Climate Justice

October 04, 2021

Climate Justice

You may have heard of a concept described as climate justice, but what does it really mean?

What is real justice and how does it relate to climatology?

What do you know about the politics of coal jobs?

Why do governments regard some jobs as more important than others?

Where has globalisation provided most jobs, and why, and for whom?

What is a quality job and how is it funded?

What is a quality hobby and how is it funded?

What do you know about unpaid work and underpaid work?

Perhaps you regard justice as a job.

Perhaps you enjoy comparing one work of art with another in your spare time.

What have you been learning through the arts and sciences about climate justice?

Perhaps you believe you can learn about the subject through politics.

Yet politics, as usually practiced, has never been about any sort of justice. It is mainly a form of deception.

There is very little real justice in the world.

There is not even much real politics in the world.

The sciences have revealed that climate justice is necessary, through the practice of necessary ethics.

The arts have revealed that koalas are real politicians.

Extreme weather events have revealed similar findings.

Perhaps you regard yourself as a real politician, whether you spend most of your life in a eucalyptus tree or attempting to implement a real democracy.

Without real democracy, climate justice is impossible.

But where is hope?

Is it up a tree with a koala or in a dried salt lake or in a summit meeting or in a medieval text or elsewhere?

Are you appreciative of your access to this information about and from the Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee?

Perhaps you have been mistaking the current climate change for climatic experiences in the Medieval Warm Period or even the Roman Warm Period.

Perhaps you have been singing along to The Lament for the Makaris and/or The Complaynt of Scotland and/or Remember You're a Womble over recent days, in preparation for COP26.

Perhaps you have been feeling cold over recent weeks, whether as a consequence of weather patterns or excessively fierce and wasteful air-conditioners. But this is not the Little Ice Age. This is the beginning of a very different age.

What age are you at present, and where are you geographically and politically located?

And what are you doing here?

Did you require a map and/or key to access this information?

Perhaps you require a map and/or key to help you understand this information.

What do you know about climate proxies?

What do you know about other types of proxies?

Perhaps you know something about political proxies.

But what do you know about real democracy?

What is real politics?

Who is practicing real journalism, and where?

Who is practicing real kindness, and how?

Who is practicing real science, and for what reasons?

How are you practicing real philanthropy, and for whose benefit?

What do you know about real art and real justice and really pleasant politics?

How have you informed yourself about good and bad government?

What do you know about atmospheric inversion?

How have you acquainted yourself with historical climatology?

How have you been relating the effects of climate change, and extreme weather events, to the effects of good and bad government?

How have you been experiencing the troposphere over your lifetime?

What have you been learning about learning and earning bubbles?

Perhaps you are some sort of expert.

How well developed is your general knowledge, and how do you know?

How well developed are your decision-making abilities in relation to you expertise?

How well developed are you decision-making abilities in relation to your general knowledge?

What do you know about the Dunning-Kruger effect?

How have you informed yourself about social justice?

How do you assess your cognitive biases each day?

How do you attempt to manage your emotions, hormones and neurotransmitters each day?

How much of your time is usually spent in the planetary boundary layer of Earth?

What have you discovered about environmental justice, and how?

What is your acquaintance with the history of jurisprudence?

What have you discovered about climate justice and climate injustice while learning about corruption?

What do you know about the history of national parks in various parts of the world?

What do you know about the history of seismic waves and volcanic winters?

What is your acquaintance with the tropopause and stratosphere?

What do you know about the Earth's crust?

What have you discovered about trust?

How do you measure the reasonableness and unreasonableness of confidence?

What do you know about hubris and hypocrisy?

What do you know about the Turin Papyrus map?

What do you know about the people and areas most affected by climate change?

While knowledge is important, knowing what to do with it is even more important.

The Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee learns from science and history to ensure important decisions can address problems appropriately.

Whether decision-makers outside the committee take any notice is another matter entirely.

History and science can reveal much about environmental and social conditions of the past.

What do you know about the history of London Bridge?

What do you know about the history of Segara Anak?

What do you know about the Saga of the Greenlanders?

How have you assessed geopolitical changes and local changes?

How have you assessed progress?

How have you assessed kindness?

