‘There Is No Way To Fool Physics’: Climate Breakdown And State-Corporate Madness
Media Lens
In the terrifying opening to his 2020 novel, ‘The Ministry for the Future’, Kim Stanley Robinson depicts an intense heatwave in India. (...)
This month, an intense heatwave did indeed hit northern India with temperatures reaching a record high of 49.2C in parts of Delhi. This was the fifth heatwave in the Indian capital since March. (...)
Meanwhile, the highest daily level of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere was recorded. (...)
Scientists are warning that the 1.5C global heating limit set by governments is about to be breached. (...)
On top of all that, climate scientists recently reported that global warming could cause the most cataclysmic extinction of marine life in the past 250 million years.
If the news media were not owned and run for the benefit of state-corporate elites, all this would be huge headline news – day after day, month after month. There would be vigorous debate across all the main media outlets, building pressure on governments to implement the urgent radical changes required to avert the worst consequences of the climate crisis. (...)
For example, Corporate Europe Observatory, a non-profit research and campaign group which monitors and exposes corporate lobbying on EU policy making, recently warned that:
‘Fossil fuel giants are shaping the EU’s response to the energy crisis.’
Six big energy companies were named: Shell, BP, Total, ENI, E.ON and Vattenfall. (...)
In the never-ending corporate quest for profit, even as the planet’s life support systems are failing, oil and gas corporations ‘are planning scores of vast projects that threaten to shatter the 1.5C climate goal.’ If governments allow the projects to proceed, these ‘carbon bombs’ will ‘trigger catastrophic climate breakdown.’ (...)
In this country [UK], the madness extends to all three of the main political parties – Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservative – calling for climate protesters to be ‘cracked down on’ and for their rational demands to be rejected. (...)
Veteran climate scientist James Hansen, who warned the US Congress of the dangers of global warming as early as 1988, injected some reality missing from ‘mainstream’ reporting:
‘There is no indication that incumbent governments are even considering the fundamental actions that are needed to slow and reverse climate change.’
As we wrote at the time, last year’s UN Climate Summit in Glasgow was a greenwashing festival, full of empty rhetoric. Last month, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said it was ‘now or never’ to save humanity. (...)
Nasa climate scientist Peter Kalmus (...) warned:
‘Earth breakdown is much worse than most people realize. The science indicates that as fossil fuels continue to heat our planet, everything we love is at risk.’ (...)
It will take truly massive, sustained public activism – perhaps on a scale never seen before in human history – to shift course away from climate catastrophe. (...)
The historical record also shows that improvements in society are rarely, if ever, bestowed as gifts from above. Power typically only ever makes concessions when it is forced to do so by pressure from below.
Time is running out too rapidly to fundamentally reform society and create a real democracy that people deserve. The immediate priority is to exert insurmountable pressure on existing power structures, not least our own governments, to change course away from climate catastrophe. If we cannot do that, there will be no human civilisation to reform or restructure.
Tags: #climate #clamte_change #climate_crisis #climate_beakdown #climate_protest #global_warming #heat_wave #india #media #corporate_media #news #news_media #journalist #journalism #Corporate_Europe_Observatory #Shell #BP #Total #ENI #E_ON #Vattenfall #fowwil_fuel #eu #european_union #ipcc #un #guterres #Extinction_Rebellion #Just_Stop_Oil
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