This is a good essay from commondreams.org: "No, Capitalism Will Not Save the Climate" by Karin Nansen.
We are facing deep-rooted climate, social, and environmental crises. The current dominant economic system cannot provide solutions. It is time for system change.
For Friends of the Earth International this means creating societies based on peoples’ sovereignty and environmental, social, economic, and gender justice. We must question and deconstruct the capitalist logic of accumulation.
The climate catastrophe is interwoven with many social and environmental crises, including oppression, corporate power, hunger, water depletion, biodiversity loss and deforestation.
She really cuts to the chase:
We must tackle climate change and the associated social and environmental crises by taking rapid and bold action to address the common root causes; privatization, financialization and commodification of nature and societies, and unsustainable production and consumption systems.
The magnitude of the crises we face demands system change.
And so on and such forth:
System change must address people’s individual and collective needs and promote reciprocity, redistribution, and sharing.
Solutions include public services achieved through tax justice, social ownership and co-operativism, local markets and fair trade, community forest management, and valuing the wellbeing of people and the planet.
Go over and give the whole thing a read.
But my question is (as always): How are we to achieve the very good things that Nansen is calling for? Our political-economic system is dominated by pro-capitalism, pro-corporate, neo-liberal parties that serve authoritarian oligarchs. Our media system is dominated by neo-liberal, corporate propagandists and "public relations" brain-washers. One-quarter of the voting population in the industrialized countries consists of stupid, ignorant, racist, patriarchal, authoritarian, brainwashed, right-wing chumps. Another one-quarter consists of partisan liberal shills and hypocrites who will turn a blind eye to the most blatant betrayals of their principles if the politician doing the betraying is nominally from their team.
Why do our politicians do the things they do? With some of them, like Donald Trump, the Ford Brothers, or Paul Calandra, ... it's because they're hollowed-out morons. They have neither the ability to empathize with others nor are they possessed of the intellectual weight to be able to discern right from wrong. Calandra has literally defrauded his dying mother. Rob Ford railed against "drugs and gangs" and then smoked drugs with gangsters. Doug Ford is just a stupid bully. A rich man's son who was a high school drug dealer and who used his brother's populist appeal to build his own political career which is all about his personal benefit and the implementation of his own personal belief system of self-serving bigotry and greed. Donald Trump is a serial con-artist, psychopath, rapist and hypocrite. A moral degenerate who could barely restrain his sexual desire for his own daughter. What sort of man would strike his own son in the face for not wearing a collared-shirt and a tie to a sporting event?
It's obvious why scum like this do the things that they do. But what about the liberals?
Not enough has been said about Barack Obama pardoning Chelsea Manning in the closing days of his presidency. I don't see that this action exonerates Obama for his numerous crimes. But considering who Chelsea Manning was and what she did, I find it remarkable. How many other presidents have thrown people like Mumia Abul-Jamal or Leonard Peltier into prison and then left them there to rot?
Obama's pardoning of Manning shows that he often knows what the right thing is, but he chose not to do it. One has to remember that Obama (like most politicians) is something of a psychopath. He did everything necessary to be the first Black US President. His chameleon ability to affect the mannerisms of whoever he's speaking to are well noted. His self-control is extraordinary. As was his brazen duplicity (telling voters he'd go after Wall Street criminals at the same time that he was filling his Cabinet with them). Becoming the first Black President (and not getting assassinated for it) was a difficult achievement. But he hardly tried when it came to climate change. Because that would have meant trouble. It would have meant stirring-up powerful adversaries. For Obama, NOT doing what imbeciles like Bush II did, or maniacs like Hillary Clinton wanted to do, was the extent of his efforts.
I see I've written much more than planned and haven't really said anything. I'll post this now and pick it up later.
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