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TechnoratiWhy We Should Listen to the Protesters
The way out of the credit and the climate crunch is the same - a Green New Deal
When this hinge-point in human history is remembered, there will be far more sympathy for the people who took to the streets and rioted than for the people who stayed silently in their homes. Two global crises have collided, and we have a chance here, now, to solve them both with one mighty heave - but our leaders are letting this opportunity for greatness leach away. The protesters here in London were trying to sound an alarm now, at five minutes to ecological midnight.
Many commentators seemed bemused that the protesters focused on the climate crunch as much as the credit crunch. What's it got to do with a G20 meeting on reviving the global economy? Why wave banners saying 'Nature Doesn't Do Bail-Outs' today? Because both crises have their roots in the same ideology - and both have the same solution.
We are facing a collapsed economy and a rapidly warming world because an extreme ideology has dominated world affairs for decades. It is the belief that markets aren't just a useful tool in certain circumstances; they are an infallible mechanism for running human affairs. If the economy ebbs, the market will put itself right by punishing wrong-doers. If the climate begins to unravel, business will rectify its own behaviour voluntarily. Now we know how well this market fundamentalism works.
The climate is currently going the same way as the banks. Last month, the world's climate scientists gathered in Copenhagen to explain we are facing "devastating consequences" - not in some distant future, but in my lifetime and yours. Unless we swerve fast, we are soon going to hit global temperatures that no human being has ever lived through. We don't have much time. By 2015, we will have belched so much carbon into the atmosphere that we will cross the Point of No Return: the climate will start to unravel as all its natural cooling processes break down one by one, guaranteeing we become hotter and hotter. Once we hit an increase of 4 degrees, much of the world will become uninhabitable, and there will be vast wars for what remains.
This isn't the warning of apocalyptic wackos: it's the judgement of the climate scientists who have consistently been proven right up to now. Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who has been appointed Energy Secretary by Barack Obama, says: "I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what will happen. We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California. I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going either." Goodbye Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego. And that, he stresses, is only the start.
The distinguished environmental scientist James Lovelock warns that climate changes tend not to happen gradually, inch-by-inch. They suddenly flip - in our case from a cool world to a very hot one. He believes the hotter new world we are bringing into being could support, at best, a billion people. That would require 84 per cent of the world's population to die off.
That's why the protesters were talking about the climate. It should be the number one issue at every global meeting. And the way out of the climate crunch and credit crunch is the same - a Green New Deal. Our leaders are divided about whether we need a fiscal stimulus at all. Obama, Gordon Brown, and the Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso are leading the charge for a burst of big government spending to jump-start the global economy, while Angela Merkel, Nicholas Sarkozy, David Cameron and the US Republicans are arguing this will simply be a debt-funded splurge to nothing.
It's a strange debate to have now, because the opponents of any stimulus seem to be mired in a row that was resolved back in the 1930s. John Maynard Keynes transformed the way that we think about recessions. Before him, everybody believed the Merkel-Cameron-McCain line that recessions are like bad weather: you just need to wrap up and sit it out, even though it hurts. But Keynes transformed all that.
He showed that recessions are actually caused by a failure of consumer demand. When people sense that they might lose their job, they - perfectly sensibly - cut back on their spending. They buy fewer DVDs or restaurant meals or holidays. But this causes a fall in demand for services - and more people lose their jobs, causing demand to fall further in turn, and on and on, in a spiral. He called it "the paradox of thrift": what is rational for an individual consumer is irrational for the society as a whole.
But he also showed that there is a way out: the government needs to spend large sums of money, financed by borrowing, to get all the workers waiting idle back into action. This form of government spending brings consumer demand back - and reverses the downward trend. Then, once you've recovered, you pay off the debt. Keynes stressed you can spend this money on anything: at one point he proposed burying wads of cash and paying people to dig them up. But today, we face an incredible coincidence. At the same moment, we need to spend lots of money on something, anything - and we need an immediate transition to a low-carbon economy. And it gets better: it turns out a green stimulus is best for the economy. A major study by the University of Massachusetts compared the effects of an old-style stimulus that simply gives people more cash to a green stimulus.
They found that a green stimulus creates four times more jobs, and three times more "good jobs", defined as those that pay more than $16 per hour. Why? Because a green stimulus is labour-intensive: you spend more money on people and less on machines. And the money you spend stays at home, making it easier to sell: you can only insulate a loft in Hull in Hull; you can only build a wind farm in the Mid-West in the Mid-West.
But it's not happening. A study by HSBC has found that only 6 per cent of Britain's stimulus so far has gone to green projects. In the US, it is just 16 per cent. It is nonsense to claim there aren't enough green projects "shovel-ready": during World War Two, the industrial capacities of our countries was transformed from making consumer goods to making tanks and weaponry in less than sixty days. We could do the same.
But this alacrity shouldn't surprise us. The weight of conventional wisdoms and the sway of powerful corporations with vested interests in the old sickening world holds back even the better leaders.