There are many ways to examine history.

There are many ways to examine societies, whether through the arts and humanities or through the social sciences or through journalism.

But how do you assess the future, including the future of justice in all its forms?

What is justice, in your view?

The Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee has now presented you with many questions, regardless of your current knowledge of consequential geopolitical changes before and after 1900.

How do you assess conflicts, whether from the distant past or the recent past, or ongoing ones or potential ones?

How do you compare 2021 with 1991, 1883 and 1257?

How have you been attempting to compare 2021 with 2057, 2083 and 2091?

Are you well aware, by now, of the ethics and economics of true kindness?

Have you thought much about kindness in terms of aesthetics and/or epistemology?

Humans have caused and otherwise experienced many conflicts over time, whether recently or in the more distant past, whether short-lived or long lasting.

You may be aware that 1816 was described as the Year without Summer in the Northern Hemisphere.

How do you attempt to assess the truth, and from whose point of view?

How do you prepare for the future, and with which techniques?

What have you discovered about transformative justice, and how?

How do you distinguish between mathematical conjectures and unequivocal evidence?

Perhaps you have been looking at elephants in rooms recently, or in medieval manuscripts, or elsewhere.

How well are you investing in the most suitable information, and how do you know?

How do you ascertain suitability?

How are you investing in a suitably rewarding routine?

Kindness is often considered to be a matter of perception.

There are, of course, deceptive persons who pretend to be kind.

How do you spot such individuals and warn other people about them?

How do you identify integrity?

How do you define sustainability?

You may regard the Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee as a non-government organisation.

How do you regard the Council of Enlightenment?

Perhaps you are not yet able to answer that question in an informed way.

The Council of Enlightenment is dedicated, directly and indirectly, to carrying out the mission established by the Spirit of Enlightenment.

The Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee has long been established to assist with the mission.

What are you doing in relation to the associated work?

Perhaps you have been attempting to be innovative rather than imitative.

Although innovation is meant to improve on the past, it often has unfortunately consequences. That is particularly the case when fads, fashions and other novelties are mistaken for usefulness, and even beauty.

Perhaps you have been learning about sustainable development and sustainable fashions, possibly even from the 13th century.

Materials and techniques used for many years have often stood the test of time whereas newer materials and techniques have not. Yet many dangerous techniques and concoctions have also been used for many years.

You may not notice transitions and transformations in your knowledge and beliefs, unless you document your thoughts on a regular basis and compare them at different times.

Do you usually associate learning with transformations?

Perhaps you mainly consider climate justice in terms of possibilities.

Perhaps you mainly consider climate justice in terms of heritage.

How do you compare on century with another?

What do you know about 13th century Italian art and culture?

What do you know about Cimabue and Giotto?

Perhaps you are quite familiar with almost lost heritage.

Who has the skills with which to assess the value of anything, whether in terms of money, history or morals?

How do you assess climate change vulnerability and other types of vulnerability?

What do you know about climate change mitigation and climate change litigation?

How have you examined the ways in which humans have changed environments?

What do you know about the greenhouse effect?

What do you know about Milankovitch cycles?

How do you compare one volcanic event with another?

What do you know about the history of elephants in Europe?

What do you know about the history of coal mining in various parts of the world?

How do you compare one cottage with another?

What do you know about the provenance of works of art?

What do you know about human rights in relation to climate change and other environmental and political matters?

What do you know about the politics of climate change?

What do you know about climate debts?

What do you know about fossil fuel subsidies?

What do you know about economic resilience, psychological resilience and climate resilience?

Where and how have you been volunteering, and for what purpose(s)?

How do you attempt to contribute to the development and maintenance of quality institutions for the greater good?

Perhaps you are currently feeling emotionally fragile.

Perhaps your emotions often overwhelm your ability to think clearly and act with suitable civility and honesty.

Leadership involves communicating with sensitivity towards necessary priorities, not only for the common good but for the sake of one's own mental health.

Excessive displays of emotion are often a sign of psychological manipulation, but so are apathetic responses to distress.

Sensationalist reporting, predatory sales tactics, intrusively seeking donations, and melodramatic responses to situations, are psychologically manipulative and therefore abusive. They draw attention to selfishness, not goodness.

