New Resource Wars … Everybody Loses!
The GOP has no “Plan B” in case we pass that crucial point-of-no-return. No plan to prevent global warming from becoming irreversible! None. Zero. Big Oil billionaires, GOP ideologues, anti-science deniers are absolutely certain they don’t need a back-up plan. Why? Because climate change is not a problem to them, and if it is, they believe capitalism is the solution not just to climate change, but to all of America’s problems. That’s right, they believe capitalism is the one and only solution to all problems in the entire world, including global warming.
But ask yourself … What if global warming really does take a turn for the worse, become irreversible? What if The Right is wrong, and they have no “Plan B?” Their “Plan-A” is total denial! Then what? Too bad, once Planet-Earth passes the point of no return, it’s too late for any plans. Too late. No turning around, because then climate change goes out-of-control, irreversible.
Seriously, what if later it turns out that the gang of GOP politicians, Big Oil’s Exxon Mobil, the Koch Bros, Chamber of Commerce, Republican president, conservative billionaires, their army of well-financed lobbyists, climate-science deniers and senators like Oklahoma’s Inhofe — really are all totally wrong? Dead wrong!
What if by 2050, in just one generation, after we add a couple billion more humans, what if Planet-Earth does in fact pass a point of no return and global warming becomes permanently irreversible? What if our Planet Earth can no longer cool? Can no longer revert to historic temperature patterns? What if our planet just keep getting hotter? Accelerating wars over water, food. Turning farmland into parched deserts? Into predictable 1,000-year dust bowls?
Already Too Late, Capitalism Is a Ticking Time-Bomb!
Then it’s game-over, right? Not just for the 67 billionaires Forbes tells us already own as much wealth as the poorest half the world, but for every last one of the 10 billion humans living on the planet in 2050. Actually, it’s already too late. Why? We’re in denial, and it’s too late, because we can’t admit it!
“Karl Marx had it right,” said economist Nouriel Roubini in the Wall Street Journal: “At some point, capitalism can destroy itself. … We thought that markets work. They are not working. What’s individually rational … is a self-destructive process” for capitalism.
So once again, ask yourself again: What if the Right is wrong? What if capitalism fails? Doesn’t solve “The Climate Problem?” And it’s too late? Then, unfortunately, it’ll also be too late to start planning a “Plan-B.”
So listen closely, capitalists are Not only self-destructing capitalism and sabotaging American democracy, they are destroying the global economy. Get it? We won’t have to wait till 2100. Self-destruction is happening now, today, and will be completed in the next generation, by 2050, mid-century. Here’s how Chris Hedges, Presbyterian minister, former war correspondent and author of many best-sellers, including Empire of Illusion, when he discussed it in 2014:
“The ideologues of rapacious capitalism, like members of a primitive cult, chant the false mantra that natural resources and expansion are infinite … it all will come down like a house of cards. Civilizations in the final stages of decay are dominated by elites out of touch with reality.” They “strain harder and harder to sustain the decadent opulence of the ruling class, even as it destroys the foundations of productivity and wealth.”
“This failure to impose limits cannibalizes natural resources and human communities. This time, the difference is that when we go the whole planet will go with us. Catastrophic climate change is inevitable … There will soon be so much heat trapped in the atmosphere that any attempt to scale back carbon emissions will make no difference. Droughts. Floods. Heat waves. Killer hurricanes and tornados. Power outages. Freak weather. Rising sea levels. Crop destruction. Food shortages. Plagues.”
“Exxon Mobil, BP and the coal and natural gas companies,” warns Hedges, “will never impose rational limits on themselves. They will exploit exploit, exploit. Collective suicide is never factored into quarterly profit reports.” The Righteous Right is on a “collective suicide” trajectory, dragging the entire world over the cliff with it. No wonder Roubini says that capitalism will inevitably self-destruct. It’s blind, arrogant, obsessed.
We’re All Capitalists … Yes, It’s In Our DNA, Yours Too!
“Resistance may ultimately be in vain,” warns Hedges: Capitalists will self-destruct Planet Earth. Solution? Global revolutions. For “to resist is to say something about us as human beings. It keeps alive the possibility of hope, even as all empirical evidence points to inevitable destruction. It makes victory, however remote, possible. And it makes life a little more difficult for the ruling class, which satisfies the very human emotion of vengeance.”
Get it? Even though we’re facing “inevitable destruction,” due to “collective suicide” of capitalism, it’s time to go beyond passive protesting like Bill McKibben’s global 350.org network of peaceful activists. It’s time to wake up, and see the odds of successful revolutions are very high now: Just a few thousand disorganized billionaires versus 7.3 billion humans who will soon wake up realizing they really have nothing to lose on a planet that by 2050, as Jeremy Grantham warns, will not be able to feed 10 billion humans anyway. Solution: start the revolution, also a basic recommendation in Naomi Klein’s new classic, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate.
Years ago Hedges began commenting on out-of-control capitalism and the consequences of extreme inequalities in the world. This same widening economic gap witnessed by leaders like Pope Francis, Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz and Tom Piketty, author of Capital in the 21st Century. Writing on Truthdig, Hedges wrote, “This is What Revolution Looks Like,” anticipating game-changing revolutions ahead for Capitalist America. Here are his 10 triggers:
The 10 Triggers of The Next Global Revolution …
“Welcome to the revolution. Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer. They can destroy but they cannot build. They can repress but they cannot lead. They can steal but they cannot share. They can talk but they cannot speak. They are as dead and useless to us … They have no ideas, no plans and no vision for the future.” Then he draws from historian Crane Brinton’s book, Anatomy of a Revolution, focusing on “the preconditions for successful revolution.” The first 9 preconditions necessary for a revolution are:
“Discontent that affects nearly all social classes …
Widespread feelings of entrapment and despair …
Unfulfilled expectations …
Unified solidarity in opposition to a tiny power elite …
Scholars and thinkers continue to defend the ruling class …
An inability of government to respond to basic needs of citizens …
Steady loss of the will within the power elite itself …
Defections from the inner circle …
Crippling isolation leaves power elite without allies or outside support.”
But reading these first nine “preconditions of a revolution” in the context of today’s America’s age of chaos, our Washington swamp, our out-of-touch capitalists, it seemed obvious that these nine “preconditions of a revolution,” alone, aren’t enough, something more is needed.
#10: Global Economic Disasters Trigger “The Revolution”
But then an alarm bell rang, loudly. Hedges gets your attention with his tenth precondition, a “financial crisis,” which should remind all Americans of the damage from the 2008 bank credit collapse that pushed Wall Street into de facto bankruptcy and cost investors over $10 trillion. So add in the tenth “precondition … a financial crisis,” and with that, we have “fulfilled the preconditions.” Remember the two massive $10 trillion losses, the 2008 credit meltdown and the 2000 dot-com crash? Both caught us off guard … the next one will too, when we least expect it.
Then we’ll have some loud responses to the big question … No Plan B? What if the Right is wrong? We can’t wait till 2050. The time for a revolution is now!