The first New Deal wasn't handed down by Franklin Roosevelt as a benevolent gesture. On the contrary: he came to power as a budget-balancing centrist, and only became a great President because he was confronted by massive riots and civil disobedience across the United States. The American people pushed him in a more radical direction, often with behaviour that made this week's riot in London look like a Buckingham Palace reception.
On Wednesday, one of the young protesters sat in a tent at the edge of the City of London, looked out towards the glistening towers of the financial district, and said to me: "The dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid. Suddenly, we are realising that we are our own asteroid." She shook her head. "How can so many people just sit at home and watch it happen?"
46 Comments so far
Show All► Well, that's great ChineseDemo. Now if we could just get the rest of the world to give up their 25,000 sq ft mansions and air conditioned stables there'd be nothing to worry about
"How can so many people sit at home and watch it happen?"
Well, I for one, can answer that, at least on my part. Why do I sit at home and watch it happen?
Because no amount of activism on my part is going to help solve this crisis. Nor do I want it solved. If this crisis of capitalism makes the capitalist system implode: GOOD.
Then, I will step in and help create the NEW system.
With respect herbalist, it was significant amounts of people engaging, as one, in non-violent, direct action and mass civil disobedience that destroyed the british empire in India and that finally won the vote for women in the UK and USA and of course, the great chartist movement in the UK that originally gave all men the vote in the first place and it will be the same in the case of the Climate Camp movement or, more to the point, all the various movements that are joining together and which, I believe, will begin to adopt the tactics that the Climate Camp use.
Because these concerns are all linked, from the gross abuse of our rapidly depleting natural resources and the massacering of our environment to the 50 million who will lose their jobs alone in Europe to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan... The cause that will unite us all is simple: ending a financial system that puts profits before everything else, before people, before justice, before truth, before a sustainable way of living and before a decent future for our children.
History is very clear Herbalist, the journey of truth goes through three stages:
First it is ridiculed.
Secondly it is violently oppressed
Eventually it is recognised as self-evident.
We want you Herbalist, you personally, to join us. Because if someone like you - who has been frightened off or persuaded away by a darkly manipulative media - will join us, then we will win sooner rather than later because make no mistake, this movement for radical change will win eventually.
Look at the Climate Camp site Herbalist. Look at the footage on you tube of how the police treated us and the rest of the demonstrators on April 1st, (Look at indymedia.org.uk) Think about the massive amount of prison camps already in place in your own country to corral and detain the millions who will eventually be hitting the streets even in your country. It's already starting. It will not be an easy journey. And even though there will be pain and suffering and death amongst the protesters, the end result is undeniable.
Even the police and the military will tire of being used by the corrupt governments that control them. Even on April 1st in London, we were meeting cops who were having second thoughts and they are trained not to think, just to take orders.
To be more critical of you, I might say that to sit back and wait until we have brought the system down does not make you anyone who has the right to take part in the new world that we will build.
I wish you all the best Herbalist and respect where you are coming from but only urge you to look a little deeper and maybe consider the information offered in the few places I have pointed you towards.
medical marajuana will save the planet.
Thank you for offering to sift through the ashes.
"It is nonsense to claim there aren't enough green projects "shovel-ready": during World War Two, the industrial capacities of our countries was transformed from making consumer goods to making tanks and weaponry in less than sixty days. We could do the same."
This could be called, "when economy meets ecology".
"...during World War Two, the industrial capacities of our countries was transformed from making consumer goods to making tanks and weaponry in less than sixty days."
Those of us on the radical left have a pretty good word for this: fascism.
what the fuck?? of course arm chair quarterbacks should listen to the people on the streets. If as a country we treat Hugo and Venezuela like a cuban step-child ie. ole fidel we will be forced to deal with him like one. let's embrace a new world view. Greening may/will be good.
four twenty somewhere.
Candotutors rock.
Keynesianism? What is the author of this article on? Keynesianism is what got us into this mess in the first place. Real economic growth doesn't come from printing money out of thin air and forcing it into the economy, it comes from careful savings and investment. Only an economic illiterate would think that getting everyone to buy tons of crap that they don't need is going to stimulate the economy.
What we really need is for people to start saving so they can become property owners and become less reliant on wage/salary labor. This is only going to happen if the government backs off. If it keeps bailing companies out left and right and granting other privileges (i.e. corporate welfare, intellectual property, tort "reform," eminent domain seizures, cartelizing regulations etc.) that allow corporations to grow to their current, monstrous sizes, then nothing will change. Most people will end up where they are right now: propertyless wage serfs for corporate America.
Keynesianism did not get us into the mess we are in. Keynesianism was dismantled in the 1970's. Neo-liberalism and financialization is what got us into this mess.
I agree with the rest of your stuff though.
Keynesianism was not dismantled in the 1970's. What do you call all of Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush's lavish defense contracts?
