Good morning!
Welcome to Issue 38.2 of Digestable, your daily mouthful of real things happening in the world, minus alarmist pandemic news.
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Today’s news, fermented:
Most days, I open the landing page of a news site and take a quick look through. Often, the first thing I click on is animal-related, which I’ll save for later, once I’ve written everything else.
Today, I clicked on a headline that seemed animal-related, but was confusing enough that I looked at it first. It was Giant underwater ‘jellyfish’ roundabout becomes latest Faroe Islands tourist attraction.
Basically, this is a piece of driving infrastructure—a literal roundabout—that is shaped like a jellyfish (in the middle of the roundabout) and located underwater.
I thought: Climate solution? Maybe, probably not. Then, I had to look up the Faroe Islands, and found that they’re located between Denmark and Iceland, and are a ‘self-governed archipelago’ that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. They look really beautiful and special in the fairylike or mystic way that a lot of northern alpiney places, or the set of Lord of the Rings, do.
So, nothing against the Faroe Islands, (or the puffins! that live there), what on earth could possibly be the justification for building car infrastructure underwater? The article suggests that the roundabout will provide a new way for people to get from one island to another, which usually happens via ferry, but the ferry often can’t run because of high winds and weather changes. I guess that could be read as part climate solution—I don’t really know anything about the earth over there, but can assume that, like everywhere else, all that is extreme will become more so in the coming decades.
I also saw that the project was partly funded by venture capital, which set off an alarm bell in my head. Why do venture capitalists invest in stuff? Almost always it is primarily because they expect to see a return on their investment, whether in the form of money or invention.
As the first piece of underwater infrastructure of its kind, I can easily imagine a scenario where those venture capitalists said ‘let’s get in on underwater highway construction a decade before it’s necessary to connect the world’s former largest cities to the mainlands they are now separated from by sea level rise.’
Anyway.
Discussion about (and maybe action on) the climate crisis is finally becoming mainstream. But whenever that happens, corporations join in on the fun, and often do their best to act like, in fact, they are the reason why that fun is happening in the first place. Take bp, aka BP, aka British Petroleum, aka corporation behind one of the largest oil spills in the world, whose website is now all about their (sorry) bullshit fucking journey to net zero, a bullshit concept. (Read more about how bp is trying to profit from the theoretical future Green New Deal in my favorite article published in 2020.)
Alongside the fossil fuel giants who are doing all kinds of nonsense, there is now the ‘gold rush’ to find lithium, especially since Bolivia delivered a hearty fuck-you to Elon Musk, our very special Lithium Prince. Lithium is a vital part of electric cars and batteries.
Lithium-seeking corporations have their sights set on Portugal, which might have enough of the element underground for 10 years of electric car and battery production. Apparently, ‘advocates’ for the lithium boom say that “local disruption is a small price to pay for tackling the climate crisis,” which is complicated, but not that complicated.
Yes, we have to tackle the climate crisis urgently. No, we do not need to do it with rare earth minerals—this kind of ‘sacrifice zone’ economy/thinking is exactly what brought us to the brink of catastrophe. To make matters worse, both supporters of the Faroe Islands underwater amusement park and opposition to the Portuguese lithium exploration cite the tourists, of all people, who will save their economies.
Y’all, neither tourists nor cars—electric or not—will save you from the climate crisis when your fields are dry and your docks are flooded.
If we’re looking to these two horridly unreliable and uncompassionate entities to save us from the greatest catastrophe our species has ever faced, it’s no wonder that plants like this one have evolved to protect camouflage themselves from their greatest predator—humans.
(via)
*Hot Goss*
Brought to you by the superb Latifah Azlan.
For some reason, someone, somewhere on this planet decided to wake Matthew McConaughey one day and ask him for his opinions on the recently concluded U.S. elections in which Donald Tr*mp was outvoted and defeated. So shut the fck up everybody, the perpetually sunburnt bongo-playing actor is talking
Matthew recently made an appearance on Russell Brand's podcast, where the two got to talking about the "hypocrisy" of the "illiberal left" when it comes to celebrating Tr*mp's defeat at the ballot box. In his own words:
"There are a lot [of people] on that illiberal left that absolutely condescend, patronize, and are arrogant towards the other 50 percent. I'm sure you saw it in our industry when Trump was voted in four years ago, they were in denial that was real. Some of them were in absolute denial. [Now] it looks like Biden's our guy. Now you've got the right that's in denial, cause their side has fake news. And I understand, they've been fed fake news. No one knows what the hell to believe, right? So they're putting down their last bastion of defense."
Matthew concluded by saying that he believes in the power of "meeting in the middle" and that it's time for everyone on the left and the right to get "aggressively centric." How many eyeroll emojis can I include in this column? Because i don't think i need to spend any more time or muscle power on typing out the thoughts I have about this tripe.
This did make me laugh though!