Fiddling while Rome burns

Katrina cartoon: Danny HellmanAustralian scientists' joint statement on 12 June:
We are shocked by the urgency of the situation. Global warming is accelerating.

There is a real danger that we have reached or will soon reach critical tipping points...with huge human and societal costs, and perhaps even the effective end of industrial civilisation. We need to cease our assault on our own life support system, and that of millions of species. Global warming is only one of many symptoms of that assault.

The need for action is extremely urgent and our window of opportunity for avoiding severe impacts is rapidly closing. Yet the obstacles to change are not technical or economic, they are political and social.

We know democratic societies have responded successfully to dire and immediate threats, as was demonstrated in World War II. This is a last call for an effective response to global warming.

What new research shows : Barrie Pittock, of the CSIRO, said the rate of increase in greenhouse gas exceeded the worst-case scenario included in last year's IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report. Barry Brook of Adelaide University said CO2 could reach 600 ppm, and warming 6ºC degrees:

3º might result in the collapse of the Amazon rainforest, a 4º increase would lead to the displacement of hundreds of million of people and the extinction of up to half the world's species, and a 5º increase would create an ice-free planet and sea-level increases of 80 metres. We're seeing events predicted for the end of the 21st century happening already.

Arctic summer sea ice is expected to melt entirely within the next 5 years. Sea level rise is doubling every decade, says Brook. What has this got to do with our daily life? Take a family of four eating 4kg of beef a week and driving a two-tonne Ford Territory 200km each week, Brook said last year: you think the worst emissions is going to be your vehicle but ...it will almost certainly be your red meat intake -- 4 times worse than an SUV!

Another panic attack - excerpts from mwmwm on DailyKos

The quagga mussel, brought as an evil seed in ballast water, a fingernail-sized predator-free mussel that makes its aquatic environment oxygen-free. It's now migrated to the Colorado River and all the Great Lakes. And, the voracious pine beetle, blown by "freak winds in 2006 ... into the province from neighbouring British Columbia" that's eating its way through the boreal forests of Canada east, ever east to the Atlantic. And the algal sludge that the New Zealand Olympic crew members are training in, in Qingdao, China. And the prawn die-off in South Africa. And the precipitous drop-off of the invasive, predatory Nile Perch in Lake Victoria, introduced in the late 50s as a crop, but which may simply have eaten through all the available fish in the lake. And the meadowlark decline in previously song-heavy Minnesota.....slow-motion harbingers of the next decade.

In my dark moments, these are indicators of our human propensity to use up our available environment... In my more normalized moments, these are just bad news, not unlike the collapsing economy, the unbelievable debt accrued from the war in Iraq...

So right now, I'm in non-normalized mode, and I'm freaked. I'll calm down soon, but these panic attacks -- driven as they are by the research I'm doing -- are hard to combat. I can't even begin to express how important the next election is, especially when I'm in this panic mode, driven by indicator realities. If we can elect a mandate for change, we might have a hope of a positive future, complete with new industries and full employment, healing what we've damaged over the last century. If we elect McSame and co, we can kiss our future goodbye.

The warming climate, a major threat to liberty -- by winterbanyan in DailyKos

If you want to see people give away freedom, make them scared. Make them feel threatened...are you just waiting for the government to deal with it? Because if you're waiting, you can probably flush the Constitution...
More moves toward trouble with Iran, more arguments about FISA... the imperial presidency, the idiots in Congress? torture?....
[Another] major threat to our liberty is rising right before our eyes... if you consider what 9/11 caused us to do to the Constitution, consider what an even bigger threat might do.

...we're talking about major human migrations, millions of people pushing through political borders to escape starvation and climate catastrophe. We're talking about food shortages on a scale larger than any we've ever seen. We're talking about losing our coastlines, and in some cases, people losing their entire islands. We're talking about the inevitable unrest and rising violence as people fight for their lives. And if you think that won't be a great tool for governments to become more totalitarian, then you don't understand history, or even the last decade.

