dancing into oblivion with the world suicide cult

[Guest guest]

DE-SALINATED WHISKY & WILD WILD WINDS

 

Blinded By Science, Trapped In A Paradox

 

By Richard Neville

 

We live our everyday lives as though the Earth will continue on its orbit, much

as always, indifferent to our aspirations and plots. Despite all kinds of

upheavals, whether in bedrooms or on battlefields, there is expectation at dawn

of solid ground, a jug of water and the rising sun. We lick our wounds and

dream. Optimism kicks in, firing the imagination. Long ago we tilted at

windmills, now we put them on our roof -

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12321430/site/newsweek/from/et.

 

It’s taken almost 50 years for environmentalism to hit critical mass, from

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, to Time Magazine’s April cover story

on global warming, declaring “The Debate is Overâ€, even as its every ink

drop promotes excess. (Full page ads: Toyota Formula 1, Rolex Oyster Perpetual:

$US16,400, Peugeot 407 “starts at just†$US51,990, Mercedes Benz…). “The

US needs to reduce its emissionsâ€, Sunita Nurain, director of New Delhi’s

Centre for Science and Environment tells Time, “It is unacceptable and immoral

that the US doesn’t take the lead on climate changeâ€. Actually, the US does

take the lead on climate change – as its prime cause. The average American

emits 20 times more carbon than the average Indian. Yet the greening of Time

marks a turning point, just like its famous 1966 cover, which asked, Is God

Dead? Today we ask: Is the Earth dying? And are we dying with it?

 

Yes, “billions will die before the end of the century,†according to James

“Gaia†Lovelock, who believes “civilisation as it is known is unlikely to

survive†- . So what kind of civilisation will take its place? While we have

witnssed global warming and the increase in wild weather events, it is

depressing to realise that a dozen or so other threats are stalking the future:

the Great Wealth Divide, the Oil Peak, the Groundwater Peak, Hyper Consumerism,

Mass Media’s False Reflection, War Without End, Nuclear Revivalism, the Spread

of Megacities, Pandemics, the Rise of Lethal Ideas, the Decline of Free Speech

and Toxic Leadership. In the next few days I plan to post on my site a pdf on

these issues for those whp wish to embark on a dark night of the soul, stiff

drink at hand, Gotterdammerung at full bore. Although maybe not, owing to the

gaining momentum of the truth versus empowerment paradox. Key experts want to

yell, WAKE UP, climate change may have accelerated to such a degree that it will

be impossible to reverse or contain. Others want to whistle a happy tune and

rave on about hydrogen fuel, organic pears and a carbon neutral lifestyle.

Sometimes these are the same person.

 

IS THE SHOPPING RELIGION MUTATING INTO A GLOBAL SUICIDE CULT?

 

When mingling with climatologists, and hearing of the plight of the West

Antarctic Ice Sheet, there comes a point when I ask something crass: yes, but

how do you really feel about our chances? Reactions are strikingly similar.

Furtive glances, hand across mouth, a muted tone: “We’re f**kedâ€. Then

comes a bleak cascade of data, until I interrupt: Why don’t you say this

publicly? “You’ve got to give people hopeâ€. But I wonder – why can’t

truth and hope be friends?

 

It’s lying that’s led us to the brink. We who are citizens of the incredible

shrinking coalition of the formerly willing are awestruck at the deceptions of

today’s democracies. Both the US and Australia have tried to gag

climatologists. Both have lied about the situation in Iraq. We suffer a culture

of deceit that starts at the top and filters down, until it meets a whistle

blower. Whenever Major Michael Mori, a lawyer for the Marines and the US Navy

appears on TV to defend the rights of Guantanamo Bay inmates, it is a reminder

that nobility still flourishes down the line, a long way down the line in the

case of the Pentagon. In 2003, Major Mori’s boss, General Richard Myers,

famously said that his forces had only fired off 1,500 cluster bombs in Iraq,

injuring just one civilian. In fact,13,000 cluster bombs were used, according to

Human Rights Watch - http://hrw.org/doc/?t=arms_clusterbombs - and over 1,000

Iraqi civilians were killed, mostly children. In their inner selves, are

Coalition leaders ashamed of running a blood bath in Iraq, now spilling into a

civil war? There’s a whiff of a clue that they might be, which I’ll float

below in a post script. Now let’s return to the issue at hand – the

truth/empowerment paradox.

