Showing posts with label global warming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label global warming. Show all posts

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Earth Crisis







Most of us don't want nature to be destroyed, and probably don't really understand what is causing it, or that opportunities to have this understanding are being systematically diminished. As the physical-commodity based assets of oil, precious metals, forests, soils and fresh water dwindle, inevitably the social costs of exploitation and unregulated pollution are becoming apparent. Not abstractly, but in real ways problems loom as ever larger populations are oppressed by famine, poverty and taxation, increasingly extreme climatic conditions and mutual conflict.

"Life as we have known it is changing at a rapid pace. Environmental, demographical and technological changes demand that we inspect our ways of living.... domination of humans over the rest of the natural world that has led to overconsumption of natural resources, overpopulation, the climate crisis, globalization fostered by transfer of goods and services but also by the extensive use of technology by people in many parts of the world. These changes are more rapid, complex and rampant than other in human history."

Ancient civilizations have all collapsed but they were relatively isolated geographically. Globalization has interlinked all present countries and civilizations, making them dependent on goods and services that are beyond their borders. If one fails it affects others so the question is exponential technology a self-terminating system? It seems that unbridled technology could allow anybody to have the power to be catastrophically destructive.

If the profit motives of an individual becomes over-zealous to the extent of harming the environment, in time they may realize the error of their ways and make amends. But a corporate entity that survives the founders may end up in the hands of people whose employment depends on following rules designed to maximize the profits of shareholders or corporations. The more profitable corporations may even become subsidiaries of larger global corporate interests that exist outside the constraints of local or national boundaries and laws. Unfortunately, billionaires & corporations can now buy elections because of a recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.

After the Second World War, a decolonization process took place - for previously slaved and colonized nations - supposedly ending almost four centuries of slavery and exploitation. It was followed by the end of the cold war and the beginning of a new era of Globalization, which has come to be accepted as the dominant world philosophy for the twenty-first century.Globalisation is not a new phenomenon, but the extension of colonisation, primarily as Neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism is what Washington and other First World countries advocate: they want Third Worlds or developing countries to have open economies for foreign investment, but have protectionist elements in their own countries. The capitalists obsession with butting in other nations affairs under the guise of good-will while the ulterior motive is solely to establish a foothold and seat in the government of foreign country's in order to access their resources and eventually gain power and influence. The wealthy want to rule the world and to do away with all culture that isn't rooted in money and power. Technology has fostered overpopulation and at the same time made possible the concentration of wealth into the hands of a few.

t’s been called the endgame, a term from the world of chess and it’s used to refer to the ending scenario of any game; of when and how it will end. - See more at: http://emergent-culture.com/world-macro-trends-report-for-1st-quarter-2012-world-on-the-brink-of-iran-syria-war-earth-changes-2012-ows-occupy/#sthash.zxmUxcXB.dpuf
"Western Governments and their corporate sponsors are becoming more invasive, destructive and abusive while public rights and protections are diminished.... It’s been called the endgame, a term from the world of chess and it’s used to refer to the ending scenario of any game; of when and how it will end.... Geopolitics is fundamentally about the competition for economic advantage and resources.  A drama of epic proportions looms as the Greatest Empire the world has ever known prepares to launch a major war in order to sustain its unsustainable immensity for yet another business cycle.... It’s been called the endgame, a term from the world of chess and it’s used to refer to the ending scenario of any game; of when and how it will end.... The good news is that a planetary culture is beginning to sprout amongst the cracks in the concrete. And you’ve seen what tree roots can do to concrete. It’s a slow process, but it happens.

...Every major European nation except for Germany is bankrupt. Every “solution” put forth by leaders is a either a band-aid or a “kick the can down the road” approach.  Once the Eurozone falters its reverberations will be felt around the world.  The looming war with Iran and Syria may be seen as last a ditch effort to salvage the Western Finance/Power system. Make no mistake about it the System has been on life support (printing money out of thin air) since the Fall of 2008.... The US is irretrievably down the rabbit hole of deficits and debt, and that, even if there were endless natural resources of increasing quality available at this point, servicing the debt loads and liabilities of the nation will require both austerity and a pretty serious fall in living standards for most people."  - Emergent Culture

Globalization started with the Industrial revolution in England.  It is a mix of things,  including the greater connection people around the world have with each other, sharing of technology, ideas, culture, goods and information. In terms of economics, it is about global capitalism, unfettered trade (which is called "free trade" but actually doesn't exist). Economics and politics being closely inter-related, economic globalization will also lead to political globalization, with consequent loss of national sovereignty, since the process of globalization consists of concentration of resources of the world, for the benefit of a small section of people, who control the levers of power.