...feeling depressed this morning, I thought, "God, what can I possibly do? This is so big and I am so small. [then] I remembered something. Last year I made a commitment to lowering my carbon footprint. By most standards, the available calculators said I was already doing pretty good, with a carbon footprint for my household below average. When I saw that, I wondered what else I could do...I changed all my lights to CFCs. I figured out which appliances I could turn off or unplug (in the case of those with clocks or standby features). I started watching my thermostat and changing it throughout the day, and finally got programmable thermostats so I never forget. I kept at it, a little here, a little there...doing without, cutting back.

A funny thing happened on the way to my electric bill this June. I cut my usage steadily over the course of year until it was less than half of what I'd been using. My quality of life didn't suffer. Only my awareness got a workout. Enough so that when my bill ballooned in June I called the electric company in a panic and the woman who looked over my usage said, "Oh, your bill was impossibly low in May, so maybe they hadn't read your meter." My response: "No, that's not it, because if you look at the past year you'll see a steady decrease. I've been conserving and it's been working."...You can do it too. And if you really want to preserve the Constitution and our liberties, you need to start doing it now.

Combine auto trips, skip the impulse to go out and get that ice cream and wait for the next regular shopping trip...buy those too-expensive CFCs for every fixture (they now have dimmable ones --unfortunately some of those strobe when you dim too far) and candelabra bases... and I've gotten used to the funky look of them around the vanity in my bathrooms. Close closet doors because except in extraordinary circumstances you don't need to heat/cool them too. I could go on, but there are websites that do it better. The health of our climate is intricately interwoven with our freedoms. Not the freedom to buy what we choose (which is what too many TV ads suggest) but the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution.

Thanks to the DailyKos Environmentalists group for pointing us to these sources. See also our previous posts on ghost forests, ocean acidification, food crises, and peak everything. And see the "recovery scenario" in Mwmwm's post-Apocology. We will compare this and other biosphere governance proposals in a later post - Ed.

Hervé Kempf, How the Rich Are Destroying the Planet / Comment les riches détruisent la planète

Un vidéo de Kempf en francais expliquant Comment les riches détruisent la planète a été réalisé pour le MÉPACQ (Mouvement d’éducation populaire et d’action communautaire du Québec) .

The post below summarizes a book review and interview with Kempf in Truthout.org 15 March 2007 by Leslie Thatcher.

Kempf's thesis is that the "oligarchy" of the hyper-rich and powerful is responsible for worldwide environmental destruction -- directly, through their control of the levers of power, and indirectly, through our imitation of their conspicuous consumption.

He begins with the evidence of what biologists call "overshoot" (a population peak that exceeds carrying capacity). In 1950 human beings appropriated 50% of net natural productivity. By 2003, humans grabbed 120%, consuming resources faster than the Earth can reproduce them.

In nature, such peaks are followed by species collapse. In our case, there is a good chance the human species will take much of the biosphere down too. Among possible precursors are new diseases such as bird flu; mass dieoff in the 2003 heat wave in Europe; overuse, overkill and pollution of major sources of food and water; soaring species extinction; and the Katrina disaster in which storm and surge was compounded by longtime ecosystem damage, pollution and governmental inaction.

The alarm has sounded many times. Why then is necessary change resisted? Why is so little being done? According to Kempf, "if nothing happens even though we're entering an ecological crisis of historic gravity, it's because those who have power in the world want it to be this way." The poor are caught in a vicious cycle in which environmental and social crises feed on each other. They are the first to be robbed of traditional food sources, driven out by drought or flood, and abandoned by the state. Which is being systematically weakened by deliberate policy (SAPs, privatization) or neglect (underfunding of support programs, unregulated financial markets, dispossession of peasants, environmental refugees, economic migrants, and the homeless).

