Photo by Alexander on Unsplash
If there is to be a history of what is happening now, that is what it will say.
As retreating Germans fled Paris and Allied advances, soldiers were to destroy the city on their way out. That was the plan. Hitler ordered the German appointed official in charge of Paris to demolish every religious and historical building in the city.
The destruction was never carried out. Some Germans refused to follow orders. We still have Paris.
Explosives were found at the site of several iconic structures. Unexploded.
Our Entire Earth Has Been Marked For Demolition
As divided as our planet is, world leaders are united in their unwavering commitment to oil. Despots and elected leaders all want oil, want to control it, want more of it.
That’s why despite blather about climate action and a transition to clean energy, they have all tirelessly sought to increase the use of fossil fuels. Each one wants to dominate the Earth while ruining it.
Hitler Didn’t Fight the War and Oil Executives Don’t Frack
Hitler didn’t and actually couldn’t destroy Paris. All he could do was order other people to destroy it. When those people refused, Hitler was powerless and Paris endured.
The same is true for oil sheiks, Big Oil CEOs, and heads of state in every country. If people don’t carry out their orders, they can’t ruin the climate— and the worst can still be avoided.
We need to help the hands-on workers in the fossil fuel industry. We must make it safe for them to quit, and must make it shameful for anyone to fill any open jobs that contribute to Earth’s destruction. Going forward, such jobs must be as disreputable as overseers or concentration camp guards.
These are not respectable ways to make a living.
Before the Walkout
Yet, there is no special relief or protection for unemployed oil industry workers. No strike fund. No jobs program. We need to find a way to protect, care for and even reward the heroes who make a personal sacrifice in the name of sanity and humanity.
But, until then, we’d like to encourage hands-on oil workers to take a historically popular and often successful lesser step. Stop doing great work. Slow down. Make mistakes (ones that don’t endanger the safety of other workers). Call in sick. Forget to order a part. Do whatever you know will make the extraction, production, storage, shipping, and selling of oil more difficult.
And those of us NOT in the industry—join The Saners. Organize and carry out a series of tactics of nonviolent noncooperation designed to spread the word, to end fossil fuels and build a better new humane civilization to replace the current dying civilization, the one posing a terminal threat to our species, and the other species who share the planet with us.
The fools who make policy have a million excuses to keep the oil flowing. They believe they have the power to keep this going indefinitely. They don’t. Nature Herself will stop them. But we can’t wait for that.
We must stop them now. We can do this by NOT extracting, NOT processings, NOT shipping, NOT selling, NOT buying and NOT burning fossil fuels. We can save Earth just as a few honorable Germans saved Paris.
Some of us have begun. Now is the time to protect your children and to make them proud of you. To give them a living planet to inherit.
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