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

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Economic changes needed to tackle climate challenges

Click here to access article by Kieran Cooke from Climate News Network.

There have been a series of meetings leading up to a major meeting of world politicos and others to be held in Paris starting in November. The meetings like the grand summit in Paris give world capitalist leaders opportunities to say how concerned they are about climate destabilization--only they don't use such a dramatic term, instead they prefer "climate change". 

The author in this piece reports on some of these grand statements at one of these preliminary meetings. For example, the president of Ireland condemns neoliberalism. He like many others sees this advanced stage of capitalism as the culprit. Thus, returning to nationally-based, regulated capitalism would solve our problems. This is like saying that the symptoms of metastasized cancer can be cured if we can only return it to a localized cancer.