Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Deranged And Deluded: The Media’s Complicity In The Climate Crisis

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, February 1, 2017

Deranged And Deluded: The Media’s Complicity In The Climate Crisis

Click here to access article by David Cromwell, editor of Media Lens (Britain).

Cromwell's article is based on a book published last year by Indian writer Amitav Ghosh entitled The Great Derangement.

Last Thursday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved their symbolic Doomsday Clock forward thirty seconds, towards apocalypse. It is now two and a half minutes to midnight, the closest since 1953. Historically, the Doomsday Clock represented the threat of nuclear annihilation. But global climate change is now also recognised as an 'extreme danger'.

Future generations, warns Ghosh, may well look back on this time and wonder whether humanity was deranged to continue on a course of business-as-usual.

Cromwell finally gets around later in the rather lengthy article to casually mention that Ghosh points to the obvious truth that "capitalism and imperialism" are responsible. But he doesn't seem to understand that major media is an integral part of capitalist rule. The best he can do is morally condemn them.

As Ghosh also observes, capitalism and imperialism are intertwined as primary drivers of the climate crisis. But when did a BBC environment, economics or business correspondent ever report this truth? Their silence is shameful....

Instead of pointing to the necessity of supporting an independent media and the overthrow of capitalism, this moral condemnation seems to be the point of the entire article. This is liberal critical thinking at its best! (sarcasm)