Elite Plans For Climate Change

Here's a good article by Richard Moser: "Doubling Down: The Military, Big Bankers and Big Oil are Not In Climate Denial, They are in Control and Plan to Keep it that Way." The United States Department of Defense, the financial insurance companies, ... heck, even the oil companies (!) do not deny that human-caused global warming is real. But the perpetrators have no plans to reduce their contributions to the problem if it will negatively impact their bottom-lines. No. They plan on adapting to the new reality and profiting from any proposals to ameliorate the crisis. (The insurance industry won't call for the abolition of capitalism. It will hike premiums and refuse to provide coverage for vulnerable sectors.)

So how is it that the bankrollers of climate chaos, investing  $1.9 trillion in fossil fuels just since the Paris Accords, also claim to “manage and mitigate these climate-related risks?”

According to the bankers, the problem with climate change is that it’s “posing significant risks to the prosperity and growth of the global economy.” What they will not say is that the global economy — which demands enormous fossil fuel production and consumption — is posing significant risks to the climate. The global shipping and aviation on which peak profit-making depends is, like the military, exempt from the Paris Accords. The bankers, generals, and politicians are protecting the sources of their power.

It's a decent summary of the situation that shows how the petro-dollar backs-up the military-industrial-complex which props-up the US-dominated world economic system which serves the capitalist class very well. They are NOT going to undercut the basis of their wealth and power.


So that's what the entrenched elites are doing. And, perhaps, the wealthiest are planning to hunker-down, build independent power-generation and food sources and etc., and fantasize about the wonderful, depopulated world their children and other descendants will get to gambol and frolic in.

But what about the rest of us? (The vast majority of humanity?)

But the military-corporate management of the crisis will undoubtedly follow the same principles that created the crisis: the costs of pollution, adaptation, endless growth and war won’t appear in the corporate ledger. Military budgets will only grow larger. The costs will be “externalized” and paid by the suffering of everyday people.

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It’s “power to the people” or nothing. There is no middle ground. But we will be swamped along with the middle ground if we do not have real leverage and real power. The military, the oil companies and the big banks have plans and power both. The Green Party’s Real Green New Deal is a solid plan, as are the guiding principles offered by DSA Ecosocialists, or Tulsi Gabbard’s OFF Act.

But, the straightest line to the power we need is not just good policy, more manifestos, analytical precision or electoral politics (although those things might be helpful) — it’s the sloppy, contradictory, demanding work of organizing and direct democracy.

I'm changing to a new font-type n' size. (And, I see that "Blogger" has decided to wrap my paragraphs in white just like the quotation blocks. Oh well.) Anyhow, what does Moser mean by "organizing and direct democracy"?

“We cannot expect politicians to do what only mass movements can do…from below and to the left.” Truth. But how?

Whether you are base-building with workers or tenants, movement-building with the peace and environmental movements or running electoral campaigns, the under-appreciated work of talking with, and listening to, everyday people is the fast track to fundamental change. Talking with everyday people is a revolutionary act. Acting with others is better yet.

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But the real question — the unanswered question — is HOW? How do we move on the climate crisis? Can we build it from the bottom up? It sure isn’t coming from the top down. Can the Green New Deal become a revolutionary reform? Ask people what they think about the Green New Deal. Where it leads is up to us.

I would suggest to you that the radical transformation of the entire political-economy of the world is a big project. And we should have started constructing actual plans for what we want to build and how we want to build it at least twenty years ago.

I'm not going to claim that Richard Moser isn't an intelligent, decent human being and an honest thinker. But I do know that at this late stage in the game we should be farther along than calling for people to talk to other people and fantasizing about how networks of ordinary, powerless, and/or oppressed people can topple the entire edifice of the wealthy and the powerful.

Let's say you talk to your neighbours about Green New Deals and they agree with you? What then? Approach the politicians and "demand" they implement it? Have a rally?

This speaks to the pathological inability of progressives to actually sit down and think about the job they believe they're trying to do. If our politicians aren't responsive [and for the most part they're not], what then? Why still talk about petitioning them and making empty "demands" of them at rallies?

If the corporate media censors us and denies us access to their networks, what then?

If the forces of state surveillance and violence crush movements for justice, ... what then?

Again, I mention that for 25-years I was pushing "Workers as Citizens" which used constitutional means to give people more power as workers within their workplaces. If we aren't calling for an actual "revolution" in power relations (toppling those at the top and raising those at the bottom) because that would require violence and/or is unrealistic because it's beyond our capabilities, ... then why not utilize the existing political system? If you deny both of those methods then what in the sweet name of fuck ARE you planning??? (Do you see how insane it is? No using of a compromised political system. No violent revolution. No explanation of your alternative. And then you expect to change the world!)

Imagine what could be done to transform the economy if the ability to do so was contained in each and every workplace?

I had a plan to challenge stephen harper when he STOLE an election (that was called because he'd been found guilty of CONTEMPT OF PARLIAMENT). I got very little feedback. And, instead, people bitched and carped on the internet and had meaningless rallies until harper became unpopular enough on his own  with the rest of the electorate (due to the Duffy Scandal and the sputtering economy) that the Liberals came to power and continued with his policies of inaction on climate change, abusing the First Nations (slightly less though), militarism and inequality.

I proposed a plan to neuter Doug Ford. The geniuses and the super-radicals won't even give it the time of day while they're busy watching the clouds float by and posting nonsensical calls for a province-wide "General Strike" to materialize out of nothing.

We are on a head-long collision-course with ecocide. And the best of us still think that starting to talk to people about how maybe we should do something and hoping somebody else will come up with a plan for how to do it (though we probably won't listen to them if they do provide such a plan*) is their best strategy to confront the crisis.

It's this inactivity that causes me to constantly lament how humanity is doomed. Prove me wrong bitches.

* Credit to George Monbiot for having proposed solutions years ago to little effect.