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

Monday, December 14, 2015

Paris agreement papers over failure to act on climate change

Click here to access article by Patrick Martin from World Socialist Web Site

In contrast to corporate media which paints the Paris agreement as a "success", Martin reveals the vacuous agreement that world capitalist leaders came up with to solve the growing problem of climate destabilization as a kind of public relations stunt.
The two-week climate summit could perhaps be summed up with a variation on the saying, “The operation was a success but the patient died.” In this case, the political operation in Paris was a great success for those who organized it, principally Hollande, Obama and other leaders of the major world powers who sought to posture as environmentalists concerned about the future of “the only planet we have.” The prognosis for the planet, however, remains terminal, so long as it remains imprisoned by the global capitalist system.