In an era of unprecedented growth in world trade, chronic poverty and instability have re-emerged in developed countries. Globalization, despite apparent gains in China and India, has done little to help the poor of the South. Trade booms and green revolutions are far outweighed by planetary degradation. Indeed, if the costs of waste, pollution and sickness were included, China's environmental agency estimates that its GDP would be negative!

Kempf coolly stacks statistic on statistic, citing unimpeachable capitalist sources like Forbes, the Economist, and the Financial Times. Then he breaks into outrage, quoting Drucker on obscene executive compensation (which has risen from 20x to over 160x the average wage) , and St. Augustine on governance ("If there is no justice, what are kingdoms but vast systems of robbery?"). The planetary elite emerge "not through success in production, but through constant redistribution of collective wealth", and live in fortress communities, "separated from the plebians. They are not aware of how the poor and wage-earners live; they don't know and don't want to know."

This predatory and greedy controlling class, wasting its rents, misusing its power, congeals as an obstacle on the way. It bears no proposal, is animated by no ideal, delivers no promise ... is blind to the explosive power of obvious injustice. And blind to the poisoning of the biosphere that growth in material wealth provokes, a poisoning that means a degradation of the conditions for human life....

Consumption drives society: "material growth is the only way the oligarchy can make societies accept extreme inequalities... growth creates a surplus of apparent wealth that allows the system to be lubricated without changing its structure" -- but immaterial growth (aka quality of life, culture), and reducing consumption are the only way to avoid environmental disaster. In the words of the comic Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us." Nor, as recent psychological studies in the UK and US show, does money make happiness.

Manufactured consent is essential to consumerist society. Democracy can be discarded. The terrorist "emergency" is the latest excuse to intensify "security", criminalize dissent, expand surveillance and imprison the poor. "The hyper-rich will attempt to maintain their excessive advantages by force as they did after Hurricane Katrina, when armed forces were sent -- not to help the drowning poor - but to hunt down looters." Environmental disaster may soon be invoked as another "pretext to persuade the people to accept a restriction of freedoms -- without, however, touching inequality".

Kempf says we must challenge the prevailing economic myths:

• that growth will solve social problems
• that technology will solve ecological problems
• that high unemployment is inevitable ("a construct whereby capitalism keeps workers docile and salaries down")
• that Europe, embodying fratenity and diversity, is the natural ally of "the obese power" of North America.

He hopes for a new movement that combines:

• a green left, based on equality and ecology
• a renewal of investigative reporting, concern for civil liberties and the public good
• global solidarity.
  

Hervé Kempf is environmental editor of Le Monde. In 2006 his article New Suspicions about GMO (translated and republished at Truthout) was nominated for a Project Censored award.

Shock doctrine: the case of New Orleans

New Orleans police 20 Dec 2007. photo: BBC

What has been happening in New Orleans offers proof of what Naomi Klein calls disaster capitalism, first developed in the Third World by structural adjustment plans and now increasingly applied in the First World. She describes three stages:

1. natural disaster, war or social-financial-environmental collapse
2. economic shock applied before the populace is aware, after which the new economy is presented by government and media as "inevitable"
3. brutal repression of protesters and the poor.

Among the facts about New Orleans:

1. "natural disaster": much of the natural ecosystem had been bulldozed, the levees were known risks in a Force 5 hurricane but underfunded and unrepaired, FEMA disaster planning had been privatized at enormous profit to consultants but with no funds for action. There was no evacuation for the 120,000 too poor to have cars. Shock Doctrine ch.20

