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Paul William Roberts

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Tag Archives: climate change

You Say You Want a Revolution…

05 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by paulwilliamroberts in politics

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a newer world, abolish advertising, Alfred Lord Tennyson, American greed, army loyal to who?, Baby it’s cold inside too, ban everything someone hates, banning pop songs, Canadian government, censorship for feminists, climate change, cost of living, cut out middle-man, end bureaucracy, end inherited wealth, end red tape, epater les bourgeoisie, extermination of homo sapiens, feminist nonsense, flat tax at ten percent, food riots, global warming, how to overthrow a state, Indigenous land rights, inflation is a tax, Karl Marx, late-phase capitalism, money v morality, Paris riots, police as paramilitary, police will not kill fellow citizens, revolution, Saudi Arabia, system is broken, the French Revolution II, those who produce only money, time to act, tipping point, Ulysses, useless jobs, vanishing liberty, Wahhabist heresy

Old patient communists in Paris are wondering if their time has finally come, Not since 1968 has there been so much fierce resistance to a system known as status quo. And this is not a trivial issue of girls being allowed to sleeo with boys – the spark igniting ’68. This is fundamental, a 21st century bread riot about the unaffordable cost of living. Perhaps the dismay over what little has been done about climate change is in there too? But this wave will spread, is already spreading, breaking on other shores with similar concerns as well as ones of their own. It will soon be here, if Carnarcosis wakes up to smell the price of coffee. Cheerfully, so it seemed, we heard today that food prices will rise dramatically next year. Perhaps to head off vegans who imagine it won’t affect them, an emphasis was placed on steep rises in the cost of fruits and vegetables. On a news broadcast that included the blunt message from environment ministers meeting in Poland that we are headed for extinction if we don’t act now. Not assemble committees and commission reports, but ACT, something politicians are usually unable to do because most are lawyers and the law moves so slowly it’s still in the 18th century. We are the first generation to know in detail the science behind climate change, and we’re also the last generation who may – may – be able to act before the planet becomes too inhospitable for any effective actions to be plausible. In fact it is probably already too late, so is this all just gallows humour?

Unable to broadcast a constant battle-cry for environmental action, so we don’t rubbish the planet and ourselves with it, the CBC, and other court jesters, did manage to ban from the airwaves a perennially popular song from 1944, “Baby, it’s cold outside”. Kudos, bold move! But really? I must have heard that song a few hundred times, and not once did it ever occur to me the lyrics were offensive, a brazen attempt at seduction precluding the female’s rights in such a situation. It didn’t occur to me probably because the lyrics are not in the least offensive. It’s cold outside, baby, stay here where it’s warm. Offensive? Manipulative? Nah, it’s just a lovingly cute conceit in a wintry song that evokes the things that enduringly please us this time of year. “It may have been acceptable back in the forties,’ said some kultural obersturmbanfuhrer, “but it has no place in today’s world.” I think this about a lot of music I hear these days, but I wouldn’t dream of telling everyone their songs are now banned, principally because I don’t like them. Such a problem has a remedy so simple anyone can use it: If you don’t like a song or a book or a film, don’t listen to it, read it or watch it. Who is this solution not good enough for? Ah, you. Well, ma’am, I’m afraid you are a tyrant in cheap clothing, beneath which are a thunderflash and jackboots. We cannot beam you back to the Third Reich, alas – no time machine – but might we suggest an acceptable alternative? It’s Saudi Arabia, where your problems are solved before they arise: all music is banned, along with singing and dancing. A few other things too, but you’ll discover those for yourself, as well as encountering a tremendous need there for more feminist thinking. Perfect? We have a flight this Friday, may I book you on it?

