KW-18 Climate honesty and seed sowing

It has not been a quiet week at The Barracks. If you were into the whole invertebrate allusions thing, you could say that it has been buzzing. The plumber finished his things. The drain people came in their oversize orange machine and pumped drains for an hour. We have, as hinted at previously, volunteers here and the pigs are being lively.

I suppose the biggest thing of the week was the film people being here. The journalist pushed me harder than most people do on the destructive elements of collapse, and it wasn’t really until the second day of filming that I realised the reason she was doing this was not necesarially in order to paint a flattering picture of either the barracks or the pirate. So I went hard on her. She seemed determined to believe that things won’t be that bad, and apparently has for her report a talking head scientist from the IPCC to say as much. So, I’m afraid I pushed quite hard against that.

I’m a bit worried that I have given her, the journalist, enough material to edit together a story that I’m not at all comfortable with. One of our exchanges went a bit like this

Journalist: So things might get a bit worse, but not as bad as full on collapse like you say

Pirate: So, what is the mechanism that stops the decline? If things start to get worse, what stops them continuing to get worse? What is the change that makes things ok again?

Journalist: I just don’t think we should give up hope

Pirate: But it needs a mechanism to reverse the decline. Something has to change. And that thing is probably the death of 4 billion human souls. You are saying that 4 billion dead is a thing called “hope”. Well, I just can’t go there.

Which might be a bit harsh, but it’s probably true, and I really hate having to think like that. It puts me in a fug for days.

Then we had a long talk about honesty in climate communication and I might have had a bit of a mild pop at her profession for being the gatekeepers of truth, and deciding for themselves which truths to publish.

Anyway, the point of this isn’t to spoil the fun of the end result. It’s to say that I was in a bit of a state about it all, and this week two climate communicators who I rather like both published things saying more or less the exact same thing. That truth in communicating collapse is super important, and that the public can be trusted with it. You know, like they were adults or something.

Rupert Read, philosopher, climate change communicator and Green Party politician, handily retweeted a link to his book from the end of last year “Do you want to know the truth - the surprising rewards of climate honesty”, and one of my favourite YouTube channelers, Dave Borlace at Just Have a Think did a video about Arctic sea ice and honesty in climate communication.

You should definitely read one and watch the other.

And now I really must go and feed the piggies and this week, I hope to plant many thousands of seeds, and that’s about the extent of the job list!

Be lovely, and be truthful

Much love

Your Pirate Ben

xoxo

https://twitter.com/GreenRupertRead/status/1592079584685879298