An Old Catastrophe: Climate Policy - 2

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog began a series titled New Climate Catastrophe Policy: Triage in September of 2009, then completed that series with New Climate Catastrophe Policy: Triage - 10 in October of 2012.

In a sense we were saying that the government was behaving as a passive denier of climate change as we demanded "show me your sincerity with sincere steps in the direction of discontinuing the pollution of the atmosphere, the oceans, the drinking water, and the minds of the public."

Adding emphatically that "then and only then will we acknowledge that the government is coming out of its trance."

Rather than choose to do that, they resorted instead to the very old mainstay of government response, replying to its old and ongoing genocidal-ecocidal climate policy critics, with propaganda.

But that is not going to fool us any more.

I started a new series An Old Catastrophe: Climate Policy, in March of 2013, to focus once again on the Oil-Qaeda induced trance of government.

A trance that is paralyzing government into considering the ongoing climate catastrophe as a political issue, rather than a scientific issue, a survival issue, and a security issue for all of civilization.

During the time of virtual denial by the government, giving only some lip service now and then, a lot of people became distraught, those who realize that The Damaged Global Climate System is a reality:

“In the past I was naive enough to think that if we used rational evidence-based argument to engage the wider public and the government with these issues, that it would be possible to effect change. Arguably my misplaced faith in the goodwill and good sense of humanity can now be

White House Police Arrest Climate Scientist

regarded as a foolish notion, justification for a misanthropic viewpoint if ever there was one.”

Instead of talking about “stages of collapse” in the manner of Orlov, he categorised collapse as follows: “we can roughly grade the degrees of collapse according to the spectrum (narrow or broad), the duration (short, medium or long term) and the geographic extent (regional, national or global)”

Collapse will occur to different extents over different time periods in different locations but with the same long term ultimate global result — total collapse of all centralised service provision — everywhere, permanently.

(Nature Bats Last, "Collapse, what is it?"). I have pointed out, over and over again, the very deep roots that pollution has in our oil-war culture.

Roots that are older than our fathers' generation, yes, even reaching way back to our grandfathers' generation (Viva Egypt - 2).

I have pointed out that culturally: Pollution-R-Us, and that the government of US hasn't a sincere clue of the reality yet.

In their stupor it is still a political game, yes, they still think that propagandizing us will solve the problem, like a kid lying to their parents as a solution to kiddo problems.

The killer reality is that Oil-Qaeda has subverted, and still owns, the government (MOMCOM's Mass Suicide & Murder Pact - 5).

Thus, the government / Oil-Qaeda propaganda continues in its deceit of many people:

But the climate flat-earthers are having none of it. As a result, what should be a pressing debate about how to head off global calamity has been reframed in the media as a discussion about whether industrial-driven climate change is in fact taking place at all – as if it were a matter of opinion rather than science.

The impact of this phoney controversy during an economic crisis has been dramatic: in the US, the proportion of the population accepting burning fossil fuels drives climate change dropped from 71% to 44% between 2007 and 2011. In Britain, the numbers who believe the climate isn't changing at all rose from 4% to 19% between 2005 and 2013 (though the floods seem to be correcting that).

The problem is at its worst in the Anglo-Saxon world – which has also historically made the largest contribution to pumping carbon into the atmosphere. Take Australia, which is afflicted by longer and hotter heatwaves, drought and bushfires. Nevertheless, its rightwing prime minister Tony Abbott dismisses any link with climate change, which he described as crap, and has pledged to repeal a carbon tax on the country's 300 biggest polluters. The move was hailed by his political soulmate, the Canadian prime minister and tar sands champion Stephen Harper, as an important message to the world. And in the US, climate change denial now has the Republican party in its grip.

What lies behind the political right's growing refusal to accept the overwhelming scientific consensus? There's certainly a strong tendency, especially in the US, for conservative white men to refuse to accept climate change is caused by human beings. But there shouldn't be any inherent reason why people who believe in social hierarchies, individualism and inequality should care less about the threat of floods, drought, starvation and mass migrations than anyone else. After all, rightwing people have children too.

Part of the answer is in the influence of some of the most powerful corporate interests in the world: the oil, gas and mining companies that have strained every nerve to head off the threat of effective action to halt the growth of carbon emissions, buying legislators, government ministers, scientists and thinktanks in the process. In the US, hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate and billionaires' cash (including from the oil and gas brothers Koch) has been used to rubbish climate change science. That is also happening on a smaller scale elsewhere, including Britain.

(Climate Change Deniers - Guardian). Anywhere there is an Oil-Qaeda affiliate, whether in your town or mine, there is also the propaganda of denial.

Moving us toward more and more, larger and larger catastrophes.

Our national policy concerning civilization's greatest threat is a catastrophe itself, as this series will continue to point out.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.