2. Two weeks after Katrina hit NO, the rightwing Heritage Foundation came up with a wish list of Pro Free Market Ideas: suspend minimum wage laws, cut corporate taxes to make the city a FEZ, raise corporate subsidies, replace public with charter schools. So-called $8.75b "reconstruction" brought in without competitive bids all the Iraq gang (Fluor, Shaw, Bechtel, Halliburton) and Blackwater armed guards for FEMA. The state capitol swarmed with lobbyists. Huge profits were made: the Kenyon funeral company billed $12,500 per body recovered. Immediately after Katrina, the US government refused emergency finances to the city, forcing it to fire 3000 employees including city planners, teachers, court workers and public transit (just like Third World SAPs). Later that fall, Congress cut Medicaid and food stamps. Two years later, half of the dispossessed had not returned (I met some New Orleans homeless on the streets of San Francisco -- they had been evicted from cheap motels when the feds ended disaster payments); the public Charity Hospital is still closed, replaced by private hospitals for the rich; electric power was privatized and only partly restored; 12000 in the city were still in temporary shelters (though 1/3 still had jobs) because public housing was not repaired; rents had risen from $450 to $950 a month; in fact HUD wanted to bulldoze 4500 public housing structures, to be replaced by condos; after this "nigger removal", key coastal strips were open for resort development. In 2006, the Business Roundtable (30 of the biggest CEOs) complained that non-profits were competing unfairly with business by donating supplies; the Red Cross was forced to sign a disaster response PPP with Wal-Mart.

3. Remember Blackwater was hired to protect FEMA. A wealthy NO suburb had imported Israeli mercenaries, Instinctive Shooting International, to keep out intruders (NYT 28 Nov 04, as cited by Klein). In December 2007, two and a half years later: NO City Council votes to send in the bulldozers, a black coalition protests, NO police pepper spray and Taser the protesters. Courts are too overloaded to hold demolition hearings. Actor Brad Pitt pledges $5m to buiild 150 storm-proof green homes and appeals hopefully for charitable donations: there's "no reason we can't build 10,000". The Katrinahelp wiki reports that DHS-FEMA "emergency response teams have been reduced substantially in size, are inadequately equipped, and training for these teams has been all but eliminated."

But $2.5b (says Klein) has been promised to DHS for border security, including the Great Wall of Texas to stop hispanic illegals. Google "racism border wall" to see the motives. Contractors include Boeing, Lockheed, Magal and Elbit (Israeli wall & surveillance co's), Golan Group (ex-Israeli military) Lucent, L3 Communications, Perot Systems and Unisys.

The Fortress Scenario: the future as seen by a former Delta Force counter-terrorism expert, now a private "security" consultant, John Robb, in Fast Company 103 (March 2006) :

Security will become a function of where you live and whom you work for, much as health care is allocated already. Wealthy individuals and multinational corporations will be the first to bail out of our collective system, opting instead to hire private military companies, such as Blackwater and Triple Canopy, to protect their homes and facilities and establish a protective perimeter around daily life. Parallel transportation networks -- evolving out of the time-share aircraft companies such as Warren Buffett's NetJets -- will cater to this group, leapfrogging its members from one secure, well-appointed lily pad to the next. Members of the middle class will follow, taking matters into their own hands by forming suburban collectives to share the costs of security -- as they do now with education -- and shore up delivery of critical services. These "armored suburbs" will deploy and maintain backup generators and communications links; they will be patrolled by civilian police auxiliaries that have received corporate training and boast their own state-of-the-art emergency-response systems. As for those without the means to build their own defense, they will have to make do with the remains of the national system. They will gravitate to America's cities, where they will be subject to ubiquitous surveillance and marginal or nonexistent services. For the poor, there will be no other refuge.

In Latin America and the more corrupt parts of Africa and Asia,where state violence reinforces the shaky "security" of the elite (thereby increasing arms sales profits) this is not a scenario; it is already reality.

Further reading: Race Poverty & Environment and Corpwatch.org on Katrina profiteering; previous posts on Los prisioneros and the military-industrial lobby; Wikipedia on the Washington Consensus; Sourcewatch on the Heritage Foundation, Blackwater, and IPOC; blacks rebuilding NO neighbourhoods.
Future scenarios of the UNU Millenium Project; Ivana Milojević on Gender, peace and terrestrial futures; a NYT article on Fiji's rent-an-army; Blackwater hiring of ex-Central American and Chilean death squads; Custer Battles hiring of Ghurkas; Wikipedia survey of mercenary PSCs, and their history up to 1999 by Daniel Isenberg of DynCorp.

