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To:    Guardian CiF
Re:  
Climate change and media dependency on the status quo
Date: Tuesday 14 August  07

 

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In response to, "The editorials urge us to cut emissions", by George Monbiot on the contradictory messages coming from the media on climate change

Link to article and thread at The Guardian.


". . . advertising helps to generate behavioural norms".

Too right it does. This is what the tobacco industry understood so well, and thus unscrupulously spent billion upon billion of dollars on. Never mind the massive damage smoking does to human health and the loss of life it causes, the tobacco industry exists to make money any "legal" way it can.

If it were just the tobacco industry, it wouldn't be such a problem; a few million deaths every year from smoking isn't going to bring down our civilization; but it's not, its virtually ALL industries, including the oil, aviation and automobile industries (not to mention the media!), whose business interests are in contradiction to achieving a sustainable way of life for 7-9 billion people on our finite and vulnerable planet.

Although he fails to draw the conclusion himself, George Monbiot's article illustrates what I have been pointing out for some time: the fact that our economy is INHERENTLY unsustainable.

If I am right - and I'm pretty sure that I am - this puts the challenge of tackling climate change in an entirely different light.

At the moment, even committed environmentalists like George Monbiot are still playing down the magnitude of the changes necessary to solve the Sustainability Problem.

Neither can we face up to them, before we recognize its root cause, in a socio-economic order deeply rooted in and dependent on our dumb-animal nature and behaviour.

2nd Post

[anarchyrises], you are right about human stupidity and where it is leading us, but with a better understanding of WHY we are so stupid we COULD do something about it.

Doctors used to be so stupid in their understanding of human physiology that they were often more of a threat to their patients than the ailments they had. That changed with better models of how the body worked and the development of modern medicine.

At the moment our models of social and economic reality are, so to speak, still medieval, causing politicians and business leaders to make our situation worse rather than better.

But like medieval doctors, they are blinded by their vested interests (as we all are) in the status quo, preferring to stick to their old models, even if it means that the patient will die as a consequence - which he will, of course, unless we are quick about developing a much better model of socio-economic reality, and applying it ourselves, grass-roots democratically, rather than waiting for our leaders to do it for us.


3rd Post

4th Post

Why are we ALL such hypocrites? How do we ALL some how manage to rationalize and justify our own particular niche, our own behaviour, our own interests?

These are serious questions, the answers to which can help us understand the situation we are in, how we got into it, and how we might yet organize the revolution necessary to get us out of it.

It is important to realize that we do not experience "reality" itself, but an interpretation of it, produced by our brains, which it adapts to fit in with the interpretations it already has, with some wider consensus, and with our own short-sighted self-interests.

This is why the reality of the inherent non-sustainability of our economy and way of life, as obvious as it should be to us, isn't - because it doesn't suit us to recognize it; we are blinded by familiarity and dependency. Not "Homo sapiens" at all, but "Homo stupidus".

While those who lead us, of course, must deny it - even to themselves - otherwise they wouldn't get elected.

Thus, we have a classic, and perhaps terminal, case of "the blind leading the blind", towards the precipice that lies ahead.

I think quite a few people can now see the precipice. What they need to understand is what's blinding others (especially our leaders) and driving us towards it.

5th Post

Why are politicians, economists and the like, so fixated on continuous and unlimited "economic growth", when it is blatantly obvious that on a finite planet, it is quite impossible and can only lead to catastrophe?

I'm sure I am not the only one who has asked and puzzled over this question, not least because politicians, economists, bankers, business leaders, etc., are among the most intelligent, successful and admired members of society. I now have the answer:

Economic growth translates into an increased amount of money, and money is POWER (in its most versatile form).

In the natural environment, where human nature and behaviour evolved, there was always a natural limit to the amount of power an individual human "prime ape" could acquire, which meant that it was not necessary for evolution to limit man's drive for it. However much he acquired, it was always an evolutionary advantage.

We are still driven very much by the same desire for, and admiration of, power (i.e. money, property, social or professional status etc.). So strong is this drive and admiration that we have always found ways of rationalizing and justifying it, even now as it causing us to exceed the long-term carrying capacity of our planet and take us towards extinction.

I think this goes pretty much to the heart of the problem, but dealing with it will not be easy, because our nation state (its power structures) and the economy both developed specifically to facilitate its realization, originally in the interests of the ruling classes (aristocracy and clergy), but now, in democratic society, theoretically at least, in the interests of everyone in a free-market free-for-all.

It is no wonder that we are in such a hopeless and unholy mess. Where, I ask, are the anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, psychologists and social scientists, whose job it is to understand this and suggest a way out?

6th Post

http://www.spaceship-earth.org