Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Violent Backlash Against Climate Scientists

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Violent Backlash Against Climate Scientists

by Stephen Leahy from IPS news service. I think that the basic conflict behind all the efforts to deny the overwhelming evidence of man-made climate change is that the capitalist system is on a collision course with the limits of our earth's ecological systems. Capitalists will viciously attack any threat to their beloved system even if it means the destruction of their own habitat. They are like addicts who know that their destructive habits will kill them (as well as the rest of us), but they simply can't stop.

U.S. Senator James Inhofe, Republican from Oklahoma and climate change denier, in late February released a list of leading climate scientists he wants prosecuted as criminals for misleading the government. Those scientists are receiving hate mail and death threats.