Uh, yes, it was dismantled. Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush lavish defense contracts are a form of State-Capitalism.
Here is an good article that explains neoliberalism.
http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/19990401.htm
Or, read this interview with Chomsky... skip to the meat of it by reading below: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/19801
Chomsy: "After World War II, the victors established a global economic order, the Bretton Woods system: Britain was represented by John Maynard Keynes, the US by Harry Dexter White. A core principle was constraints on capital. Governments were permitted to control capital flight, a principle that still is in the IMF rules, though ignored. And currencies were regulated within a narrow band. The motives were twofold. The first was economic: Keynes and White believed that these measures would stimulate economic growth and trade. The second was sociopolitical: both understood that unless governments are able to regulate capital, they will not be able to carry out social democratic (welfare state) measures. These had enormous support among populations that had been radicalized by the Great Depression and the anti-fascist war (World War II).
The basis for the sociopolitical motive is straightforward. Free capital movement establishes what international economists have called a "virtual parliament" of investors and lenders, who carry out a "moment-by-moment referendum" on government policies. The "virtual parliaments" can "vote" against these policies if it considers them irrational: enacted for the benefit of people, rather than profit for concentrated private power. They can "vote" by capital flight, attacks on currencies, and other devices offered by financial liberalization. Keynes considered the most important achievement of Bretton Woods to be establishment of the right of governments to restrict capital movement.
Keynes regarded speculation as destructive. His basic insight is well described by Indian economist Prabhat Patnaik, at the UN conference of October 30 on the global financial crisis. Patnaik explains that Keynes "had located the fundamental defect of the free market system in its incapacity to distinguish between `speculation' and `enterprise.' Hence, it had a tendency to be dominated by speculators, interested not in the long-term yield on assets but only in the short-term appreciation in asset values. Their whims and caprices, causing sharp swings in asset prices, determined the magnitude of productive investment and, therefore, the level of aggregate demand, employment and output in the economy. The real lives of millions of people were determined by the whims of 'a bunch of speculators' under the free market system." The replacement of governmental "demand management" by "bubble booms" created by speculators is a prime cause of the current financial crisis, Patnaik argues plausibly, supporting Keynes's analysis.
Both motives of the Bretton Woods planners -- the economic and the sociopolitical -- proved well justified. The following years, until the system was dismantled in the 1970s, are described by economic historians as the "golden age" of capitalism (more accurately, state capitalism). Since financial liberalization and the related neo-liberal programs were introduced in the 1970s, there has been considerable deterioration where the programs have been adopted, though there has been rapid growth where they have been mostly ignored, notably in East Asia. The same has been true of the sociopolitical motive. The Bretton Woods years were the era of substantial progress in establishing basic social and democratic rights, which have been under attack during the neo-liberal/financial liberalization period. To take just the United States for illustration, during the Bretton Wood years, economic growth was not only unusually rapid but also egalitarian: the poorest quintile did as well as the richest. And social indicators, general measures of the health of the society, closely tracked growth. Since the late 1970s, for the majority of the population real incomes have stagnated, work hours have increased, benefits have declined, and social indicators not only did not track growth, but in fact steadily declined."
Here is another guy that explains Keynesianism very well.
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20930
Here is another article that puts "the mess" into perspective.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/02-14
Here is a golden nugget quote to show that other people also know that the economic order since the 80's has been neoliberalism and NOT Keynesianism -which was dismantled in the 70's.
"This is the logic of financialization, which has become so dominant since the neo-liberal era began in the 1980s."
And, another... "This too explains why the global financial system is in permanent crisis. Indeed, the term "crisis" is in some respects a misnomer: for what is happening is more nearly business as usual, the way financialized capitalism in the neo-liberal era works."
Thank goodness for you! I thought I had stumbled into the land of Socialism. This is one of the few comments that I've read on this site that has any real intelligence. If the government would have stuck to governing we would not be in this mess. Obama is much worse than Bush and I thought he was scary!!!! It's time for people to start thinking outside the parties because really thier the Republicrats!!! They are the same!!! Liars!!!
An outstanding article, at last Common Dreams, you are using better material from the UK!
I was at that very camp, the Climate Camp, where two hundred tents appeared in the middle of a main road at the heart of the financial district and outside the Climate Exchange, flipped open in seconds... Within minutes, we had a kitchen set up, a band playing, workshops in progress... The police didn't known what to make of it. A brave and brilliant action. Utterly non-violent and utterly peaceful. And the main press focus? The riotous behaviour around the corner caused by hundreds of tooled up police cramming thousands of people into a space and keeping them there for five and a half hours with no water, food or toilets and charging the people every now and again, visciously before retreating.
Later on, under cover of darkness and when the main press had long gone, the police ploughed in to the Climate Camp and brutally removed the non-violent campaigners. The police had agreed to let the camp stay on the street until mid day the next day but someone told them that was not to be the case. Who gives the orders to use violence and excessive force? The Home Secretary, the government.