Does whoever in the CBC responsible for this joke think such bans should be extended to all the arts, ancient and modern, if they contain anything someone, or even just you, are offended by? Where to begin? Well, the Bible is a good start, many rapes, sexual chauvinism on a monumental scale, and gender inequality almost worse than Saudi Arabia. I could proceed on through the canon, then the oriental canon (oh, how that Li Po objectifies women!), and African ones, (Wole Soyinka’s male characters drink too much and treat women like chattels) but I think the point is made. We shall be left with nothing if the power to censor is handed to some humourless automaton, in state broadcasting or anywhere else. In fact I am an owner of the CBC, one of 30 million, and I object to censorship in any form being perpetrated by my public broadcaster. Today it’s a harmless pop song, tomorrow it’s Finnegans’ Wake or Lolita. Grow up, ladies, and lighten up too. You don’t want history to remember you as the one who banned “White Christmas” for its overtly racist lyrics – or do you?

A great deal of trivial nonsense flew around just before the French Revolution, possibly to divert attention away from the appalling enormities of a status quo, a 5 percent, who treated the other 95 worse than beasts of the field, squeezing them until many died of want, if despair didn’t get there first. This announced steep rise in prices begs the question: Why? We surely all know by now that Marx was ostensibly right about capitalism’s proclivity to devour itself, or like Saturn its children. Market volatility is a sign, but a volatile bond market is an veritable omen. That market is supposed to be so stable it’s boring, because it was always so safe, the yield-curves pleasingly stable and always heading in the right direction but slowly. Now yield curves are all over the place and prices are up and down like the Assyrian empire. This reflects a general governmental instability, because bonds are mostly government debt. Politicians are obviously on their way out of the rulership game, and no one trusts them because they’re all such untrustworthy liars, lining pockets while doing nothing for the public whose arse they once plated for a vote. In a sunnier age this could be overlooked, but not anymore. When life becomes less affordable we, the people will take a look behind the scenes. What will we find?

 

We will find that between farm or grower and buyer or customer there are layers of middle men and women who produce nothing except money. Every activity creates businesses within it, some of them vital, some not so much. And commerce itself has some gigantic enterprises within it that need to be examined. Take advertising and marketing. These two swallow up a goodly portion of any company’s profits, and they do the rest of us no good at all. One might say they even harm us by interrupting shows or films with moronic exhortations comprised mostly of shameless lies. Who needs this so-called “information of choice” that is the ad man’s clarion call raison d’etre? Not I. On the rare occasions I need anything new, I ask someone to go online and see what the consensus says about this or that product. I can honestly say that no ad has ever influenced me to buy anything at all ever. I don’t have TV in fact because the stultifying ads revolt me. I watch, or really just listen to Netflix because there are no ads. If this changed I would cancel my subscription. Film is or can be a serious art form, in fact it’s the dominant form of our age, and to watch a Bertolucci, an Orson Welles, a Scorsese, or a Bergman and have it interrupted by some inane jingle boosting unneeded rubbish is to me like someone gluing a puerile imogee over Picasso’s Desmoiselles d’Avignon, or spraying commercial graffiti on Michaelangelo’s David. Beside those working in it, is there anyone to defend the continued existence of advertising and marketing? No? Away with them then, which is bound to bring prices down.

 