Los prisionieros

por Eduardo Galeano, extracto de su escrito de 1996.

En la era de las privatizaciones y el mercado libre, el dinero se propone gobernar sin intermediarios. ¿Cuál es la función que se atribuye al Estado? El Estado debe ocuparse de la disciplina de la mano de obra barata, condenada a salarios enanos, y a la represión de las peligrosas legiones de brazos que no encuentran trabajo: un Estado juez y gendarme, y poco más. De los otros servicios públicos, ya se encargará el mercado, y de la pobreza, gente pobre, regiones pobres, ya se ocupará Dios, si la policía no alcanza....

favela y riqueza, Sao Paulo: photo huevorama
Mientras tanto, crece la pobreza y crecen las ciudades y crecen los asaltos y las violaciones y los crímenes. "La criminalidad crece mucho más que los recursos para combatirla", reconoce el ministro del Interior del Uruguay. La explosión del delito se ve en las calles, aunque las estadísticas oficiales se hagan las ciegas, y los gobiernos latinoamericanos confiesan, de alguna manera, su impotencia. Pero el poder jamás confiesa que está en guerra contra los pobres que genera, en pleno combate contra las consecuencias de sus propios actos. "La delincuencia crece por culpa del narcotráfico", suelen decir los voceros oficiales, para exonerar de responsabilidad a un sistema que arroja cada vez más pobres a las calles y a las cárceles y que condena cada vez más gente a la desesperanza y la desesperación....

Las fábricas de opinión pública echan leña a la hoguera de la histeria colectiva, y mucho contribuyen a convertir la seguridad pública en obsesión pública. Cada vez tienen más ecos los gritos de alarma que se pronuncian en nombre de la población indefensa ante el acoso del crimen....

No sólo los vividores de la abundancia se sienten amenazados. También la clase media, y también numerosos sobrevivientes de la escasez: pobres que sufren el asalto de otros pobres más pobres o más desesperados. En sociedades que prefieren el orden a la justicia, hay cada vez más gente que aplaude el sacrificio de la justicia en los altares del orden: hay cada vez más gente convencida de que no hay ley que valga ante la invasión de los fuera de la ley. Hay un clamor creciente por la pena de muerte en la opinión pública de varios países latinoamericanos; y las matanzas de niños por los escuadrones parapoliciales de la muerte en Bogotá, Rio de Janeiro o la ciudad de Guatemala son pública o secretamente aplaudidas por un sector considerable de la sociedad....

A los niños pobres los trata como si fueran basura. A los niños ricos los trata como si fueran dinero.... En algunas de las grandes ciudades latinoamericanas, donde los secuestros se han hecho costumbre, los niños ricos crecen encerrados dentro de la burbuja del miedo. Habitan mansiones amuralladas, grandes casas o grupos de casas rodeadas de cercos electrificados y guardias armados, y están día y noche vigilados por los guardaespaldas y por las cámaras de los circuitos cerrados de televisión. Viajan, como el dinero, en autos blindados. No conocen, más que de vista, la ciudad donde viven....

Más allá de las fronteras del privilegio, se extiende una región del terror donde la gente es mucha, fea, sucia y peligrosa. En plena era de la globalización, los niños ricos no pertenecen a ningún lugar. Crecen sin raíces, despojados de identidad nacional, y sin más sentido social que la certeza de que la realidad es una amenaza. Tienen por patria las marcas de prestigio universal y por lenguaje los códigos internacionales. Los niños ricos de las ciudades más diversas se parecen en sus costumbres, tanto como entre sí se parecen los shopping centers y los aeropuertos, que están fuera del tiempo y del espacio. Educados en la realidad virtual, los niños ricos se deseducan en la ignorancia de la realidad real, que sólo existe para ser temida o para ser comprada.

Ver el texto completo en patriagrande.net