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

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Earning a profit from global warming

Click here to access article by Pete Dolack from Systemic Disorder. (I regard this as a "best post".)

As the Paris climate summit scheduled for December approaches, we are witnessing several major governments making promises about efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is strictly an effort to cover for their past failures in reducing carbon pollution in our atmosphere and to keep their population believing that they are making serious efforts at preventing a disastrous destabilization of our climate. Dolack writes about these propagandistic efforts while the real actions of capitalist ruling classes, like the neoliberal trade proposals, only increase the problem. 

His argument leads inevitably to the conclusion that the dynamics of capitalism is in sharp contradiction to a planet that can sustain human life. Thus the only real solution is revolution.
To stave off further global warming, and avoid the massive disruptions it promises, requires nothing less than an entirely new economic system, one that provides for human need under community control rather than private profit under the control of industrialists and financiers.