Neoliberalism is a form of economic liberalism whose advocates support free trade and open markets, privatization, deregulation, and enhancing the role of the private sector in modern society. Since the 1990's activists use the word 'neoliberalism' for global market-liberalism ('capitalism') and for so called free-trade policies. Neoliberalism is promoted as the mechanism for global trade and investment supposedly for all nations to prosper and develop fairly and equitably, but actually the effects of neo-liberalism is that the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer. "Neo-liberalism" is a set of economic policies that have become widespread during the last 25 years or so. Although the word is rarely heard in the United States, but you can clearly see the ever increasing effects. The concept of neoliberalism has, during the past twenty years or so, become quite widespread globally.

"Around the world, neo-liberalism has been imposed by powerful financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. It is raging all over Latin America. The first clear example of neo-liberalism at work came in Chile (with thanks to University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman), after the CIA-supported coup against the popularly elected Allende regime in 1973. Other countries followed, with some of the worst effects in Mexico where wages declined 40 to 50% in the first year of NAFTA while the cost of living rose by 80%. Over 20,000 small and medium businesses have failed and more than 1,000 state-owned enterprises have been privatized in Mexico. As one scholar said, "Neoliberalism means the neo-colonization of Latin America."  

In the United States neo-liberalism is destroying welfare programs; attacking the rights of labor (including all immigrant workers); and cutbacking social programs. The Republican "Contract" on America is pure neo-liberalism. Its supporters are working hard to deny protection to children, youth, women, the planet itself -- and trying to trick us into acceptance by saying this will "get government off my back." The beneficiaries of neo-liberalism are a minority of the world's people. For the vast majority it brings even more suffering than before: suffering without the small, hard-won gains of the last 60 years, suffering without end."   -Corpwatch  

Neo-liberalism, is actually a grab-bag of ideas based on the fundamentalist notion that markets are self-correcting. It was this market fundamentalism that underlay Thatcherism, Reaganomics, and the so-called “Washington Consensus” in favor of privatization, liberalization (deregulation), and independent central banks focusing single-mindedly on inflation.

Benefits accrued disproportionately to those at the top in developing countries that pursued neo-liberal policies. That allows special interest companies to exploit international loopholes to minimize their taxes, other people have to pick up the bill. That the global elite are using whatever means at their disposal to hide their money from governments isn’t exactly surprising. Tax havens create a veil of secrecy that enables multinational companies to siphon profits out of developing countries. They let companies shift profits out of the country where they were actually made and into a tax haven with a much lower tax rate.  This sleight of hand deprives developing countries of desperately needed tax revenue – money that can build schools and health clinics and infrastructure. The increasing volume of operations involving tax havens countries, which leads to enormous losses in terms of tax revenues, reveals the relevance of this problem. The Tax Justice Network's report estimates that unreported offshore wealth held in tax havens has reached at least $21 trillion, and possibly as much as $32 trillion.

That kind of money can find ways to buy lobbyists,  regulatory agency personnell, politicians, judges, even entire governments. Anyone who refuses to be bought, such as Sadam Hussein, can simply be eliminated. Writers and economists have been pointing out for years that the biggest winners in today’s globalized, finance-heavy economy have been a small band of super-rich. Tim Noah dubbed them “the stinking rich.” Chrystia Freeland went with “plutocrats.” No matter what you choose to name them, the largest economic gains have accrued to the top 1% club at the very, very tiniest tip of the earnings pyramid.

