Dear Friends, if, like me, you are a liberal, a leftist, or even just a compassionate person in America, or if you are somewhere else in the world looking in at this country, I am sure that you must find the non-stop barrage of insults, threats, aggression and intolerance issuing forth from the Trump White House mentally exhausting and spiritually depleting, as I do. I have been especially appalled by the ban on travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries, which disrupted so many people's lives for no good purpose, and which sets the tone for increased animosity and ill will between the USA and the Muslims of the world. It had become the norm in recent decades to hear U.S. presidents extol the virtues of diversity and inclusiveness, but Trump has turned his back on all this in order to push the country on a retrograde path back toward the worst moments in American history, the ones that cause intelligent Americans to hang their heads in shame, the times when blacks were enslaved, segregated and lynched, when native peoples were exterminated and dispossessed, when Japanese-Americans were interned in concentration camps, when artists and intellectuals were hounded for real or imagined communist sympathies, when Vietnamese were demonized as “gooks,” when Iraqi prisoners of war were tormented and humiliated in violation of the Geneva convention, when gays, lesbians and other non-heterosexuals had to live in constant fear of harassment, humiliation and beatings ranging from the frightening to the fatal. As we see with the Muslim Ban executive order—which in Trumpian terms is of course NOT a Muslim Ban even though it mainly affects Muslims and is the fulfillment of a campaign promise Trump made for months—Trump is obviously going to use “national security” as the justification for all manner of oppressive actions toward ethnic and religious minorities and any and all who dare to criticize or oppose him. I fear that we are living in a time not unlike 1930s Germany, where the storm cloud are gathering and the storm troopers are massing.
But I digress. There is much to say about the actions of the Trump regime and what we can and must do to fight back against them, but my main point today is to muse on how we must be careful to not let the constant din and doom of Trump and his minions so exhaust and deplete us that we are unable to do anything besides reflecting the darkness and dishonesty that is now emanating from the White House like radiation from Chernobyl. We need sources of solace and comfort, reassurance and inspiration. Different people will seek out different points of refuge and recharging. For me, this means turning toward Paganism.
As my strongest affinity is for the Norse (Germanic) Pagan traditions of Scandinavia and Iceland, I look there first. I see first of all that the world of the Norse myths is a world of uncertainty, struggle and often great sorrow. It is one in which the god of wisdom and knowledge is tortured, first gaining wisdom in a painful, shamanistic self-sacrifice, second, seeing his own son killed and being unable to help him, third, preparing to lead the gods in battle against gigantic forces of destruction, all the time knowing, owing to his power of foresight, that his side is going to lose, despite their best and most valiant efforts, and the world is going to be ruined and burnt. We are told in the Eddic poem Voluspá that in the end, or rather, after the end, after all has been destroyed, there is the possibility that the world will re-emerge, and that the gods too will be restored; or maybe not.
Relating this to our own situation, I see that we who seek knowledge and wisdom in difficult times should not be surprised to find ourselves feeling tortured, psychologically speaking, when we see our society electing a dangerously ignorant, rage-driven buffoon who unleashes a maelstrom of chaos, confusion and brutality, cheered on by equally ignorant and rage-driven hordes. Obviously, this mental torture could even become a physical experience, should we internalize our anxiety and sorrow to where it causes bodily ailments like hypertension, ulcers, strokes or heart attacks. It could also become a physical reality if the Trump regime decides that “national security” requires the interrogation, detention, and/or public shaming of regime opponents, echoing the “Red Scare” tribunals and blacklists of the 1950s.
I also think of Yggdrasil, the “World Tree” in Norse mythology, which supports and connects all worlds but itself suffers daily from being continually gnawed and damaged by various beings who come to feed on its branches and shoots. This reminds me of how in our modern world, the kinds of institutional systems that support and connect the world and provide succor and aid to many are under constant threat from the right-wingers like Trump, Pence and Ryan who seek to cut off the branches of government and let the tree of international cooperation wither, so that all will be left to fend for themselves, the weak and poor having no recourse, the wealthy and powerful feeling no responsibility, and institutional supports that make life better for the disadvantaged and lessen animosity and inequality between the peoples of the world, degraded if not dismantled. I would not doubt that right-wing Pagans have different interpretations, perhaps viewing Norse mythology through the lens of Ayn Rand and thinking of the tree as the society of the "maker" elite whose wonderful works and wealth are unfairly drained and diminished by the parasitic class of unproductive "takers," the world's underclass, regarded here as the architects of their own infirmity through their laziness, stupidity and "poor choices," with Ragnarök as the necessary destruction of an evil, socialistic world order that caters to the demented underclass rather than their majestic overlords. Myths, like any texts, are of course open to interpretation, and I can only say that mine is the one that makes sense to me and meshes with my values and concerns. I would hope it resonates with some of you as well.
I feel a special connection to trees. Whenever I see them, they comfort me and seem pillars of natural health and vitality, rooted deep, reaching high, providing shade and shelter for all living beings, free of charge. I always lament when I see trees harmed or cut down when there seems no urgent necessity. The status of trees seems to me a bellwether of the state of society. A society that values trees and greenery, and does not feel the need to mow down trees to create a blankly utilitarian landscape, is a healthier, saner one, in my view, than that which sees trees as a nuisance and would prefer dead concrete or an artificially perfect, chemical-drenched green lawn.
The plight of the World Tree is reflected in so many situations that one sees everywhere, everyday, above all the horrendous threat to the world's weather systems posed by climate change and global warming, which echoes the disturbance of nature said to presage the final destruction in the prophecy of the Voluspá. The Tree suffers much but still sustains us all, and I think this is the right way to think of one's moral duty in society in troubled times such as ours. We may have to suffer with and from people whose ideas and intentions seem ill-informed, distorted, destructive and hateful, but we must never forget to support and sustain human AND humane society and the health and well-being of the natural order which in turn gives us our health and well-being. Like Odin, we must seek wisdom, even if the quest is torturous and painful, and we must muster all our strength, intelligence and courage, even if we sense that the forces arrayed against us are truly ferocious and horrifically powerful.
The ambiguous ending of the Ragnarök tale in Voluspá gives room for hope that the powers of destruction, whether Frost-Giants, Fire-Demons, or Fascistic American Presidents, will not prevail forever. Their day will pass and a new day will dawn. We just have to hold on as best we can and make sure that the things we hold in our hearts as true and valuable and life-enhancing are not forgotten or erased, so that they may rise up as beacons of hope after the floodwaters of darkness subside. Like the gods in Voluspá, we must keep in mind that while our own time is limited, the world will go on, and we should dedicate ourselves to giving what we can to make that future world better than the one that we now see engulfed in flames. Pagans tend to look to the past, to enjoy reliving and reviving traditions of many centuries ago, but we should not forget that those traditions also looked to the future. The Vikings didn't stay at home and remain passive when times were hard. They went out and created a new world, reaching toward the future.
The hour of Trump will pass. Remember that, and don't let him drag you down into his angry darkness. Find peace and courage in nature, which endures much, but always regenerates.... eventually. Even Chernobyl, site of one of the world's worst environmental calamities, has green plants growing and animals roaming.
When his son Baldur was dead and his body laid out for his cremation, Odin bent down to his corpse and whispered something into his ear. According to the myths, no one knows what it was that the All-Father said. As there would seem little point in speaking to someone truly dead and departed, it may be that Odin knew something about the future, a future in which Baldur--and the world--would be revived, as is indeed suggested in the final lines of Voluspá.
I like that idea just now.... Something beyond the darkness.
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Saturday, February 11, 2017
Saturday, May 3, 2014
The Rites of Spring, Then and Now
Sacrifice and Revolution...are these the Rites of Spring?
I was listening tonight to a radio program featuring a discussion of Stravinsky's composition "The Rites of Spring," a ballet inspired by Slavic Paganism and the notion of human sacrifice. The music and dancing in "The Rites" were so radical, so jarring, so unlike anything that had gone before in European classical music that this ballet actually caused riots in Paris when it was first performed in 1913. The discussion I listened to was on Chris Lydon's Boston NPR program "Open Source," which replayed a discussion of Stravinsky from the year 2000 on "The Connection," the program Lydon hosted on WBUR at that time. You can hear it at http://radioopensource.org/rite-of-spring-revival .
I am moved to reflect upon sacrifice, spring and revolution. We are just a few days in from May Day, once a worldwide day of tribute to workers and socialism, and more recently, a date on the calendar when modern-day Pagans often celebrate Beltane or other "rites of spring." In Stravinsky's vision, the Rites of Spring means the selection of a young maiden to be offered in human sacrifice in order to bring on the life-giving renewal of spring. The maiden is then driven to dance until she dies, which the frantic, driving music of the composition renders both hypnotic and frightening. Stravinsky's, and not only Stravinsky's view of sacrifice is that it is a very basic spiritual mystery, a primal bargain in which death pays for life, in which something must be given, wasted, killed, destroyed--sacrificed--by one, or by some, so that new abundance can be obtained for the many, or even for all of us. There is a similar logic in Christ's crucifixion and in Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son Isaac in the Old Testament.
In Norse myth, the world itself is created by the sacrificial killing and dismemberment of the primal being Ymir, and wisdom, poetry, writing and more are made possible for mankind by Odin's agonizing self-sacrifice on the world tree Yggdrasil. The apocalyptic vision of the end of the world in the poem Voluspa is also in a sense a story of sacrifice, as the destruction of the existing world is the prelude to the revitalization and re-creation of the world, rising up from the depths of the ocean, "fresh and green."
With our retrospective knowledge of what would happen in Europe and Russia in the years immediately following the debut of the "Rites of Spring," Stravinsky's ballet now seems not only a powerful reflection on sacrifice and death, but an artistic prophecy of the huge changes about to occur in Europe through WW I and the Russian Revolution. I find its message still entirely relevant, still full of jarring, even frightening resonance, in our own time. Our society has become dominated by a corporate and economic elite as corrupt, self-serving and unresponsive to human needs and aspirations as was the Tsarist regime of Stravinsky's time. Are we perhaps building up to the point when a revolution--a massive, horrific, collective sacrifice--is again required to make this society a more promising place for all of its citizens, not just a privileged elite? Will we need to rise up and accept the necessity of risk, loss, ruin, danger, and even death, to break the death-grip of the corporate oligarchy that now controls the parameters of our lives?
