Is This the Final Showdown?

 

Sorry

Developments on the climate crisis have not been encouraging.  Greenhouse gas emissions that are supposed to be plunging are heading in the wrong direction.

Chris Hedges put it this way:

It is hard to be sanguine about the future. The breakdown of the ecosystem is well documented. So is the refusal of the global ruling elite to pursue measures that might mitigate the devastation. We accelerate the extraction of fossil fuels, wallow in profligate consumption, including our consumption of livestock, and make new wars as if we are gripped by a Freudian death wish. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – Conquest, War, Famine and Death – gallop into the 21rst century.

Andew Nikiforuk dished up a two-part article on the Fossil Cult we've become.

At the beginning of last month, Canadian-born climate scientist, Katherine Keyhoe, warned that we've already left it too late to deal with climate breakdown.

The world cannot adapt its way out of the climate crisis, and counting on adaptation to limit damage is no substitute for urgently cutting greenhouse gases, a leading climate scientist has warned.

Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy in the US and professor at Texas Tech University, said the world was heading for dangers unseen in the 10,000 years of human civilisation, and efforts to make the world more resilient were needed but by themselves could not soften the impact enough.

“People do not understand the magnitude of what is going on,” she said. “This will be greater than anything we have ever seen in the past. This will be unprecedented. Every living thing will be affected.”

In May, Guardian climate writers, David Carrington and Matthew Taylor, reported on the fossil energy giants plans for new hydrocarbon fuel extraction, that they termed "Carbon Bombs." George Monbiot wrote that, almost as lethal as the fossil giants are their political handmaidens, the same people we elect to high office, who serve us up on a platter.

The world’s leading energy economist [the International Energy Agency] has warned against investing in large new oil and gas developments, which would have little impact on the current energy crisis and soaring fuel prices but spell devastation to the planet.

In today's Guardian, Monbiot turns his attention to the final battle, the winner-takes-all struggle between democracy and plutocracy, the "endgame for our planet." 

It feels like the end game. In the US last week, the third perverse and highly partisan supreme court decision in a few days made American efforts to prevent climate breakdown almost impossible. Ruling in favour of the state of West Virginia, the court decided that the Environmental Protection Agency is not entitled to restrict carbon dioxide emissions from power stations.

Just at the point at which we need a coordinated global effort to escape our existential crises – climate breakdown, ecological breakdown, the rising tide of synthetic chemicals, a gathering global food emergency – those who wield power string razor wire across the exit.

When I began work as an environmental journalist in 1985, I knew I would struggle against people with a financial interest in destructive practices. But I never imagined that we would one day confront what appears to be an ideological commitment to destroying life on Earth. The UK government and the US supreme court look as if they are willing the destruction of our life support systems.

...the supreme court has strayed way beyond its mandate of interpreting the law, into the territory of the executive and the legislature: making the law. It is imposing policies that would never survive democratic scrutiny, if they were put to the vote. By seizing control of regulatory power, it sets a precedent that could stymie almost any democratic decision.

All this might seem incomprehensible. Why would anyone want to trash the living world? Surely even billionaires want a habitable and beautiful planet? Don’t they like snorkelling on coral reefs, salmon fishing in pristine rivers, skiing on snowy mountains? We suffer from a deep incomprehension of why such people act as they do. We fail to distinguish preferences from interests, and interests from power. It is hard for those of us who have no desire for power over others to understand people who do. So we are baffled by the decisions they make, and attribute them to other, improbable causes. Because we do not understand them, we are the more easily manipulated.

...But even financial interests fail fully to explain what’s going on. The oligarchs seeking to stamp out US democracy have gone way beyond the point of attending only to their net worth. It’s no longer about money for them. It’s about brute power: about watching the world bow down before them. For this rush of power, they would forfeit the Earth.

All these cases expose the same political vulnerability: the ease with which democracy is crushed by the power of money. We cannot protect the living world, or women’s reproductive rights, or anything else we value until we get the money out of politics, and break up the media empires that make a mockery of informed political consent.

Since 1985, I’ve been told we don’t have time to change the system: we should concentrate only on single issues. But we’ve never had time not to change the system. In fact, because of the way in which social attitudes can suddenly tip, system change can happen much faster than incrementalism. Until we change our political systems, making it impossible for the rich to buy the decisions they want, we will lose not only individual cases. We will lose everything.

Science is now sidelined and, with it, us as well.

Comment Response -

Yes, Lungta, we are riding the tiger.

I think we've crossed too many tipping points already. We're great with promises but crap with delivery. Today's post deals with the UK's chief science officer, Patrick Vallance, who suggests humanity is in a voracious and ultimately deadly struggle with nature.

For good measure I threw in British celebrity physicist, Brian Cox', comments on how, when truly global threats loom, advanced societies are incapable of implementing global collaborative situations.

I have written of this in the past when arguing that we, in the latitudinally advantaged developed nations, are still threatened by the climate crisis but not as urgently or severely as those in the poorest, tropical regions. Were we, the rich countries, were the most desperate and vulnerable we'd be stomping our feet and angrily demanding action. It's why we prefer to offer sops such as an extra dime or quarter per litre in gas pump levies.