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
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