Corporate media sounds the alarm
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newable sources right now, though doing so would not halt capitalism’s drive for perpetual increases in the extraction and use of finite resources. Climate change is a social problem, and calls for the ap plication of political economy and social struggle.
In confronting climate change, we face a dual challenge. We must educate our selves and patiently explain to oblivious co-workers what’s at stake. Yet we also must build a mass movement with revo lutionary potential, which cannot be done on the basis of pessimism or nihilism. It is critical to emphasize that what we do to day still has the potential to build a better world tomorrow.
Our progeny will face unprecedented challenges from a changing physical en vironment. But a socialist society based on mutualism and democratic planning will meet those challenges with all the beautiful human resilience that can be mustered. No one will be left to drown in a hurricane storm surge or lack access to the best modern medicine. Nor will any one be cursed any longer with overwork, financial insecurity, unemployment, hun ger, or poverty. All will have access to free education, community support for child-rearing, and the time and means to express their creativity through the arts.
Do we need to reduce global energy consumption? Absolutely. Does this en tail reducing the level of production? Yes. But people will be better off.
This perspective is critical to building (continued on page 10, in “Snowden speaks in ‘Citizen Four’”)
When the leading corporate media sound the alarm big time on the im pending climate catastrophe, it’s clear that the scientific facts are no longer refutable by the “deniers.” A Nov. 2 New York Times headline, “U.N. Panel Issues Its Starkest Warning Yet on Global Warming,” quotes extensively from the 175-page excerpted report issued the same day in Copenhagen by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body appointed by the world’s top polluters.
A few of the reports conclusions highlight of depth of the crisis:
• Failure to leave most fossil fuel re sources in the ground “could threaten society with food shortages, refugee crises, the flooding of major cities and entire island nations, mass extinction of plants and animals, and a climate so drastically altered it might become dangerous for people to work or play outside during the hottest times of the year.”
• “Continued emission of green house gases will cause further warm ing and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.”
• “Mass die-offs of forests, such as those killed by heat-loving beetles in the American West; the melting of land ice virtually everywhere in the world; an accelerating rise of the seas that is leading to increased coastal flooding; and heat waves that have devastated crops and killed tens of thousands of people” are today’s cli mate crisis reality.
The report nevertheless demon strates that the world’s leading pol luters and their monopoly energy cor porations, the most profitable in the world, have every intention of ignor ing the most elementary data and are instead currently spending and plan ning to spend additional multi-tril lions of dollars to increase the use and extraction of the very energy sources whose deployment spells doom to hu mankind.
The report comes a month before the Lima, Peru, international climate conference, where little or no action is expected to reverse the climate crisis. The Times quoted one of the report’s authors, Oxford University climate sci entist Myles R. Adams: “If they choose not to talk about the carbon budget … they might as well not bother to turn up for these meetings.” n