Global climate change

... is going to kill millions of people, force hundreds of millions to migrate, and, in general, massively destabilize the world. Darfur, Nigeria, New Orleans, Iraq: the pockets of instability we now experience will become arcs, nay, swaths of disaster, continental in scope. And some people are going to be very, very angry at the piggies who’ve gobbled up so many resources and expelled all the resulting poisonous waste out into the toilet we’ve made of the atmosphere and oceans.

Against this, what effect will recycling, solar panels, and carbon-trading (what a scam!), or the fantasy of sequestration, have? Little to nothing, methinks. And taxing carbon, which passes for a radical notion in a corporate-controlled polity, is only a start. No, what we need is a revolution in the way we live. We need to stop being consumers. We need to stop buying the shit; we need to reorient our selves. Growth for growth’s sake, which Edward Abbey called the ideology of the cancer cell, is killing the planet and, needless to say, us along with it. Indeed, we have to change what we mean by “progress.” Of course, progress’s hold on us akin to the Church’s before the Enlightenment…

Considering that people still buy SUVs, though, this is a huge order. Not least because this Western disease has infected China and India, where a couple of billion people have been suckered into thinking that plastic and cars are going to make their lives better. Most often I’m pessimistic and think change will only come after disaster, and not necessarily the right kind of change either, for in desperation people usually fall for the charlatans and the thugs. But then I remember that the Church’s power was broken. We enlightened up once…

And of course I don’t mean we need to change as individuals and be done with it. O no; we must act collectively, for the commonwealth of the planet.