Extreme wealth and inequality are reaching levels never before seen and are getting worse. Over the last thirty years inequality has grown dramatically in many countries. In the US the share of national income going to the top 1% has doubled since 1980 from 10 to 20%. For the top 0.01% it has quadrupled to levels never seen before. At a global level, the top 1% (60 million people), and particularly the even more select few in the top 0.01% (600,000 individuals - there are around 1200 billionaires in the world), the last thirty years has been an incredible feeding frenzy. This is not confined to the US, or indeed to rich countries. In the UK inequality is rapidly returning to levels not seen since the time of Charles Dickens. In China the top 10% now take home nearly 60% of the income. Chinese inequality levels are now similar to those in South Africa, which are now the most unequal country on earth.

The 1% are financing globalization which is largely to blame for some global warming. Fossil fuels are acquired from overseas to power our cars, population growth is driven by cheap food production in other countries and international trade encourages India and China to produce vast amounts of carbon dioxide at precisely the moment when this should be stopped. If we are to survive we need to think in terms of local self sufficiency and maintaining a careful balance between our population and our natural resources. Global warming  started as early as the 1860’s due to the Industrial Revolution that began after the Civil War. This was a time of invention and creation; where man made machine and machine changed society. Not only did the machine change society, but it also changed the atmospheric gases – more specifically, greenhouse gases.

By moving industries to deregulated countries, exploitation and pollution have virtually no constraints. According to Dr.Vandana Shiva, there's rape at every level—rape of the earth, rape of our resources, rape of the economy, and rape of the poor. Scholars at Princeton and Northwestern universities have even concluded that “America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened… The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” Instead, policy tends “to tilt towards the wishes of corporations and business and professional associations.”

The following is from a Politics series on Economic Liberalism at www.potiori.com
Neoliberal policies advanced by supranational organizations have come under criticism for advancing a corporatist agenda. Rajesh Makwana,  writes that "the World Bank and IMF, are major exponents of the neoliberal agenda" advancing corporate interests.[122] Sheldon Richman, editor of the libertarian journal The Freeman, also sees the IMF imposing "corporatist-flavored 'neoliberalism' on the troubled countries of the world." The policies of spending cuts coupled with tax increases give "real market reform a bad name and set back the cause of genuine liberalism." Paternalistic supranational bureaucrats foster "long-term dependency, perpetual indebtedness, moral hazard, and politicization, while discrediting market reform and forestalling revolutionary liberal change."[123] Free market economist Richard M. Salsman goes further and argues the IMF “is a destructive, crisis-generating global welfare agency that should be abolished."[124] "In return for bailouts, countries must enact such measures as new taxes, high interest rates, nationalizations, deportations, and price controls." Writing in Forbes, E. D. Kain sees the IMF as "paving the way for international corporations entrance into various developing nations" and creating dependency.[125] He quotes Donald J. Boudreaux on the need to abolish the IMF.

1 in 37 American adults is in the prison system – heavily promoted by the Clinton administration, is the neoliberal U.S. policy tool for keeping unemployment statistics low, while stimulating economic growth through the maintenance of a contemporary slave population and the promotion of prison construction and "militarized policing."[120] The Clinton Administration also embraced neoliberalism by pursuing international trade agreements that would benefit the corporate sector globally (normalization of trade with China for example). Domestically, Clinton fostered such neoliberal reforms as the corporate takeover of health care in the form of the HMO, the reduction of welfare subsidies, and the implementation of "Workfare".[121]

With energy bills on the rise and an increasing awareness of our vanishing resources, it is time to turn to an alternative forms of energy and embrace policies aimed at promoting energy efficiency and green-technology development. Stronger policies focused on reducing carbon emissions could overturn entrenched economic structures and foster a green economy that works for all,  while resisting the forces that exploit their labor the same way they exploit the earth. A real green energy transition could stimulate employment and effectively transfer power from the hierarchy of a carbon-based economy to a new sustainable system.

Economist Joseph E. Stiglitz says that Tax Reform Save the Middle Class through fair taxation for all, including cracking down on the mega tax-dodging corporations. On a recent episode of Moyers & Company, Bill Moyers said, ”In 1983, 50 corporations controlled a majority of media in America. In 1990 the number had dropped to 23. In 1997, 10. And today, six. There you have it. The fistful of multinational conglomerates that own the majority of media in America.”  We’re left with a monolithic media industry driven to maximize the next quarter’s profits and fueled by oil and gas industry advertising. As long as meaningful action on climate change will hurt the short-term profits of the fossil fuel industries, the media conglomerates and Wall Street, we can’t expect improvement.

