A Reality Check from the Brink of Extinction

I want to call attention to a thoughtful article by Chris Hedges… same title as this page. There are multiple themes that run through the climate change debate: chaning lifestyles, aggressive organizing, technological innovation, even ditching capitalism. A good composer can weave the themes into a symphony, but generally all we hear is cacophony… or at best picking out the one theme that we already know.

Hedge's article was first published at truthdig and then picked up and re-published at West Coast Climate Equity. It is about as revolution oriented as any that I have read. It may appeal to some Greens. He even quotes extensively from Derrick Jensen.

“If all we do is reform work, this culture will grind away. This work is necessary, but not sufficient. We need to use whatever means are necessary to stop this culture from killing the planet. We need to target and take down the industrial infrastructure that is systematically dismembering the planet. Industrial civilization is functionally incompatible with life on the planet, and is murdering the planet. We need to do whatever is necessary to stop this.”

Unfortunately, I don't think that there is time to do what he wants on a world wide basis. When the Prime Minister of the Maldive Islands calls a cabinet meeting at an underwater location to illustrate the fact that his country will eventually be submerged, you know that it is more than a publicity stunt. Even if we were to pull down capitalism, anarchy is not the answer and he offers no others.

This is not a multiple choice test where you get to pick the best approach. The answer is all of the above.

Desmond Tutu at Davos

There was a lot of comment that President Obama would not let any of his high powered economists attend the World Economic Forum in Davos. Those NOT making the trip this year included Tim Geitner and Laurence Sommers. Fotunately, according to the BBC coverage Archbishop Desmond Tutu did make the trip and offered these two comments that sort of wrapped it up... even if he were NOT the last speaker.

According to the BBC's Tim Weber:

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu said "we worshipped in the temple of cutthroat competition, and so some cooked the books, because the treasure is so great".

"We spend billions on banks," Mr Tutu said, "when we know that a fraction of this money could save all the children in the world."

Unfortunately, those who need to hear this are deaf… or at least tone deaf as evidenced the scale of bonus payments from Wall Street / banking firms that needed federal bailout money.

Fair pay for fair work.

The idea that information is free seems to be a mantra for the Internet. Some ask if that is not just a capitalist scheme to short change those who supply content... for free.

Consider Huffington Post. Paying their writers is "not our financial model" says the founder, Ken Lerer. Yet, time and again the progressives who loudly support Danny Glover and Unite Here, who march with the California Nurses Association when they strike over wages and benefits, have no qualms about using venues that do not pay the writer, or the reporter.

This argument was brought forward by Stephen Smoliar at The Rehearsal Studio. Smoliar is a scientist and writer by trade. The Rehearsal Studio is where he tries on / works out ideas that may or may not find their way into other content. His view is the progressivism has lost touch with the world of work.

Whether or not you agree with that, you have to pay attention to those who he cited in this post, especially Timothy Egan, whose NY Times blog entry, Save the Press, is quoted liberally. Egan is fighting for his job. He wants to be paid for doing what he does, as we all do. However, what he does is to write, and content is a commodity to be acquired and the lowest price and resold for what ever anyone can make out of it.

If any of those guys on the docks heard that I was now part of a profession that asked people to labor for nothing, they’d laugh in their lunch buckets — then probably shut The Huffington Post down. Doesn’t the “progressive” agenda, much touted on their pages, include a living wage?

So what is it about Huffington Post, or OpEdNews that makes them the model to be emulated? Well, it seems to be in the best tradition of the worst of Capitalism, to make money off the labor of someone else.

Is there a Green Solution? What we currently have are venues for private publishing (Green Party Watch or Green Commons if it gets revived???) and an attempt to build a social networking site for Greens. (Green Change.) Yet, I have no answer for my wife when she asks me how much I am making for all the time I spend here and would not my time be better spent completing the very long list of homeowner tasks that we have agreed must be done.