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

Friday, March 14, 2014

A Response to Robin Hahnel's Open Letter to the Movement

Click here to access article by Nicholas Davenport from New Politics.

It seems that many people like Hahnel in the climate justice movement continue to be fooled by proposals coming from capitalist agents that pretend to deal with the threat of climate catastrophe. Such people are apparently incapable of grasping the inescapable fact that capitalism and a sustainable planet are totally incompatible. Referring to the "cap and trade policies" offered by these agents, Davenport writes:
Their purpose is to provide the appearance of doing something while, in fact, fending off a challenge to capitalism by permitting a fossil-fuel-based economy to continue for as long as possible, and, to the extent that transition from fossil fuels does occur, placing as much of the cost as possible on the working class and the developing world.