It is a tired refrain of American political thought that in a democracy such as ours, we must work through the political system, with all its flaws and contradictions, to achieve improvements in society, and that we should accept the reality that change comes slowly, and may take many generations. There is no need for drastic action, so this thinking goes, no reason to imagine anything as violent and radical as a revolution. America had a revolution once, it is true, but that was long ago, and we now have a constitutional democracy designed to accommodate public demands and to foster change and adjustments in our society, however slowly. All things in good time, you see.
Stravinsky's "Rites of Spring" reminds us of other, darker chords that can be played on the strings of the collective social orchestra. We are not in a time of social and political progress. The system is not working, or if it is, it is only working for those with massive financial power to bring about the results that they desire. Thus, when we have a financial Ragnarok as in 2008, it is only the oligarchic elite that gets much help from the government that is supposed to be "by the people, of the people, and for the people." Thus, when the world is threatened by massive climate disruption, when the icecaps are melting and increasingly violent storms and droughts rock one country after another, the carbon fuel industry is able to manipulate the media and cloud the public discourse in the United States to such a degree that most people doubt the need for any decisive action, and the profits of the carbon companies go up and up and up, just like the earth's temperature, with all the great danger that entails. Whatever happens in our world now is assimilated, adapted and repackaged by the forces of international finance and corporate power into a way for them to gather greater wealth and influence. What chance do the rest of us have?
In our world of dazzling, digital distractions, where our concerns about pressing social and political issues and our desires for real and meaningful change can be so easily dissipated, neutered and anesthetized by ever-proliferating forms of mind-crippling entertainment, it is hard to imagine a massive uprising such as the French, Russian or American revolutions. Furthermore, in a world where the economy has been transformed into an ever-more competitive, ever-less supportive, ever-more frightening zone of total insecurity for the vast majority of wage-earners, more and more of whom fear that at any moment they might be replaced by the latest "labor-saving" technology, which offers vast profits to the corporate and financial elite and the prospect of unemployment or progressively lower-wage work to many, most people are rightfully terrified to embark on any course of action that could endanger what little economic and occupational security they have managed to hold onto against the powerful techno-capital forces rumbling in the background like Tyrannosaurus Rex monsters looking to devour any and every creature that they can force into their perpetually ravenous mouths.
And yet... and yet, the brutal lesson of history, and of the "Rites of Spring," is that there can be no real spring, no true renewal, no large-scale social progress, without sacrifice and loss. The time may come when people will rise up to demand this, and be willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the welfare of future generations. It is my hope that as the threat of such uprising and revolution begins to take on shape and form and momentum, as began to happen with the "Occupy Wall Street" protests of 2011 and 2012, that the people with great power in government and the corporate and financial sectors will finally realize t the need for a thorough renegotiation of the basic social contract, and then our society can be renewed on a better basis for all. But if they are unable or unwilling to accept the need for such change... if they are so blinded by their own narcissism and the delusional belief that they have a right to perpetuate the order that is of such service to them and such disservice to others... then all bets are off, and the "Rites of Spring" may again need to be performed.
I was listening tonight to a radio program featuring a discussion of Stravinsky's composition "The Rites of Spring," a ballet inspired by Slavic Paganism and the notion of human sacrifice. The music and dancing in "The Rites" were so radical, so jarring, so unlike anything that had gone before in European classical music that this ballet actually caused riots in Paris when it was first performed in 1913. The discussion I listened to was on Chris Lydon's Boston NPR program "Open Source," which replayed a discussion of Stravinsky from the year 2000 on "The Connection," the program Lydon hosted on WBUR at that time. You can hear it at http://radioopensource.org/rite-of-spring-revival .
I am moved to reflect upon sacrifice, spring and revolution. We are just a few days in from May Day, once a worldwide day of tribute to workers and socialism, and more recently, a date on the calendar when modern-day Pagans often celebrate Beltane or other "rites of spring." In Stravinsky's vision, the Rites of Spring means the selection of a young maiden to be offered in human sacrifice in order to bring on the life-giving renewal of spring. The maiden is then driven to dance until she dies, which the frantic, driving music of the composition renders both hypnotic and frightening. Stravinsky's, and not only Stravinsky's view of sacrifice is that it is a very basic spiritual mystery, a primal bargain in which death pays for life, in which something must be given, wasted, killed, destroyed--sacrificed--by one, or by some, so that new abundance can be obtained for the many, or even for all of us. There is a similar logic in Christ's crucifixion and in Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son Isaac in the Old Testament.
In Norse myth, the world itself is created by the sacrificial killing and dismemberment of the primal being Ymir, and wisdom, poetry, writing and more are made possible for mankind by Odin's agonizing self-sacrifice on the world tree Yggdrasil. The apocalyptic vision of the end of the world in the poem Voluspa is also in a sense a story of sacrifice, as the destruction of the existing world is the prelude to the revitalization and re-creation of the world, rising up from the depths of the ocean, "fresh and green."
With our retrospective knowledge of what would happen in Europe and Russia in the years immediately following the debut of the "Rites of Spring," Stravinsky's ballet now seems not only a powerful reflection on sacrifice and death, but an artistic prophecy of the huge changes about to occur in Europe through WW I and the Russian Revolution. I find its message still entirely relevant, still full of jarring, even frightening resonance, in our own time. Our society has become dominated by a corporate and economic elite as corrupt, self-serving and unresponsive to human needs and aspirations as was the Tsarist regime of Stravinsky's time. Are we perhaps building up to the point when a revolution--a massive, horrific, collective sacrifice--is again required to make this society a more promising place for all of its citizens, not just a privileged elite? Will we need to rise up and accept the necessity of risk, loss, ruin, danger, and even death, to break the death-grip of the corporate oligarchy that now controls the parameters of our lives?
It is a tired refrain of American political thought that in a democracy such as ours, we must work through the political system, with all its flaws and contradictions, to achieve improvements in society, and that we should accept the reality that change comes slowly, and may take many generations. There is no need for drastic action, so this thinking goes, no reason to imagine anything as violent and radical as a revolution. America had a revolution once, it is true, but that was long ago, and we now have a constitutional democracy designed to accommodate public demands and to foster change and adjustments in our society, however slowly. All things in good time, you see.
Stravinsky's "Rites of Spring" reminds us of other, darker chords that can be played on the strings of the collective social orchestra. We are not in a time of social and political progress. The system is not working, or if it is, it is only working for those with massive financial power to bring about the results that they desire. Thus, when we have a financial Ragnarok as in 2008, it is only the oligarchic elite that gets much help from the government that is supposed to be "by the people, of the people, and for the people." Thus, when the world is threatened by massive climate disruption, when the icecaps are melting and increasingly violent storms and droughts rock one country after another, the carbon fuel industry is able to manipulate the media and cloud the public discourse in the United States to such a degree that most people doubt the need for any decisive action, and the profits of the carbon companies go up and up and up, just like the earth's temperature, with all the great danger that entails. Whatever happens in our world now is assimilated, adapted and repackaged by the forces of international finance and corporate power into a way for them to gather greater wealth and influence. What chance do the rest of us have?
In our world of dazzling, digital distractions, where our concerns about pressing social and political issues and our desires for real and meaningful change can be so easily dissipated, neutered and anesthetized by ever-proliferating forms of mind-crippling entertainment, it is hard to imagine a massive uprising such as the French, Russian or American revolutions. Furthermore, in a world where the economy has been transformed into an ever-more competitive, ever-less supportive, ever-more frightening zone of total insecurity for the vast majority of wage-earners, more and more of whom fear that at any moment they might be replaced by the latest "labor-saving" technology, which offers vast profits to the corporate and financial elite and the prospect of unemployment or progressively lower-wage work to many, most people are rightfully terrified to embark on any course of action that could endanger what little economic and occupational security they have managed to hold onto against the powerful techno-capital forces rumbling in the background like Tyrannosaurus Rex monsters looking to devour any and every creature that they can force into their perpetually ravenous mouths.
And yet... and yet, the brutal lesson of history, and of the "Rites of Spring," is that there can be no real spring, no true renewal, no large-scale social progress, without sacrifice and loss. The time may come when people will rise up to demand this, and be willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the welfare of future generations. It is my hope that as the threat of such uprising and revolution begins to take on shape and form and momentum, as began to happen with the "Occupy Wall Street" protests of 2011 and 2012, that the people with great power in government and the corporate and financial sectors will finally realize t the need for a thorough renegotiation of the basic social contract, and then our society can be renewed on a better basis for all. But if they are unable or unwilling to accept the need for such change... if they are so blinded by their own narcissism and the delusional belief that they have a right to perpetuate the order that is of such service to them and such disservice to others... then all bets are off, and the "Rites of Spring" may again need to be performed.
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Fighting the Darkness
This seems to me such a dark time in America, with a darkness that is only growing. At every turn, the forces of conservatism, inequality and oligarchy are racking up victories, with little or no or only the most pale and weak-kneed opposition from the more "liberal" or socially progressive voices in our political structure. Though some see rays of hope in such accomplishments as the increasing acceptance of the right of homosexuals to enter into marriage, I see this as only a very small drop in the bucket when we consider the larger problems of stagnant wages for the many and ever-expanding fortunes for the few, the increasing dominance of the wealthy elite and large corporations in many areas of our life. Even the supposedly ultra-liberal cable news network MSNBC runs the self-congratulatory and pro-fracking advertisements of the carbon fuel industry, and the supposedly liberal New York Times increasingly caters to the Wall Street-financial services crowd that now dominates New York City as well as the American economy.
