Two recommended articles to keep you informed about the latest threats to human existence (Saturday, July 20, 2019)

• Britain Pirates Iranian Ship 'Grace 1' - Iran Responds - Takes British Tanker Hostage by Bernhard from his weblog Moon of Alabama.

• Most Important Message Ever from Arctic News. Credit for this post goes to an activist who submitted it to me.

Articles recommended for Sunday, July 7, 2019

• Iran and the EU: divorce proceedings underway by Elijah J Magnier from his weblog.

• The Muslim Brotherhood as assassins by Thierry Meyssan from his weblog Voltaire Network (France).

• Life After Arctic Blue-Ocean-Zero: Abrupt System Disruption by Paul Beckwith from his weblog Paul Beckwith, Climate System Scientist. 

Dr. McPherson explains AME at Open Secrets Book Store, San Rafael, CA April 23, 2019

Listen via YouTube his nearly 82 minute address and some questions that he responds to:

The ecosocialist path to 1.5°C sustainability

Click here to access article by Richard Smith from Real-World Economics Review Blog. (I wrote up an extensive commentary on this article, but lost it somehow. This is the reason for this rather late post.)

Here is the latest article by Smith who has co-founded System Change not Climate Change and whose work entitled "Capitalism and the Destruction of Life on Earth: Six Theses on Saving the Humans" forms one the basic foundations for my blog (the other is Power and Powerlessness by Susan Rosenthal). 

Because Dr. Richard Smith is a specialist in the physical sciences and having been educated at an American university, he is limited in his understanding of what it takes to overthrow a well-entrenched social-economic system and the ruling class that benefits from it. If after reading his article, you still believe that the ruling capitalist class will accept his proposals, I have a bridge to sell you (def.). 

I am convinced that our ruling masters have been so addicted to their system which has delivered to them so much power and wealth that they are completely unfit to accept such proposals and act on them. The dire environmental threats we are now facing were well-known to them in the 1970s, and since then our masters have only promised to do something much like an alcoholic who promises to quit drinking (alcoholic beverages). It was clear to many activists in the 1970s that only a revolution could save humans; and I held out hope that the events in the 1960s and 70s (the numerous assassinations, the Anti-Vietnam War Movement, Civil Rights Movement, etc) would enable a revolutionary movement to form and grow. Obviously this did not happen. 

Then I began a blog 10 years ago posting articles that I imagined might alarm people sufficiently to create a revolutionary movement. That did not happen. All we have now are the Extinction Rebellion and the Green New Deal movements; and as revealed by Cory Morningstar in her excellent series entitled "The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg", these movements are led by capitalists or their agents to insure that the rising chorus of environmental concern does not interfere with "business as usual", and hopefully will provide even greater opportunities for more products, such as electric cars, in order to reap ever greater profits and power.

As I have recently quoted Karl Rove, a prime influential in the Bush Jr. administration, it reveals the secret to the capitalist success to maintain their rule in spite of the fact that it can only end in the extinction as humans and many other species:

We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

Rove means by this quote that the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire has created an updated version of fascism that includes the ubiquitous control of all significant ideological institutions by infiltrating agents in all media corporations, academia, and even Hollywood to create our understanding of the world--a comprehensive false consciousness. Now most people are led around like dumb sheep into the chutes of nuclear war annihilation or into the nightmare of climate destabilization. Honestly, when I look at all the facts, they won! But, as we shall soon see, it is a Pyrrhic victory.

Between the Devil and the Green New Deal

Click here to access article by Jasper Bernes, the Managing Editor of Commune, from Commune. 

The author provides us with a comprehensive analysis of the Green New Deal (GND) proposed by reformers, and its potential for solving the climate crisis that is presently threatening to destroy humans and many other species. He shows convincingly, in my opinion, that the GND is a vague illusory promise to not only solve the climate crisis, but to provide universal health care, and full employment. Thus, it sounds like a campaign promise that promises everything to everyone. Further, he claims that saving capitalism and saving humans is a lie. Here are the main passages that exhibit his reasoning:

To replace current US energy consumption with renewables, you’d need to devote at least 25–50 percent of the US landmass to solar, wind, and biofuels, according to the estimates made by Vaclav Smil, the grand doyen of energy studies. Is there room for that and expanding human habitation? For that and pasture for a massive meat and dairy industry? For that and the forest we’d need to take carbon out of the air? Not if capitalism keeps doing the thing which it can’t not keep doing—grow. The law of capitalism is the law of more—more energy, more stuff, more materials. It introduces efficiencies only to more effectively despoil the planet. There is no solution to the climate crisis which leaves capitalism’s compulsions to growth intact. And this is what the Green New Deal, a term coined by that oily neoliberal, Thomas Friedman, doesn’t address. It thinks you can keep capitalism, keep growth, but remove the deleterious consequences. The death villages are here to tell you that you can’t. No roses will bloom on that bush.

