Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Are We Falling Off the Climate Precipice?

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, December 18, 2013

Are We Falling Off the Climate Precipice?

Click here to access article by Dahr Jamail from TomDispatch. (Note: if you wish to skip Engelhardt's introduction, you will need to scroll down to the article by Jamail.)

If somehow you have wandered innocently onto this website, I think I should warn you that the content of this article could be hazardous to your mental health--especially if you normally only consume the news and information pablum provided by corporate owned media.

Okay, now for the rest of us who still look critically and fearlessly at information, what I found most disturbing in this article by an independent journalist and author is the timeline record of scientific predictions which suggests that the most negative predictions are likely the most accurate. I intuitively felt this all along, but now the evidence that the author provides largely confirms this fear.

Here is one statement from a scientist that I felt was especially true--although I would put far more emphasis on the economic system than on numbers of people:

"Economic growth is the biggest destroyer of the ecology. Those people who think you can have a growing economy and a healthy environment are wrong. If we don't reduce our numbers, nature will do it for us. .... Everything is worse and we're still doing the same things. Because ecosystems are so resilient, they don't exact immediate punishment on the stupid."