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the largest international body of climate scientists in the world, released a new report on March 31st detailing how the climate is already changing with catastrophic effect, and how the dangers and crises now occurring will only be magnified if the world is unwilling to take action. As an educator, I see the trend toward increasingly standardized and regulated education only gaining strength, as influential figures from the President on down seem to be abandoning the ideals of liberal arts education in favor of increasingly vocational, job skills oriented education. When people are no longer allowed to think freely and openly, to freely explore the riches of cultural heritage and to freely experiment with ideas and activities that are freed from the stifling grip of monetary evaluation, but when the education system only trains the bulk of people to perform the tasks and functions deemed valuable by the high priests of the high-tech companies and the corporate economy, an economy organized around the maximization of corporate profits and stock market dividends, not the fulfillment of human needs, I shudder to think of the cold, heartless, fearful, high-tech prison of a society that we are building for ourselves, digital brick by dividend brick. Profits will increase but human freedom and happiness? I doubt it.
I am starting to reach the conclusion that others before me have, a conclusion that I have always resisted; the feeling that there may be no hope for saving America from its drift and decline. I actually sympathize to some extent with the right-wingers and Tea Partiers who range and rant about our country going wrong; I agree that our society is sick, but I disagree with them about the nature of the malady and the treatment to be administered. Many on the right seem to think that the root of the problem is Big Bad Government; I disagree completely. I would grant that our government can do stupid things, that some policies, regulations and programs may be misguided and counterproductive, but that calls for fixing and improving the policies, regulations and programs, not abolishing them all in favor of an unregulated libertarian utopia. I think that vision, if ever achieved, would only result in a dog-eat-dog, every-gun-for-himself, zero compassion dystopia. I see the problem lying in the power of large corporate business interests to manipulate everything to their advantage, without caring enough about the suffering of the poor or the desecration of the planet. If corporations were able to function as good public citizens and be effective stewards of society and the environment, I would be all in favor of total free market capitalism, but I do not see that being the case at all.
Without pressure from the government with its pesky rules, regulations, policies and taxation, many companies and wealthy individuals would do nothing for the benefit of others or of the world in general, but only seek to further enrich themselves and increase their plunder and power. That's what happened in such periods of economic "freedom" as the "robber baron" era of the late 1800s, in the Roaring Twenties, and in our recent period of financial deregulation and financial collapse. You may have noticed that since the bleakest days of the 2008 downturn, the stock market has recovered, big banks and financial companies are running up great profits, but many people are now working for lower wages than before the crash, many others cannot find work at all, and many people have lost their homes and had their lives ruined. In this case, the government functioned effectively to rescue the financial elite, but not the rest of us. What I conclude from that is not that we need to abolish the government, but need to radically reform it to make it more responsive to human needs. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court's ruling in the McCutcheon case this week will only make our politicians more dependent on big-money, fat-cat donors, so the situation is not likely to improve anytime soon.
I do see a ray of hope in my little corner of the Pagan world. Recent communications with a number of Norse Pagans in America have again demonstrated that I am not alone in wishing to develop a new form of American Asatru that would be politically progressive, environmentally concerned, anti-racist, anti-military, and pro-social justice. I think there are enough of us to do it. So, please do get in touch with me if you are on this wavelength. Send me a message to this blog including your email address, and note that you do NOT want this published on the blog. I will contact you off-blog and we can start networking, sharing ideas and planning. This may be a dark time, but we can do our best to be a source of light and vision, love for the earth and caring for humanity--ALL humanity and ALL the earth. A universal Paganism based in Norse traditions but not limited to them. If this resonates with you, please communicate with me.
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the largest international body of climate scientists in the world, released a new report on March 31st detailing how the climate is already changing with catastrophic effect, and how the dangers and crises now occurring will only be magnified if the world is unwilling to take action. As an educator, I see the trend toward increasingly standardized and regulated education only gaining strength, as influential figures from the President on down seem to be abandoning the ideals of liberal arts education in favor of increasingly vocational, job skills oriented education. When people are no longer allowed to think freely and openly, to freely explore the riches of cultural heritage and to freely experiment with ideas and activities that are freed from the stifling grip of monetary evaluation, but when the education system only trains the bulk of people to perform the tasks and functions deemed valuable by the high priests of the high-tech companies and the corporate economy, an economy organized around the maximization of corporate profits and stock market dividends, not the fulfillment of human needs, I shudder to think of the cold, heartless, fearful, high-tech prison of a society that we are building for ourselves, digital brick by dividend brick. Profits will increase but human freedom and happiness? I doubt it.
I am starting to reach the conclusion that others before me have, a conclusion that I have always resisted; the feeling that there may be no hope for saving America from its drift and decline. I actually sympathize to some extent with the right-wingers and Tea Partiers who range and rant about our country going wrong; I agree that our society is sick, but I disagree with them about the nature of the malady and the treatment to be administered. Many on the right seem to think that the root of the problem is Big Bad Government; I disagree completely. I would grant that our government can do stupid things, that some policies, regulations and programs may be misguided and counterproductive, but that calls for fixing and improving the policies, regulations and programs, not abolishing them all in favor of an unregulated libertarian utopia. I think that vision, if ever achieved, would only result in a dog-eat-dog, every-gun-for-himself, zero compassion dystopia. I see the problem lying in the power of large corporate business interests to manipulate everything to their advantage, without caring enough about the suffering of the poor or the desecration of the planet. If corporations were able to function as good public citizens and be effective stewards of society and the environment, I would be all in favor of total free market capitalism, but I do not see that being the case at all.
Without pressure from the government with its pesky rules, regulations, policies and taxation, many companies and wealthy individuals would do nothing for the benefit of others or of the world in general, but only seek to further enrich themselves and increase their plunder and power. That's what happened in such periods of economic "freedom" as the "robber baron" era of the late 1800s, in the Roaring Twenties, and in our recent period of financial deregulation and financial collapse. You may have noticed that since the bleakest days of the 2008 downturn, the stock market has recovered, big banks and financial companies are running up great profits, but many people are now working for lower wages than before the crash, many others cannot find work at all, and many people have lost their homes and had their lives ruined. In this case, the government functioned effectively to rescue the financial elite, but not the rest of us. What I conclude from that is not that we need to abolish the government, but need to radically reform it to make it more responsive to human needs. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court's ruling in the McCutcheon case this week will only make our politicians more dependent on big-money, fat-cat donors, so the situation is not likely to improve anytime soon.
I do see a ray of hope in my little corner of the Pagan world. Recent communications with a number of Norse Pagans in America have again demonstrated that I am not alone in wishing to develop a new form of American Asatru that would be politically progressive, environmentally concerned, anti-racist, anti-military, and pro-social justice. I think there are enough of us to do it. So, please do get in touch with me if you are on this wavelength. Send me a message to this blog including your email address, and note that you do NOT want this published on the blog. I will contact you off-blog and we can start networking, sharing ideas and planning. This may be a dark time, but we can do our best to be a source of light and vision, love for the earth and caring for humanity--ALL humanity and ALL the earth. A universal Paganism based in Norse traditions but not limited to them. If this resonates with you, please communicate with me.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Death by Corporation
I have recently been thinking about how so many of the world's most serious problems today are either caused or made worse by the powerful business entities known as corporations. It is not just that large corporations engage in practices and sell products that may be harmful in various ways. It is also the case that such corporations are also able and willing to use their considerable economic power, media presence and political clout to block or confuse any efforts to address serious problems from global warming to childhood obesity to gun violence, to name just a few.
Global warming. It is a serious threat to humanity's future. Warmer temperatures are causing more and more extreme weather with damaging, even lethal consequences, with the "superstorm" Hurricane Sandy on the East Coast of the USA in October of 2012 and the raging fires caused by excessive heat and drought in the New South Wales region of Australia in January of 2013 as two recent examples of the environmental juggernaut that is bearing down on us. In the judgment of most scientific authorities, we have to alter our patterns of energy consumption, in particular our dependence on carbon-based fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas, in order to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases that are building up in the atmosphere and triggering a warming of the climate that is in turn warming the ocean waters, that in turn cause more warmth and moisture to rise into the atmosphere and produce the storms, droughts and other weather effects causing increasing damage to life, land and property. However, the carbon fuel industries have poured money into an intensive media campaign, particularly prominent on right-wing news outlets like FOX News but also finding its way to other media channels as well, to discredit the very idea of global warming or climate change, convincing a good many Americans, and no doubt others elsewhere, that either global warming is a kind of scientific hoax, or, that there is no clear proof that it is the result of human activity,and no proof that human activity can halt it. Therefore, it would be foolish to undertake actions such as reducing the burning of fossil fuels, since such actions would be disruptive to the world economy without any certain environmental benefit. This has confused many people into a state of apathy. The Victors: corporations that profit from fossil fuel production and consumption. The Losers: all of us who want the planet to remain livable. The reason: the incredible hunger for profit that blots out all other concerns and values is proving capable of drowning out the world's scientists and visionary leaders concerned about the future.
Childhood obesity. This is an increasingly common condition in the USA and is growing in the UK and elsewhere too. It is not just that young people are becoming more massive in their size. They are also manifesting diseases such as diabetes that threaten their health and longevity. Scientists are not clear on all the causes for this situation, and there may well be many from lack of exercise due to more sedentary lifestyles and pastimes to the ingestion of growth hormones given to farm animals and ending up in American food to overeating of "junk food" filled with fat, carbohydrates, salt, sugar and/or corn syrup, and chemicals that add appealing color and addictive taste. No one objects to the government encouraging young people to exercise more, such as First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign, but when Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of NYC, made an effort to restrict the bottle and/or serving size of sugary drinks such as soda, there was a huge outcry from the soda and beverage industry,and a media campaign accusing the mayor of robbing Americans of their "freedom," presumably the all-important freedom to eat and drink non-nutritious foods and beverages and develop heart disease and diabetes. Once again, corporate greed attempts to override human interests.
