Surviving Capitalism (Not) : How Should Progressives Respond to the Gulf Oil Spill?

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

Monday, August 30, 2010

How Should Progressives Respond to the Gulf Oil Spill?

by Erik Lindberg from Transition Milwaukee. An excellent response to all the liberal green rubbish about alternative fuels.

...self-described progressives are also accustomed to technological fixes for nearly every problem and challenge, and the very possibility that some breakthrough technology or solution isn’t just around the corner is scarcely fathomable; that alternative energy might not be able to replace fossil fuels is so alien and so far removed from popular consciousness that this possibility need not even be discussed or rise to the level at which it is worthy of being dismissed in “The Progressive”: apparently it “goes without saying”-- the presumed untapped riches of renewable energy is, after all, “the only way”.

Liberals, in the American political sense of the word, like all others in mainstream US cannot imagine a world without capitalism which is dependent on ever increasing amounts of energy to exist. Thus, "power down" options are not an option.