Next we’ll be looking into other areas that suck up money the way an anteater inhales ants. Bureaucracy and the red tape preventing ordinary men and women from opening snall businesses – that will go. We’ll tolerate the consequences of less health regulations and the number of toilets the way we’ve tolerated mindless regulations for years. As capitalism staggers and heads for a terminal collapse, our elites will panic. I mean the one percent who have more than the rest of us combined. These are the people for who the police act as a private army (have you noticed how paramilitary the cops have become?). We shall see what happens in Paris when the police, who after all suffer too in a bad economy, refuse to fire on their fellow citizens, and even go over to their side, as happened in 1789. For a revolution, this is the axial moment. Once police or army, ort both are with you it’s all over. You seize the media broadcasters, or their towers of insolence, and you sit your new leader in a studio: Newsflash! The government has fallen and the Popular Front for Canadian Liberation is now in charge. There is no reason to panic. The police and army will protect us all. But things will change here. And things will have to change. Real liberty must be returned to us all, and those who impoverish us by their unconscionable profits or obscene severance packages must realise it’s all over now, that scam. Tax at a flat 10 percent for all, no exceptions, only necessities written off, all hidden assets confiscated. No more inherited wealth, leave them a house, it’s more than enough, and take pride in the amount you left for your nation. Narrow the gap between haves and have-nots, or else the have-nots will do it themselves. Now we turn to the banks, far trickier than anyone else, but essentially working an astounding angle for the last century. They take your money and loan it to someone else at a percentage of interest you cannot get for yourself, and then they actually CHARGE you for whatever you do with your own money. Amazing racket, no? And now they have encouraged everyone to borrow as much as possible, and spend, spend, spend, whether you need what you buy or not. Interest rates have been very low for very long (I don’t mean the credit card shy operators, who sometimes dare say 28 percent is low interest for them, which is true, and which will also shut their racket down). What we want is a currency actually worth its face value, thus backed, as it used to be, by gold or platinum. It’s important to remember that inflation is actually another tax, and in a tax-ridden nation we do not want another tax, do we? Income federal and provincial, GST whenever you buy or sell anything, vehicle taxation, property taxes, school taxes (if you have kids or not), and a thousand other insidious and invidious ways of taxing us that bring the overall tax rate here up to well over 80 percent. Anything over 10 percent I say is extortionate and antisocial. The free health care where I live is lousy, incompetent and sometimes even dodgy. We shall pay for it through a non-profit state insurance plan. We can now afford it and the system will be better or else forced to get better. Rid of all those who sit in between taking their cut like medieval barons, the economy will thrive like never before, no one in the middle to ad costs by producing nothing but their own wealth. This attitude will prevail in every aspect of commercial life. And it will need to.

 

Desperation will drive this or any country to revolt, and the desperation on its way to us now is a planetary catastrophe unequalled in human history. Survival will be everyone’s main concern, and pure survival brings out the ruthlessness in anyone. Those who cling to old ways and continue forms of theft will be dealt with harshly. It’s unfortunate, but then so is greed and starvation. Reps from the 20 most prosperous nations on earth have now told us the tipping point has passed. We and everything that calls this world home face appalling upheavals, cataclysmic weather and seismic events, and very probably an extinction of species not unprecedented but certainly never seen by human eyes, and one of those species will be our own. The long, long struggles of history, the glorious achievements in art and science, all of it for nothing, lost forever in time. It is indeed unthinkable, but just because we cannot think about it does not mean it cannot happen, because, my friends, it is happening already, and the top climate scientists – women and men who have warned us for years this was going on – aren’t exactly saying we told you so now, but they are pointing out that for all the decades they were ignored by governments their predictions gradually all came true, due to the stupendous inaction of those in positions of responsibility. Now they are saying that their new predictions cannot be averted so easily if at all, because, as was said half a century ago, beyond a certain point there is no possibility of reversing the damage done. Greenhouse gases, human activity, corporate farming techniques, a psychopathic need to burn fossil fuels, and most of all the kind of insane greed that denies the evidence of science for profits, these are among the causes for ecological worry cited over my entire lifetime yet not acted upon. Why? Because, yet again, all governments are controlled by big businesses who have no desire to see a bottom line disfigured by expensive changes to processes or machines merely to save the earth. Business thinks only of the next quarter’s report. Shareholders want to see better dividends, not a falling share price due to environmental restrictions. This ballooning disaster cannot continue, and public rage will be at such a pitch by then that those who placed their wealth above the welfare of all life on earth will be viewed as common criminals and sociopaths. True, it is a good way to build a business, but it is not good for an economy in the long term, and, as we can see, it isn’t good for anything else on the planet either.