Gun violence. As I have addressed this recently, I will not rehash the whole discussion, but just focus on the corporate profit dimension. Guns and gun-related paraphernalia are big business in the USA, highly profitable indeed. The main pro-gun lobbying organization, the NRA, is largely funded by gun manufacturers. With so much money at stake, the purveyors and manufacturers of guns are definitely not going to let a mere public outcry by the majority of the people of the nation over problems of gun violence get in the way of the profits that their stockholders feast upon. And once again, we find a sophisticated media campaign funded by gun manufacturers and amplified by right-wing media that any reduction or restriction of guns in America is an assault on fundamental freedoms and evidence of a totalitarian government in the making that is best resisted by --you guessed it-- guns. So go out now, all you freedom-loving folk, and prepare for war against the big bad government that thinks of nothing else but how to oppress and enslave you. I keep wondering when someone will start championing the right to bear nuclear arms. If possessing personal weapons without restriction of ANY sort is so important, then why not allow patriotic Americans to have their own nuclear bombs and missile launch systems? Wouldn't that be the ultimate demonstration of the most important American "freedom?"
The defense of the "right" to eat and drink unhealthy foods and the "right" to own and use a limitless number of guns is almost identical to the way that tobacco companies used to champion the "right" to smoke. The skillful effort to confuse and discredit the overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming/climate change is a planet-threatening problem RIGHT NOW is also reminiscent of how the tobacco companies argued for decades that there was no good scientific evidence that smoking was harmful to human health, even though the companies themselves had done their own research proving that point!
We cannot trust corporations to watch out for our health or the future well-being of our planet. Corporations just want us to buy buy buy whatever crap they are producing, no matter what the cost to health, to society, to the environment,and they will do everything in their power to prevent anyone from interfering with their business activities. As a college teacher, I am sad to see how many of my students seem to believe that the American style corporate economy, the so-called "free enterprise/free market" system, is not only the best economic system, but indeed the ONLY one that is possible. This is the result of the past 30 years of American politics in which the Reaganite vision of government-BAD, businessmen-GOOD; regulations-BAD, profits-GOOD; compassion for others-STUPID, selfishness and individualism-SMART has been dominant. For the sake of the planet and ourselves, I pray that this paradigm is now losing its allure and that we will be able to have a different kind of conversation about such issues as mentioned above. One thing is for sure, every step of the way, powerful corporations will fight like hell to prevent any changes that might deprive them of their all-important profits. They do not care about the future, so we are going to have to care twice as hard.
In Snorri Sturluson's version of the myth of Baldur, his death causes widespread sadness, and his mother lets it be known that if all beings will weep for him and show their love, he will be returned to life. The whole range of living beings are ready to cooperate, but only one creature refuses, a female giant that is actually the mischievous god Loki in disguise. She says, "Let Hel (death) keep what she has...I will not weep for Odin's son!" This is the kind of hard-heartedness that we can expect from the giant corporations of our day. When we tell them the children are being killed by an oversupply of dangerous weapons and unhealthy food, that the oceans are rising and destructive storms are washing away our shores and threatening our cities, and when we urge them that we have to change the way they do business so that future generations can walk on the earth in safety and enjoy the light of the sun, the blue of the sky and the greenness of the earth, they are not going to want to listen. We have to keep at it until they do. Today's corporations are caught in a web of evil that they have spun for themselves, but the corporations are at bottom human institutions, and we must strive to reawaken that glimmer of humanity that still exists somewhere inside the armies of lawyers, the billion dollar marketing teams, the disinformation campaigns, the corporate boardrooms obsessed with financial figures.
Above all, we have to reject the idea that profits are all that matter. People are more important than profits. Nature is more important than profits. The well-being of us all and our planet is more important than profits. We need new economic arrangements that honor our deepest, most sustaining and inspiring values and reject the false idols of narrow-minded greed and profit. We need to revisit the very idea of what corporations are for, who they should serve, and whether they should bear more responsibility to society and nature in a broader sense, and not just be answerable to their shareholders and the stock market.
As a Pagan, I can easily relate this to the Pagan love of nature, but there is in fact no religion I know of that tells people they should seek to destroy each other and all in nature for the sake of gold and greed.
Global warming. It is a serious threat to humanity's future. Warmer temperatures are causing more and more extreme weather with damaging, even lethal consequences, with the "superstorm" Hurricane Sandy on the East Coast of the USA in October of 2012 and the raging fires caused by excessive heat and drought in the New South Wales region of Australia in January of 2013 as two recent examples of the environmental juggernaut that is bearing down on us. In the judgment of most scientific authorities, we have to alter our patterns of energy consumption, in particular our dependence on carbon-based fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas, in order to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases that are building up in the atmosphere and triggering a warming of the climate that is in turn warming the ocean waters, that in turn cause more warmth and moisture to rise into the atmosphere and produce the storms, droughts and other weather effects causing increasing damage to life, land and property. However, the carbon fuel industries have poured money into an intensive media campaign, particularly prominent on right-wing news outlets like FOX News but also finding its way to other media channels as well, to discredit the very idea of global warming or climate change, convincing a good many Americans, and no doubt others elsewhere, that either global warming is a kind of scientific hoax, or, that there is no clear proof that it is the result of human activity,and no proof that human activity can halt it. Therefore, it would be foolish to undertake actions such as reducing the burning of fossil fuels, since such actions would be disruptive to the world economy without any certain environmental benefit. This has confused many people into a state of apathy. The Victors: corporations that profit from fossil fuel production and consumption. The Losers: all of us who want the planet to remain livable. The reason: the incredible hunger for profit that blots out all other concerns and values is proving capable of drowning out the world's scientists and visionary leaders concerned about the future.
Childhood obesity. This is an increasingly common condition in the USA and is growing in the UK and elsewhere too. It is not just that young people are becoming more massive in their size. They are also manifesting diseases such as diabetes that threaten their health and longevity. Scientists are not clear on all the causes for this situation, and there may well be many from lack of exercise due to more sedentary lifestyles and pastimes to the ingestion of growth hormones given to farm animals and ending up in American food to overeating of "junk food" filled with fat, carbohydrates, salt, sugar and/or corn syrup, and chemicals that add appealing color and addictive taste. No one objects to the government encouraging young people to exercise more, such as First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign, but when Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of NYC, made an effort to restrict the bottle and/or serving size of sugary drinks such as soda, there was a huge outcry from the soda and beverage industry,and a media campaign accusing the mayor of robbing Americans of their "freedom," presumably the all-important freedom to eat and drink non-nutritious foods and beverages and develop heart disease and diabetes. Once again, corporate greed attempts to override human interests.
Gun violence. As I have addressed this recently, I will not rehash the whole discussion, but just focus on the corporate profit dimension. Guns and gun-related paraphernalia are big business in the USA, highly profitable indeed. The main pro-gun lobbying organization, the NRA, is largely funded by gun manufacturers. With so much money at stake, the purveyors and manufacturers of guns are definitely not going to let a mere public outcry by the majority of the people of the nation over problems of gun violence get in the way of the profits that their stockholders feast upon. And once again, we find a sophisticated media campaign funded by gun manufacturers and amplified by right-wing media that any reduction or restriction of guns in America is an assault on fundamental freedoms and evidence of a totalitarian government in the making that is best resisted by --you guessed it-- guns. So go out now, all you freedom-loving folk, and prepare for war against the big bad government that thinks of nothing else but how to oppress and enslave you. I keep wondering when someone will start championing the right to bear nuclear arms. If possessing personal weapons without restriction of ANY sort is so important, then why not allow patriotic Americans to have their own nuclear bombs and missile launch systems? Wouldn't that be the ultimate demonstration of the most important American "freedom?"
The defense of the "right" to eat and drink unhealthy foods and the "right" to own and use a limitless number of guns is almost identical to the way that tobacco companies used to champion the "right" to smoke. The skillful effort to confuse and discredit the overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming/climate change is a planet-threatening problem RIGHT NOW is also reminiscent of how the tobacco companies argued for decades that there was no good scientific evidence that smoking was harmful to human health, even though the companies themselves had done their own research proving that point!
We cannot trust corporations to watch out for our health or the future well-being of our planet. Corporations just want us to buy buy buy whatever crap they are producing, no matter what the cost to health, to society, to the environment,and they will do everything in their power to prevent anyone from interfering with their business activities. As a college teacher, I am sad to see how many of my students seem to believe that the American style corporate economy, the so-called "free enterprise/free market" system, is not only the best economic system, but indeed the ONLY one that is possible. This is the result of the past 30 years of American politics in which the Reaganite vision of government-BAD, businessmen-GOOD; regulations-BAD, profits-GOOD; compassion for others-STUPID, selfishness and individualism-SMART has been dominant. For the sake of the planet and ourselves, I pray that this paradigm is now losing its allure and that we will be able to have a different kind of conversation about such issues as mentioned above. One thing is for sure, every step of the way, powerful corporations will fight like hell to prevent any changes that might deprive them of their all-important profits. They do not care about the future, so we are going to have to care twice as hard.
In Snorri Sturluson's version of the myth of Baldur, his death causes widespread sadness, and his mother lets it be known that if all beings will weep for him and show their love, he will be returned to life. The whole range of living beings are ready to cooperate, but only one creature refuses, a female giant that is actually the mischievous god Loki in disguise. She says, "Let Hel (death) keep what she has...I will not weep for Odin's son!" This is the kind of hard-heartedness that we can expect from the giant corporations of our day. When we tell them the children are being killed by an oversupply of dangerous weapons and unhealthy food, that the oceans are rising and destructive storms are washing away our shores and threatening our cities, and when we urge them that we have to change the way they do business so that future generations can walk on the earth in safety and enjoy the light of the sun, the blue of the sky and the greenness of the earth, they are not going to want to listen. We have to keep at it until they do. Today's corporations are caught in a web of evil that they have spun for themselves, but the corporations are at bottom human institutions, and we must strive to reawaken that glimmer of humanity that still exists somewhere inside the armies of lawyers, the billion dollar marketing teams, the disinformation campaigns, the corporate boardrooms obsessed with financial figures.