 

BLINDED BY SCIENCE, TRAPPED IN A PARADOX

 

Last month in a boardroom on the edge of Sydney Harbour, the cruise ships

gleaming in the midday sun, a leading climatologist presented the latest stats

on the global predicament. “Worse than we fearedâ€, he said, displaying

mysterious graphs. I asked how long before he expected a significant rise in sea

levels? (The usual answer is a hundred years). “Perhaps as soon as a

decadeâ€, he said. Okay, now what? On top of this, there’s an energy crisis.

Princeton’s eminent petroleum academic, Kenneth Deffeyes, has already put a

date on the oil peak – last November. He has expressed a “strong conclusion

that the oil fields we have already found contain 94 percent of all the oil we

are ever going to find " . Black gold fuels 90% of all transportation. It is

involved in the production of 95% of all the goods in shops, including 95% of

all food - produced as it is, mainly by industrialized means and shipped halfway

round the world. In the sixties, a poster urged us to Plant a Flower Child

Today, but now it might be wiser to plant fruit trees. Except that fresh water

could be as scarce as hens teeth, which will indeed be scarce if bird flu

strikes.

 

So to all those bright young things studying advertising, marketing, tourism,

urban architecture, food technology, fashion, fine arts and so on, what should

environmentalists be saying? That tomorrow’s shopping malls will be off the

grid and T-bone steaks harvested in Petri dishes? That WallMart will re-invent

itself as a farmers market, cars will run on hemp and desalinated Coke will get

us through the night. Sure. Or will true leadership emerge on the world stage,

extracting the West from its psychopathic imperial vortex in time to deal with a

dramatic shift of priorities? The sun is indifferent to national boundaries.

Aquifers are sinking. “Hungry oceans gain advantage on the kingdom of the

shore.†It’s not a dumb duality of us against them, Mr President, or good

against evil, at least not yet. In the longer term, everyone on Earth faces the

same threats, so it makes sense to switch collectively from exploitation to

regeneration. If politicians keep putting the national interest before the

interest of the globe, then we may as well start hoarding baked beans and

candles.

 

POST SCRIPT: DO WARMONGERS FEEL SHAME?

 

Estimates of the total number of civilians who have been killed or maimed as a

result of our intervention in Iraq are hardly ever mentioned in the media or by

those who barracked for war. When pushed, George Bush recently suggested 34,000.

The source of this figure is Iraqi Body Count, http://www.iraqbodycount.org,

which does not claim to provide a tally of total deaths. As explained by Dahr

Jamail and Jeff Pflueger - http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041306j.shtml -

this figure derives from a patchy record of war-related violent deaths that have

been reported by “two approved international†English language media

sources, whose correspondents are thin on the ground during midnight bombing

sorties. Reports from over 500 Arabic and Persian news outlets are excluded.

Iraqi Body Count acknowledges that “thousands of deaths go unreported in its

data baseâ€. More thorough compilations are available.

 

On October 29, 2004, The Lancet published its findings of casualty rates in

Iraq: 100,000 deaths, “and moreâ€. Eighty-four percent of the deaths were

caused by the actions of Coalition forces, and most of the victims were women

and children. The lead author of the Lancet report, Les Roberts, has elsewhere

concluded there could be double this number of civilian deaths -

http://www.alternet.org/story/31508. An Iraqi humanitarian group released a

report last July, counting 128,000 violent fatalities and specified that it

included “only deaths confirmed by relatives, omitting the large numbers of

people who have simply disappeared without trace amid the ongoing

bloodlettingâ€.

 

Why are these shocking statistics ignored in the West? Is it from a sense of

shame, or from a fear of further inflaming the public distaste for our meddling?

Journalists who keep citing the discredited figure of 34,000 are merely only

quoting each other, and thus engaging in propaganda.

 

http://www.richardneville.com

 

 

 

Authors Website: www.richardneville.com

 

Authors Bio: Richard Neville has been a practicing futurist since 1963, when he

launched the countercultural magazine, Oz, which widened the boundaries of free

speech on two continents. He has written several books, including Playpower

(71), the bio of a global serial killer (79), his sixties memoir, Hippie Hippie

Shake (95) and his latest handbook of social change, Footprints of the Future. A

social commentator and a professional futurist with a sharp tongue, Richard is

based in Australia, where he continues to “stir the possumâ€.

 

 

You can bomb the world to pieces

You can't bomb it into peace