 

Perhaps we shall go cap in hand to the Indigenous and ask them to show us a better way. After all, they were here for millennia and did no harm at all. Possibly we should return all the land boosted from them out of sheer guilt? Nonetheless, they know how to survive and be self-sufficient. Few of us know such things, and we shall need to learn very quickly.

 

One feels sorrow and shame for Americans, the only one out of 20 prosperous nations to refuse any action on global warming, with a president who might not understand a scientific paper but knows someone who could explain it to him, still announcing that he doesn’t believe in climate change. Science requires no belief. It is not like politics or politicians. Empirical fact is the essence of science, meaning facts that cannot be fake news because they’re verifiable by anyone. Trump’s followers may get no news except his news and whatever they call the stuff broadcast by Fox, but Trump himself has all news sources available to him. This makes his denial of the inconvenient truth an act of conscious evil – evil being defined as doing harm you are conscious of being harmful as you do it – and such acts are capital crimes when they involve, as this will and already has done, the lives of millions. Motive for evil deed? Profits for friends, family and self. No judge will be remotely lenient, especially if the country is bankrupted by the cost of global warming’s destructive effects, as will be the case. The US dollar will cease being a global currency, its value possibly wiped out overnight, as a debt so vast no one can even tell you exactly how much it is becomes due and there’s nothing to pay with. Creditors will seize assets, at cents on a dollar, so much of the country will be owned by the Chinese or the Russians and others. Not that America was ever great, but the risible slogan will come to seem cruelly ironic when China looks for cheap labour in Wisconsin or Ohio. Trump will forever remain as a cautionary tale, a symbol of what happens when morality caves in to money, and the public is deliberately deceived into electing someone who no one wants to do business with after doing business with him. He is a man too who represents all those whose wealth was obtained crookedly, by not paying contractors, lying to partners, as well as to everyone else including himself, and thinking of a deal only interms of how much he can squeeze out of it. That is a protection racket not a deal. For such a baggy ego this will be a dingy end indeed, yet I doubt if a single soul will feel pity for the Man Who Tried To Sell The World As It’s Warranty Expired. It is the grimmest time I can ever recall, and my heart goes out to those decent simple islanders in the South Pacific whose culture of millennia is inextricable from their island home, a paradise that will have vanished entirely under the sea within five years. Where will 300,000 people go to continue with their lives? What happens to their culture when their world has vanished? Perhaps our Indigenous brothers and sisters can answer this, along with all the other questions we shall have for them. Maybe the National Chief – is it Perry Belgard? – should be asked to head up a provisional government, at least while we all work out the essentials for a better world.

 

Your food prices rise next year, withhold taxes and demand to see the books explaining why the prices rose. Demand an accounting for every penny a politician spends. Every project suddenly costs $500 million – bridge repairs, scheme to help someone, aid to African country, whatever it is –  but when I want to build something and the estimate is $500 I question it, ask for a breakdown, check it all thoroughly. But the government just writes another check. Five years later we hear of massive corruption, bid fixing, kickbacks. Does our money ever come back to us? No, the system is broken, broken deliberately to allow what you have to leak out through the cracks into someone else’s pockets. It is time to make it new again. On that note I shall leave you with the end of Tennyson’s “Ulysses”.

 

Come, my friends,

‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

 

robertspaulwilliam@gmail.com

Remembrance Week

13 Sunday Nov 2016

Posted by paulwilliamroberts in art, Canada, politics, United States of America

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carl marx, climate change, Donald Trump, election law, electoral college, federal reserve, leonard cohen, the future of america

 

 

If you are the Dealer

          I’m out of the game

  • Leonard Cohen

 

‘Dealer’ is a common Cohen euphemism for ‘president’ or any kind of boss-man. Indeed, as far back as his poetry of the late-fifties, gambling appears as a metaphor for life itself, in which you are playing with the greatest dealer of all. The words and music of Leonard Cohen have been a staple of my life for fifty years, and his death was a harder blow than I’d ever anticipated it would be. My personal issues aside, what a diabolical week! Through the agency of my wife, I placed upon his Montreal doorstep this morning a box of chocolates and a long-stemmed rose. In his characteristically self-effacing way, Leonard would be amazed by the worldwide outpouring of love and grief. I can hear him saying, ‘It’s just the Lightforce of the Lord shining through me that they feel…’ Yes, indeed.

