We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

‘Mission Blue’ Warning: The Ocean Is Not Too Big to Fail

Click here to access article by Sylvia A. Earle from The Daily Beast.

I originally found this article at The Greanville Post, a website whose articles I have often posted because they have contributed a lot to understanding the major issues of today: the destructiveness of capitalism both on societies and the environment. However, occasionally I see articles posted like this on their website which, I am convinced, serve capitalist elites. Let me explain.

I doubt that Earle intentionally designed the piece to pander to the interests of the One Percent ruling classes, but such articles could easily have been written by design to lull unsuspecting, un-critically thinking people into acquiescing with their dangerous activities. My argument is that such articles do, in fact, serve the interests of capitalist actors, like this major corporation that owns The Daily Beast, and their directors who are actively destroying societies as well as the environment while satisfying their addictions to power and profit.

The article performs this function first by seducing unsuspecting readers who are increasingly concerned about the environment with material that recognizes the serious problems that have been caused by man-made actions on the ocean. But then the article cleverly steers them into a solution which will protect capitalist "business as usual" by suggesting that all that needs to be done is to establish ocean reserves. This solution reminds me so much of the establishment of reservations for indigenous people whom European-Americans failed to destroy in the 19th century. Does anyone seriously think that such reserves could be immune to the massive assault on the environments of the rest of the planet; but more importantly, that we can save the planet for humans and other species by such as scheme?