Above all, we have to reject the idea that profits are all that matter. People are more important than profits. Nature is more important than profits. The well-being of us all and our planet is more important than profits. We need new economic arrangements that honor our deepest, most sustaining and inspiring values and reject the false idols of narrow-minded greed and profit. We need to revisit the very idea of what corporations are for, who they should serve, and whether they should bear more responsibility to society and nature in a broader sense, and not just be answerable to their shareholders and the stock market.
As a Pagan, I can easily relate this to the Pagan love of nature, but there is in fact no religion I know of that tells people they should seek to destroy each other and all in nature for the sake of gold and greed.
Monday, October 29, 2012
The Election and the Environment
Another autumn, another horrible storm bearing down on the USA, and just a week away from our 2012 presidential election. We are experiencing these destructive mega-storms with ever-increasing frequency. Just last year on almost the same date, a hurricane that came after many weeks of heavy rain did massive damage, including turning a street near by me into a river when the underground sewer exploded from an excess of water pounding through the pipes. The weather event unfolding today and expected to continue to howl and rage all this week, is truly a monster, called "Frankenstorm" by some, as it combines a hurricane with a couple of other weather fronts to create a huge storm system nearly 1000 miles wide, which means it will move very slowly through the region before it finally dissipates, and subject most of the US East Coast as well as areas well inland to a sustained beating by rain and wind that is sure to cause many people to lose electricity, if not their lives, and many homes, buildings, road and other structures to be severely damaged or even destroyed. Low-lying parts of New York City are already being evacuated, and if the water surge around coastal areas is as expected, major damage could be done to the NYC train and subway system, which could soon be sitting underwater.
This kind of extreme weather is exactly what all the scientific research about global warming has been predicting: more killer storms, ever more frequent, ever more immense, and ever more destructive. The storm bearing down on us today is much larger than the horrendous Katrina storm of 2005, which shows, I suppose, some kind of progress on the climate change issue, but progress in the wrong direction, in that we have succeeded in paving the way for even more destructive weather.
If the storm is half as devastating as some are predicting, one would hope--and pray--that this would be the wake-up call that America has been needing to begin taking serious measures to change our patterns of energy usage and production, in order to at least slow down our descent into a future of hellishly calamitous weather, if not begin to reverse it, but I am not confident that my country has the wisdom, judgment, collective will or long-term vision to step up to the task.
Looking at our ongoing presidential election campaign, I see little cause for confidence. Both candidates are refusing to raise the difficult questions that need to be raised about carbon-based fuels and our need to make a rapid transition to other forms of energy. How fast can we make a transition to cleaner energy sources? How much will it cost? What new structures will have to be created? Instead of speaking to any such concerns, both President Obama and his challenger, Governor Romney, are peddling the same moronic pablum about the need to pursue an "all of the above" energy strategy, meaning continuing to drill for oil and gas, including expanding the controversial, environmentally dubious practice of hydrofracture gas drilling which has been previously addressed on this blog; continuing to extract coal by all means possible, including blowing up mountaintops for coal, ruining the surrounding rivers and streams and kissing goodbye to some of our most cherished landscapes; continuing to press for new nuclear power plants, even after the hard lessons of the Fukushima meltdown of a year and a half ago, not to mention Chernobyl 1996; and also, last and perhaps least in the two candidates' schemes of things, continuing to develop newer, more sustainable energy sources, such as wind, solar and geothermal.
The main area of contention between the two has been over who is more supportive of the coal industry. That's right, COAL: the dirtiest, most polluting carbon-based fuel of all. To listen to Obama and Romney go at each other on this issue, each pointing out how the other has in the past taken measures to limit or turn away from coal production, you might think that the two men were running for King of Coal, not President of the United States. Both keep going on about "clean coal," which does not exist outside of coal industry propaganda. Coal is a dirty, polluting fuel, period, and its extraction wreaks havoc on the environment wherever it is done. The sooner we are done with coal, the better.
Obama is better than Romney on the environmental front, but not by much. Obama's administration did provide funding for weatherization, solar power and other "Green Energy" type businesses, as part of the 2009-10 "Stimulus" program, but has not done much in this area since, caving in to vociferous opposition by conservative Republicans who mock the very concepts of climate change and green energy. He has however advanced higher fuel economy standards for cars and put in place other environmental regulations. Rommey has followed his party in attacking Obama for supporting some green energy businesses that went under, such as the Solyndra, solar power panel company, but continues to claim that he is pro-green, arguing that what was wrong with Solyndra was putting public, taxpayer money at risk when all such new investment should be left to private investment companies.
A major problem with the Romney private investment approach is that it leaves our long-term energy and environmental future to the whims of short-term oriented capitalists and investment brokers, who are not concerned with the fate of the planet in 2100 and 3100, but only the profits to be made in the next few months or years. Romney also talks of rolling back environmental legislation that he characterizes, in official Republican party-line jargon, as "job-killing," painting the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, as a kind of demonic, cannibalistic force that must be stopped. Ironically, it was President Richard M. Nixon, a Republican, who created the EPA in the first place. That was back when Republicans were still capable of caring about the environment and did not yet view environmentalism as an anti-American conspiracy that they could profit from denouncing.
Sadly, both candidates were in the past far more environmentally aware and far more supportive of government action to combat climate change and global warming than they are today. While governor of Massachusetts, Romney made an appearance in front of a coal-burning power plant and stated the forthright position that he was in favor of shutting down the plant because "it kills" by virtue of the negative health effects of burning coal. Romney now completely rejects this stance. In a similarly breathtaking display of political expediency and environmental hypocrisy, the same Barack Obama who once spoke eloquently about the need to combat climate change and turn toward cleaner forms of energy now hardly ever mentions the word climate change, but has a lot of kind words for coal and hydrofracking.
Obama's betrayal is especially grievous because he was in a position, coming into office after the carbon-fuel based Bush-Cheney administration, to really chart a different energy and environmental course. He has, as noted, put in place regulations that will help create a cleaner environment over time, but Obama has displayed his characteristic timidity and political cowardice in failing to make a strong, loud, public case in favor of clean energy and a greener future. He has been too worried about reelection and so failed to use the presidency as a teaching-tool to educate the population and shape public opinion for the long-term struggles ahead. He took the coward's way out, and now fewer Americans believe that global warming is a real and pressing issue than did when Obama took office. By pursuing a kind of "stealth strategy" on environmental issues, quietly pushing regulations behind closed doors while for the most part keeping silent on the public stage, Obama has ceded ground to the anti-environmental, pro-carbon fuel forces that have swamped the media universe with pro-coal, pro-fracking propaganda, and cast doubt on the need for rapid and decisive action on energy and environmental issues.
So who's a liberal, environmentalist American Pagan to vote for, given this choice between two candidates who have each proven so craven and hypocritical on environmental issues? Well, taking into account other issues like women's health care, abortion rights, ending tax policy that favors the rich, reducing the size of our obese and bloated military, the future composition of the Supreme Court, and preservation of social programs that help the underprivileged, Obama is definitely the better choice, and is still marginally better than Romney on the environmental front, as he has, as stated, supported regulations that will be helpful in the long run. But either way, we will not yet have a President who clearly, boldly, publicly and forthrightly supports a new direction in energy policy for the USA, who is capable of turning away decisively from carbon-based fuels to aggressively promote less polluting energy forms like solar, wind and geothermal in order to preserve the health and well-being of the natural world for the sake of future generations. Voting day this year will be a sad day for environmentalists, regardless of who wins.
There is however another choice: the Green Party candidate Jill Stein for President. She has no chance of actually winning the election, but if the Greens make a stronger showing this year than in years past, it will put pressure on the other political parties to be more pro-environmental, and will also help the Green Party obtain government funding for future election campaigns. I therefore advise liberal, environmentalist Pagans to consider voting for Jill Stein as an alternative to President Obama. However, as the worst result by far would be for Romney to become President, as he is clearly beholden to the extreme right wing of his party, I would advise voters who share my concerns to look at the situation in the following manner.
If you are in a state where Obama is sure to win, such as New York, Massachusetts or California, then consider voting for Jill Stein. Obama will still win the state, but your vote will help promote the only political party currently offering a boldly pro-environmental direction. However, if you are in a state where the election is very close, such as Ohio, Florida or Nevada, I would suggest supporting Obama, not with great enthusiasm, but simply as the necessary expedient to prevent a total right-wing takeover of our system of government. Romney's foreign policy statements and advisers suggest he might well drag us into another Middle Eastern War, and this must absolutely be avoided.
So, if you are a liberal, a Pagan and concerned about the environment, I urge you to consider, depending on where you are, either voting Green or Democrat.
Beyond the election, I hope to see Pagans getting more involved in political causes, especially as regards the environment. As far as I know, reverence for the environment and the sacredness of nature is one of the unifying themes of ALL Paganism from Asatru to Romuva to Wicca. Hopefully we can all make more effort to protect this earth that we all love and value.
This kind of extreme weather is exactly what all the scientific research about global warming has been predicting: more killer storms, ever more frequent, ever more immense, and ever more destructive. The storm bearing down on us today is much larger than the horrendous Katrina storm of 2005, which shows, I suppose, some kind of progress on the climate change issue, but progress in the wrong direction, in that we have succeeded in paving the way for even more destructive weather.
If the storm is half as devastating as some are predicting, one would hope--and pray--that this would be the wake-up call that America has been needing to begin taking serious measures to change our patterns of energy usage and production, in order to at least slow down our descent into a future of hellishly calamitous weather, if not begin to reverse it, but I am not confident that my country has the wisdom, judgment, collective will or long-term vision to step up to the task.
