Global warming is not what I'm afraid of

Is burning fossil fuels the number one cause of global warming? Dunno. Not really sure at all, because, frankly, there is a lot of stuff going on on the planet. Ms Earth has a nasty habit of warming and cooling, all by herself.

Is global warming the number one danger civilization is facing? I say no way Jose. I say the most clear and present danger is the current capitalist, corporate fascism. Just my opinion. But since you’re here, I’ll tell you why.

One. The present corporate-capitalism is a borg-like machine with one purpose: move money up. Forests are only valuable to this machine when they are broken into pieces and sold. Humans only valuable for their labor-production-profit capacity or the money that can be taken from their pockets. Tigers are valued by the pelt or zoo revenue. To the borg, society is a means to pump money up into high pockets. Nothing else. The borg cannot smell or eat grandma’s cookies, but it can brand and market and distribute them. The present borg system disrespects nature. Nature is invisible to it. So is society. So are you. So am I. It cannot see us. It cannot see grandma and children, nor smell evening flowers or savor the scent of your lover's neck. Instead it is programmed and empowered to consume and pump money.

And so, this one problem, this inability to value anything other than money, causes a world of hurt: poverty, pollution, junk food, dead whales. It's a long list.

So go ahead, control co2 emissions all you want. And while you’re pouring resources into that enormously difficult task, the borg will be busily breaking into pieces and selling even more of what is left of this lovely planet and human society. And we may well wake up in a feudal-corporate wasteland with perfectly controlled co2. With sea levels and weather still wandering around.

Two. Humans are robust and tough and have found ways to thrive in:

• burning romantic deserts,
• mucky inbred swamps,
• hysterical fertile crescents,
• high altitude picturesque mountains,
• tiny beautiful islands with coconut skies,
• anaconda/jaguar/ayahouska jungles,
• freezing arctic seasides,
• Calcutta,
• the outback,
• and American suburbia for godsake.

We’re cool, creative, survivors all right. We can thrive anywhere!

But (when the seas rise and storms come and weather patterns change) civilization could fall! (screams from off-stage).

You mean the civilization where whoever has the most money has therefore the power of law and force behind them to kick the shit out of everyone else and do whatever they please? That civilization might fall? Hope so. I’ll gladly throw some banana peels in its path. I’m sick of that one. Earth-life is literally sick of that one.

But real civilization, the one that’s been pushed to the side of late, where thinking, compassionate, mature humans look at the nature of the situation around them, and with their family, friends, and natural extended community, do their best to find ways to live happy, creative, exciting, challenging, non-destructive lives…well that one I think has a long, glorious (bumpy) future ahead of it.

Sorry, but global warming isn’t scaring me. Life is change. Don’t like change? Too bad you weren’t born a rock. Erosion denial.

But (when the seas rise and storms come and weather patterns change) global warming will change everything! (screams from offstage)

Everything has always been changing. To think that things stay the same is delusional. Weather patterns change. Continents move for godsake. Go with the flow a bit. Please?

We cannot keep sea levels stable, any more than we can stop the tides, or make every day a sunny spring nymphfest. There are seashells in the Rocky Mountains, and not so long ago the Sahara Desert was a pretty nice place to live. This is a planet of change. Check out this graph of sea level changes over the past half a million years or so:
(from: Eustatic sea level during past interglacials)
You recon you can smooth that baby out by controlling carbon emissions? (And if you averaged out the swings, sea level would be maybe fifty meters lower than now...and that means, well, a lot of glaciers up north. Looking at the graph, we seem to be near a peak.)

Before the next conference on global warming, I want everyone present to take a deep breath and say: ‘Nature is always changing. We can’t keep nature from changing. I accept that Nature changes. I am happy to be a part of Nature. I am happy to meet any and all changes whatever they may be. I will do my best not to be an asshole to the other lifeforms on this planet.(repeat last sentence two more times)’

Sea level has never been constant. To whine about it is kind of dumb. To say that if we control co2 emissions then sea level and weather will be stable is even more dumb.
Nature has never been stable because she is evolving. So are we. She's not about a steady state, fixed stars, Dantian reality micromanaged into the dust. She's out there on the edge. Honest and clean. Taking reality as it comes.

I'm happy to live with that.
Are you?

I say the number one problem is the borg.
We need to face the borg. Inject it with an appreciation it now lacks. Or kill it if it can't be turned to serve earth-life.

Ike was right

I've just re-read Eisenhower's parting words as President. Wow. America could use a leader like that again. I highly recommend reading the whole speech.

You can find it here.

Some excerpts:

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

and,

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

and,

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.

and finally,

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:

We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

We have indeed fallen from a great height.

How corporations kill

What makes a corporation evil?

I think that really is the question that cracks it all open. Let's turn it around: Why should corporations be good? Well, it seems that there is no inherent reason for them to 'be good' or 'do what is best for society' whatsoever. None. However if the people who direct the corporation wish to do good, they are at liberty to do so, provided that they do not violate the prime directive: maximize the return for the stockholders. So, no reason to do good, legal mandate to increase profits.

The system used to evaluate profits is blind to environmental and social destruction. So clear-cutting forests makes corporate sense. As does dumping pollution anywhere you can. The world environment and society have no value in the corporate reckoning system, so they simply are not counted. Such atrocities don't make it into the ledger.

