(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Anti-Capitalist Meetup: Happy New Year? [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-01-01 An unremarkable scene from an American city identifiable by the branding Happy new year everybody. I will try to keep this ACM shortish so that we can all get back to the Hair of the Dog Bowl or whatever it is you are doing on 1/1/23. Looks like we have some work to do. Let’s start with Norman and Nancy Blake doing Jordan Am a Hard Road to Travel. Among the mind boggling events of 2022, our amazing home surpassed 8 billion contemporaneously living human residents. And worldometers is there to document every birth and death certificate. Not really, but the algorithmic counter is a reminder that there is a lot of nice informative data and graphics online in 22-23. Here’s one, global population is still growing, but seems to be approaching a maximum this century. Development, education and autonomy all play roles in plateauing population. If we have not yet baked in die offs with atmospheric waste, we still face peak agricultural land use. Either way, we seem to be running out of room for growth on this planet. Agricultural researchers are busy world wide in efforts to keep productivity rising. Many are even breeding more for endemic conditions and less for high energy and chemical input systems. True sustainability remains elusive. Looking a little more closely, there appear to be opportunities to feed people by consuming less animal products and decreasing the need for pasture. Perhaps advancements in agriculture and energy production will allow us to keep adding more humans who are free to consume just as much of whatever we want within the limits of personal finances. Fusion, for one, might help solve energy and air pollution issues in the coming decades. On the other hand, maybe technology won’t solve all of our growing issues. A livable climate is not the only boundary we are testing. I contend that we must find and accept our place in the global community, which includes reevaluating priorities, as regularly discussed in the ACM. Those with the power of wealth seem inclined to embrace racist and xenophobic fascism over democratic equity. We with the power of people need to keep working together on stopping and reversing what the bosses have done since the latest in trickle down and international labor exploitation tricks. Cutting to a comedy skit of today or an international court of justice in the future, let’s hear from an examination of defense witnesses. We’re so sorry for what happened. We did everything we could. You had no choice in planning cities, driving cars, flying planes, packaging in plastic, consuming resources for food and materials, and polluting the environment? We did what we had to to survive and provide for our children. Your honor, the prosecution presents these million commercials as evidence otherwise. Begin highlight reel of fossil fuel addicted societies of discernment demanding excellence and expecting convenience. Remember learning about logistic curves, possibly during COVID-19? Similar curves can be fit for population and production data presented here. Data show that we are past exponential growth. Questions now remain on whether we will reach an equilibrium population range, or if we blow our home world resiliency and crash as a global population. The former still seems reachable through development, policy and treaty avenues. Done democratically and equitably, it is a whole world better than the alternative pain, suffering and wars. I thought about a title including Heck Yeah I’m Mad, but reconsidered based on the prohibition of cursing in titles, and after catching a segment on PBS of the Dali Lama talking about the waste of anger. Tibetans strove to exercise compassion with their Chinese invaders, after all. Still, I am not sure that anger is useless. A combination of determination, anger, and similar feelings got me to leave my home and work on my career. Knowing well through experience life is not all fun and games, and that following passion and love often don’t work out, I still remain hopeful for more joy and satisfaction, and less sorrow and anger. Yet, with so much inequity in the world, and with people dying poorly while solutions abound, I can’t just go along and be happy. So, I am not denying anger, but rather working on compassion and seeing the human needs in my friends and adversaries alike. To finish up, here is another old related video from The Wailers to enjoy this new year. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/1/2137010/-ACM-Happy-New-Year Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/