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The original video to Bowie and Mercury’s ‘Under Pressure,’ was pretty dystopian in its own right with a special guest appearance by Nosferatu. This video takes the original feel of the video and crafts it to climate change/emergency.
If I was good at this sort of thing, this is the video I would have tried to make because the song was the inspiration of this site and my own You Tube channel.
‘Cause love’s such an old fashioned word And love dares you to care for The people on the edge of the night And love (people on streets) dares you to change our way of Caring about ourselves This is our last dance This is our last dance This is ourselves under pressure Under pressure Pressure
— Songwriters: David Bowie / John Richard Deacon / Brian Harold May / Freddie Mercury / Roger Meddows Taylor
The oil and gas industry intends to spend $4.9tn over the next 10 years, exploring and developing new reserves, none of which we can afford to burn. According to the IMF, every year governments subsidise fossil fuels to the tune of $5tn – many times more than they spend on addressing our existential predicament. The US spends 10 times more on these mad subsidies than on its federal education budget. Last year, the world burned more fossil fuels than ever before.
Climate change denialism followers generally fall into two
categories. The first, are the religious whack-jobs whose adherence to their
pernicious worldview of Evangelical Christianity is so tight, it resembles that
of a baby to its blanket. They cannot admit that ‘God’s creation’ could be in
any way affected by anything man does. Man is puny, God is great. Therefore,
who are we to think we can influence his perfect creation?
The second group are capitalists of all stripes. It’s a
simple thing – climate change threatens their cash flow and they can’t have
that. After all, they earned their money the good old-fashioned American way
(usually through inheritance or graft) and since, despite many of their claims
of being Christian, believe they only get one life of luxury to live, they
don’t mind seeing the rest of the world perish if their lives have been, well,
enriched.
The greed with many of these is so strong, they are willing
to fuck their own children over, perhaps believing that a shorter life of
wealth and luxury beats no life at all. Many of them are also digging
underground bunkers, buying land in New Zealand or hatching plans to live in
fortified floating cities on the world’s oceans.
Of course, these two groups can intersect in a Venn diagram
of evil, forming perhaps a third group — small but powerful, typified by
millionaire mega-church preachers.
For the rest of us little people, ensnared in a trap laid
for us by the above groups’ dominance of the media, think tanks, politics and
police, the best we can do are sober scientists and Extinction Rebellion. Our
leader is 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, the St. Joan of Arc of climate causes.
The scientists are harassed online, Thunberg is ridiculed in the press and Extinction
Rebellion is looked upon with measured amusement as long as they remain
non-violent and pay their taxes.
Merely believing in what any reasonably cognizant people can
observe happening around them, is not enough and will not be enough. In the
end, being able to say, ‘I told you so,’ will be the cold comfort provided to
us.
Of course, you and I are not blameless. We made the choices
that, little by little, helped pile drive humanity into an early grave. But I
would also submit, we had a limited range of choice in consumer goods,
employment, transportation and other forms of modern living. It was modern
living itself, in its own wasteful, profiteering and polluting way, that set
the course in motion over a hundred years ago. I live in a city, Pittsburgh,
whose pollution in the early 20th century was so bad it was referred
to as ‘Hell with the lid off.’
Some sociologists, scientists and historians do say that the
die was cast at the start of the industrial revolution, while some hold that
the machine was set in motion when humankind first started organized
agriculture.
It almost seems beside the point now. In many ways, in our
rush to develop and advance we, the collective we, were not wise enough to
understand the long-term effects. And by the time we had the science to show us
the error of our ways, it was almost too late. And since we were so locked in
to our way of life, it became too late.
How long the deniers will keep up their charade remains to
be seen. When the world is in extremis,
the religious will probably say that what is happening are just the prophecies
given in the book of Revelations (in allegorical form, of course) and they were
right to oppose any attempt to stop them. After all, evidently, this was ‘God’s
will.’
The plutocrats will attempt some last-minute half-hearted
attempts to stop climate disaster – their final attempt at PR to assure their
final grab for gold – but they will probably more invested in getting safely to
their bug out bunkers than answering for their crimes.
That leaves the rest of us who knew, believed and fought the good fight to the end. What will God or gold do for us then? Nothing. The final act of grace will be for us to keep our heads and help each other do whatever must be done to either provide for a remnant of human life on earth or to ameliorate the suffering of people who, a few years ago, were planning a future that no longer exists.
And we will all go together when we go What a comforting fact that is to know Universal bereavement An inspiring achievement Yes, we all will go together when we go
We will all go together when we go All suffuse with an incandescent glow No one will have the endurance To collect on his insurance Lloyd’s of London will be loaded when they go
Oh we will all fry together when we fry We’ll be french fried potatoes by and by There will be no more misery When the world is our rotisserie Yes, we will all fry together when we fry
Last Call 