 

In retrospect, I was appalled by my attempt to put an optimistic spin on the election of Donald Trump. There is clearly little or nothing optimistic about a Trump presidency. I do not know enough about Constitutional Law to say whether or not a legal challenge to the election-result is viable. However, I do know that hardly any Americans can explain the phenomenon of Electoral College votes – which mean that the election goes to whoever wins over 270 such statewide votes, and not to whoever gains the most votes, as Hilary Clinton seems to have done last week. You elect electors and not candidates? It makes no sense. Like the private ownership of the Federal Reserve, it is one of those fundamentally inexplicable anomalies that breed theories of conspiracy, or at least of occluded double-dealing. It is a curious turn of events that has the Democrats questioning this election and not, as he’d suggested, Trump’s Republicans. The whole US system, with its usually ignored or down-played mid-terms, its Electoral College, and its general federal-state confusion has long been called into question. But I think it is democracy itself that needs to be questioned. One of its more modern pioneers, Rousseau, says, in his Social Contract, that it is a perfect system, yet one only suited to a perfect society of gods. He maintains that some peoples will never be able to handle democracy. The US seems to be one of these. The Socratic ideal, espoused in Plato’s Republic, theorizes a perfect rule by philosopher-kings, of which Piere Elliot Trudeau was once acclaimed by some as an example. But ancient Greece was hardly democratic – like the US, it was an oligarchy – and the Platonic republic suggests outlawing poets, writers, and perhaps artists of any kind. They’re a menace to societal tranquility.

I once wrote a piece – for Harper’s, I think – suggesting that a vote needed to be earned, and was not a right. There ought to be some kind of basic test before you could vote — state what the candidates’ platforms are about, for example. Nothing severe, but not multiple-choice either. Why would you vote, went the argument, if you do not know why you’re voting? The piece garnered great hostility – I was a fascist, mainly – yet I now wonder whence the hostility came. I’d assumed it was from the Left, but this recent election makes me think it may have been the Right. They do have more to gain from an ignorant electorate — those whose political views exist only as moronic slogans. There is of course also the great mystery of a proletariat consistently voting against its own best interests. Who has ever explained this, except by family tradition or amped-up media rhetoric? An earned vote would at least prevent millions from casting a self-destructive ballot. But those millions also comprise the most easily-swayed segments of society. Right-wing barkers and howlers have long accused universities in particular of being bastions of the Left. This has always struck me as a self-refuting allegation, inasmuch as it points to the most intelligent being drawn to liberal politics. It is natural that right-wing elites have always opposed state-subsidized further-ed for the needy. It is education alone that will change society for the better by ensuring a fully-informed vote. To this extent, America is still back where Europe was during the Industrial Revolution. And, in truth, no western nation will achieve democratic ideals until the system of private schools is abolished. I have lectured in such schools and can assure readers that their small classes and numerous other perquisites – not least of which are opportunities to socialize with others in elite strata of society – guarantee advantages way, way beyond the grasp of ordinary mortals. The very few exceptions – mainly, it seems, in venture capital or Silicon Valley – simply prove the rule. I have friends willing to pay for such offspring-benefits – and, no doubt, I would have too if the money had been there. But the playing-field must be levelled if we are to call ourselves a democracy. It is a simple fact that wealth ought not be hereditary – that merit alone must determine social status and its rewards.

