Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Resistance and Hope at a Time of Climate Emergency

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

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Resistance and Hope at a Time of Climate Emergency

Click here to access article by Nick Buxton from Transnational Institute.

As climate scientist, Kevin Anderson of the UK Tyndall Center argues climate change requires large scale and much more radical government actions than has ever been carried out before. Yet our political and economic system, as it currently exists, makes that radical action almost impossible.

However, he lets me down with this statement: "we must pro-actively confront the corporations that have hijacked the political system ...." As long as people refuse to acknowledge that the problem is the system, there is no hope of survival. "Radical action" is not reform!

I think that writers like this--and they are all over the place--need to dig a little deeper to see that the system of capitalism needs to be replaced by a system where no one benefits from the appropriation of wealth produced by others, by excessive consumption of fossil fuels, by trashing the environment with pesticides and other forms of pollution.