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

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Trouble in the Heartland

Click here to access article by Theo Anderson from In These Times. 

"Free Marketeers" are for the One Percent what Mouseketeers were for the Mickey Mouse Club TV show--their anti-global warming chorus and cast. Despite their baloney science and adverse media exposés, they are loved by corporations, especially the fossil fuel industry, which showers them with funding. The success of this effort is evident everywhere in the US: the public remains largely ignorant and/or passive about global warming.
According to Heartland, climate “alarmism” is just the entering wedge for socialism.
... there is Heartland’s promise that future warming will be modest and warmer will be better. ....

The surreal thing about being at Heartland’s Seventh International Conference on Climate Change was knowing that Heartland has been exposed as an extremist organization, and might be doomed—yet it’s winning. In the United States, at least, Heartland’s free-market fetish has trumped the science.

We’ve heard the warnings of impending catastrophe and have decided, basically, to do nothing. We’ve chosen to believe Heartland’s comforting “research and reason” rather than hard truths.