It’s easy to get lost in the weeds here and lose sight of the essential. In each of these scenarios, on each of these sad, warming planets, the Green New Deal fails because capitalism. Because, in capitalism, a small class of owners and managers, in competition with itself, finds itself forced to make a set of narrow decisions about where to invest and in what, establishing prices, wages, and other fundamental determinants of the economy. Even if these owners wanted to spare us the drowned cities and billion migrants of 2070, they could not. They would be undersold and bankrupted by others. Their hands are tied, their choices constrained, by the fact that they must sell at the prevailing rate or perish. It is the class as a whole that decides, not its individual members. This is why the sentences of Marxists (and Marx) so often treat capital as agent rather than object. The will towards relentless growth, and with it increasing energy use, is not chosen, it is compelled, a requirement of profitability where profitability is a requirement of existence.

To those who believe that the GND can serve as a "transitional program", he writes: 

If you build a party and other institutions around the idea of solving climate change within capitalism, do not be surprised when some large fraction of that party resists your attempt to convert it into a revolutionary organ. The history of socialist and communist parties is reason for caution. Even after the leaders of the Second International betrayed its members by sending them to slaughter each other in the First World War, and even after a huge fraction split to form revolutionary organizations in the wake of the Russian Revolution, many continued to support it, out of habit and because it had built a thick network of cultural and social structures to which they were bound by a million and one ties. Beware that, in pursuit of the transitional program, you do not build up the forces of your future enemy.

He then reaches this rational conclusion:

We cannot keep things the same and change everything. We need a revolution, a break with capital and its killing compulsions, though what that looks like in the twenty-first century is very much an open question. A revolution that had as its aim the flourishing of all human life would certainly mean immediate decarbonization, a rapid decrease in energy use for those in the industrialized global north, no more cement, very little steel, almost no air travel, walkable human settlements, passive heating and cooling, a total transformation of agriculture, and a diminishment of animal pasture by an order of magnitude at least. All of this is possible, but not if we continue to shovel one half of all the wealth produced on the planet into the maw of capital, not if we continue to sacrifice some fraction of each generation by sending them into the pits, not if we continue to allow those whose only aim is profit to decide how we live.

For now, a revolution is not on the horizon. We’re stuck between the devil and the green new deal and I can hardly blame anyone for committing themselves to the hope at hand rather than ambient despair. Perhaps work on legislative reforms will mean the difference between the unthinkable and the merely unbearable. But let’s not lie to each other.

But what if revolution were possible to overturn the capitalist rule and restore ordinary humans to exercise control over their planet, and these people became instantly highly informed instead of dumbed-down as to the threat of global warming? Well, as McPherson argues, we would still have, what has become known as, McPherson's Paradox to deal with. 

The latter explains that in addition to spewing greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, into our atmosphere, we have also spewed other substances that act as dimmer of solar radiation that is heating up our planet Earth. So if we had the technological means to stop the heating of our planet through geoengineering, which we don't, we could easily accelerate the global warming crisis. This is a synopsis of this paradox. But I should let the biologist and generalist (of the physical sciences) Guy McPherson explain this paradox in his own words:

The only problem I have with McPherson's analysis is his targeting "civilization" as the culprit that has led humans to this critical point. McPherson's has been trained in the physical sciences, but his weaknesses in the liberal arts is evident. He doesn't know of the history comprising the last 10,000 years of one ruling class after another dominating the rest of their societies, and likewise the efforts of ordinary people both successful and unsuccessful at eliminating one ruling class after another. However, revolutionary efforts at eliminating the rule of capitalists has apparently been too much for ordinary humans to accomplish. The latest and most dominant transnational ruling class, the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire, has used the advancements of knowledge to avert any further revolution. But in their obsessive concern to amass profits and power, they have destroyed the habitat that supports human life and that of many other species.

