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

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Big call: Cambridge prof. predicts Arctic summer sea ice “all gone by 2015”

Click here to access article by David Spratt from Climate Code Red. 
This is one of those moments when the pace of climate change and its consequences become simply extraordinary.
In the last two weeks, I’ve spent some time trying to unravel the Arctic’s big melt of 2012 and what is means for future global warming and the world we will live in. 
If one clicks on the article in the Scotsman where the prediction by this Scottish scientist is reported, one discovers once again that the only real solution now being considered are geo-engineering fantasies. It is now clear that past affirmations from our masters in the One Percent about reducing carbon output was all propaganda to calm resistance to their ongoing projects of wealth extraction for their class. Nothing, not even destruction of our planet, will deter our masters from pursuing their addictions to power and profits.

In my darker moments I sometimes think that I should re-name this blog as some sort of chronology of the human race's decent into barbarism as we experience one ecological catastrophe after another.