Another article that pretends that climate change isn't a political issue; that the only authorities on it are professional scientists trained in measuring reality rather than changing it, and that the only possible responses to it are (their) personal, emotional ones. We've thought ourselves into a tiny little box that we can't see outside of.
Jed, I think you misunderstand the article. Thi s is decidedly a political problem. How else do you read this but as political analysis?
> Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. There more than enough hubris in our power-mad betters to sink the lot of us. Even if climate weren’t staring us in the face, how soon will we fix that? This decade? This century?
It’s the result of facing the political that we come to this point.
Well everything is political and so this is. I should have said that this article pretends it isn't a petropolitical issue. But this also conforms to the dominant liberal format for such articles on climate -- begin with a climate scientist meditating on her personal reactions to the situation (reinforcing the notion that only they can truly understand it and therefore their reactions are the most valid), and focus exclusively on the problem, rather than the cause of the problem, which is a specific set of commodities that have shaped and fueled the massive and unstable regime of American-style capitalism that rose to dominance in the 20th century, and whose fall will be a signature aspect of the coming catastrophe. The mid-21st century will be remembered not as an age of climate disaster, but as an age of the collapse of capitalism that was accellerated, made more deadly, and in some respects instigated by climate disaster. In ignoring the petropolitics that got us here and looking at "climate" in a scientistic isolation from class analysis, we lose the ability to truly use climate as an issue to mobilize the working class against the capitalists. Here was my effort at the same type of article, and with respect and humility, I think I did better than you: https://thespouter.substack.com/p/the-punchline-to-history
Everywhere you look there is an example of an impediment to achieving harmony with nature. From airliners overhead to the asphalt parking lots of the innumerable strip malls these are emblems of a social order that has no regard for nature.
Our problem is conformity. We collectively restrain from swinging a sledge hammer to lighting that fuse. We all worry about assuming the responsibility of acts that while providing potential for achieving a blow for a less toxic future will be decried as destructive and deemed criminal. Each of us is burdened by the thought that these acts cannot be ours alone. Who made us God?
Well, we need to be disabused of these worries. The psychopaths that rule us know full well that our system of living cannot last. They fervently believe that they will last and we won't.
Another article that pretends that climate change isn't a political issue; that the only authorities on it are professional scientists trained in measuring reality rather than changing it, and that the only possible responses to it are (their) personal, emotional ones. We've thought ourselves into a tiny little box that we can't see outside of.
Jed, I think you misunderstand the article. Thi s is decidedly a political problem. How else do you read this but as political analysis?
> Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. There more than enough hubris in our power-mad betters to sink the lot of us. Even if climate weren’t staring us in the face, how soon will we fix that? This decade? This century?
It’s the result of facing the political that we come to this point.
Thomas
Well everything is political and so this is. I should have said that this article pretends it isn't a petropolitical issue. But this also conforms to the dominant liberal format for such articles on climate -- begin with a climate scientist meditating on her personal reactions to the situation (reinforcing the notion that only they can truly understand it and therefore their reactions are the most valid), and focus exclusively on the problem, rather than the cause of the problem, which is a specific set of commodities that have shaped and fueled the massive and unstable regime of American-style capitalism that rose to dominance in the 20th century, and whose fall will be a signature aspect of the coming catastrophe. The mid-21st century will be remembered not as an age of climate disaster, but as an age of the collapse of capitalism that was accellerated, made more deadly, and in some respects instigated by climate disaster. In ignoring the petropolitics that got us here and looking at "climate" in a scientistic isolation from class analysis, we lose the ability to truly use climate as an issue to mobilize the working class against the capitalists. Here was my effort at the same type of article, and with respect and humility, I think I did better than you: https://thespouter.substack.com/p/the-punchline-to-history
Leave off three letters. We need rage.
Everywhere you look there is an example of an impediment to achieving harmony with nature. From airliners overhead to the asphalt parking lots of the innumerable strip malls these are emblems of a social order that has no regard for nature.
Our problem is conformity. We collectively restrain from swinging a sledge hammer to lighting that fuse. We all worry about assuming the responsibility of acts that while providing potential for achieving a blow for a less toxic future will be decried as destructive and deemed criminal. Each of us is burdened by the thought that these acts cannot be ours alone. Who made us God?
Well, we need to be disabused of these worries. The psychopaths that rule us know full well that our system of living cannot last. They fervently believe that they will last and we won't.