Civilization has a broad concept has at its core meaning a desire to understand our human existence. To suggest that we could have saved ourselves by remaining ignorant and scrounging around looking for plants that we can dig up and animals to kill in order to eat and survive is completely absurd.  

Unexpected surge in global methane levels

Click here to access article from Climate Nexus which "is a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors".  

I am not sure who the scientific organizations this article referred to, but some scientists clearly expected this surge because of increasing temperatures in the polar regions and the melting of the permafrost. I've posted at least six articles with scientific documentation that scientists, based on research, expected the increase in methane level in the past five years: 3-5°C temperature rise is now ‘locked-in’ for the Arctic, The climate emergency with Dahr Jamail, Arctic thaw imperils climate goals, Climate change in the Anthropocene: An unstoppable drive to Hothouse Earth?, Researchers Tally the Global Cost of Melting Permafrost, and Thawing Permafrost Will ‘Seep, Not Explode’ CO2.

Some scientists, particularly those who support the findings of biologist and generalist Guy McPherson, argue that it is already too late to avoid catastrophic climate destabilization: Support for action surges, majority say we face climate emergency, Hope is a Mistake and a Lie, David Suzuki & GM [Guy McPherson]- Abrupt Climate Change - Compassion in the Face of Death, No Surrender, and Two articles written by highly educated scholars illustrates the power of capitalist ideology.

In This Blitzkrieg of Idiocy, Fascist Marches, Fake-news Coups, and What Looks Like a Race Toward Extinction – What is the Place of Literature?

Click here to access a speech given by Arundhati Roy posted in Scroll.in (India). (This is a transcript of her lecture at the PEN America Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture delivered by her on May 12 in New York City.)

I discovered this by reading a very abridged version on Wrong Kind of Green's website that narrowly excerpted her comments about the threatening climate destabilization. This post gives the full version of her talk which, I believe, portrays Indian politics as much the same as the Empire's politics, but with an Indian accent which gives us insights about what is going on in this second most populous country. In addition, I think there is much to be learned from her profound observations about reality as we head into the nightmare of climate destabilization and human extinction.

She also asks, and provides her answers to, the following question:

‘In this blitzkrieg of idiocy, fascist marches, fake-news coups, and what looks like a race toward extinction – what is the place of literature?’

The London Climate Protests – Raising The Alarm [another reaction to this article]

Click here to access article by David Cromwell, editor of Media Lens, and from the latter's website (Britain). 

I posted this article a few days ago after arriving from a grueling road-journey to the West Coast to visit activists. I was hurriedly sifting through articles that seemed important to me, and offered no comment to this one other than describing its contents. This morning I have another reaction, particularly to one statement made by Cromwell which I quoted in my original post:

Even if corporate interests were crazed enough to think they could promote mass public dissent on this scale in the cause of profit, they would have no way of controlling the outcome.

I counter this argument with one I have advanced for years: that our ruling class of capitalists are indeed "crazed enough", and thus perfectly able to lead such movements so that they can control the outcome to insure that such movements don't interfere with their obsession with power and profits. They are insane. Period. And ordinary people are so disoriented by our capitalist master's control of all ideological and media institutions that they will be led like sheep into benign forms of protest. I don't know, but I think it is too late anyhow; yet, I intend to continue my lifelong fight against our "crazed" executioners to the last breath (def.).

Capitalism’s burning house: California wildfires put [capitalist] system on trial

Click here to access article by Nicholas Avedisian-Cohen from Liberation.

By July 2018, scientists were predicting an annual worsening of the wildfire situation due to global warming. Forestry experts and ecological engineers can diagnose the threat of wildfires with impressive precision and advocate for responsible individual practices, but an economy based entirely around manic pursuit of quick profits will continue to let fossil fuel industries and militarism run rampant, leading to devastating climatic shifts that make uncontrollable wildfire practically inevitable. California, despite its liberal self-branding as a “green” and “environmentally conscious” state, remains a hub for military contractors and the energy industry – the two biggest culprits in climate change. The state is simply reaping what it sows, when it comes to wildfires. [my emphasis]

This is the base reality.

