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, January 11, 2012

No More "Green Capitalism"

Click here to access article by Josep Maria Antentas and Esther Vivas from Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt. 
We will save the markets, not the climate. That is how we can summarize the outcome of the [Durban UN conference].... There is a striking contrast between the rapid response by governments and international institutions at the onset of the economic and financial crisis of 2007-08 in bailing out private banks with public money and the complete immobility they demonstrate in response to climate change. Yet this should not surprise us, because in both cases it is the markets and their accomplices in government who come out as winners.
The evidence keeps piling up that capitalism is on a collision course with an ecology that can sustain human life. Now, it is starkly clear that there is more than social-economic justice at stake--far more. Now it is the survival of the human race that we must fight for, and it is the capitalist system that stands in our way.
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