We live in a dystopian age. Governments have known since at least the mid-’90s about the potentially devastating impact of human-induced climate change. But for the most part they have either disputed and denied this, or pretended to be responding to scientists’ findings.
Despite overwhelming evidence that the world has already passed certain tipping points, setting off large and unpredictable changes in the climate, why are governments still refusing to act on the scale and pace required?
We should live in a simple way for others to be able to live as well.
Mahatma Gandhi
He who is richer is not who has more, but who needs less.
Zapotec saying, Oaxaca, Mexico
2010 - We suffer the severe effects of climate change, of the energy, food and financial crises. This is not the product of human beings in general, but of the existing inhuman capitalist system, with its unlimited industrial development. It is brought about by minority groups who control world power, concentrating wealth and power on themselves alone.
The New Deal and World War II are reminders of past transformative times, reverberating in current severe hardships and extreme dangers. Emergencies can bring clarity and reason about what to do, though at the opposite end, crises can elicit the worst outcomes, such as outlined by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine.
[Editor: video of event held in Vancouver on June 21, 2019. If you don't have time to listen to the whole event (2 hours and 44 minutes), then it is very worthwhile to go to the speech by Avi Lewis which begins just after 2:11:17. The complete program includes speakers David Suzuki, Kanahus Manuel, Harsha Walia, and Avi Lewis, with Anjali Appadurai as MC.]