As we have seen most clearly with Trump – yet it preceded him – further education, with its fancy big words, and its theorized scorn for the working man, is in fact undesirable, and even a social ill. It is what those of us who questioned Marx and Trotsky referred to fearfully as ‘a dictatorship of the proletariat’ – the idea of government by the under-educated for the uneducated. Of course, it would in fact be manipulation of the uneducated by the well-educated posing as blue-collar oafs. Marx saw the workers rising like Lazarus, yet he did not envisage this happening without universal education. He also saw the fiest revolution happening in relatively well-educated England, not serf-owning Russia. The Russian proletariat were only roused by leaders posing as fellow-workers. One thinks of that malevolent goblin Lenin in his worker’s cap, and of Mao in his custom-tailored Mao-jacket, which from a great distance resembled attire of the dispossessed hundreds of millions.

Trump doesn’t wear tacky Mafia-suits from his own line, nor one of his own frightening collection of cheap, sweatshop-made silk Trump Neckties. It is admittedly true that he has managed to find an expensive tailor to dress him with equal vulgarity. Yet one must assume that, with his pricey hair-weave or toupee, he closely resembles the self-image many a laid-off coal worker or dirt-poor farm labourer has of their lottery-winning selves. Trump has always been a vulgarian – whose excesses were only matched by his first wife – so I am not suggesting demonic cunning going back decades. His awful TV show probably showed us the real public man. His problem now is different, though. As my friend, Richard Sparks observed, he’s narcissistic, self-promotional, venal, greedy, power-hungry, and he needs to be loved – all of these being excellent qualities for a politician. The need to be loved by all, however, may be what saves us. We are now hearing a more reticent Trump – liked Obama, loved the concern and patriotism of anti-Trump demonstrators – so we can imagine a Trump already looking towards his historical record as another Lincoln, a healer of divisions, a political Titan. He will not enjoy being president – no one ever has – so all the job will hold for him is the explosive bloating of his baggy brand to interstellar dimensions. Resigned to being a minor footnote in financial history, he now faces the possibility of bestriding the known world like a Colossus, an American Caesar, a Yankee Frederick the Great,  or a Brooklyn Napoleon (minus Waterloo). We can only hope that the compromising minutiae of the job turn him to these greener pastures: Uncle Trump’s fireside chats-of-the-Union.

Trump’s victory aside, has there been anything more despicable than the Republicans who scorned him when the chips looked to be down now trying to crawl up his arse for positions and preferment? That shameless pawn of vested interests and extravagantly unprincipled Beltway whore, House Speaker Paul Ryan, taking Trump up to the Capitol’s mount to show him all the kingdoms of the world – truly sickening! And he’s just one of a disgusting troupe of hypocritical bum-lickers. One hopes Trump won’t forget so quickly the league of back-stabbers. Yet when you hear of such hoary old Nazi reptiles as Newt Gingrich and Rudolfo Giuliani – surely long since cast into the Lake of Fire? – you cannot help but think of replacing the Statue of Liberty’s slogan thus: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here… No wonder California wants to leave the Union.

 

As I’ve said, all US refugees welcome up here in the Laurentians. It’s inexpensive, and we ought to survive the Global Warming apocalypse longer than most – not hat having the last laugh will be very consoling.

 

Paul William Roberts

 

The Solution to Global Warming

08 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by paulwilliamroberts in Uncategorized

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climate change, global warming

[The Sai Baba narrative will continue in next blog].

Having listened to his masterly  Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, and not having that much choice in the Blind Society’s digital library, I thought I would try Paul Kennedy’s Preparing for the 21st Century, written over 20 years ago. Not only is he uncannily percipient regarding the problems we are now facing, his chapter on climate change is the best and most thorough discussion of the topic I have ever come across. Furthermore, his bibliography reveals serious warnings in scientific journals dating back to the mid-1980s [even National Geographic magazine ran a very comprehensive article in 1993], meaning that governments have ignored for over 30 years the worst problem faced by this planet since the end of the last Ice Age. Kennedy acknowledges the counter-arguments, also noting that they come mainly from scientific sceptics out of their field, or from economists innately opposed to the measures necessary for reducing carbon emissions. He states, unequivocally, that global warming is a transnational issue, affecting us all.