The issues involved in climate change are utterly linked to the disasterous way our financial bodies have been allowed to operate in and what has the G20 done? Propped up the IMF. In effect, changed it into the new Casino bank. What, so that desperate countries can borrow more money as long as they privatise their water and basically open their commerce to be plundered by greedy, soulless white men who live in a universe devoid of creativity or real joy? Business as usual. And not a mention of the climate.
In the 90's, Naomi Klein and the Seattle protesters drew great inspiration from the methods used by the non-violent direct action movement called Reclaim the Streets. Well, America, as so many of you are beginning to realise, we need a world movement that is non-violent and utilises innovative forms of direct action and civil disobedience. Well, that is the Climate Camp movement. Look and learn. And do it fast, for all of us!
www.climatecamp.org.uk
The world movement needs to get active yesterday. By tomorrow, we need to be old friends, joined across the atlantic and around the world by determination, vision, innovation, courage and the force of Victor Hugo's undeniable words:
"Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come"
The violence meted out to us on Wednesday is in direct proportion to how scared the state are by us. And I have never seen such violence in over twenty years of being an activist but then I have never seen such undeniable truth firing all our souls as one before.
Mister Mcgloin, you echo many I have heard on this site, asking when will America be filling the streets. It's up to you to make that as soon as possible. Study the Climate Camp movement and copy immediately. They are Reclaim the Streets times ten. Look at the site, watch the films, they are unstopable.
Love and fire to you who listen.
In dedication to Ian Tomlinson, the 37 year old who died during the protests on Wednesday in extremely suspicious circumstances.
For those of you from the UK. We are meeting back outside the Bank of England on Saturday 4th at Mid Day in order to pay respects to the dead young man, call for an independent public enquiry in to his death and draw attention to the brutal political policing we all witnessed on Wednesday. As hundreds of thousands more will be joining us over the next six months with employment plumetting, the recession deepening and the lies becoming paper thin, we need to ensure that the police are not used as a brutal tool. We have no hate for the police, it is their handlers that must be stopped.
I just checked the website. YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME! One question I have though. Where are all the high-profile people? Are they not out there or is the media not showing the footage? I have understood the idea of waiting until the time was ripe so as to not end your career but if I was famous I would be out front saying before you beat up these kids you have to beat me up first. I don't know. I do know that if Oprah got a bloody nose millions of middle age women would fashionably take to the streets and using their pumps as a weapon.
In the states they glossed over the death saying it was someone who was diabetic, and said he should not have been there in the first place.
The next time you guys try this they will probably bust everyone with a napsack. Unbelievable. We are in a police state with cops beating up unarmed protesters while the public laughs about it. I am in Austin, Texas now and there is no civil disobedience whatsoever. Everyone is too busy partying.
I am moving back east and getting involved in political theater. GA, I think the cops here might be worse, I am not sure but most of them are bullies who would love to kick some ass even if the orders don't come down.
You guys are heros!
Hey high karate
Thank you deeply for the positive response and for going so far as to check the site. Incidentally, I am just one person who participates in the Climate Camp movement as I do in many other movements but I am not a spokesperson, just someone disseminating ideas and practises that I see working.
Yes, you have police who have been trained to act exactly as ours have been. If you see above, in a reply to Herbalist, I have quoted Schopenhauer's three steps to truth. I know them to be true. We are in the stage of violent oppression. The more people that join together in this stage, the more quickly we get to the last and final stage.
We know the handlers of the police are terrified of this movement and will continue to try and scare us and beat us away. But that now only strengthens our resolve.
In ten minutes I am going to get on my bike and return for another rally at the flash point where the protests were violently crushed on Wednesday April 1st and where a man died. I guarantee that there will be hundreds joining me. We all can expect more brutal treatment by the police. We will not fight back. We will stand up and be counted. We know that our actions today, our sense of solidarity which I am extending to you and all the readers of Common Dreams, are part of the beginnings of a movement that will change the world and in fact is changing the world. London is way behind much of Europe, who are already flooding the streets. Right now, Strasbourg has 50,000 protesters facing military style security around the NATO proceedings.
And by the way, you mention that so many party in the great Austin Texas. Well, you ain't ever been to a party like the ones we hold when we have finished and survived a successful action. They make the raves at the height of the ecstasy explosion look like tea parties for grannies mate! And I am not talking about drugs, I am talking about the massive rush of joy to know the two key things that keep us going:
We will win
We are everywhere
Love to you and thanks, once again. tell your friends brother and never stop, always keep it lit!
You are an inspiration. Let me know if you or others ever make it to the states and need a place to stay. I will be checking out your site regularly. Thank god for people like you who combine action and integrity.
Love to you and many thanks for your generosity of spirit!
Namaste
It looks like the English government authorized extreme brutality at G20 protests to send a message to other potential protestors: "Protest = Personal Injury." After all the English elites are truly afraid of the current potential for massive unrest.