Looking at our ongoing presidential election campaign, I see little cause for confidence. Both candidates are refusing to raise the difficult questions that need to be raised about carbon-based fuels and our need to make a rapid transition to other forms of energy. How fast can we make a transition to cleaner energy sources? How much will it cost? What new structures will have to be created? Instead of speaking to any such concerns, both President Obama and his challenger, Governor Romney, are peddling the same moronic pablum about the need to pursue an "all of the above" energy strategy, meaning continuing to drill for oil and gas, including expanding the controversial, environmentally dubious practice of hydrofracture gas drilling which has been previously addressed on this blog; continuing to extract coal by all means possible, including blowing up mountaintops for coal, ruining the surrounding rivers and streams and kissing goodbye to some of our most cherished landscapes; continuing to press for new nuclear power plants, even after the hard lessons of the Fukushima meltdown of a year and a half ago, not to mention Chernobyl 1996; and also, last and perhaps least in the two candidates' schemes of things, continuing to develop newer, more sustainable energy sources, such as wind, solar and geothermal.
The main area of contention between the two has been over who is more supportive of the coal industry. That's right, COAL: the dirtiest, most polluting carbon-based fuel of all. To listen to Obama and Romney go at each other on this issue, each pointing out how the other has in the past taken measures to limit or turn away from coal production, you might think that the two men were running for King of Coal, not President of the United States. Both keep going on about "clean coal," which does not exist outside of coal industry propaganda. Coal is a dirty, polluting fuel, period, and its extraction wreaks havoc on the environment wherever it is done. The sooner we are done with coal, the better.
Obama is better than Romney on the environmental front, but not by much. Obama's administration did provide funding for weatherization, solar power and other "Green Energy" type businesses, as part of the 2009-10 "Stimulus" program, but has not done much in this area since, caving in to vociferous opposition by conservative Republicans who mock the very concepts of climate change and green energy. He has however advanced higher fuel economy standards for cars and put in place other environmental regulations. Rommey has followed his party in attacking Obama for supporting some green energy businesses that went under, such as the Solyndra, solar power panel company, but continues to claim that he is pro-green, arguing that what was wrong with Solyndra was putting public, taxpayer money at risk when all such new investment should be left to private investment companies.
A major problem with the Romney private investment approach is that it leaves our long-term energy and environmental future to the whims of short-term oriented capitalists and investment brokers, who are not concerned with the fate of the planet in 2100 and 3100, but only the profits to be made in the next few months or years. Romney also talks of rolling back environmental legislation that he characterizes, in official Republican party-line jargon, as "job-killing," painting the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, as a kind of demonic, cannibalistic force that must be stopped. Ironically, it was President Richard M. Nixon, a Republican, who created the EPA in the first place. That was back when Republicans were still capable of caring about the environment and did not yet view environmentalism as an anti-American conspiracy that they could profit from denouncing.
Sadly, both candidates were in the past far more environmentally aware and far more supportive of government action to combat climate change and global warming than they are today. While governor of Massachusetts, Romney made an appearance in front of a coal-burning power plant and stated the forthright position that he was in favor of shutting down the plant because "it kills" by virtue of the negative health effects of burning coal. Romney now completely rejects this stance. In a similarly breathtaking display of political expediency and environmental hypocrisy, the same Barack Obama who once spoke eloquently about the need to combat climate change and turn toward cleaner forms of energy now hardly ever mentions the word climate change, but has a lot of kind words for coal and hydrofracking.
Obama's betrayal is especially grievous because he was in a position, coming into office after the carbon-fuel based Bush-Cheney administration, to really chart a different energy and environmental course. He has, as noted, put in place regulations that will help create a cleaner environment over time, but Obama has displayed his characteristic timidity and political cowardice in failing to make a strong, loud, public case in favor of clean energy and a greener future. He has been too worried about reelection and so failed to use the presidency as a teaching-tool to educate the population and shape public opinion for the long-term struggles ahead. He took the coward's way out, and now fewer Americans believe that global warming is a real and pressing issue than did when Obama took office. By pursuing a kind of "stealth strategy" on environmental issues, quietly pushing regulations behind closed doors while for the most part keeping silent on the public stage, Obama has ceded ground to the anti-environmental, pro-carbon fuel forces that have swamped the media universe with pro-coal, pro-fracking propaganda, and cast doubt on the need for rapid and decisive action on energy and environmental issues.
So who's a liberal, environmentalist American Pagan to vote for, given this choice between two candidates who have each proven so craven and hypocritical on environmental issues? Well, taking into account other issues like women's health care, abortion rights, ending tax policy that favors the rich, reducing the size of our obese and bloated military, the future composition of the Supreme Court, and preservation of social programs that help the underprivileged, Obama is definitely the better choice, and is still marginally better than Romney on the environmental front, as he has, as stated, supported regulations that will be helpful in the long run. But either way, we will not yet have a President who clearly, boldly, publicly and forthrightly supports a new direction in energy policy for the USA, who is capable of turning away decisively from carbon-based fuels to aggressively promote less polluting energy forms like solar, wind and geothermal in order to preserve the health and well-being of the natural world for the sake of future generations. Voting day this year will be a sad day for environmentalists, regardless of who wins.
There is however another choice: the Green Party candidate Jill Stein for President. She has no chance of actually winning the election, but if the Greens make a stronger showing this year than in years past, it will put pressure on the other political parties to be more pro-environmental, and will also help the Green Party obtain government funding for future election campaigns. I therefore advise liberal, environmentalist Pagans to consider voting for Jill Stein as an alternative to President Obama. However, as the worst result by far would be for Romney to become President, as he is clearly beholden to the extreme right wing of his party, I would advise voters who share my concerns to look at the situation in the following manner.
If you are in a state where Obama is sure to win, such as New York, Massachusetts or California, then consider voting for Jill Stein. Obama will still win the state, but your vote will help promote the only political party currently offering a boldly pro-environmental direction. However, if you are in a state where the election is very close, such as Ohio, Florida or Nevada, I would suggest supporting Obama, not with great enthusiasm, but simply as the necessary expedient to prevent a total right-wing takeover of our system of government. Romney's foreign policy statements and advisers suggest he might well drag us into another Middle Eastern War, and this must absolutely be avoided.
So, if you are a liberal, a Pagan and concerned about the environment, I urge you to consider, depending on where you are, either voting Green or Democrat.
Beyond the election, I hope to see Pagans getting more involved in political causes, especially as regards the environment. As far as I know, reverence for the environment and the sacredness of nature is one of the unifying themes of ALL Paganism from Asatru to Romuva to Wicca. Hopefully we can all make more effort to protect this earth that we all love and value.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Global Warring vs. Global Warming
The recent experience of destructive winds and catastrophic flooding brought by Hurricane Irene on her steady march up the Atlantic coast of the United States, which has washed away roads and bridges, crippled highways and rail lines across the region, and destroyed homes and businesses across the region, with New Jersey, New York and Vermont getting the worst of it and looking ahead to months, if not years, of recovery. This kind of massive flooding is exactly what has been predicted would occur as Global Warming sets in. Irene's unwelcome visit came two days after the six year anniversary of the Hurricane Katrine disaster, another extreme weather event which may be attributable to Global Warming, and about a week before the ten year anniversary of the 9/11/01 attacks, which launched America into two seemingly unending wars halfway around the world, with conflict now spreading to Pakistan and Yemen. Two different types of destructive events...which should we pay more heed to? Herein lies a tale of two perspectives, each of which carries with it different priorities and responsibilities.
The 9/11 attacks were a horrible shock to the national psyche, literally blowing away many Americans' sense of their country being a safe land far away from the roiling tensions in other parts of the world. About three thousand Americans died on the day of the attacks, and thousands more, including rescuers and bystanders, would die in months and years to come from illnesses brought about by exposure to toxic substances in the World Trade Center. A small portion of New York City was devastated and soon rebuilt, as was the section of the Pentagon damaged by the plane that headed for the capital, but the more lasting damage was to American psychology. Many people became terrified about the possibility of other terrorist attacks, and many remain in a state of hyper-vigilance, supportive of ANY measures that the government might take that promise to increase security. There was also an understandable desire for pure REVENGE.
The results have ranged from the curtailment of civil liberties in the USA, the acceptance of increased surveillance by our government against its own citizens in violation of time-honored American traditions of privacy and freedom from government interference, the acceptance of torture as a tool of military interrogation, in violation of international treaties, and the transformation of Guantanamo Bay into a prison camp outside of international law. The government of President Bush furthermore committed America to the invasion and occupation of first Afghanistan, then Iraq, with further use of military force in several other countries, the resulting death of thousands of our own soldiers and the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. The hunting down of terrorists like Osama bin Laden was the original focus of our international interventions, but it seems that the killing of bin Laden has brought no peace to the American psyche. As far as I can tell, people feel just as frightened as ever, and it seems that the so-called "War of Terror," which is already the longest war in American history, may become a perpetual process of continuing death and destruction--theirs or ours, either way, the show will go on, and the budget of the military will remain larger than that of any other nation on earth, giving vast profits to companies like Halliburton that provide services to the military and defense contractors that reap wonderful profits developing weapon systems. Americans may not feel safer, but the war will continue.
Will Americans ever feel safe again? There will obviously always be a threat of terrorist attacks, no matter what we do. Even top military brass like General Petraeus have conceded that military force alone can never provide complete security. There has to be a "winning of hearts and minds," to recycle the old Vietnam trope, to convince those ready to take up bombs against America that violence is not the best way to resolve their grievances. The American military and its NATO allies have tried to play the compassionate "good cop" (building roads, schools, hospitals)as well as the aggressive and punitive "bad cop" (blowing up buildings, killing those suspected of terrorist involvement, and terrorizing families and communities by breaking down doors in the the middle of night to search homes under suspicion and interrogate and intimidate the residents, sometimes brutalizing or killing those who dare to resist these searches and interrogations.) Many Afghans, Iraqis and Pakistanis are understandably resentful of our occupation of their countries and violation of their homes and communities, and that resentment could fuel a desire for revenge against the USA just as intense as Americans' rage on 9/11. There could well be an endless cycle of violence and attacks and counterattacks.
