The World Begins to Fry and ...?

 

Don't get me wrong; Eve Ottenberg is one of my favourite writers.  What I'm complaining about really has very little to do with her.  It's just that reading her essay this morning: "As Earth Sizzles, Climate Denialists Rearrange Deck Chairs" caused me to again bewail the almost total failure of the Left to face-up to the reality of the task ahead of us and to put forward serious strategies for accomplishing that task.

So if we mere, tiny humans can change our planet’s axis, it’s pretty darn likely burning fossil fuels, thus pumping a trillion and a half tons of carbon into the atmosphere over centuries, could heat things up. Indeed, the lousy climate news just pours in. July 3 was the hottest day ever, a record broken by July 4. In fact, that first week in July smashed records, going back, on the fourth, 125,000 years. Meanwhile Spain geared up for prolonged heat of 112 degrees Fahrenheit, while by July 16 parts of China were hotter than Death Valley. This is not normal. This is bizarre, much hotter and sooner than even the most pessimistic scientific predictions.

That first week in July reached “the hottest global average since scientists began recording such data in 1979,” Truthout reported on the fifth. “The global temperature was bumped up by a heat wave blistering across the U.S. with an estimated 57 million people exposed to dangerous heat…with at least 14 heat related deaths across Louisiana and Texas as of last week and at least 112 deaths in Mexico…In June, a heat wave in India killed at least 96 people, and record heat is gripping swaths of China, northern Africa and the Antarctic.”

...

And that’s just the disaster on land. The oceans are too hot, also. On July 10 Colin McCarthy, an expert on extreme weather, tweeted: “A severe marine heatwave has emerged off the coast of Florida, as water temperatures have soared into the 90s. Multiple buoys in Everglades National Park are reporting water temperatures as high as 95 degrees Fahrenheit.” Worse is predicted for the planet’s oceans in August. That’s too hot. Such heat endangers marine wildlife and their ecosystems. 

Ottenberg does briefly mention some possible responses and the unlikelihood of their being carried out under our current political-economy:

Still, there are solutions that maybe even plutocracy could accept. Like solar panels on every building in the world and massive investment in wind power. Also, we could speed up the switch to electric vehicles. Promoting sustainable, organic, peasant farming to replace industrial, pesticide-dependent agriculture would help too. That’s just a start, because there’s lots more. Everybody who could make a difference knows all of this. Will any of those people – hello Biden? – move against our fatal political inertia? Now is the time.

So, if the oligarchs and their political representatives won't do it, then who will?  Ordinary people.  The majority of humanity that is concerned about this issue.  What is stopping us?  Lack of power.  Political power is in the hands of the oligarchs.  The USA is dominated by the Republicans and Democrats.  And the Republicans are those who gain their electoral victories by gerrymandering electoral districts and relying on anti-democratic institutional structures such as the Senate, the Electoral College and the Supreme Court so as to succeed beyond their narrow voter base of assholes, racists and shit-heads who think Ben Schapiro is a genius.  The Democrats, meanwhile, are the "Lesser Evil" in every way.  However evil the Republicans are, the Democratic Party leadership is content to be just a little less disgusting.  In that way, they can be the more EFFECTIVE evil.  And this party is kept churning along by evil and stupid scumbags like "Driftglass" who remains willfully blind to his party's perfidy so long as Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden agree to shart on his face. 

And, Canada continues to stagnate under the Liberals and the Conservatives and the increasingly disappointing NDP and Greens.  

So the electorate is a problem.  Because?  Because our political-economy is liberal capitalist.  Our culture is liberal capitalist.

And that means that the media, the information system, is against us.

So what do we do?

Come up with a plan for the instant (that is: ASAP) transformation of the economy.  Use every means available to communicate it to the people and get them onside behind it.  And then focus on getting the power to do it ourselves.  Because the powers-that-be aren't going to do it no matter how many petitions or peaceful afternoon rallies we have.

Of course the oligarchs are going to resist.  Incorporate that knowledge into your strategy and tactics.

I haven't thought this through entirely.  That would require a full-time paid gig.  The sort of paid gigs that hundreds, perhaps even thousands of progressives and leftists enjoy while seemingly permanently incapable of coming up with anything other than the aforementioned petitions and afternoon gatherings.

How will this be paid for?  Modern Monetary Theory tells us: Create the money to pay for doing whatever is necessary to save the eco-system's ability to support humanity and then tax the Bejeeziz out of the oligarchs thus taking their trillions of dollars of Dead Money out of the equation.

Bye for now!