This type of government response to protest has been going on in the US since 9/11. Many potential protestors stay home because they don't want to be beaten by police thugs, or tear gassed, or tasered.
As the econonmy collapses and the wealth gap widens, the government has to either respond to people's needs or become increasingly repressive. In the US this dynamic of government repression has been going on since the late seventies when the powers that be initiated a prison building boom and passed harsh drug legislation that led to the jailing of ever greater number of poor people.
I also believe that the increased use of jail time for "domestic violence" is part of that pattern. While these strict laws are applauded by many liberals and feminists, the definition of "criminal domestic violence" has expaneded dramatically, to the point criminalizing of a man who shouts at his spouse or destroys property at home. Yes, jail true batterers, but the past two decades domestic violence laws have led to incarceration of people who have not really physically hurt anyone. A poor man is much more likely to go to jail over domestic violence than a rich man who can afford expensive lawyers.
In general the US has chosen to use jailtime as method of treating a variety of social problems caused by our rapidly deteriorating society. That deterioration is caused by the rich and paid for by the poor.
This comment is as good as the article. Thank you.
Hoa binh
Thank you Hoa
Spread the word!
I hope people are listening: capitalism has been an eco-disaster since it's origins, using up the world's resources and exploiting its labor for profits. We have enslaved human beings and the earth in exchange for paper money. When will the streets in the US be filled with protestors linking these two catastrophic issues?
I'm sorry but I rather like living in a country that allows me to have a dream and to reap the benefits from the work I put into it, whatever that may be. You want to live somewhere that the government can come in at anytime and decide that you have too much and you have to share. I decide to share and to give, I don't want you or anyone else force me to. Free interprise is what pushes any real change. You make it, and make it affordable, the people will buy. I do what ever I can to be eco-conscious and I believe in it but Global Warming is fake!!! It is just propaganda to slowly take away your rights and control the masses. The Oceans have stopped warming over the last few years but you don't hear that splashed all over the new do'ya.
And I don't like living in a country that expects taxpayers to subsidize dream stealers like these thuggish banks that gang raped the economy. I also don't like living in a country that rewards bonuses for people bent on destroying the economy, rather than building something that's useful. I agree hard work should be rewarded, but I'm not seeing that. I see economic psychopaths getting rewarded by the taxpayer. If that's your idea of a dream, I want no part of it.
"You want to live somewhere that the government can come in at anytime and decide that you have too much and you have to share..."
You all ready do live there. This government (USA) has decided that the poor and the middle class have too much and the LION'S share needs to be given to those who all ready have the most. They call it "trickle down economics".
I'm glad to learn that INTERPRISE is all that it takes to make any real change, and that it's free. I am also greatly relieved to read that oceans have stopped warming and therefore, "global warming" is not occurring; foolish me, I must have been wrongly thinking that greenhouse gasses from pollution was a culprit, among other man-made/unnatural alterations to the world's eco-systems.
At least, you did acknowledge that you are sorry...
Wow, how is second grade? A little pompous are we? I'm sure you voted for Obama. Please explaim how the stimulus is helping anyone but the super rich? The Federal Reserve is the main cause of this financial problem. Thank you Democrats! As for the Government taking from the poor and middle-class to give to the rich I say thank you again to the Democrats, if it weren't for them we wouldn't even have income tax. I'm sure you think you know just what kind of person I am don't you. Let me give you some idea. I only buy organic, I always use my green bags, I buy local (I even buy raw organic milk from a local farmer), I recycle everything I possilby can, and I compost. So don't try to peg me as some kind of ignorant who knows nothing and guess what I still don't believe in Global Warming. I used to and then it occured to me that I was just going off the media and all the crap that gets shoved down your throat. I then jumped off the band wagon and started to think for myself and do some research and I changed my mind. I'm sure that will be illegal soon too if people like you have their way. If you believe in it then fine and I respect your opinion but this is exactly the problem I have with Global Warming believers. There is no open debate, no respectable conversation; there is just name calling when anyone dares to disagree. Well excuse me I do dare so deal with it.
Actually the income tax was started under a Republican Administration (Taft).
Um, no. Woodrow Wilson, Democrat. Look it up.
It was ratified in 1913 and yes, Woodrow Wilson just became President (my bad), but since it takes time to ratify a Constitutional amendment, it was still proposed during a Republican administration!
It’s not a question of belief, bjaekel; it’s a question of paying attention to hundreds of scientific studies in dozens of completely independent fields. In each of those fields there HAS been decades of debate; data set after study after metastudy now clearly indicates we are causing climate change that will be disastrous to world civilization. If you pay attention to the facts and the science you will understand this. If on the other hand you pay attention to right wing ideologues, or to the media, whose corporate owners have their own profit-motivated bias, and whose profit-obsessed cost-cutting has laid off so many reporters that there are hardly any left who understand science or have the time to research their stories, you will get the he-said, he said method of reporting any question, creating “interesting” controversy even over questions settled in 200 BC. The time for debate about the existence of both a spherical Earth and global climate change is over. It’s time to ramp up your green bag using and organic buying, because as good as those are they are not enough.
