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      Stop Misdiagnosing Climate Change

      Stop Misdiagnosing Climate Change

      So what's the real source of our planetary self-destruction? It's growth-dependent capitalism.

      Diana Stuart
      Ryan Gunderson
      Oct 12, 2018

      The recent IPCC report has received widespread attention. The report states that rapid and bold actions are necessary to avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change and that the goals of the Paris Accord will be insufficient. This has resulted in an outpouring of opinion pieces calling for individuals to take actions in their daily lives to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to pressure elected officials to take significant steps to support renewable energy. This sense of urgency is critically needed, yet most of these calls for action are misguided due to a widespread misdiagnosis of the climate change problem.

      To address a problem, it is most effective to identify the root cause. One might argue that the root cause of climate change is fossil fuel combustion. However, this overlooks how our current economic system not only continues to protect and sustain the fossil fuel industry but also drives the continuous increases in production and consumption causing environmental degradation at large. What is this system? Growth-dependent capitalism. Here we focus on the impacts of that growth. The prioritization of economic growth is what makes highly effective actions, such as buying-out or nationalizing fossil fuels and keeping them in the ground, infeasible. A recently released UN document, related to the 2019 Global Sustainable Development Report, suggests that the root cause of climate change is the economic system, namely one that prioritizes profits at the expense of ecological and social well-being.

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      Opinion
      We Need Cities of Resistance: Climate Adaptation Is No Longer an Option

      We Need Cities of Resistance: Climate Adaptation Is No Longer an Option

      The old adage that a crisis is never a crisis until it is validated by disaster has become a reality for seventy percent of our cities already dealing with flooding, drought, fire and environmental decay

      Jeff Biggers
      Oct 12, 2018
      IOWA CITY--The arrival of Hurricane Michael on the heels of the landmark IPCC climate report is a reminder that climate "adaptation" is no longer a viable option.
      Adapting to a failed system in an age of climate change, as the devastation from Hurricane Michael attests, is failure, not adaptation.
      My own town in Iowa had to cancel celebrations this week for a recently completed $60 million flood mitigation project on our Iowa River, due to even more flooding. With the red lights of the University of Iowa's coal-fired power plant burning in the background, the irony of climate failure was not lost on anyone.

      Our nation spent more than $300 billion on recovery from climate disasters last year. The historic barrage of hurricanes in 2017--wiping out Puerto Rico's and the U.S. Virgin Islands' infrastructure, grinding the city of Houston to a stop, and placing Miami's downtown streets under water--served as a brutal and costly reminder that our major cities along the coasts have reached a reckoning with the rising tide.

      "We can no longer continue with the delusional planning that somehow doing 'less bad or harm' is sustainable; instead, we must actively break from our dependence on fossil fuels and rebuild our local economies in ways that restore our relationships with nature and regenerate the ecosystems we depend on."

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      Opinion
      A Partisanship Of The Heart: Interior Measures Towards A Re-Visioning Of Capitalism's Imperium Of Death

      A Partisanship Of The Heart: Interior Measures Towards A Re-Visioning Of Capitalism's Imperium Of Death

      We human beings, as a species, have arrived at a profound point of demarcation: paradigm shift or perish.

      Phil Rockstroh
      Nov 21, 2017

      According to a nationwide study conducted by the Center For Disease And Prevention (CDC) a greater number of US Americans died (approximately 65,000) from drug overdoses, last year, than were killed during the course of the Vietnam War.

      All part and parcel of capitalism's war against life itself. The emotional and physical pain, anxiety, and depression inflicted by the trauma inherent to a system sustained by perpetual exploitation has proven to be too much for a sizeable number of human beings to endure thus their need to self-medicate.

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      Opinion
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