Two stories appeared nearly side by side in my morning feed:
Jane Fonda blames ‘White men’ for climate crisis, calls to ‘arrest and jail’ them
Story by Taylor Penley • Pentecost Sunday, May 28, 2023 • 12:45 PM
Jane Fonda blamed men – and racism – for climate change during a conversation at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, arguing that without the patriarchy, the crisis allegedly of epic proportions would cease to exist.
“This is serious,” she said Saturday. “We’ve got about seven, eight years to cut ourselves in half of what we use of fossil fuels, and unfortunately, the people that have the least responsibility for it are hit the hardest — Global South, people on islands, poor people of color. It is a tragedy that we have to absolutely stop. We have to arrest and jail those men — they’re all men [behind this].”
She continued, answering a question from one of the audience members when she delved into her claims that the climate crisis couldn’t exist without the perfect conditions.
“It’s good for us all to realize, there would be no climate crisis if there was no racism. There would be no climate crisis if there was no patriarchy. A mindset that sees things in a hierarchical way. White men are the things that matter and then everything else [is] at the bottom.”
There’s more at the original, and there’s no paywall involved. 🙂
As William Teach tweeted out, the washed-up actress claimed that her former four-time costar, Robert Redford, “did not like to kiss” and was “always in a bad mood,” apparently without ever considering that maybe he just didn’t like doing stuff with her.
But I digress. The second story in my feed was this:
What life in medieval Europe was really like
by Erin Blakemore • Thursday, May 25, 2023
A time of innovation, philosophy, and legendary works of art: the realities of the medieval period (500 to 1500 C.E.) in Europe may surprise you.
Many know the years before the Renaissance and Enlightenment that followed as Europe’s “Dark Ages,” a time of backward, slovenly, and brutal people who were technologically primitive and hopelessly superstitious.
But it turns out the Dark Ages was anything but. Here are four myths about the medieval world it’s time we moved past.
Sure, it would take until the 19th century for the germ theory of disease to overtake the concept of humors and “miasmas” that could damage human health. But the common image of medieval people as slovenly, unwashed, and lacking hygiene is false.
There’s much more at the original, with the author telling us that medieval Europeans were more ‘civilized’ than we imagine, but it still points out one thing: that before the evil white men Miss Fonda blames for global warming climate change, the vast majority of people were living in small huts, heated solely by burning wood, and most died by their forties . . . if they lived even that long.
There’s a scene in one of my favorite movies, The Lion in Winter, in which Peter O’Toole, as King Henry II, arises in the morning and breaks the ice on the top of the bowl of water to splash water on his face.
Indoors.
There was no glass in the small window into the castle’s bedroom, and the bed was heaped with furs — and Jane Merrow as Alys, the Countess of Vexin — due to the brutal conditions in which even kings lived.
It was, of course, those wicked, wicked men that the lovely Miss Fonda wants jailed who discovered and refined the fossil fuels which enable modern transportation, which moves us from place-to-place, so that we are not stuck within a few miles of our homes for all of our lives, which fueled the modern industry which, among other things, enabled the creation of the motion-picture industry which made her wealthy, and which cooks our food and heats our homes. Without all of those things, we’d still be like Henry II, breaking the ice off the water vessel in the morning.
Then there’s Sophia Kianni, who bills herself as the “Youngest UN Advisor” She believes that:
The three most important things you can do when it comes to climate change are:
• Talk about it!
• Join an organization that amplifies your voice, and
• Advocate for system-wide change
Of course, she had just previously said that:
Focusing on individual choices around air travel and beef consumption heightens the risk of losing sight of the gorilla in the room: civilization’s reliance on fossil fuels for energy and transport overall, which accounts for roughly two-thirds of global carbon emissions
The lovely Miss Kianni, who has shown us photos of her having jetted off to Denver, Washington, DC, jetlagged somewhere, Poland, and Boston, and is wealthy with a net worth of approximately $3 million, doesn’t want anyone to focus on her travel, but the ability of everybody else to travel.
The left apparently believe that we can run and power our country entirely on hopes and dreams, never realizing that completely electrifying our country, with all power being generated without the use of burning fossil fuels, would take decades, several decades. We would have to completely change all automobiles in the country, and not just replace every oil, gas, coal, and trash-burning power plant in the country, but build hundreds additional ones, to meet the power demands of vehicles, homes, businesses, and industries which had previously used natural gas and heating oil. Yes, it could be done, but not until Miss Kianni is old and grey.
Yet somehow, some way, she does not believe that her individual choices send a message, a message of do as I say, not do as I do, because she certainly doesn’t want to change her lifestyle. Miss Fonda? She’s 85 years old, so the years left to her on Mother Gaia are few, but if she has told us that she’s willing to go back to the 12th century, and break the ice on her morning water bowl, I’ve somehow missed it.