Our ecological concerns have been thrown into a single basket labeled “Climate Change”, which has given the oligarchic pillagers and rapists the tactical advantage of having only a single target. All they have to do is keep the climate debate going and there’s no attention left for the other aspects of ecological catastrophe that will kill us just as surely.
We’ll probably starve to death before we drown under rising seas. We’re using up our topsoil, killing pollinators with pesticides, exhausting the earth’s stores of potable water.
We’ll probably poison ourselves to death before ecosystems collapse from changing climate. There will soon be more plastic in the ocean than fish, and the bright side of that is that if we stop eating fish we won’t be eating the plastic they’ve injested. The pesticides we rely on to produce our food are designed to kill biological entities. Guess who else is a biological entity and relies on myriad biological entities for survival? High-fructose corn syrup, industrially raised meats and fish, denatured grains are among the substances we call food so that we can have the illusion of nutrition, when, in fact, they induce a slow, disease-ridden death.
Then, of course, are the abundant armaments and myriad instruments of murder and destruction poised for use by those who wield them to grab their piece of the dwindling toxic pie.
I’m sure there are other threats to survival that just aren’t on the tip of my tongue at the moment.
If we changed our energy source from oil to solar tomorrow, we’d still have these conditions. So let’s go a little deeper. In the words of the charlatan who helped usher in the era of banksters, “it’s the economy, stupid.” Our economic system relies on neverending growth, which, by the way, is a description of cancer. The psychopaths and sociopaths have taken over and, by definition, they don’t care about you, you peon. We’re running out of chances to turn things around. That’s why the Green New Deal.
Too bad about the name. Everybody is harping on the Green part of it, but that word is redundant. Does anyone think we’re going to launch an economic recovery based on fossil fuels and not clean, renewable energy? “New Deal” is the important part of the name. It’s about economic transformation. Sustainability, respect for the earth and for each other, recognition of our membership in the web of life, humility inspired by the awe of creation, are all implicit in that transformation. Those are qualities that are implicit in the word economy, which derives from the Greek words for “home management.”
Of course, Green New Deal is easier to sell than “Transformation of Planetary Relationships”. New Deal has a lot of good selling points. Aside from the Interstate highway system (which seemed like a good idea at the time), it was the last time we did anything serious about our country’s infrastructure. Lots of people have been to a park or building that was built by the WPA or the CCC. There’s lots of good marketing material.
The opposition will be fierce. No doubt it will be revealed that FDR was working for Joe Stalin and Hitler was really fighting to save America from communism.
So I’m all for helping our legislators craft a worthy plan. It may be our last chance to test whether our system of government can actually work.
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