Before I start this rant, I want to thank Jay Elias for keeping me honest and reeling me in in regards to “The Corporations.” You see, I think there is no greater threat to both our Constitutional government and the health and well being of seven billion people and the planet’s atmosphere, the planet’s food and water supplies, and general geopolitical stability than those Corporations that place concern for their profits above legal, social and environmental responsibility. The pure unvarnished greed at the heart of the modern multinational corporation is akin to me to that of say, the Mongol Hordes on a planetary scale. Or, since our government can, and has been, basically bought (as the FISA/Telcoms example shows)by The Corporations….perhaps a merger (heh) of the Vandals and the Roman Empire. Jay provides a bit of balance and perspective for me, lol. He has helped me to tone down my rhetoric to point out that The Corporations, while they are no doubt despicably and shortsightedly and maliciously destructive to life on earth, they are really just the disastrous culmination of human greed, in a form that is specifically designed to avoid any and all responsibility and consequences for their mendacity, perfidy, and willingness to destroy anything for a handful of pocket change. Otherwise I might condemn them to harshly.
There has been a rash of reports recently on Climate…ad of course, one of them are good. In fact considering that three of them have been by our own government, and that ‘our own government’ is currently in the business of serving business (EPA censorship etc.) as opposed to serving The People whose planet The Corporations are attempting to destroy, they are even more alarming.
So alarming in fact, that the latest report; “The National Security Implications of Global Climate Change Through 2030.” has been classified because of its implications for American foreign policy.
A report on Climate Change…which the Right Wing ‘business boosters’ (iow, Corporate whores) deny even exists …has to be classified because of its implications for American national security and foreign policy.
In addition to examining how weather could add stress to governments with a weak grip on power … the authors mulled a spectrum of second- and third-order consequences for Washington policymakers to consider — including indirect security concerns like impacts on economies, energy, social unrest and migration.
Foreign-policy concerns were also weighed, including how flooding, rising water levels or drought might create humanitarian crises. Also examined was how extreme weather events could challenge the response capabilities of governments around the world.
So….Three Government reports, from a government that is actively practicing Censorship on Global Warming…
When it comes to global warming, the Bush administration seems determined to bury its head in the sand and hope the problem will go away. Worse yet, it wants to bury any research findings that global warming may be a threat to human health or the environment.
The latest example of this ostrichlike behavior involves some heavy-handed censorship of a draft report that is due out next week from the Environmental Protection Agency. As described by Andrew Revkin and Katharine Seelye in yesterday’s Times, the report was intended to provide the first comprehensive review of what is known about environmental problems and what gaps in understanding remain to be filled. But by the time the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Management and Budget finished with it and hammered the E.P.A. into submission, a long section on the risks posed by rising global temperatures was reduced to a noncommittal paragraph.
…that all raise the VERY REAL specter of disastrous effects of Climate Crisis:
Federal Report: Warming = More Harmful Climate Extremes
The effects of climate change on agriculture, land resources, water resources, and biodiversity
“The National Security Implications of Global Climate Change Through 2030.”
And what is our Corporate serving Government doing to to address it? What are The Corporations themselves doing to significantly change their atmosphere destroying ways? In relation to the scope of the disaster that is here now…and the much, much worse to come…
On September eleventh, 3000 humans died. In response, America changed in a vast and fundamental way. The Patriot Act was passed and we invaded two countries, incurring trillions of dollars of debt to do so.
Since we now have a government report that DOES say that climate extremes such as hurricanes/cyclones are the result of Warming, it is fair to say that the 1800 people in New Orleans and the 4,234 in Bangladesh and the 84537 who have died in Myanmar are victims of Climate Crisis. But what fundamental changes are we seeing in response?
The CAFE standards received their first significant overhaul for more than 30 years in 2007 when President George W. Bush raised fuel consumption standards for new cars from 27.5 miles per gallon now to 35 miles per gallon by 2020.
And that only after a hard fight by the Car Corporations and the Oil Corporations to get the bill killed.
We as a planet, faced with this crisis are still increasing
carbon output. Even though the amount of carbon in the atmosphere already is well over the danger level.
Why are we not stopping Climaticide? There is one overarching reason.
It would be bad for business. It would hurt The Corporations. It would cost too much. In other words…Greed. On the part of The Corporations who are making money off of killing the atmosphere that sustains all life on earth…and the government that serves them.
According to The Corporations…the only planet we have…would cost too much to save.
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The willingness to allow others to suffer and die for your greed…even if your greed is dressed as a Corporation to allow you to avoid taking responsibility, is evil.
to all the peoples of this planet than something you turn on the tap at home to receive (which it has, by the way, in many areas of the world already)the beginning of the end of life as it we know it will be beyond the turning point.
If we don’t start taking global warming and environmental cleanup seriously, and soon, I forsee this happening within the next generation or two.
Then again, my prognosticating is more Nostradumbass than Nostradamus…..
😉
We humans are too many for our planet.
Since we humans — as a species — are unwilling to control our births, we have opted to regulate our population through other means, for example: war, famine, drought.
Now our changing climate — a climate that we humans are directly changing — will trigger more wars, famines, and droughts.
We are too many — and we rich humans (intentionally or through complicity) are using climate as a weapon to reduce our numbers.
James Lovelock believes we’ll winnow down the 7 billion to as few as 500 million by 2100.
From The Guardian today, America’s No 2 utility wins right to build $1.8bn coal power plant.
Not only does mining coal remove mountain tops and burning coal pump greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, but both pollute the water supply.
As a related note, I think this should hurt Virginia governor Tim Kaine’s chances at the VP spot. Whether it does or not, we’ll have to see. Obama is a friend of coal too.
if we don’t stop it.
corporations have power. that is true. so do we.
…I’m not sure what comment I’d like to make about this right now (and I’m a bit busy celebrating the Heller decision), but I’m glad that I promote thinking harder about this subject.
you might want to google….www.veoliawater.com This takes
you to their web site… but looking a little further it’s
amazing just how evil this company is. And it’s just one
of many such ‘water’ companies. Guess they must have been
listening years ago when some of us were saying “He who controls
the water controls the world.”
And what does it come back to?
Yep!
Basically, the strategic goal of any corporation is to enhance shareholder value.
Therefore, any means of accomplishing this goal is subject to a completely amoral cost/benefit analysis. We see the egregious mistakes and harm this causes to society (world society) in the tobacco and cigarette business, for instance, where the costs of litigation and product liability were assessed not against the inherent health harms of the product but whether or not readily higher taxes on the products would ultimately foster the very basis of the business model.
“Enhancing shareholder value” ignores stakeholders, i.e., employees and customers, in total conflict with the values espoused by Henry Ford, for instance, who felt he could only be successful if his assembly-line workers could afford to buy his Model T’s.
Therefore, the goal, the progressive goal, should be to restructure the business model of all corporations worldwide as non-profit organizations. These are very competitive the world over, and there is every incentive to get the very best production out of individuals and organizations, else the non-profit organization loses its customers and dies, just like we have now.
The egregious law-breaking of the capitalist, free enterprise model of business is absolutely ungovernable, unregulatable, and for over a century has served as an inherent evil for (world) society. Capitalism, and corporations-as-persons, are lawbreaking pirates that move fluidly across borders breaking laws whenever these are regarded as inconvenient to accomplishing the strategic goal: enhancing shareholder value whether at the expense of employees and through the exploitation of workers or even the virtual genocide of their customer base.
It is outrageously simple to cure this ill, and it is the only way forward. But there must be culpability, and the lawyers will have to get engaged.