Thus, with nothing inclining them towards the good, and absolutely no reason to care about the environment or human welfare, but a clear and legal prime directive pushing them to maximize return, what should we expect? Add to that mix a set of driven, smart, CEO types, who have perhaps convinced themselves that what increases the bottom line is inherently good, and you have a recipe for a very efficient organization whose actions could be massively destructive.

No megalomaniacal evil genius at the helm.

But destruction, exploitation, and all kinds of bad stuff.

These kinds of men built tens of thousands of nuclear warheads. Sleeping soundly in their beds at night.

I remember from my days at Martin Marietta (now Martin Lockheed) a cool, family guy, softball coach, project manager who had a big laser photo (remember those?) framed as the center piece of his office. It showed MX missile warheads returning to Earth through the cloud cover, like a family of falling stars. He was a nice guy, a family man, and he loved that picture. And if they would have been mere meteorites, it would have been beautiful. But it wasn't. They were dummy nuclear warheads. He put that picture in front of his desk, so every time he looked up, he saw it. Why? Because his work made those warheads fly so precisely. He was one of the nicest guys I met during my time there. I liked him very much.

He was proud of his work.
I was new enough to be sickened with dread.

Iraq: a two front money scheme

The simple reason that the W company (a front company) sent the American military to shock and awe Iraq is the old story. Old as the hills. Treasure. To steal treasure. Again. From the poor to the rich. Again. Yawn.

But this war has a modern twist. In Roman times money came from the booty of war. But W company isn’t so interested in stealing treasure from the vanquished – Iraqis were rather poor after years of brutal sanctions. And not to steal oil, though that’s a nice side dish. No, one of the great reasons for ‘going in’ was to take money from the US Treasury; to take money from the US treasure and put it into a few carefully positioned pockets. And the time and energy they take to position their pockets is truly amazing. Would that they could channel such intensity towards happy ends, but alas, I digress.

The American army no longer cooks for itself, nor washes its own clothes, nor builds its own camps, nor supplies it’s soldiers with means of calling home. KBR (Kellog, Brown and Root, a Halliburton possession, for newcomers to world events) does that at dectuple the price, thank you very much. See the documentaries Iraq for Sale, or The War Tapes for enough gory details to make you sick. Meals to the troops get billed out at $29, laundry $99 a load, and locally made cola $6 a six-pack. KBR bills by the plate whether there is food on it or not, and by the truck-journey, whether there is anything in it or not. They can even demand that US soldiers protect their investments. Good work if you can get it. And if the vice prez happens to be your former CEO, get it you can. Without even the process of bidding, and all that competition nonsense.

And then of course there’s all the material. The bullets, the humvees, the trucks, the smart bombs, the fuel. War consumes like crazy. Look around. Every company who sells these consumables is a ‘patriotic’ supporter of the war. Their stock is up. Patriotic bumperstickers fill their parking lots. “I support my paycheck the troops”.

A few years ago, via Riverbend blog (a heroic Iraqi), I read about an Iraqi engineering company, in the early, ideological days of the ‘reconstruction’, that bid on the repair of a bridge. They lost. The contract went to a US company, at ten times their bid.

What ended up getting constructed were permanent military bases, and the biggest embassy on the planet – a new, neocon Vatican.

America is in a money fever. Our army is on the other side of the world. The fever has gotten down to our roots.

We’ve started yet another war to pump money into pockets. Looks like over 700,000 Iraqis have died as a result. Don’t talk about them. Kids in Iraq can’t go to school and are growing up in a nightmare scenario. Don’t talk about them. The money is flowing as designed. Americans are getting poorer and working harder just to stay afloat. Don’t talk about them. The money is flowing as designed, from our normal pockets into some rich CEO's, and in the process is massive suffering and death.

The constitution lays out the mechanisms by which we control this beast called government. We have not used those mechanisms. The death toll has been enormous. Our karma.

Instant karma, because make no mistake my friends, this is a two front war: Iraq and America. The people behind W company know that the American people are their greatest threat. The Patriot act was no mistake.

Torture is legal; free speech is not.

Our primary torture base has a cute nickname, gitmo.

A two front war. Both countries are in mortal danger. And the money guys look in the camera and say ‘stay the course’.

This fever is at our cultural roots now. What are we going to do?

the commons and the FED

thoughts: the commons is the missing component in capitalism. Introduce a valued commons, placed under the protection of a trust, and banes of capitalism will be checked and the benefits remain. Please check out The Commons Rising from the Tomales Bay Institute.

thoughts: The FED (the US central bank) must go. It does not 'dampen' the swings of the 'business cycle', it creates them out of whole cloth. That's right: it doesn't guide us through the vicissitudes of a fluctuating market - it creates the risings and fallings to pump money into a select few pockets. That is its raison d'etre.
It was designed by rich bankers and is in violation to the constitution. It is not under government oversight, cannot be audited, and is controlled by private individuals who reap vast profits while contributing nothing to society. It's fractional lending system devalues the money in our pocket - an effective tax. It is the third (or fourth?) central bank in US history. The previous ones were shut down by an outraged public. Jefferson would not tolerate a central bank. It is by no means axiomatic that a central bank is either necessary or desirable for a nation. (check for yourself)
This is a core issue behind the question of "What's wrong in America?'.