Support for action surges, majority say we face climate emergency

Click here to access article by David Spratt from Climate Code Red (Australia). (Some editing was done in the last paragraph at 1:40 PM CT to add greater clarity.)

Australians have awoken to the climate and environmental crisis as indicated by recent polling.

In the first-ever poll of its kind, new research from The Australia Institute (TAI) has found that a clear majority of Australians agree the nation ‘is facing a climate emergency’ requiring emergency action and that, in response, governments should “mobilise all of society” like they did during the world wars.

Now that it has become obvious to the majority of citizens (I believe this is true in most parts of the world), it is the opinion of many scientists like Guy Mcpherson, that it is too late. The ruling capitalist classes successfully soothed us for the last 50 years with tales like that this threat was far too in the future to worry about, that we could create technological fixes for it, or that it was just a bunch of hooey. But now that it is becoming obvious especially to citizens of the West, our capitalist masters have taken charge of the Green New Deal movement so that any environmental fixes won't get in the way of their access to the drugs of profit/power. Like an alcoholic in the advanced stages of addiction, our capitalist masters are willing to risk everything, including human extinction, to continue their access to the drug of power.

But this is not unusual. The capitalist classes have competed in global wars to obtain control over access to cheap resources and cheap labor; and to accomplish this, they have insured that all institutions of their societies supported their interests of profit and power. Having already co-opted the highly trained upper-middle-class with generous salaries and perks to maintain their institutions of indoctrination, little stands in their way of pursuing more wars and exploitation. They will continue to use fossil fuels to do this while fooling us with tales that they are seriously combating climate destabilization and environmental collapse. 

Witness the sordid history of wars which nowadays are never-ending. Our masters in the ruling class encountered no difficulties in getting us to sign up for their wars, leave our families and loved ones and jobs to go over to foreign lands to kill people on their behalf. Every time they asked us in the past, we enthusiastically signed up to do this. They had no difficulty in doing this because they controlled our very minds through their control of every ideological institution of their societies. With their present command of advanced technologies, this control is easier than ever.

With all the evidence around us that indicates we are headed for major environmental crises and because our masters can no longer deny this, we are now signing up for this Green New Deal movement in numbers. The only rub is ... they control this movement as Cory Morningstar argued with evidence in her articles (see the above link). Do you think we can continue to trust these drug addicts to lead us out of the present crisis? In the past I argued that our only solution was revolution: taking the ownership and control of the economy away from our masters and directing it ourselves. Now I think it is likely too late.

Assessing the Green New Dea

Click here to access article by Eléana Ní Mhurchú from Rebel (Ireland). Added some minor editing to my commentary at 1 AM CT on Saturday, April 21 to add clarity.)

Even this "socialist" website devotes only one line to the realistic fact that only a revolutionary change from a capitalist economy to an economy directed by the people can produce real policies to prevent catastrophic climate destabilization. And, this is only stated in vague, abstract terms by including it in the last paragraph:

Combating climate change, however, ultimately requires expropriating resources from the rich in order to mitigate the worst effects of an increasingly hostile climate.

At this political stage, the Green New Deal is only in a "simple resolution" phase before Congress. That is a notion of intent much like an individual's New Year's resolution to lose weight in the coming year. There are so many legislative tricks to dodge a real implementation of any substantive change in the operations of the economy. The latter is under the control of private individuals realistically identified as a capitalist class, and they won't tolerate their government to meddle in what they regard as their affairs. 

The capitalist class is a (tiny) ruling class that shapes all institutions of society to serve their interests. If you think they are going to allow their funded representatives to pass laws to expropriate their private ownership of the economy, I think you should commit yourself to the nearest mental institution. Besides at this stage of consciousness, the people have been so dumbed-down that they don't even know that capitalism is responsible for the climate crisis. They have been taught 24/7 from birth that the economic system is "free markets" rather than capitalism. Hence, they can't even express in words what the economic system actually is. Their minds have been so manipulated for so long that they have very little comprehension of political and economic realities.

Some revolutionary people are supporting the "Green New Deal" because they have fantasies that eventually people will recover their mental capacities sufficiently that they will get behind an effort to take away the private ownership of the economy and restore this vital societal sphere to societal control. As a life-long socialist I can hardly blame them. To do nothing is to accept defeat. So, I guess we must accept reality for what it is and "grasp at any straws" (def.) that present themselves.  

