We need a revolution in the way we human beings live and the way we treat each other.There is no way that the world’s 6.5 billion people--and especially the 2 billion of them who live in wealthier societies--can continue to consume energy at even close to the level that we have been consuming it.
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The so-called “green” politicians who talk about instituting carbon-trading schemes, about driving
hybrid automobiles, about buying fluorescent light bulbs, and about turning down the thermostat and wearing sweaters, are deceiving us or themselves.
None of this is going to save us.
What will save us is recognizing that the age of consumer-driven capitalism is over.
We either come up with a new way to organize society, in which production is based upon real needs, not upon manufactured needs, and in which scarce resources are made available to those
who need them, not just to those who can afford them, or we will all be doomed--or at least our progeny.
The peoples of the world--especially of the developed world, but really everywhere--need to recognize that unless our expectations are changed, unless our selfish desire for more is curbed, unless wasteful production is ended, we are all likely to be on that extinction list.
Very bold, dramatic writing. One doesn't have to believe in the inevitability of global warming (though anyone willing to dismiss it altogether is being willfully obtuse) to realize that our consumerist lifestyle is unsustainable. This means that our children or our grandchildren are going to have inevitably traumatic futures unless we start to do something yesterday.
Once again though, the trick is that we have to start yesterday. And as of today, we have no coherent way plan for the carrying out of the necessary revolution. That's where "Workers as Citizens" comes in of course ...
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