Surviving Capitalism (Not) : We may have already committed ourselves to 6-meter sea-level rise

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

We may have already committed ourselves to 6-meter sea-level rise

Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from Systemic Disorder.

It's clear to me that one major problem, among others, in arousing people to take action to prevent climate destabilization is the time scale which many humans use--at best, about a few decades ahead, but typically much shorter time periods. Capitalists mostly focus on the next quarters' financial statements and do everything they can daily to enhance the bottom lines. Because capitalists rule over societies, their time scale informs all discussions carried by their media and all other ideological institutions.

In this piece Dolack first addresses this problem indirectly by stating facts that we humans have already created climate destabilization to a marked degree. He ends this piece by explaining how the latest stage of capitalism called neoliberalism is accelerating the problem.