Earth, we have a problem
The plan is to feature Roger Hallam and myself in an audio podcast ‘Talking about a Revolution’ on 1 May 2024 7pm BST (GMT +1). Part of the advice for preparing for a podcast or interview is “Read the book” i.e. you’re expected to read the book if they’ve published one. I’ve been following that advice and here’s a small section of Roger Hallam’s book ‘COMMON SENSE FOR THE 21st CENTURY’ (2019).
[ed: I did provide a link but it should be available to subscribers to https://rogerhallam.com only]
Earth, we have a problem
Societies around the world did not allow the current ecological collapse.
Governments did. Since the 1990s, a false narrative was promoted around
the world that individuals should take responsibility for their ‘carbon
footprint’. Or that ‘it’s the corporations’, the fossil fuel and other polluting
industries that are to blame. Yet governments are the only institutions with
the power, and the responsibility, to protect us from harm. But they haven’t
used that power.
In the UK and around the globe, people have inherited a government system
and a civil society community of environmental NGOs unable to address the
threat we now face to the continued existence of humankind. Government is
something created by society to protect us from such threats. Yet it has
failed.
We need to rescue the concept of revolution from left wing political
ideology into a more classical 19th century tradition where we’ve had
enough of corruption and the gross abuse of power. The challenge we face
with the climate emergency is to promote the message that climate change
affects us all and so we all need to act.
There is no avoiding the following analysis: that the world’s political
systems which have facilitated a 60% increase in global emissions since the
beginning of the crisis in 1990 have no ability to stop a continued rise in CO2,
let alone create the political will to massively reduce levels (40% in
the next ten years according to the UN October report ).
This leads us to the grave conclusion that the probability of organising a
political revolution to remove the corrupt political class has a higher chance
(if small/indeterminate) than the chance that the political class will respond
to the climate crisis (effectively zero, as evidenced by the last 30 years).
This then is the central meta strategic point of this paper.