Perceived apathy may be indicative of emotional exhaustion, fatigue, burnout, inadequate leadership, psychopathy, arrogance, powerlessness, prejudice, pain, grief, depression, disability, hunger, overwork, boredom, a lack of meaning, a lack of purpose, a lack of planning, a lack of direction, poverty, disillusionment, a feeling that no-one cares, a feeling of futility, a feeling of emptiness, or the problem of legislated restrictions preventing appropriate action.

Improving the behavioural institutions of society and culture requires adequate understanding, suitable sensitivity and appropriate leadership.

What have you been learning about such matters, and through which cultural filters?

What do you know about formal organisations known as institutes, including research institutes?

What do you know about the development and decline of organisations, states, cultures and societies?

What do you know about formal and informal social groups and informal organisations?

What do you know about climate justice and other types of justice in relation to the concept of institution?

How do you ascertain the truth about societies and states, and communicate it?

The Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee has long placed emphasis on highlighting irony, hypocrisy and the harmonious interplay of beauty, understanding and magnificence.

How will you attempt to grasp the present moment, and who will attempt to prevent you from doing so?

Leadership is about solving problems reasonably well. That involves guiding processes, moderating excesses, delegating appropriately, and knowing when the symbolism of leadership makes delegation unwise.

Real leaders guide organisations and societies safely between the oppression of excessive order and the dangers of excessive disorder. They maintain pleasant continuity while communicating worthwhile achievements to pursue.

If you do not regard climate justice as a worthwhile achievement to pursue, why do you feel that way?

Perhaps you feel overwhelmed by the injustices you have personally experienced and/or someone close to you has experienced.

If so, you may prefer not to be part of adversarial activities. That is understandable. Adversity often lowers the ability to cope with conflict.

Yet abusers act with impunity if they are not prevented from causing more harm. There are often institutional injustices assisting abusiveness. Those processes must be stopped as quickly as possible.

There is no time to lose.

How clearly do you distinguish between the literal and the figurative?

How do you distinguish between Durga and Kali and the Danse Macabre and Vanitas and the Silly Symphony skeleton dance and gathering rosebuds and Memento Mori and learning the facts about environmental disasters and financial disasters and political disasters and humanitarian disasters and the meaning of life?

How do you tell the difference between possessing knowledge and providing leadership?

Acting upon the truth requires leadership. It especially requires political leadership.

Perhaps you spend much of your time attempting to understand the meaning of death.

Or perhaps you spend much of your time attempting to convince people that you understand that meaning.

But what do you do to support justice?

The legal profession mainly supports the economic and social advancement of members of that profession, including those with political ambitions. It does very little at all to address corruption, even within its own ranks.

The institutional structures of law and order do very little to support justice. They hardly do anything at all to address injustice. They merely punish some forms of wrongdoing, and innocence, while ignoring various very serious forms of wrongdoing, including within institutional structures.

The Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee is providing the necessary societal and global leadership in the absence of effective political structures to address institutional inadequacies.

What do you attempt to learn from art of one sort or another or another or another or another or another?

What do you know about the ways in which death has been interpreted in different cultures at various times and in various places?

What do you know about the ways in which life has been interpreted in different cultures at various times and in various places?

What do you know about the symbolism of the human skull?

Of course, the Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee distinguishes clearly between symbolic depictions of warnings, scientific assessments of problems, political actions to address problems, artistic interpretations of youth, and elegant depictions of protest.

Health is ephemeral. Youth is ephemeral. Life is ephemeral. Or at least that is the case for individuals.

But where is a healthy, sustainable culture, and what are its features?

How do you compare Madame Adélaïde with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Mickey Mouse, John William Waterhouse and Adélaïde Labille-Guiard des Vertus?

How carefully do you distinguish between preparatory studies, incomplete works and finished products?

How do you tell the difference between something of ephemeral value and something of lasting value?

How do you compare one preparatory study with another?

You are currently experiencing a small sample of a preparatory study.

What do you know about art collectors, their motives and their sources of wealth?

If you have a private collection of art, books, textiles, real estate, or anything else, how do you protect, conserve and preserve it, and for whose benefit?