Concerning Humanity’s Future: Interview with Nick Humphrey, Climatologist and Geoscientist

Click here to access an interview with meteorologist/geoscientist Nick Humphrey conducted by "xraymike79" from his blog Collapse of Industrial Civilization: Finding the Truth behind the American Hologram. (ML is "xraymike79")

I first discovered the writings of meteorologist/geoscientist Nick Humphrey with his brutally honest essay The Conversation No One Knows How To Have and since then have followed his posts and comments. He has been featured or quoted in a number of publications such as Mother Jones, New York Times, Washington Post, and Science Alert. Few scientists will publicly tell you how dire things are, but Nick Humphrey is not one to shy away from the truth. What follows is a Q&A interview I held with him on a variety of questions concerning humanity’s future.

The Green New Deal

by Ron Horn

I became aware of this phrase sometime late last year, and when I became aware that it was a push by members of the Democratic Party, most especially the newly elected Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I dismissed it as another ploy to distract ordinary people of the USA from the ongoing efforts of our capitalist ruling class to satisfy their addiction to wealth/power while pretending to confront climate destabilization about which a growing number of ordinary citizens are becoming alarmed. However, I became aware today after reading an article posted on System Change not Climate Change that it was having a distracting effect among people who are concerned about the issue much like the Russiagate phenomenon served to distract attention from all real issues.

Thus, I have perused online posts and selected what I regard as accurate information about the Green New Deal. Let me be clear: I do not entirely agree with all the opinions expressed in these articles. I still insist that nothing short of a worldwide, thoroughly democratic revolution that puts people in charge of the world's economies would be the solution to the climate crisis. Time is fast running out and I can't imagine this happening in time to avoid the destabilization of our climate and our own extinction as a human species (along with many other species).

In order to understand the terms used to describe Congressional actions, I've selected the following resources: Non-binding resolution and H.Res.109 - Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.

The following are the online posts I've selected (some I've posted before):

• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Releases Green New Deal Outline by Danielle Kurtzleben from NPR. (2/7/2019)

• The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent: The New Green Deal is the Trojan Horse for the Financialization of Nature [ACT V] by Cory Morningstar from Wrong Kind of Green.  (2/13/2019)

• The fallacies and evasions of the Green New Deal by Bryan Dyne and Barry Grey from World Socialist Web Site.  (3/5/2019)

• Democrats abstain from voting on their own “Green New Deal” by Genevieve Leigh from World Socialist Web Site. (3/28/2019)

• The Green New Deal, explained by David Roberts from Vox. (updated Mar 30, 2019)

Articles recommended for Tuesday, March 26, 2019

• Trump recognizes Israeli annexation of Golan Heights: Green light for global war by Bill Van Auken from World Socialist Web Site.

• Discrediting the Yellow vests: why Macron will not resign so easily from United World International.

• How to sell a massacre: NRA's playbook revealed by Peter Charley from Al Jazeera.

Greenwashing? The Green Marches are Mute on the “War Factor”

Click here to access article by Nazanín Armanian originally from the Spanish website Publico and posted in English on Wrong Kind of Green via (via Google Translator).

What can you expect with the heavily promoted Youth for Climate and Swedish climate girl Greta Thunberg by capitalist ruling classes other than greenwashing? I'm sure that they have already appointed the leadership to insure that the organization doesn't interfere with "business as usual". The author points out one very obvious contradiction--no mention of wars, and I think that there are many more contradictions that will be revealed in the days to come.

On March 15, the Day of the Popular March for Climate, tens of thousands of young people from several countries, followers of the Swedish student Greta Thunberg, showed their indignation at the indifference of world leaders towards climate change. Since last August, 16-year-old Greta demonstrates every Friday before the Swedish Parliament calling for greater commitment in the fight against the alarming deterioration of the oceans and glaciers.

Surprising (or not) that while environmental activists of the stature of the Honduran Berta Cáceres or the Iranian professor Kavous Emami who have been killed for their struggle against the powers that benefit from the destruction of the environment, the Swedish teenager is presented as leader of the fight to save the planet.

New study shows IPCC is underselling climate change

Click here to access article from the University of Adelaide, Australia posted on Climate Code Red (Australia based). 