And if the proponents of saving civilization are not as polite as you would like, to people who refuse to admit settled fact or who want to gamble with the lives of 6 or 8 billion people based on the lies of those who are clearly in it for the money, please excuse them. Perhaps their patience has worn thin debunking the same transparent lies and uninformed assertions over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. And over.
The debate's over. Get over it.
The debate is not over. Have you read thousands of scientific papers on this, I doubt it. Stopping "Climate Change" is like stopping Continental Drift. Humans who believe we can control the climate are flattering themselves and our species. If you can control the climate please start by making all the weekends sunny.
Climate Change is perfectly natural and normal. We are spending billions and billions chasing a ghost.
FACT: We are currently enjoying the end of a warm interval (interglaciation) between ice ages. Our interglaciation is called the Holocene. The last interglacial (before the last ice age) was called the Eemian. The Eemian Interglacial was WAAY HOTTER THAN TODAY AND CO2 WAS SKYROCKETING AS WELL!!! Modern Man was not here yet during the Eemian but if we were some Al Gore type would have been blowing hot air and blaming "human activity."
Thank God the Earth naturally warmed up from the last ice age, because my country - Canada - was covered by ice several kilometers thick about 12,000 years ago. These warm interglacials typically end after about 12,000 years so statistically the next ice age is getting close. Ice ages (glaciations) last about 10 times longer than these warm interglacials. ALL Interglacials come to an end.
We should all be concerned about air pollution and toxic waste, but CO2 is not pollution.
CO2 is only 0.038 % of the atmosphere, and only about 5 % of that is man made. There really is not much CO2 in the air.
CO2 IS NATURAL AND GOOD: We all produce CO2 every time we exhale. Trees take in CO2 and produce oxygen from it. If we somehow removed all the CO2 from the atmosphere("carbon sequestration") all plants would die the same day, and human extinction would follow.
The simplistic notion that “CO2 causes global warming and controls climate” is equivalent to saying “hot dog sales cause recessions and control the economy “. It’s a childish oversimplification of an extremely complex topic.
Lets keep it real, and please be tolerent of disenting opinions based on scientific facts
It's a good thing your not in government you would be a fascist!!!
repeat submission deleted
I have read dozens of papers and several meta-study summaries on it, the best collections and interpretations available (IPCC, etc) so although I’m by no means an expert I have some understanding of it. Enough to know the difference between climate (more than a century of a trend) vs. weather (sunny vs. rainy for the weekend) for example.
Having just begun to emerge from a time when our (US) Constitution and basic bodily and other rights were denied, attacked and essentially voided, I’m acutely sensitive to attempts to do that. For conservatives to start calling people fascist and talking about plots to take over the world (which I perhaps wrongly theorize is also your position)seems not only ludicrous but an excellent example of psychological projection.
And the points you bring in to support this bizarre assertion are simplistic distortions of actual facts—straw dogs and straight lies--er--errors so anti-logical and non-sequitor I can’t help but ask the usual question I come to when dealing with the extreme right—lying, stupid (or maybe just woefully uneducated, a byproduct of the long conservative assault on science and education) or crazy? Or all of the above?
Some examples: NO ONE—obviously! is talking about removing all the CO2 from natural cycles and to say we are is so absurd a misrepresentation of any position ever taken by a by a pro-civilization person that, well, we’re back to the question: L, S, C, A?
The amount of something is not the relevant number; the amount relative to its biological or ecological effects is. Some substances have effects at the level of only a few parts per billion. CO2 has been shown in many studies, confirmed and reconfirmed models and experiments to have warming effects at the levels we have now; to say otherwise is an anti-scientific statement so profound as to bring me back yet again to the question.
I’m not sure what to say to someone who so clearly either doesn’t understand ecology or is deliberately distorting it; it’s obvious to me (BS in environmental education—to start with) that even in the most complex system imaginable, one input can have dramatic and even somewhat predictable results when one knows enough, pays attention, and bases conclusions on facts and not the reverse. And when the predictions are borne out by measurements and confirmed by observations, well, that’s called science—explanatory, predictive, measurable, and above all, democratic, in that anyone can say anything, and the most explanatory, predictive, and confirmable measurements are what convince reasonable, reality-based people. I guess this is the latest attack on science by the right—to call it into question because reality is complex. Of course reality is complex; if it weren’t we wouldn’t need science to figure it out.
To me, the complexity-caused uncertainty inherent in everything (except emotional illness of varying degrees) is all the more reason to make the changes that I advocate—conservation, renewables, a more ecological society. Pascal’s wager is a bad way to decide what to believe about God, but it’s a pretty good way to decide what to do in some situations. There are 4 possibilities:
1) anthropocentric global climate catastrophe (AGCC) is false and we do nothing (so our world continues to decline as it is—declining resources, declining nature and ecosystems we depend on, more war, more desperation, crime, starvation, tyranny, etc.)