You may regard the acknowledgement of heritage as a celebration of life and its ongoing value, even in the face of danger, disease and death, political indifference and widespread ignorance.

The word heritage derives from the Latin word heres meaning heir. You are one of the heirs of the world's heritage, both natural and cultural.

How do you place value on cultural heritage?

How do you place value on natural heritage?

How do you place value on lives, both human and non-human?

How do you place value on moral rights, natural rights and legal rights?

How do you assess politics?

Perhaps you value lives mainly in economic terms or mainly in political terms or mainly in moral terms or mainly in emotional terms.

Perhaps you mainly value places for their economic value, their heritage value, their entertainment value, their aesthetic value, their educational value or their political value.

Perhaps you value a grand location more than a humble one.

But what is grandeur?

How does grandeur relate to life, death and politics?

How do you compare one virtual tour with another and another and another and another?

What do you usually gain from such experiences?

What do you usually gain from experiencing satire?

If you regard yourself as a climate activist do you also regard yourself as a political satirist?

If you regard yourself as a cultural critic and/or social commentator and/or social critic, how can you be sure you are not a hypocrite?

How do you compare one image with another and another and another?

In many situations, advocacy is little more than an image. It conveys ideas, not real actions.

Providing information, images, entertainment and/or education, may or may not supply the knowledge with which to solve problems.

Advocacy is not leadership. It may or may not have influence. It may or may not encourage leadership. It may or may not help to solve problems. It may or may not be associated with the acquisition of resources, or the dismantling of unjust institutional power. It may or may not attempt to address structural inequality.

But when politicians ignore social issues, what do you do?

When the structures of the state exacerbate social, economic and/or political problems, what do you do?

When public administration mainly benefits the administrators, what do you do?

When government contractors mainly focus on their own advancement rather than the common good, what do you do?

When a business is pursued mainly to increase the wealth of the owners and/or feed the greed of senior executives, what do you do?

When employees, contractors, executives, shareholders, bureaucrats and/or politicians exploit situations for their own benefit to the detriment of society and/or the world as a whole, what do you do?

The Revolutionary Climatological Needlepoint Committee has no time for persons unwilling to acknowledge the prevalence of human arrogance and laziness, the widespread denial of scientific facts and the inability of most people to distinguish clearly between adequate skill, adequate effort and a suitable sense of purpose.

Are you sure you are aware of all the resources here to assist the elegance, relevance and maintenance of your climate activism?

Assessing skills is a skill in itself.

Assessing effort is also a skill in itself. It even requires more effort than most other assessments.

But how do you assess purposefulness?

How do you assess responsibility?

How much wealth, power and influence do you currently possess, and how do you know?

Who pays attention to you and why do they do so?

Who does not pay attention towards you, and why?

Towards whom, and what, have you been paying attention, and why, and for how long?

How have you been documenting your attentiveness?

How have you been assessing yourself?

How have you been acting politically, and why?

How do you distinguish between a political action and a non-political action?

How are you helping to improve democracy, with or without assistance from the global Mozarty Party?

If you are not contributing to the improvement of democracy, what are the reasons for your laziness in that regard?

Without daily contributions towards improving democracy, social changes tend to be towards the terrible and terrifying rather than the wonderful and edifying.

Perhaps you are seeking guidance from the spirit of enlightenment or one of her avatars.

Are you sure you are adequately aware of the guidance you require?

Are you sure you know how to prevent yourself from being deceived?

There is much trickery in the world.

Being aware of possible deception is very important.

Dangers often arise when they are least expected.

There are many wonderful teachers available, whether physically, digitally or ethereally.

How do you attempt to teach yourself?

How well are you preparing for the future, and how do you know?

Climate justice is about respecting nature and improving culture through the harmonious interplay of beauty, understanding and magnificence.

But most politicians are on the side of disharmony. They are too arrogant to appreciate anything beyond their own vanity.

They will never understand or respect true justice.

Please learn from history, and science.

Please learn from art and culture and nature, by making accurate comparisons.

How are you already doing so, and how do you know?

Who is helping you?

Who is hindering you?

How are you comparing one work of art with another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another and another?

How do you usually prepare for the unexpected, and the inevitable?