Our world is in transition from an old paradigm into a new one. Market-based schemes for the exploitation of Nature for profit are unstable and unsustainable. The exploitation of cheap labor, food, energy, and raw materials has been the foundation of a political system of power that is becoming too top heavy.

Wall Street will no longer be able to bet on the financialization of nature and the risk to our common resource. And governments based on Favoritism, Cronyism, and Nepotism will become ever more intolerable. There simply must be a better way see the relations between humans and the rest of nature. “Waking up” is certainly apparent more and more among the enlightened ones, yet those who govern us are still caught up in this technocratic dreamworld they call “progress”. 

Five mass extinctions have occurred since life began on Earth. Species of plants and animals are becoming extinct at least 1,000 times faster than they did before humans arrived on the scene, and the world is on the brink of a sixth great extinction, a new study says.

Learning to to encompass empathy and social responsibility is probably the only way that things will change on this planet, yet as the moral corruption is deeply entrenched. How can we awaken from the cultural hypnosis of consumerism and materialism? Obviously we need to rethink the psychological and spiritual roots of the global challenges of a world in transition and pay more attention to world trends, our collective future sustainability, spirituality, and consciousness itself. 

The spiritual roots of the global challenges does not refer to religion, not the old religion. "Tho shalt not." was the gist of the old religion - it was a set of inflexible rules (an eye for an eye,) concerned primarily with avoiding eternal damnation in the hereafter. The new spirituality is not about rules, but about principles, thou shalt -an abiding expectation that good will prevail  It is more about the here and now than it is about the hereafter - how to be in the present. It is not about a distant, abstract heaven, but about how to live in this beautiful world, and "love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays." Those are the words are from Chief Seattle's Speech of 1854.

In the sixth century BC. Taoists were referred to as the "cloud people" because of their serenity. Spirit is believed to be the energy out of which every manifestation of life is formed, whether it be a plant, a bird, a tree, an animal, or a human.

Mankind's' dominion over the earth has been a disaster of disrespectful and heartless pillage and plundering. Somehow we must find our way out of indifference, and learn or relearn reverence. Conscious evolution is about the opportunity to live sustainably and compassionately.

Surely, whatever there can be of hope for our future will not come from further hardening ourselves with indifference, competition, aggression, violence, or greed. Rather we must turn within to gentleness, kindness, caring, cooperation, and love, perhaps starting with some sense of gratitude for what there is in nature that evokes a sense of beauty, awe and wonderment.

   "We've got less than ten years to shift away from petroleum based fuels or we are going to ed up struggling with a radically different planet." - everythingscool.org


Links

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Climate Change






It has been called the most important issue in human history and we are allowing it to be ignored.


The following is an excerpt from Jan-6-2013 when Anthony Leiserowitz was talking with Bill Moyers about a Global Warming Gallup world poll, the first every scientific quality survey conducted in 130-plus countries around the world.

ANTHONY LEISEROWITZ: "... It's a remarkable scientific achievement. And one of the things that it taught us right from the very beginning that to be honest surprised me, four out of ten people on planet Earth have never heard of climate change.... Forty percent. And in fact, when you look in particular countries, even countries that are kind of poster child countries for climate change like Bangladesh, it rises to two-thirds of people have never heard of climate change. In some countries it's 75 percent have never heard of climate change....

Currently we are scheduled, unless we change direction to go through the two-degree mark. And in fact, we're heading on towards three degrees, four degrees and perhaps even six degrees centigrade warmer than in the past. As you go things get much, much worse. And in fact, let me just use a simple analogy.

Because people often will say, "Wow, you know, four, five degrees, that doesn't sound like very much. I mean, I see the temperature change more from night to day." But it's the wrong way to think about it. I mean, think about when you get sick and you get a fever, okay. Your body is usually at, you know, 98.7 degrees.

If your temperature rises by one degree you feel a little off, but you can still go to work. You're fine. It rises by two degrees and you're now feeling sick, in fact you're probably going to take the day off because you definitely don't feel good. And in fact, you're getting everything from hot flashes to cold chills, okay.

