Another week, another bereavement. Could the grief bus just stop. I want to get off.

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Meanwhile, thoughts are whirling around my head, several key projects stacked in my brain’s in-tray. I am returning to studies after a two-month bereavement break and, in all honesty, I am finding it difficult to concentrate on these longer works (though I’m trying), and much beyond my daughter’s imminent A’Levels, or bursts of 280 characters.

I am moving through a period of deep loss, ADHD diagnosis ~ also some kind of loss, but of my old identity ~ and medicine titration; a battle to even get anything from the NHS. I am also still in recovery from my first (and I hope, last) bout of clinical depression I had last Summer. I have no means of official therapy now. Waiting lists are months long, money is tight-to-zero, and Adam’s support money for Gracie until her 18th birthday has evaporated into probate. I try things myself to alleviate fast brain syndrome. Two delightful kittens play their part in lightening daily life, I attend weekly art therapy courses at Mind and doodle-draw in fly-wheel states, and I am volunteering now, ad hoc, for a local Help for Ukraine charity, packing boxes of donated sleeping bags and baby medicines to be sent to the insanity of bomb shelters underneath Kharkiv.

But today, I’m compelled to write this blog. It’s been a while.

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Dysenergy

The Johnson government has announced its energy policy to be put in train for decades, and the major TV stations are accepting without criticism. In fact, there seems great excitement over the projected stimulus of such a gigantic infrastructure build ~ the contributions it will make to what I now call the wantonomy – the wanton economy of growth and greed.

Instead of a care-full, just, and sensitive energy transition from “fossil fools” (Antonio Gueterres, 2022) ~ mass insulation projects, new building regulations, 20-min -journey-time-planning, onshore community-owned renewables, reduced international logistics, agro-ecologies, et al, The Shock Doctrine (Naomi Klein) has been fully exploited for the benefit of the BIG business of corporate nuclear power, so-called blue/green hydrogen, and vast offshore wind. Russia’s abominable war crimes against the Ukrainian people, together with global inflation have given the billionaires are generous tip, and there are future billionaires – let’s call them pretenders – salivating in the wings. I will write again soon on Ukraine, and also about the ecological hit by such giant infrastructures compared to the alternatives (of course, there are alternatives)! And don’t forget these long-term projects do nothing to help people suffering today.

I’ve no doubt the Johnson energy policy is not based on logic, morality, sincerity, or a real practical response to the problems of international energy, climate, or security, but on the ideology of extreme capitalism. These are Leviathan capital projects, requiring Ziz capital investment, with the expectation of Behemoth capital gains, and, of course, the exploitation and exclusion of most people and all teresapien life.

There is a centralising core to it (against the flows of nature and symbioethical distribution) to ensure the human population of Britain is completely reliant upon the companies that supply them. The coffers are therefore guaranteed. Loyal friends of the government are financially secured and will be offered Royal patronage and other powerful positions of cultural and economic influence. Despite the Russian lesson, foreign wealth will still be embraced. Neo-colonial forces ensuring uranium supplies and other materials will, again, be set in motion. Hydrogen cells – as stored energy – are simply replacements for natural gas as a globalised commodity, the fossil fuel industry’s preferred fuel of replacement, a fuel of the loco-motive, to keep stuff moving ~ and selling ~ at even higher levels than today. These planet-sized corps can even use the same pipelines and ships. Never mind saving costs from the “public purse”, there are continuing overheads attached to such schemes paid for in the deaths of entire flolocas, symlings wrenched away from symlings, vast broken ecologies, for the sake of whitemanthropocentric business-as-usual, grid-leak inefficiency over distances (more dollar for waste). At best, these people are visionary-less to all but increasing narrow pressure to reduce emissions and, at a push, cleaner air (not clean).

More, do not ever consider that military forces around the world do not map and plan attacks, including tactical nuclear attacks, on centralised energy sources and processing plants. Someone very close to me studied and worked in this field, including tracing potential radiation pollution – at high levels of security, even if in a “defensive” capacity and unable to reveal to me any detail except with his facial expressions.

I ask myself whether I am more or less depressed by this news. I think I’ve gone into an intensive state of trauma-laced-suspended optimism. Few will want to listen – really listen – to what I am saying. Even the climate science community, now desperate for people to listen to them, seem bent on simply shouting louder, grabbing attention via protest (fair enough, it gets in the papers), but continuing to exclude from their main circles experts on human values and vital pedagogies that are PRE-REQUISITE for an egalitarian, equitable r-evolution of the masses. At least, I will have made this note for my own mental state if not for repeating incessantly on Twitter.  Though I truly love my friends, I am giving that particular dysenergy a break!

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PS I am currently listening to the UN expelling Russia from the Human Rights Council. There’s no current mechanism for them to be ousted from the Security Council, but they should suspend them pending acts of aggressive war and war crimes against the Ukrainian people, including the elderly, disabled, children,  but also foreign migrants and students. If they don’t, the UN itself is at risk. Far too many people, including senior members of the Conservative Party, wish to see that whole institution burn down. We need to reform it to protect it! Its core philosophies are absolutely worth protecting. IPCC supporters, take note.

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