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

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Paris climate talks accomplish nothing to curb global warming

Click here to access article by Daniel de Vries from World Socialist Web Site.
The industrial capacity exists to transition to entirely renewable sources of energy within a matter of a few decades or less, as a recent study by Stanford researcher Mark Jacobson concluded for the United States. However, the level of planning and coordination on an international basis needed to implement such a transition comes into immediate conflict with the division of the world into rival nation-states and private ownership of the world’s productive resources.

The pledges put forward correspond to the needs of the banks and major transnational corporations.
The 800 pound gorilla in the rooms of the Paris conference is the private ownership and control of the world's economies by tiny classes of capitalists. As long as nations are controlled by these people, so long will we be observing conferences where capitalist leaders pontificate about the threats of climate destabilization and make empty promises of doing better to mitigate its effects. 

At the same time we are seeing nations lining up mostly in two blocs, both armed with nuclear weapons, with one bloc (US Empire) thoroughly dominated by capitalists whereas the other bloc (led by China and Russia) using capitalists to drive production at a frenetic pace in order to protect themselves from the virulent imperialism of the first bloc. Whether the latter bloc can maintain control of their own capitalists is a matter of pure speculation. In any case, humanity is caught between the Charybdis of climate destabilization and the Scylla of nuclear war. Only an informed and aroused people all over the world can prevent the extinction of humans.