If you like, you could say that OUR attacks and invasions are reasonable and justifiable, and THEIR attacks are wrong and deserving of punishment and endless years of military occupation, but the thing is, after a point, if it all becomes a tit-for-tat situation of "get revenge at any cost," "stand up for your people and kill the other guy," what difference does it make? More importantly, how can it ever end? Will there ever be enough people who want to end it, if vindictive, violent passions are continually stirred up on both sides? I am not sure, but I think that at least part of the answer will involve America withdrawing its military forces from the countries we now occupy and making an effort to treat Muslim countries as equals, rather than insulting them by making it extremely clear that we see them as deranged lunatics that we have the right to kill at will and invade and occupy as often as we like.
I know that some of my more conservative, pro-military readers will find my reasoning ridiculous. They will, I imagine, yell something like, "You are a crazy bleeding heart liberal idiot! We cannot just back off now, retreat without having established absolute victory, let those countries do what they want. Our only hope of security is to maintain control by force, and if that means decades more of occupation, so be it."
As my counter-argument, I would point to the case of Vietnam. During our lengthy and costly involvement in that seemingly endless conflict, the pro-military folks often said, "We can't quit, can't back down. That would give the Communists an unforgivable victory. There would be a "domino effect" and the whole of Southeast Asia might go Red* (meaning, younger readers, Communist not Republican, back in the 1960s-70s.)" Well, we did quit that war. We fought many hard battles, won some, lost some, and then we withdrew. None of the doomsday scenarios transpired. A Communist regime took power in all Vietnam, but it was no worse than many other governments in the region, and over time, it even helped to get rid of a REALLY nasty and horrific regime in Cambodia, that of the psychotic Khmer Rouge. By the 1990s, American was signing trade deals with Communist Vietnam, and we now engage in billions of dollars in trade on an annual basis, with the Vietnamese appearing to hold no grudge for the thousands of pounds of bombs we dropped on them and all the people that we killed, not only in Vietnam but in adjoining countries, none of whom ever attacked or invaded us. It is still not anyone's ideal of a democratic paradise, but the VN regime does seem to be moderating over time. Domino-doomsday never took place.
I would argue that the same could happen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let us withdraw in an orderly manner, give economic and technical support to the new governments that develop there, if our help is wanted, and we can hope to have better relations over time, just as with Vietnam.
It also seems to me that we have gotten our money's worth out of these wars, and there is no need to drag things out ad infinitum, unless the military has become the only kind of government-funded jobs program that Americans are willing to support. (I suspect this may be so.) Al-Qaeda, based in Afghanistan, attacked us on one day in 2001. ONE day. In return, we have invaded for ten years. TEN years. We have killed many thousands, disrupted life, brutalized and terrorized many. What more do we want? Isn't that enough revenge? Or do you still want more? And, at what cost? In money, we have spent more than a trillion, I believe, money that could have been put to so many uses back at home. In lives, more Americans have now died fighting in these wars than were killed on 9/11. Will causing more deaths on both sides really make our world a better place? I worry we may be getting dragged down into a nether realm of nationalistic psychopathology (*see Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan) where we just want to use force against others because it makes us feel good, not because it accomplishes anything of positive value.
I believe it is time to step back from Global Warring and consider other needs and priorities,such as Global Warming. I accept the view of climatologists and other scientists that the extreme weather events of recent years are being driven by a gradual increase in world temperature produced by greenhouse gasses accumulating in the atmosphere. What weather events, you ask? They constitute a vast and continually growing catalogue ranging from agriculture-limiting droughts and dryness-triggered wild fires in places like Australia, Africa and various regions of America to heavier-than-usual snowfalls in winter, wetter-than-usual summers, and increasingly intense storms in both winter and summer, with tornadoes in the USA occurring with increasing frequency in places like Connecticut, Massachusetts and even the urban borough of Queens, New York that have rarely if ever experienced such events before. The economic cost from our new-fangled, 21st century weather is in the billions, but there is much more than money at stake. Decreased crop yields have led to riots and instability in countries from Somalia to the Philippines. Low-lying countries like Bangladesh and Burma (Myanmar) are at risk of vanishing under rising sea levels. THIS IS A VERY DANGEROUS TREND. If it gets worse, we are really going to be in trouble. We are going to have spend increasing amounts of money, worldwide recession or no, on feeding starving people, rebuilding flood,fire and tornado damaged regions, and dealing with mass migrations of displaced people, to just mention a few of the most alarming effects, WHICH ARE ALREADY BEGINNING TO HAPPEN.
This has all been known for years. Former Vice President Al Gore did a fine job of publicizing the issue and educating the public with his film "An Inconvenient Truth." Critics have pointed to several inaccuracies in the documentary, but his overall message, that we need to start cutting back on carbon use and greenhouse gases or we will turn the world into an increasingly harsh and inhospitable planet, really cannot be disputed, and is in fact NOT disputed by the vast majority of professional scientists who deal with climate issues. Yes, there are a few dissidents who can be found casting doubt on FOX news and other anti-environmentalist, pro-corporate media outlets, but they are a tiny, tiny, tiny group, and their viewpoint is especially suspect in that they are often paid to promote their anti-Global Warming ideas by oil and coal companies.
So what is a bigger threat to human life, the Al-Qaeda-type terrorist threat as observed on 9/11, or the increasingly destructive weather patterns resulting from climate change? Should we be more concerned with Global Warring or Global Warming? I have no doubt that the bigger threat is Global Warming.
Though America was rudely awakened out of a sweet but false dream of perfect security and safety on the awful morning of 9/11, the fact is, terrorism has always been around in some form or other,and always will be. There are always people around fired up either by extreme devotion to a political or religious cause or psychological instability who are willing to use violence to advance their cause or actualize their fantasies. Police, psychiatrists and other professionals can intervene to reduce the possibility of such individuals or groups acting out on their violent ambitions, but there is no way you can ever achieve total security, a completely risk-free world, as much as some try to sell this notion to a fearful and often gullible public (think: Giuliani & Associates). Other parts of the world, with either more experience or longer memories or less manipulative politicians know this, and they do not flip out and seek to invade a half-dozen countries every time a bomb goes off or a nut goes on a rampage. They make moderate, targeted responses, as opposed to seeking world domination. We Americans could learn a lot from them, except that many Americans don't like to learn from other countries, it seems.
The possibility of our environment becoming ever more unstable and self-destructive is something we must start thinking about. Perhaps the destruction wrought by Hurricane Irene will be a needed wake-up call. It should be noted that much of the worst damage was not caused by Irene alone, but by the combination of a wet summer of higher-than-average rainfall in the northeast followed by the additional heavy rains of Irene. If, as climate scientists seem to agree,we are going to be seeing more, not less, of such extreme weather events, we should start demanding that our politicians and media begin paying more attention to this and seeking out means to lessen the impact and slow the rate of change, rather than obsessing about how many suspected terrorists we can kill in Pakistan with our nifty drone bombers. The consensus among scientists is that we MUST start turning away from carbon fuels, because the more we burn them, the more we are going to suffer floods, droughts and fires. Sadly, the supposedly pro-environmental administration of President Obama has taken the first steps toward approving a huge, new, potentially highly polluting pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the oil refineries of Texas. Supposedly, it was the non-Obama candidates in 2008 who were in favor of "Drill, Baby, Drill" as the solution to our energy needs, but it looks like Obama is not so different after all.
I am proud to be involved with Paganism when I reflect that Pagan religions, with their nature gods and metaphors and joyful sense of sacredness in nature, collectively provide one of the best platforms around for cultivating reverence for the natural world. I encourage all Pagans to speak out on these issues in the grand struggle to turn the great dumb and easily distracted beast that is the American public away from post-9/11 terror, war and security obsessions to an understanding of the need to address our collective carbon addiction and protect our environment as the #1 issue of our time.
To my warrior-oriented Pagan friends, Asatru or other, let me suggest this: even if you are the most super-bad-assed, head-to-toe tattooed, multiple-gun-toting, spear-throwing, axe-tossing, sword-bearing, military-loving, tough-guy Pagan or a super-dangerous, ultra-gorgeous, Xena-like, Amazon-crossed-with-Valkyrie warrior princess with daggers in your hair and a grenade in your handbag next to your mini-AK, consider this: no more planet, no more battles, no more war, no more warriors, no more glory! No planet, no nothin;' it will just be Ragnarok without the happy ending of a miraculous renewal. Whether you are a wimpoid left-wing peacenik like me or a rough-and-ready, battle-hardened military enthusiast, this should be something we can get together on.
Mission One is not killing terrorists; it is saving our planet.
The 9/11 attacks were a horrible shock to the national psyche, literally blowing away many Americans' sense of their country being a safe land far away from the roiling tensions in other parts of the world. About three thousand Americans died on the day of the attacks, and thousands more, including rescuers and bystanders, would die in months and years to come from illnesses brought about by exposure to toxic substances in the World Trade Center. A small portion of New York City was devastated and soon rebuilt, as was the section of the Pentagon damaged by the plane that headed for the capital, but the more lasting damage was to American psychology. Many people became terrified about the possibility of other terrorist attacks, and many remain in a state of hyper-vigilance, supportive of ANY measures that the government might take that promise to increase security. There was also an understandable desire for pure REVENGE.
The results have ranged from the curtailment of civil liberties in the USA, the acceptance of increased surveillance by our government against its own citizens in violation of time-honored American traditions of privacy and freedom from government interference, the acceptance of torture as a tool of military interrogation, in violation of international treaties, and the transformation of Guantanamo Bay into a prison camp outside of international law. The government of President Bush furthermore committed America to the invasion and occupation of first Afghanistan, then Iraq, with further use of military force in several other countries, the resulting death of thousands of our own soldiers and the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. The hunting down of terrorists like Osama bin Laden was the original focus of our international interventions, but it seems that the killing of bin Laden has brought no peace to the American psyche. As far as I can tell, people feel just as frightened as ever, and it seems that the so-called "War of Terror," which is already the longest war in American history, may become a perpetual process of continuing death and destruction--theirs or ours, either way, the show will go on, and the budget of the military will remain larger than that of any other nation on earth, giving vast profits to companies like Halliburton that provide services to the military and defense contractors that reap wonderful profits developing weapon systems. Americans may not feel safer, but the war will continue.