2) AGCC is false and we get ecological (so our world improves in terms of all the above even though we were wrong about the one thing)
3) AGCC is real and we get ecological (so we save civilization and millions of species and the beautiful rich complexity of Earth’s diverse ecosystems)
4) AGCC is real and we do nothing (so civilization ends soon in horror and chaos. The Earth survives with a vastly simplified biosphere, maybe some humans do, probably in some poverty-stricken and primitive state)
In none of the possibilities do we come out better by doing business as usual; in all of them—all eventualities possible as far as I can tell—we come out better going all ecological. The cost is minimal—an estimated .1-3% of GDP and a bargain at 10 times the price; the effect on the economy will be better than any other course conceivable (solving our twin eco-crises, economy and ecology, with a green jobs program) and so the debate IS over. Except the 21st century equivalent of paper or plastic/you want fries with that?:
You want solar or wind with that conservation? (The correct answer is C. Both. )
oops--typo i missed. of course i meant anthropogenic climate change, not a-centric.
I could have come back with much more to say but I will leave this for now. Thank you for the conversation. I guess only will time will tell in the end.
"It's a good thing your not in government you would be a fascist!!!"
You should look up the word fascism instead of throwing it around, because you are way off the mark. You have the nerve to expect tolerance and then you call people names like fascist. Tolerance is a two way street.
That remark was only in response to "debate over. Get over it."
I'm not off the mark:
Fascism a political philosophy, movement, or regime, that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of the opposition( if the poster had their way there would be no opposition) I'm very tolerant of other peoples opinion but I'm not so tolerant of one person trying to shut another up or put them down for their beliefs and my dear the only thing that seperates them from a true fascist is that they have no real power.
Part 2
Ecological destruction is self-destruction.
I believe that, although liberals have their own pathologies it is the particular pathology of conservatives to not have enough experience of, or faith in, interpersonal, intrapersonal and extraspecies connection to know that punishment is not the answer to every problem, that placing faith in the authority of fathers at every level from psychological, familial, institutional and governmental to religious is a misguided answer, a childhood-generated somato-emotional lacking as well as what Gregory Bateson called it, an epistemological mistake. Far from exalting nation or race my loyalties lie first with the totality of the Earth’s ecosystem.
When I said “more than connected” I meant we are not part of the ecosystem we ARE the ecosystem; we are not connected, we are inseparable—physically, psychologically, and in every other way imaginable. So while I believe that individual expression is essential and must not be limited more than absolutely necessary, I believe it is also a means to an end. Science is mostly a social convention, a way of coming to agreement about what the senses reveal; it is democratic and therefore anti-authoritarian, it reveals meanings and other connections and thus offends conservatism on several levels. In all things I oppose fascism, including our recent anti-scientific, anti-human rights, pro-war, pro-torture, punishment-is-the-answer-to-everything right wing administration and congress.
So I welcome opposition. I just wish the opposition would either learn enough science to tell the difference between science, ideology and nonsense, (at the same time healing themselves enough to not react out of unconscious desires) OR through feelings of humility, trust and connection (that I know are very hard for conservatives) allow others who do know science to convince them of what is real. The first is infinitely preferable; the second is only a last resort so that some remnant of civilization can survive the next 2 centuries.
Thus the statement ‘time will tell’ is unacceptable, for in this situation as in many, not to decide is to decide. The goals of oil, coal, and nuclear executives as well as those who deny the existence of anthropogenic climate disruption for psychological reasons (which includes those execs) are met by putting off action until there is absolute proof. And all of us, including they, lose.
And in science, outside of pure mathematics there is never absolute proof. For thousands of years people have been drawing and measuring and working with right triangles. The relationship is known; it is represented by the equation a2 +b2 =c2. (I suspect that’s not going to look right in this comment. The 2s are superscripts). Every right triangle ever measured has fit this equation exactly; in the 2500 to 3000 years since the equation was discovered by or before its namesake, Pythagoras, not one, as far as we know, has ever been discovered that doesn’t fit it. That, I guess wildly, is billions of measurements, if not trillions, but because the number of potential triangles is infinite and can’t all be measured (I don’t think the one with a and b sides equal to 6 parsecs each has actually been measured with a ruler and protractor yet) science says there is no proof. So poor Pythagoras only has a THEOREM named after him. That is the nature and exactness and insistence, in science, on preciseness of language and degree of proof.