How do you attempt to cope with your fears about the unexpected and inevitable?

Whether you are a member of a royal family, a political family, a wealthy family, an artistic family, or any other sort of family, or even if you know nothing much about your family and ancestry at all, how do you attempt to interpret the causes and consequences of revolutions?

What have you been learning from one artist or another?

How do you usually view art?

How do you usually view the sitters in portraits?

How do you usually assess the people only known to you through history or the media?

How do you usually assess strangers?

How do you usually attempt to overcome your biases about people, including the people you believe you know quite well?

How do you perceive people's emotions?

How do you perceive your own?

How do you attempt to distinguish between small minds and great minds, and all the minds in between?

How do you know when claims of greatness are deluded?

What do you know about the 18th century Mesdames of France?

What do you know about French paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art from the early eighteenth century to the revolution?

What do you know about Adélaïde Labille-Guiard's pastel studies of the Madames des France?

How do you tell when revolutions have counter-revolutionary elements within them as well as externally?

How do you know when revolutionaries and/or counter-revolutionaries are uncouth, and possibly even violent?

Peaceful, well-planned, purposeful revolutions are necessary, particularly in the vicinity of Adelaide.

Far too many people in the world are preparing for violence instead of preparing for peace.

Many do not even have properly designed dwellings, properly designed constitutions, or properly designed sources of income, water, food, furnishings, clothing and energy.

What have you been learning from history about the development of empathic political processes and practices?

What have you been learning about failures in that regard?

How do you compare Madame Élisabeth de France with her aunt, Marie Louise Élisabeth?

How do you usually assess posthumous reputations, and life paintings and even posthumous paintings?

How do you compare interpretations of a life?

How do you compare interpretations of deaths?

The Spirit of Enlightenment hopes you will support the committee in its work on behalf of herself and the Council of Enlightenment.

Of course, Pieter Bruegel the Elder continues to assist to the best of his abilities, primarily to remind you of your duties in relation to the second Age of Enlightenment.

How have you attempted to inform yourself about love, chastity, death, fame, time and eternity, with or without assistance from Petrarch?

You may recall that COP25 happened in December 2019, at very short notice, in Madrid.

A few weeks earlier, in New York, soon after several global climate strikes, the UN Climate Action Summit happened.

But what was the point of any of those events?

What is the point of any sort of travel or any sort of activism or any sort of promise?

How do you attempt to interpret the meaning of temperance in the 21st century context?

How do you attempt to interpret the meaning of extravagance?

Perhaps you regard these notes to be extravagant representations of the committee's meetings.

What do you know about the extravagance of Isabel/Elizabeth Farnese?

What do you know about the Palazzo della Pilotta in Parma, Italy?

If you happened to be in Madrid for COP25, did you also have time to explore the Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso and the Prado Museum?

What do you know about restorations, whether of paintings or monarchies or democracies or environments?

Perhaps you are aware that The Triumph of Death is in the Prado. It was restored in 2017-2018.

Perhaps the painting shocks you.

From 1745, the work was in the collection of Elizabeth Farnese.

But what is its relevance to the theme of climate justice?

It was painted in the early 1560s. What do you know about that time?

What do you know about power struggles?

How have you struggled against people, nature and death?

Some deaths are entirely natural. Other deaths are not.

How often do political and administrative decisions, and various acts of negligence and arrogance, cause death?

What do you know about the War of the Spanish Succession and the leadership of Marie Anne de La Trémoille, princesse des Ursins?

What do you know about the Spanish treasure fleet from Havana, lost in a hurricane off Florida in late July 1715?

As a consequence, that area of Florida is known as the Treasure Coast.

But how do you usually identify and assess treasures?

How much do you treasure your own experiences of life and your ability to learn?

Death leads all armies. Death leads most governments. Death leads most companies, particularly the larger ones. Death is leading the rise in global temperature, along with Greed. Death is encouraging greenhouse gas emissions.

Who has the right to own treasure? Is it the finders? Is it the plunderers and/or their proxies? Is it the Indigenous populations from whom much of it was stolen? Is it the global public?

When does nature provide and/or restore treasure?

How does human knowledge assist restorations, and when?