Opinions of Peter Belmont
Speaking Truth to Power
| Oligarchs On Climate Change: Better Dead Than Green |
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by Peter A. Belmont / 2015-01-10
For a while it has been apparent to many that the USA is run by a cabal which has supplanted democracy with oligarchic control. The oligarchs clearly believe that money and political power—theirs—is and deserves to remain a more powerful sovereign than any other. More powerful even than nature. Historical Religions Anciently, people worshiped and feared nature and natural gods. Animism made every rock, every tree, each river, lake, or sea a god. And these gods were feared and were worshiped. This was the early and unscientific worship and fear of nature, of natural forces. Nature was all-powerful. Animism lasted a very long time. Next, people invented smaller sets of (usually) human-like gods: for example, the Norse gods, the Greek and Roman gods, the Hindu gods. These gods gave or withheld rain for farmers, wind for sailors, success in the hunt and at war. The gods were all-powerful. These polytheisms lasted a shorter time. Still later, Middle Eastern and perhaps other peoples invented single gods and monotheistic religions. The single God was the single all-powerful sovereign of all the world, creator of the entire creation. Jesus is called The Lord. all-powerful, sovereign. God is called The King. all-powerful, sovereign. But the Jewish monotheism was already sliding toward another idea, the idea that mankind is near-all-powerful. In one story, Genesis describes God’s giving the earth and all creation to mankind for his use asking merely (at most) that mankind act as steward (but steward on whose behalf?) of that creation. If God was making mankind steward on His (on God’s) behalf, then mankind was indeed made powerful, quasi-all-powerful. Of course, political power and later economic power (money; wealth) became pseudo gods, gods in the sense that people regarded these things (or those who possessed them) as all-powerfuls. Money makes the world go around. Money, not God. More broadly, Pope Francis has made it repeatedly clear that he is a critic of global inequality and of a capitalist world economic system that has produced ‘plunder of nature,’ a ‘frenetic rhythm of consumption,’ and worship of ‘the god of money.’Falk: Pope Francis and Religious Cosmopolitanism The idea that wealth and power are gods makes mankind all-powerful, with the wealthy and powerful (nowadays these ideas merge in the oligarchies which control “democratic” nations) all-powerful of all creation. The truly fantastic achievements of the 19th and 20th centuries, industrial and scientific and technological, have cemented the idea that mankind is all-powerful: mankind need fear no other God. In this system of thought, mankind is all-powerful and the natural creation is something to be used for mankind’s benefit (not God’s), and to be known, if ones cares to, by that system of examination and thought now called “science”. The earth is permanent and dependable: not to be feared and not all-powerful. It is to be used (or abused) at will. At the will of the all-powerful, mankind (especially of the all-powerful wealthy and powerful). And see! The Koch brothers, not unlike the others in the big fossil fuel industries, big banks, big defense, etc, happily (and blindly) ride rough-shod over Mother Nature as also over mankind. We are steamrollers: keep out of our way! And even individuals act in a small way as all-powerfuls: land-owners control their own land! They can clear-cut the trees (never mind the ensuing mud-slides); they can cut the tops off mountains to mine the coal efficiently (never mind the pollution and ruined steams); they can build housing on farm-lands (never mind the need for arable land); and they can cut down the tropical rain forest (for wood, to clear for pasturage) (never mind global warming). Climate Change and Nature as All-Powerful Today (that is, since 1970s or so), scientists have known (and learn more every day) that the earth will not supinely abide the abuse that mankind has in its ignorant and greedy way been visiting upon it. It will fight back. Climate Change theory, the theory of Global warming, has taught an important lesson to mankind—or at least to those among us willing to surrender the know-nothing accouterments of power-and-wealth sovereignty to the extent of learning a bit of science. That lesson is that the earth is fighting back against what mankind has been doing: overpopulating and over burning of fossil fuels. And since industrial mankind’s entire modus vivendi (economy or as some might say “civilization”) has so-far been based both on growth (including growth of population) and on burning fossil fuels for the cheap and concentrated energy it provides, the earth is teaching us that our entire manner of behaving has been, in large part, an error and must be reshaped and reworked—and reshaped and reworked ASAP. Though you couldn’t tell it from most human behavior, there is no time to waste. Nature (or Earth) is all-powerful, and power-and-wealth pseudo-sovereignty cannot longer prevail by its traditional methods. Will mankind learn this lesson? Certainly. In one of two ways, and the earth doesn’t care which. If we get very, very busy reshaping our modus vivendi to eliminate the burning of fossil fuels, we may retain the earth-system (climate, sea levels, life-forms) more or less as we know it today. Of course, in that case, our manner of living (modus vivendi) will be quite different. even our political and economic institutions may be different, for nationalism and corporatism may well be found to be incompatible with the changes required for speedy retreat from climate change/global warming. Of course, mankind is incredibly slow to change the nature of power and wealth. Conservatism is built in. We can go to war in no time at all against “the other” seen as “the enemy”, but we cannot mobilize ourselves quickly to fight ourselves. Old dogs learn new tricks slowly if at all. If we cannot, and very soon, mobilize ourselves to stop doing what’s harmful, our earth (climate, sea levels, surviving life-forms) may soon (50 years?) be so different from what prevails today as to be unrecognizable. There is no reason to think that mankind will survive, say for 100 years, at least in contemporary forms; what there is reason to believe is that, if we fail to act soon, the transition over the next 100 years will be quite dreadful. As dreadful as it is unnecessary. We have met the enemy and he is us! The Pogo comic-strip wisely taught that “We have met the enemy and he is us!”. Walt Kelly, Pogo’s creator, also wrote: Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly. It is just unfortunate that in the clumsy hands of a cartoonist all traits become ridiculous, leading to a certain amount of self-conscious expostulation and the desire to join battle. There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blasts on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us. Forward! ” |
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