Suing the States
Alec Loorz, a 16 year old member of the iMatter campaign and founder of Kids vs Global Warming has "filed a lawsuit against the United States of America, for allowing money to be more powerful than the survival of my generation, and for making decisions that threaten our right to a safe and healthy planet."
"Today, I and other fellow young people are sueing [sic] the government, for handing over our future to unjust fossil fuel industries, and ignoring the right of our children to inherit the planet that has sustained all of civilization."
"The government has a legal responsibility to protect the future for our children. So we are demanding that they recognize the atmosphere as a commons that needs to be preserved, and commit to a plan to reduce emissions to a safe level."
"If we continue to hide in denial and avoid taking action, my and I generation will be forced to grow up in a world where hurricanes as big as Katrina are normal, people die every year because of heat waves, droughts, and floods, and entire species of animals we've come to know disappear right before our eyes...it's going to take more than changing light bulbs and buying hybrid cars. I believe it will take nothing less than a revolution...a revolution in our entire culture and way of thinking, so that we value nature and the future of my generation with every action we take."
Indeed, how can one obediently sit in classes, learning obviously obsolete material (look at the very world such ideas have produced), while the biosphere is routinely subject to devastation so thorough, extreme, and asinine that they, require new forms of measurement?
Characteristic of awakening digital natives across the globe, from the Middle East uprising and the DDoS activists advocating Wikileaks to the Slutwalks movement, Loorz addresses his generation: "I believe this revolution needs to be led by youth. It's our future we're fighting for, and we are some of the most creative, dedicated, and passionate people on the planet. We have the moral authority to look into our parents and leaders eyes and ask them, "Do I matter to you?""
"Also, as youth, we are the last group of people in the US who don't have any official political rights. We can't vote, we certainly can't compete with rich corporate lobbyists... So we are forced to simply trust our government to make good decisions on our behalf."
"However, it's become clear that our government has failed us, by not protecting the resources on this planet we need to survive. Even though scientists overwhelmingly agree that CO2 emissions are totally messing up the balance of our atmosphere, our leaders continue to turn their backs on this crisis."
It is unavoidable to draw the conclusion that the mechanisms necessary to sustain monetarism increases overall entropic degradation, increases aberrant, pathological behavior in individuals, and will doubtlessly ensure the end of our species.
The social order, the infrastructure, the forms of government, waste management, resource allocation, energy production, city design, transportation, and so on are irritatingly pre-Internet. All of this was designed prior to the development of our extra electronic brains--computers. The digital information age has made it clear that we can do better because computers are unbiased.
Loorz states that he'll be meeting with attorneys "in every state in the US to demand that our leaders live and govern as if our future matters."
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- 5-11-11
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Hope for the future.
^_^
Wow
I feel less alone now.
Perpetual Gratitude
Pre-Internet...
Martin MS, you raise the point that I found oddly absent until this time in the discussion. Computers & the internet sprung out of the same ideologies that birthed all the infrastructure and array of world consuming machines that are denigrated in the same paragraph quoted above. To say computers are unbiased is so flagrantly outrageous that I would think this was a joke, if I didn't know otherwise. This is akin to the notion that "Numbers don't lie". That the source of truth is distinctly non-biological and unconnected to us in all but the most abstract of ways. http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/chapter2-4.php
I see the point that connection makes us more communicative and opens the possibility of a greater degree of integration across a planetary scale but my great qualm is... Though our metaphorical neuronal network is falling into place - we have a means to transmit information near instantaneously planet wide; our circulatory systems are comprehensive yet utterly backwards. The functioning of this circulatory system is devoted to extracting the life from vast swaths of the planet and concentrating this richness into localized hubs of poison production which metastasize out, spawning suburbs and consuming the vitality of the land little by little. This begs the question: If our information networks stand on the foundations of our material networks, especially the infrastructure that composes the basis of our information networks; are they not just as constitutionally grounded in the same life-denying pillars as the rest? Can more of the same really help? Will the ideology that made the problem, solve the problem? But I have coloured my comment in an aberrant direction; I'm commenting on the views of the author and not the news itself. But that is the troubling part... Mr Edge, you have framed the above quotations from Mr Loorz with what are clearly your own views (upon further reading) though at first they seem to seamlessly integrate with his. I consider this lacking in journalistic integrity; using anothers words entirely not intended in the context they were used by you, for your own views and purposes. This was presented as a news piece, but was interpreted to support your views; an opinion piece. I may sound as though I am picking at nothing... but is it not a valid concern?
LET THE MENTAL POKEMON TORMENT BEGIN!
“…I fail to see how computers (which are exactly as biased as the people who make their software) contribute to better city design, social order or forms of government.”
^Oki-doki – One example is simply this particular type of software out now where you tell the program what you want (spaced on the name…). Say you’re designing cell phones. You set the parameters and the program in turn spits out a chip and a design for a cellular phone that maximizes those parameters - BETTER THAN A PERSON CAN! Applying the same program to say waste management or energy allocation seems to have a potentially high yield for useful-awesome.
As for government—well remember American Idol? Imagine, if you dare, that you got to vote on every issue via SMS or email. That might be a real democracy, ya know. These are two pedestrian examples.
The problem here is that people are basically technophobic, especially computers—which they express through computers (roflopolis). Though, I understand the sentiments and harbor my own skepticisms about the digital age, I DO see the utility of CALCULATION MACHINES that computers are. Especially when you weigh the bias of a computer (“eh” on that one dude, “eh” …bias – it’s bias to do math) against the bias of oh say 100 lobbyists for every representative. Can you dig it now? That’s what I’m getting at here. I’m saying moral corruptibility. If you set up parameters (“you are to do this and only this”) for a computer it’s not going to go beyond those parameters…that’s the fuckin point. Our whole system of governance now however is that we supposedly set up the parameters via the Constitution and what do we have now. See, this is what I mean by bias here.