Will Americans ever feel safe again? There will obviously always be a threat of terrorist attacks, no matter what we do. Even top military brass like General Petraeus have conceded that military force alone can never provide complete security. There has to be a "winning of hearts and minds," to recycle the old Vietnam trope, to convince those ready to take up bombs against America that violence is not the best way to resolve their grievances. The American military and its NATO allies have tried to play the compassionate "good cop" (building roads, schools, hospitals)as well as the aggressive and punitive "bad cop" (blowing up buildings, killing those suspected of terrorist involvement, and terrorizing families and communities by breaking down doors in the the middle of night to search homes under suspicion and interrogate and intimidate the residents, sometimes brutalizing or killing those who dare to resist these searches and interrogations.) Many Afghans, Iraqis and Pakistanis are understandably resentful of our occupation of their countries and violation of their homes and communities, and that resentment could fuel a desire for revenge against the USA just as intense as Americans' rage on 9/11. There could well be an endless cycle of violence and attacks and counterattacks.
If you like, you could say that OUR attacks and invasions are reasonable and justifiable, and THEIR attacks are wrong and deserving of punishment and endless years of military occupation, but the thing is, after a point, if it all becomes a tit-for-tat situation of "get revenge at any cost," "stand up for your people and kill the other guy," what difference does it make? More importantly, how can it ever end? Will there ever be enough people who want to end it, if vindictive, violent passions are continually stirred up on both sides? I am not sure, but I think that at least part of the answer will involve America withdrawing its military forces from the countries we now occupy and making an effort to treat Muslim countries as equals, rather than insulting them by making it extremely clear that we see them as deranged lunatics that we have the right to kill at will and invade and occupy as often as we like.
I know that some of my more conservative, pro-military readers will find my reasoning ridiculous. They will, I imagine, yell something like, "You are a crazy bleeding heart liberal idiot! We cannot just back off now, retreat without having established absolute victory, let those countries do what they want. Our only hope of security is to maintain control by force, and if that means decades more of occupation, so be it."
As my counter-argument, I would point to the case of Vietnam. During our lengthy and costly involvement in that seemingly endless conflict, the pro-military folks often said, "We can't quit, can't back down. That would give the Communists an unforgivable victory. There would be a "domino effect" and the whole of Southeast Asia might go Red* (meaning, younger readers, Communist not Republican, back in the 1960s-70s.)" Well, we did quit that war. We fought many hard battles, won some, lost some, and then we withdrew. None of the doomsday scenarios transpired. A Communist regime took power in all Vietnam, but it was no worse than many other governments in the region, and over time, it even helped to get rid of a REALLY nasty and horrific regime in Cambodia, that of the psychotic Khmer Rouge. By the 1990s, American was signing trade deals with Communist Vietnam, and we now engage in billions of dollars in trade on an annual basis, with the Vietnamese appearing to hold no grudge for the thousands of pounds of bombs we dropped on them and all the people that we killed, not only in Vietnam but in adjoining countries, none of whom ever attacked or invaded us. It is still not anyone's ideal of a democratic paradise, but the VN regime does seem to be moderating over time. Domino-doomsday never took place.
I would argue that the same could happen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let us withdraw in an orderly manner, give economic and technical support to the new governments that develop there, if our help is wanted, and we can hope to have better relations over time, just as with Vietnam.
It also seems to me that we have gotten our money's worth out of these wars, and there is no need to drag things out ad infinitum, unless the military has become the only kind of government-funded jobs program that Americans are willing to support. (I suspect this may be so.) Al-Qaeda, based in Afghanistan, attacked us on one day in 2001. ONE day. In return, we have invaded for ten years. TEN years. We have killed many thousands, disrupted life, brutalized and terrorized many. What more do we want? Isn't that enough revenge? Or do you still want more? And, at what cost? In money, we have spent more than a trillion, I believe, money that could have been put to so many uses back at home. In lives, more Americans have now died fighting in these wars than were killed on 9/11. Will causing more deaths on both sides really make our world a better place? I worry we may be getting dragged down into a nether realm of nationalistic psychopathology (*see Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan) where we just want to use force against others because it makes us feel good, not because it accomplishes anything of positive value.
I believe it is time to step back from Global Warring and consider other needs and priorities,such as Global Warming. I accept the view of climatologists and other scientists that the extreme weather events of recent years are being driven by a gradual increase in world temperature produced by greenhouse gasses accumulating in the atmosphere. What weather events, you ask? They constitute a vast and continually growing catalogue ranging from agriculture-limiting droughts and dryness-triggered wild fires in places like Australia, Africa and various regions of America to heavier-than-usual snowfalls in winter, wetter-than-usual summers, and increasingly intense storms in both winter and summer, with tornadoes in the USA occurring with increasing frequency in places like Connecticut, Massachusetts and even the urban borough of Queens, New York that have rarely if ever experienced such events before. The economic cost from our new-fangled, 21st century weather is in the billions, but there is much more than money at stake. Decreased crop yields have led to riots and instability in countries from Somalia to the Philippines. Low-lying countries like Bangladesh and Burma (Myanmar) are at risk of vanishing under rising sea levels. THIS IS A VERY DANGEROUS TREND. If it gets worse, we are really going to be in trouble. We are going to have spend increasing amounts of money, worldwide recession or no, on feeding starving people, rebuilding flood,fire and tornado damaged regions, and dealing with mass migrations of displaced people, to just mention a few of the most alarming effects, WHICH ARE ALREADY BEGINNING TO HAPPEN.
This has all been known for years. Former Vice President Al Gore did a fine job of publicizing the issue and educating the public with his film "An Inconvenient Truth." Critics have pointed to several inaccuracies in the documentary, but his overall message, that we need to start cutting back on carbon use and greenhouse gases or we will turn the world into an increasingly harsh and inhospitable planet, really cannot be disputed, and is in fact NOT disputed by the vast majority of professional scientists who deal with climate issues. Yes, there are a few dissidents who can be found casting doubt on FOX news and other anti-environmentalist, pro-corporate media outlets, but they are a tiny, tiny, tiny group, and their viewpoint is especially suspect in that they are often paid to promote their anti-Global Warming ideas by oil and coal companies.
So what is a bigger threat to human life, the Al-Qaeda-type terrorist threat as observed on 9/11, or the increasingly destructive weather patterns resulting from climate change? Should we be more concerned with Global Warring or Global Warming? I have no doubt that the bigger threat is Global Warming.
Though America was rudely awakened out of a sweet but false dream of perfect security and safety on the awful morning of 9/11, the fact is, terrorism has always been around in some form or other,and always will be. There are always people around fired up either by extreme devotion to a political or religious cause or psychological instability who are willing to use violence to advance their cause or actualize their fantasies. Police, psychiatrists and other professionals can intervene to reduce the possibility of such individuals or groups acting out on their violent ambitions, but there is no way you can ever achieve total security, a completely risk-free world, as much as some try to sell this notion to a fearful and often gullible public (think: Giuliani & Associates). Other parts of the world, with either more experience or longer memories or less manipulative politicians know this, and they do not flip out and seek to invade a half-dozen countries every time a bomb goes off or a nut goes on a rampage. They make moderate, targeted responses, as opposed to seeking world domination. We Americans could learn a lot from them, except that many Americans don't like to learn from other countries, it seems.
The possibility of our environment becoming ever more unstable and self-destructive is something we must start thinking about. Perhaps the destruction wrought by Hurricane Irene will be a needed wake-up call. It should be noted that much of the worst damage was not caused by Irene alone, but by the combination of a wet summer of higher-than-average rainfall in the northeast followed by the additional heavy rains of Irene. If, as climate scientists seem to agree,we are going to be seeing more, not less, of such extreme weather events, we should start demanding that our politicians and media begin paying more attention to this and seeking out means to lessen the impact and slow the rate of change, rather than obsessing about how many suspected terrorists we can kill in Pakistan with our nifty drone bombers. The consensus among scientists is that we MUST start turning away from carbon fuels, because the more we burn them, the more we are going to suffer floods, droughts and fires. Sadly, the supposedly pro-environmental administration of President Obama has taken the first steps toward approving a huge, new, potentially highly polluting pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the oil refineries of Texas. Supposedly, it was the non-Obama candidates in 2008 who were in favor of "Drill, Baby, Drill" as the solution to our energy needs, but it looks like Obama is not so different after all.
I am proud to be involved with Paganism when I reflect that Pagan religions, with their nature gods and metaphors and joyful sense of sacredness in nature, collectively provide one of the best platforms around for cultivating reverence for the natural world. I encourage all Pagans to speak out on these issues in the grand struggle to turn the great dumb and easily distracted beast that is the American public away from post-9/11 terror, war and security obsessions to an understanding of the need to address our collective carbon addiction and protect our environment as the #1 issue of our time.
To my warrior-oriented Pagan friends, Asatru or other, let me suggest this: even if you are the most super-bad-assed, head-to-toe tattooed, multiple-gun-toting, spear-throwing, axe-tossing, sword-bearing, military-loving, tough-guy Pagan or a super-dangerous, ultra-gorgeous, Xena-like, Amazon-crossed-with-Valkyrie warrior princess with daggers in your hair and a grenade in your handbag next to your mini-AK, consider this: no more planet, no more battles, no more war, no more warriors, no more glory! No planet, no nothin;' it will just be Ragnarok without the happy ending of a miraculous renewal. Whether you are a wimpoid left-wing peacenik like me or a rough-and-ready, battle-hardened military enthusiast, this should be something we can get together on.
Mission One is not killing terrorists; it is saving our planet.
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