We are now so accustomed to the nation state that we tend to forget it only came into being a millennium ago, with the advent of Spain, France, and England consolidating central rule over a mosaic of minor kingdoms, dukedoms, and duchies. Indeed it was the Hapsburg Empire which first established actual frontiers for the territories it claimed to own.  Like Charlemagne before him, Napoleon dreamed of a united Europe, with vassal kingdoms ruled by an Emperor in Paris. Had anyone studied the problems he faced, the current disaster of a European Union would have been aborted.

One of global warming’s main features is that it will afflict the poorer countries far more than the richer ones. It is also natural for countries like India and China, still in the throes of their industrial revolutions, to object when complained about by nations which did what they are currently doing over a century ago. Each country has its own atmospheric emission problems, and some have to feed a billion people with rice that will not grow if the average temperature exceeds 35 degrees Celsius. If sea levels rise, as they are doing, 8 million people in both Egypt and Bangladesh will become refugees. Others, like inhabitants of the Maldive Islands, will lose their homelands entirely. These are all people who cannot afford the protective measures developed nations can, but their problems will be ours too. With 5% of the world’s population, the US uses 15 times as much energy as, say, Brazil, which objects to being told to cease cutting down rain forest by a country that destroyed two thirds of its forests over the past 300 years. Indeed, while every country has its specific responsibilities, the US is by far the most profligate in having all the problems, from excessive car emissions to heavy industrial pollution. But business always trumps common sense there, so it is little wonder that developing nations resent being told to halt development by the world’s worst polluter and most powerful state.

Developed nations may suffer less, but they will suffer. Venice and other coastal cities will probably vanish; and places like Holland and the lower Rhine lands will experience devastating troubles. Just building a sea wall to protect America’s Barrier Islands would cost over 100 billion dollars; and flooding would remove some 20 thousand square miles of US land. Much of the south would become desert, no crops able to grow in, for instance, Oklahoma. Northern countries, like Canada or Norway, might actually benefit from extra warmth. Where I live, in  the mountains of Quebec, would be able to become an agricultural haven – except the constant fall of pine needles has made the soil too acidic for much to grow. There are many imponderables. For example, no one is sure if additional heat would attract menacing insects up from the tropics, or whether crops grown in dramatically altered soil would kill them. What is known is that trees absorb carbon dioxide, and by clear-cutting them, not to mention burning them, we are increasing the greenhouse effect tremendously. In fact, all of the effects Kennedy predicted over 20 years ago – freak weather, rising sea levels, melting glaciers etc – have already occurred. Indeed, it may well be too late to reverse something that will be as catastrophic as the Deluge. When transnational governments hold a conference you know the issue is serious. But the measures discussed or agreed upon are pathetically insufficient. We need to cease carbon and other gas emissions entirely, no matter how it affects the economy – which won’t be very important if the planet heats up another three degrees. We also need to fund the poorer countries in developing green energy sources, like photovoltaic devices. Instead of buying increasingly expensive weapons – a trillion dollars for the latest fighter jet…each – we ought to spend this preposterous fortune on developing renewable energy sources. To achieve this will require a multi-national body committed to the task and powerful enough to pass binding international laws impervious to national governments and their self-interested objections. It would, I suppose, be a step towards world-government, which, when saving us all from possible extinction is at stake, seems to be a rational move. The pitiful ideas, like cap and trade, might have helped 30 years ago, but they will do nothing now, except keep industries afloat. The boat is sinking, however, and our only hope is to build life-rafts.

This earth was once a closed, self-sustaining system, which our population’s sudden expansion – from around a billion to seven billion in a mere century – along with its needs and demands has damaged, perhaps irreparably. Attempting to repair this damage and save the only home we have ought to be the sole concern of every government, since there may well be nothing to govern within 50 years.

 

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