I am super tired and honestly as close to a nervous breakdown as I've ever been (hello international house move during a global pandemic while recovering from and awaiting major surgery while the US descends into full fascism! ) - but I have a few things to say.
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I don't want to start fights. I am generally happy (I believe) to see both positive and negative contributions, and praise what I see as good, gloss over or simply mention downsides, and move on with my life. I think that approach suits my blood pressure and our activism ...
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where we have to work together as a quarrelsome diverse bunch, across a continuum of understanding and opinion.

Sometimes, of course, when someone makes a REALLY dumb argument, I actually enjoy taking them down. See exhibit A here:
3/ https://twitter.com/JKSteinberger/status/1242584908385726465

This is not such a case. I don't want to cause division. I want the movement against climate crisis & ecocide to continue to be an alliance of activists & scientists, who are willing to blend emotional rawness, personal reflection, collective action and scientific insights.
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That mix has enormous power & potency, and all its elements are necessary to unlock our current moment, and gain enough power to sway our fossil-fueled societies away from disaster. I've written about this before.
5/ https://twitter.com/JKSteinberger/status/1285008284236369920

I want XR to keep "Tell The Truth" as a core demand. Ok. That was my preamble.

Some things have been said in response to @TEGNicholas Galen Hall & @ColleenBSchmid1 's piece critical of Deep Adaptation that are just unacceptable to me.
6/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/faulty-science-doomism-and-flawed-conclusions-deep-adaptation/

And the reboot is using divisive straight up gaslighting & smear tactics. So here's what's up.

1. You do NOT get to call for people to be nicer to you *after* calling your critics "technotopian centrist environmentalists".
(Also - lol I'm a technotopian centrist now. Cool.)

7/

2. You do NOT get to call for people to have more respect for your academic background after trying to smear your critics as nuclear industry shills (with a winky face emoji no less ) because one of them happens to be doing his PhD in fusion physics.
8/ https://twitter.com/jembendell/status/1284483396815724546

A technology, by the way, which he has criticized very publicly, at risk to his career no doubt, because he simply has heaps & heaps of integrity. That integrity is also why he's a climate activist. Makes sense, right?
9/ https://theconversation.com/conservative-nuclear-fusion-by-2040-pledge-is-fantasy-their-record-on-climate-change-is-too-little-too-late-124404

This smear was so good, tho, it was repeated in a piece in @the_ecologist defending Deep Adaptation. If your discussion of positive points cannot avoid baseless innuendo against young scientists, well - that's not a good sign right there, is it?
10/ https://twitter.com/JamesGDyke/status/1288868358289580032

3. You do NOT get to call for others to "listen to all the sciences" when you yourself ignore ones (such as political economy, heterodox economics or degrowth) that engage directly with moving our societies away from growth-dependent fossil capitalism.
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Because only lack of listening to these sciences would cause someone to approvingly RT a statement that the fight for climate "was never winnable" because economic growth and climate damage go together.
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And finally
4. You do NOT get to lecture others on the integrity of their process when you have not only rewritten your original piece, but replaced it at the link on your website, so that people can no longer read it as part of the record?
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In academia, flawed as it is, we have a few standards. If we mess up, we fess up. We write "erratums" and if we update a paper, the old one is available to download as well, often with a list of most important points changed between versions.
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In fact, what has happened is in many ways good: there is more moderation and agreement and focus on how to cope with a changing (and potentially, even likely, utterly disastrous) future, rather than claiming "the science says X outcome is unavoidable."
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But the attacks on young scientist-activists who are trying to bring clarity to the debate, and stayed away from personal attacks to focus on the content, is just effing beyond what I can put up with. I hope that we all can work together towards a much better future.
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This is a sincere, like Kumbaya, hope for alignment and moving forward together as a broad spectrum movement. But for that to happen, some people have to learn to swallow a bitter pill of criticism without lashing out so badly at others.
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I mean, if your goal is to help people face the prospect of the collapse of their normal world order, surely your ego can take a bit of a bruising without you losing all sense of proportion ? And you can become a better scientist, communicator and person as a result.
End/