It’s democracy v plutocracy – this is the endgame for our planet
George Monbiot (The Guardian)
The US supreme court is helping to destroy our climate. But it was a much smaller decision, closer to home, that was the final straw for me.
It feels like the end game. In the US last week, the third perverse and highly partisan supreme court decision in a few days made American efforts to prevent climate breakdown almost impossible. (...)
The day before, in the UK, the government’s climate change committee reported a “shocking” failure by Boris Johnson’s administration to meet its climate targets. (...) [T]he UK government also announced that it intended to scrap the law protecting the UK’s most important wildlife sites.
But the final straw for me was a smaller decision. After two decades of disastrous policies that turned its rivers into open sewers, Herefordshire county council (...) finally did the right thing. It applied to the government to create a water protection zone. (...) [T]he UK’s environment minister, Rebecca Pow, refused permission, claiming it “would impose new and distinct regulatory obligations on the farmers and businesses within the catchment”. This is, of course, the point. (...)
Just at the point at which we need a coordinated global effort to escape our existential crises – climate breakdown, ecological breakdown, the rising tide of synthetic chemicals, a gathering global food emergency – those who wield power string razor wire across the exit. (...)
I never imagined that we would one day confront what appears to be an ideological commitment to destroying life on Earth. (...)
As Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has documented, hundreds of millions of dollars in dark money (funds whose sources are unknown) were poured into the nomination and confirmation of the three judges appointed to the court by Donald Trump. (...)
Once the favoured justices were in place, the same networks started using their financial power to steer their decisions. They do so through “amicus briefs”. (...)
In this case, the supreme court has strayed way beyond its mandate of interpreting the law, into the territory of the executive and the legislature: making the law. It is imposing policies that would never survive democratic scrutiny, if they were put to the vote. By seizing control of regulatory power, it sets a precedent that could stymie almost any democratic decision. (...)
The media often represent politicians’ interests as if they were mere political preferences. Very rarely is the lobbying and political funding behind a decision explained in the news. (...)
All these cases expose the same political vulnerability: the ease with which democracy is crushed by the power of money. We cannot protect the living world, or women’s reproductive rights, or anything else we value until we get the money out of politics, and break up the media empires that make a mockery of informed political consent. (...)
Until we change our political systems, making it impossible for the rich to buy the decisions they want, we will lose not only individual cases. We will lose everything.
> See also: ‘There Is No Way To Fool Physics’: Climate Breakdown And State-Corporate Madness (Media Lens)
‘When I began work as an environmental journalist I never imagined we would one day confront what appears to be an ideological commitment to destroying life on Earth.’ Photograph: Charlie Riedel/AP.
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