Anthropogenic climate change therefore is not a fact; it is a theory with more factual, methodical, democratically interdisciplinary weight behind it than most of what science says. Certainly there is nothing about diet, which millions of people jump on as fact, and nothing about astronomy and almost none of physics that is any more certain than AGCC. But all our lives depend on assuming those are facts—eating, computers, cars, planes, bridges, sci-fi movies… The degree of certainty in AGCC as opposed to spurious, faith-based arguments with bad data sets cherry-picked from minority views should be enough to tell you you’re out on a limb with your denials, and your Gish gallop of thrown up defenses designed only to delay action and prop up rigid, weak egos.
The right uses this gallop, a multi-layer defense against climate change arguments, because each and every argument against AGCC is untenable. When one is debunked the next is put up, and another one after that, each one contrary to established, peer-reviewed, overwhelmingly accepted scientific knowledge. When all are, the debate is given up or some quasi-religious assertion is made, or there’s some excuse to leave. Then it begins all over in some other forum. The liars are convincing the ignorant, that is clear. Unconsciousness is spreading like a stain across the country; as educated people are slowly being convinced by good science in the rare fora where it appears, that global heating is real and dangerous and caused by carbon emissions, the uneducated and the blindly ideological are being herded by droves into the opposite camp by viral lies and arguments they can’t recognize as nonsense, to the shame of our education system and our emotional immaturity. As can be seen by the modified Pascal’s wager, it is driving us to destruction. What part do you want to play in that?
"The dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid. Suddenly, we are realising that we are our own asteroid." She shook her head. "How can so many people just sit at home and watch it happen?"
bjaekel,
You are assuming piles of statements I didn't make and don't believe. You seem to be doing the same thing with my beliefs that you’re doing with climate change: making assertions about things not in evidence. You could have asked me about my beliefs before making such broad assumptions and accusations; you chose instead to write based on...what, exactly? I think, since there’s absolutely no evidence supporting your assertion, that it’s far more likely a result of your own projections and your need for me to be something in relation to you, and in relation to political solutions.
Politics is based on unconscious personal psychological needs and desires that keep us from seeing the reality of the situation. No doubt there are worlds left for me to uncover, about myself and politics, but I have done considerable work on both in a lifelong attempt to make my beliefs and actions more conscious, and less dictated by ignorance of myself and the systems I'm part of. Most people haven’t, and I’d guess (with no evidence beyond half a century of observing life) that the vast majority of conservatives and climate-deniers haven’t.
This is what I would have told you if you’d asked:
I believe that people, as social animals, have an innate tropism toward connection, that in infancy and beyond (and before) this is met and molded by physio-emotional responses (looks, talk, touch, feeding and other care) from our caregivers; when it is (never perfectly, but as psychologist D.W. Winnicott said, “good enough…”) we are healthy, feel connected, and act “morally” even without fear of punishment. I believe we (including other non-human beings) are more than connected—physio-emotionally, physically (ecologically), psychologically. I believe free expression is absolutely essential to our continued existence on the planet, not just politically but personally, requiring immense patience and refraining from judgment-driven repression from all levels of caregivers. It is through that expression, nurtured and accepted by those around us at best, that we create ourselves, either as whole (integrated), conscious beings or if we don’t get it, as repressed and therefore unconscious and split beings who can then, for an extreme example, be perfectly OK-seeming successful family, economic and social creatures while committing, condoning or denying essentially psychopathic acts. It is the existence of these splits, (unconsciously knowing while consciously repressing) that created the Nazis, who could either participate, know about and condone, or knowingly remain unknowing of the Holocaust—and societies like ours, who can maintain pseudo-happiness while political repression, mass imprisonment, mass impoverishment, invasion, torture and mass murder go on in our name. Global climate change falls into all those categories, as it will lead to them as inevitably as war leads to death, rape, and destruction.
continued in part 2
Actually, these statements are right on target; stimulus for the rich, the Fed, and concerning the bullshitty Income Tax, after the opening lines anyway ;)! I would only substitute "Repubocrats" for "Democrats". I look at "Global Warming" kind of like I look at 9/11 - I don't know precisely what is going down, I just know something is very wrong, and we are not being pointed in the right direction by the PTBs. Those that might really know aren't going to share the information.
So, roll on bjaekel. You did a good job of clarifying yourself. If people like me had our way, there would ONLY be open debate and no dictates from Big Brother and/or his agents (MSM for instance).
Thank you and I totally agree with the Republicrats part. The real reason I started to look into it more was because I was really looking into the food industry of the early twentieth century. They scared the bejesus out of people to get certain things through in government that has greatly effected our food supply. If Monsanto has their way they will completly control the entire worlds food supply. In my opinion this is a much greater threat to the survival of our way of life that Global Warming. It started to dawn on me the Global Warming had kind of the same feel to me. This just stinks of yet another ploy to control the masses in some way. Global Warming is just flat out a theory that is being treated as fact. Just look at all the things the Gov. is trying to do under the guise of protecting us from Global Warming, it is some really scary stuff.
China is communist and they pollute, *just a little bit*
China isn't communist.
double post deleted
And at who's behest are they making this small contribution to the pollution peoblem?
AMEN