Read Gleick’s “The Information” for more yumminess on calculating machines.
Onto Muta..
Kisses…Muta
Kisses...
“Computers & the internet sprung out of the same ideologies that birthed all the infrastructure and array of world consuming machines that are denigrated in the same paragraph quoted above. “
^ACTUALLY you can connect the Internet to shit like Eisenhower’s farewell address (“BEWARE”), Kennedy’s call for major co-op projects (NASA), MLK’s push for equality across the board (The Dude), and Tim Leary (Tune in, creative eplosion!), more so than you can connect it to the “ideologies that birthed all the infrastructure and array of world consuming machines.” That’s really more the industrial revolution, not the post-internet apocalypse. Wee.
“To say computers are unbiased is so flagrantly outrageous that I would think this was a joke, if I didn't know otherwise.”
^addressed above. I should of thought of Godel...damn
"...This is akin to the notion that "Numbers don't lie". That the source of truth is distinctly non-biological and unconnected to us in all but the most abstract of ways. http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/chapter2-4.php”
^5 isn't 5? Is it everything else BUT 5?...That’s some hardcore anti-intellectualism right there. Like Orwellean level hardcore. I know we’re not all born with an interest in mathematics, (even metamathematics for all you haters out there (“wasssup!”)), Boolean algebra, quantum information theory, Shannon limits, and so on—but the irony, the sweet sweet blank me with a blank irony is to hear critiques about systems that invented technology wrought on the very technology they’re critiquing. Yes. Numbers, calculation, and abstraction have no place in a civilized world. Math is metaphor and it’s harder to screw with than most other systems...
Now I’m going to jump to the cannonball here…
“Mr Edge, you have framed the above quotations from Mr Loorz with what are clearly your own views”
^ …FIRST STRIKE! Ahhhh! TRU! But I was unconscious at the time.
“(upon further reading) though at first they seem to seamlessly integrate with his.”
^ Muwwwahahahaha!
“I consider this lacking in journalistic integrity; using anothers words entirely not intended in the context they were used by you, for your own views and purposes. This was presented as a news piece, but was interpreted to support your views; an opinion piece. I may sound as though I am picking at nothing... but is it not a valid concern?”
^ You’re absolutely correct. I am guilty. They are my sentiments. I have no idea what Mr. Loorz’s opinion is on technology used smartly. Though, and this is a big guess, ahem, some of Reality Sandwich seems to have subtle bents that sometime bleed into our features and news items (^_^)—why, well because most of the writers here have a, well, I suppose you could say, a ‘different’ take on the world. A’hem. As do our wonderful readership.
Sure we COULD just copy paste other news items here, or re-word articles so we’re not taken to Internet court, but I feel that what makes RS really cool is THE SPIN. RS has some of the most peculiar and opinionated contributors on the planet. (Did you see that Jodorowsky interview!? It was incredible!) Plus, it’s not like you’re going to find a spin-less arena ANYWHERE…EVER….even with computers it seems (still sucking my thumb over this one). As long as there is conscious life capable of talking about it there will be opinion. There are no Tabula rasas out there doing the news.
I wish we could save the world all day, but alas, now I must hunt and gather greenbacks – sayonara.
Have fun ya'all!
Oooooh PS & heads up! Let's not let this detract from what's really imporant guys. Like a 16 year old suing the US! How awesome, righ'!?
I am very moved by this
Does anyone wish we could go
The youth are starting to change.
Lygeia
The problem is not really the petroleum industry (I know, fracking is terrrible).
The problem is nuclear power whose by-products are used to create nuclear weapons. No nuclear power, no nuclear weapons.
The problem is ...
"No nuclear power, no nuclear weapons." Nuclear weapons preceded nuclear power. The first atomic bombs were developed in order to win World War II. In the post-WWII world the civilian nuclear power industry was set up in the U.S. to support, and as a cover for, the military program to develop ever bigger atomic weapons, the better to threaten the rest of the world with.
As for "the problem", there are lots of problems. Perhaps the root problem is that human society long ago became hierarchically organized, and the top of the hierarchy was quickly occupied, and still is, by evil men, who give orders to stupid men, who give orders to cowards, who give orders to the rest of us. (Thanks to Richard K. Moore, and to the author of that great novel Shantaram, for stating this clearly.)
As for suing the government, that's a nice idea, if only to draw attention to the fact that the U.S. government is, at its highest levels, totally corrupt, and has now become an enemy of the people. But failure to prevent global warming may not be the best complaint. See The Global Warming Scare.
NUCLEAR
How bout we sue for ignoring the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?
"In his April 2009 Prague speech President Barack Obama called for a nuclear weapons-free world, for which in part he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Today he has released his Administration’s FY 2012 Congressional Budget Request that follows up on the deal made to placate a Republican minority in the Senate for ratification of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia. In exchange, Obama pledged to increase funding for new U.S. nuclear weapons production facilities and massive improvements to the nuclear arsenal. These increases total $85 billion over the next decade to “modernize” the nuclear weapons research and production complex, and $100 billion for new heavy bombers, ballistic missiles and strategic submarines."
the preceding paragraph was taken from the following article: http://www.nukewatch.org/facts/nwd/FY2012_BudgetRequest_PR.pdf
Thanks and praise
Interesting Idea