meat we should be able to make ends meet anyway.
I read Greta’s book over Christmas, what an extraordinary girl she is.
Ricky Gervais in his Comic speeches at the Golden Globes (apparently, as I speak, the honestly very last one he will ever host) asked recipients of Awards to steer clear of any political speeches. "You know nothing of the real world" he warned, "And some of you have attended school for less time than Greta Thunberg!"
She wasn't the only one sailing close to the wind, then...!
Apparently Elayna decided to make the video of the crossing a six-part series, here’s the first part. Lots of little details about all the preparation that goes into making a crossing like this, really enjoyed watching it.
Just saw the news this morning about Greta being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Second episode. Talk about rough weather in the Atlantic... you have to have guts to go sailing on a boat that’s not so big with just a few people. Props to these guys.
Lots of ‘food’ for thought here. Having seen the scale of the problem in the developing World, we can help how we can, however, it’s a momentous task for sure. For me, to stick to the eightfold path and a strategy of least damage, pain toward others, then my personal view is that notwithstanding technicalities and justifications otherwise, a move towards a plant based diet is skilful for both the animal world, but also for ourselves in terms of looking after our temple and our ethical outlook. I’m not 100% there yet, but I’m close and closer than I was a year ago. In my view, to adhere to eightfold path, There are always more ethical choices than consuming animals and their products.
This is the last one of these which I’ll post as nobody seems to reply to them, but the electrical storm was something special in this third video of the trip...