At three you're starting to get really sick. And at four degrees and five degrees your brain is actually slipping into a coma, okay, you're close to death. I think there's an analogy here of that little difference in global average temperature just like that little difference in global body temperature can have huge implications as you keep going. And so unfortunately the world after two and especially after three degrees starts getting much more frightening, and that's exactly what the scientists keep telling us. But will we pay attention to those warning signs?

BILL MOYERS: What do you think?

ANTHONY LEISEROWITZ: I think we are entirely capable of responding to those warning signs, absolutely. When this country and when this planet puts their minds to do something, they absolutely can do this. And in fact, I often go back to a great old quote by Henry Ford who said, "Those who think they can and those who think they can't are both right."

This is within our power. We have waited however a long time to really engage this issue and to get started. And unfortunately, and this is actually a core American value, it goes back to the founding of this country and it goes back to Benjamin Franklin, one of the leading lights of that time, who said - and every American knows this - "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

A little action now is going to forestall much greater-- the need for much greater action later. And that's exactly the nature of this problem, is that if we delay-- if we wait until we've reached three and four degrees, it's too late. At that point the climate system is locked. It's a massive system. The heat is already in earth's system, it's absorbed in the oceans, it's being absorbed by the ice systems.

It's in the atmosphere, there is no magic vacuum cleaner that's going to suddenly pull the CO2 out and bring our temperatures back to what we consider normal. So that's why it's so imperative that we begin taking these actions now to forestall the worst effects that are going to happen decades to come.

BILL MOYERS: So what ounce of prevention could be taken in this new year, 2013, that would make you think we might be on the right path?

ANTHONY LEISEROWITZ: It's not like we haven't already gotten started. California has done tremendous work already to take action on climate change.

If it was a country it would be one of the leading countries in the world. There are mayors all over this country that are doing tremendous things, companies that are changing their systems and getting the CO2 and its emissions out of their processes because they find it actually makes them more efficient and profitable in the process, citizens all over this country that are doing what they can individually and are starting to engage the political system to demand change.

We're not starting from ground zero, okay. But what we haven't had is the ability to come together as a country and clarify the choice that's in front of us and to really help the broad set of country, those six different Americans I was talking about, engage with this issue and recognize that we as a country and as a planet are facing a fundamental threat, a fundamental challenge to the way of life that we have now and the kind of life that we want to hand on to our children.

Until we start with that conversation it's very hard for me to see how we ultimately lead to the national policies that are going to be required, much less the international policies that are also going to be required. So I think whereas in the past we've treated this as an issue, that we learned about from climate science and that has basically been a few set of political leaders that have tried to impose solutions on this country, on our states, at the world from the top-down, what we have not down is build the bottom up to meet them halfway.

And until we have that bottom-up demand for this issue because it's going to affect every one of us, it absolutely is going to affect us either directly or indirectly through economics, through disease, through foreign challenges in faraway places, the world is now one planet. We are all interconnected in fundamental ways. And so these issues are rising the most deep questions about what it means to be a human being, and what is the right relationship that we have-- and again not just to the planet but to our fellow human beings. Because our choices now are going to have collectively huge implications for the lives of our fellow travelers within the human family on this planet as well."

 - ~ -
Scientists underestimated global warming says a new study, reports Jeremy Hance at Mongabay. Not only is the Arctic warming eight times faster than the rest of the planet, but failure to account for temperature gaps has led global datasets to underestimate the rise of temperatures worldwide. By adding in new temperature data from satellites over the rapidly-warming Arctic, scientists report that the world's climate has not slowed in warming, as it previously appeared to some, but is warming as rapidly as predicted, with the Arctic currently facing the brunt of it.

The Ross Ice Shelf, a raft of ice the size of France, could collapse quickly, triggering a dramatic rise in sea levels. Bill Moyers asked Kumi Naidoo how long we have to change our ways and save the Earth, he replied that the Earth is not in danger, the Earth as it was created will recover over time and endure. It is the human beings who will disappear. Naidoo said, “For some of the people it is too late but if we act in the next five to 10 years the largest part of the planet’s inhabitants will survive. If we don’t act it will be too late.”

"There are forces larger than human forces. These forces are absolute, with no mercy. And if you don't learn, you are just going to suffer the consequence."
  -Oren Lyons, on the Indigenous View of the World




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