Just Politics

[BullNBear52]

Opinion: If the Right is wrong on climate change, the Earth burns
Published: Nov 22, 2014 12:58 a.m. ET

There is no Plan B if global warming hits the point of no return

Yes, the Right has no Plan B. None. Big Oil, GOP ideologues, conservative billionaires are absolutely convinced that they do not need a back-up plan: Capitalism is the solution to all of America’s problems. Capitalism is the one and only solution to all the problems in the world. No backup needed, ever.

But still, ask yourself: What if global warming becomes irreversible ... and the Righteous Right has no Plan B. Unfortunately once Planet Earth passes the point of no return, it’s too late ... climate’s out of control ... irreversible.

What if later it turns out that the gang of the McConnell-Boehner GOP, Big Oil’s Exxon Mobil, the Koch Bros and other conservative billionaires, and their army of well-financed lobbyists, climate-science deniers and senators like Oklahoma’s James Inhofe — really are all totally wrong? Dead wrong?

What if by 2050, in just one generation, after we add three billion more humans, what if Planet Earth does pass a point of no return and global warming becomes predictably irreversible? What if then our Planet Earth can no longer cool? Can no longer revert to historic temperature patterns? What if our planet just keep getting hotter? Wars over water, food. Turning into parched deserts? Into predictable 1,000-year dust bowls?

We’re doomed ... not just the 67 billionaires who already own half the world ... but every last one of the 10 billion humans living on the planet in 2050.

Actually ... it’s already too late ... we’re in denial ... it is too late, we just can’t admit it!

“Karl Marx had it right,” said celeb 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 ask yourself again: What if the Right is wrong? If capitalism fails? It’s too late? Unfortunately, it’ll also be too late for a Plan B.

So listen closely, capitalists are self-destructing capitalism, sabotaging American democracy, 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, author of “Empire of Illusion” recently put it in Truthdig:

“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.”

Capitalists will never limit their free-market capitalism?

“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.

“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 just 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: revolt.

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 in Truthdig, Hedges wrote, “This is What Revolution Looks Like,” anticipating game-changing revolutions ahead for Capitalist America. Listen:

“Welcome to the revolution.” It’s already happening. “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.”

The ‘Anatomy of a Revolution’ is alive, happening, near the flashpoint

Hedges then references historian Crane Brinton’s book, “Anatomy of a Revolution,” focusing on “the preconditions for successful revolution.” They include: “discontent that affects nearly all social classes ... widespread feelings of entrapment and despair ... unfulfilled expectations ... a unified solidarity in opposition to a tiny power elite ... a refusal by scholars and thinkers to continue to defend the actions of the ruling class ... an inability of government to respond to the basic needs of citizens ... a steady loss of will within the power elite itself and defections from the inner circle ... a crippling isolation that leaves the power elite without any allies or outside support.”

But reading these first nine “preconditions” in the context of today’s chaotic America, our do-nothing Washington, our out-of-touch capitalists, it seemed obvious that these “preconditions of a revolution,” alone, aren’t sufficient, not yet anyway.

But then a bell rang, He got our 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.”

Bottom line, Hedges opened with, “Welcome to the revolution.” Clearly, since hitting the bottom in March of 2009, Hedges like many on Wall Street has been expecting another crash, bigger than 2008, bigger than the earlier one in 2000, after the irrational exuberance of the dot-com mania.

Jeremy Grantham predicts one for 2016, around the next presidential election. Other major Wall Street players are also anticipating a major crash ahead. And when it happens, all 10 “preconditions” are met ... and the revolutions will ignite. Then we’ll have some loud responses to the question: No Plan B? What if the Right is wrong?

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/if-the-right-is-wrong-on-climate-change-the-earth-burns-2014-11-22?page=2