This is what I expect from scientists in capitalist controlled countries: they underplay the threat of man-made climate destabilization.

"We found that the main message from the reports—that our society is in climate emergency—is lost by overstatement of uncertainty and gets confused among the gigabytes of information," says lead author Dr. Salvador Herrando-Pérez, from the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute and Australian Centre for Ancient DNA.

Trump and the War to Save “the War”

Click here to access article by Gordon Duff, a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War, from New Eastern Outlook.

Duff exposes the Global War on Terror (GWOT) scam, for what it is:

Lo and behold, a great threat looms over the Middle East. There is nothing worse for the US and its select allies, Britain, France, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Germany than peace breaking out. Yet exactly that, the “threat of peace” is taken as far more devastating than terrorism.

America’s biggest enemy in the Middle East today isn’t ISIS, for those who pay attention, more effort has been made by the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and to be honest about it, a host of other nations as well, to save ISIS and al Qaeda from the “axis of evil” than any military effort since Vietnam.

We are, to be honest still, in our eighth year of a war to keep terrorism alive.

And he asks a final unanswered question:

Why would someone want discord and suffering on a global scale? Is money and power really worth it?

This is another confirmation of the theme I have been hammering for the past several years: the capitalist ruling classes behind the Empire are a driven lot. They are thoroughly addicted to the power that capitalism delivers to them via concentrated wealth. Because of this addiction to power, this question becomes irrelevant. The addiction must be satisfied regardless of the consequences which are horrendous. The real question is: are we ordinary people going to tolerate this any longer? Are we prepared to endure whatever "slings and arrows" that we might experience in the immediate future in order to save us from horrors that await us in the long run?

The unfortunate headline implies that Trump is behind these policies. Trump is only one addicted figure among a whole class of capitalists largely within the borders of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire.

Articles recommended for Tuesday, March 19, 2019

• Governments and media seek to cover up culpability for fascist attack in New Zealand by James Cogan from World Socialist Web Site.

• John Pilger is interviewed by Dennis Bernstein on his program from KPFA. Listen to the first 23:10 minutes of this program and learn from Pilger about the history of grand juries are how they are presently used in the USA, specifically to persecute whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning.

• Venezuela: US Imperialism Is Based On Lies And Threats by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers from Popular Resistance.

• Inside the Yellow Vests: What the Western media will not report by Ollie Richardson from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard. 

• EU dilemma: how to deal with China by Pepe Escobar from Asia Times.

It’s the Green New Deal or Else

Click here to access article by Paul Street from Strategic Culture Foundation. 

Now that we understand these economic realities [as presented to us by capitalist class "experts"], we can prepare—without rebellion, with calm acceptance and within the limits of our stagnant incomes—for our coming extinction. Onward with the coming macroeconomic ecocide. [satire]

Except, wait. Hold on. Maybe Ohanian [one of the "experts"] is full of petroligarchic crap. Maybe there’s still hope for the species after all.

He is, and there is [maybe].   [my insertions]

As the World Burns: Hurtling Towards an Unlivable Planet

Click here to access article by Paul Street from CounterPunch. 

This the first article I've encountered from a (legitimate) fringe left-wing online website/blog (given that the US political spectrum has shifted rather dramatically to the right in this new century) that deals explicitly with the end of humans simply because the end is in sight and it can no longer be ignored. Expect many more such articles in our limited future as we stare into the headlights of our disappearance as a species. 

Street even knows what is responsible for this catastrophe with his coining of the word "capitalogenic". However, he implicitly regards this species ending event as "unthinkable" by presenting so much evidence that spells our doom as a species, but still holding out, rather lamely, hopeful remarks that we can still change things and save ourselves. His final paragraph illustrates this:

The reigning political and media “elite” is happy to keep capitalogenic global warming on the public margins until long past the last ecological tipping points are passed. They can be counted on them to fiddle and diddle through the species’ final, fossil-fueled flame-out. It is an existential necessity to create a new culture, media, and politics with the elementary natural and social intelligence required to properly prioritize the most pressing problems of our time.

I am frequently guilty of doing the same thing in my commentaries, but in my saner moments I simply want to seek revenge on a tiny capitalist class that has caused our disappearance from the Earth. This is no ordinary crime.