When this hinge-point in human history is remembered, there will be far more sympathy for the people who took to the streets and rioted than for the people who stayed silently in their homes. Two global crises have collided, and we have a chance here, now, to solve them both with one mighty heave - but our leaders are letting this opportunity for greatness leach away. The protesters here in London were trying to sound an alarm now, at five minutes to ecological midnight.
Many commentators seemed bemused that the protesters focused on the climate crunch as much as the credit crunch. What's it got to do with a G20 meeting on reviving the global economy? Why wave banners saying 'Nature Doesn't Do Bail-Outs' today? Because both crises have their roots in the same ideology - and both have the same solution.
We are facing a collapsed economy and a rapidly warming world because an extreme ideology has dominated world affairs for decades. It is the belief that markets aren't just a useful tool in certain circumstances; they are an infallible mechanism for running human affairs. If the economy ebbs, the market will put itself right by punishing wrong-doers. If the climate begins to unravel, business will rectify its own behavior voluntarily. Now we know how well this market fundamentalism works.
The climate is currently going the same way as the banks. Last month, the world's climate scientists gathered in Copenhagen to explain we are facing "devastating consequences" - not in some distant future, but in my lifetime and yours. Unless we swerve fast, we are soon going to hit global temperatures that no human being has ever lived through. We don't have much time. By 2015, we will have belched so much carbon into the atmosphere that we will cross the Point of No Return: the climate will start to unravel as all its natural cooling processes breaking down one by one, guaranteeing we become hotter and hotter. Once we hit an increase of 4 degrees, much of the world will become uninhabitable, and there will be vast wars for what remains.
This isn't the warning of apocalyptic wackos: it's the judgment of the climate scientists who have consistently been proven right up to now. Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize winning scientist who has been appointed Energy Secretary by Barack Obama, says: "I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what will happen. We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California. I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going either." Goodbye Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego. And that, he stresses, is only the start.
The distinguished environmental scientist James Lovelock warns that climate changes tend not to happen gradually, inch-by-inch. They suddenly flip - in our case from a cool world to a very hot one. He believes the hotter new world we are bringing into being could support, at best, a billion people. That would require 84 percent of the world's population to die off.
That's why the protesters were talking about the climate. It should be the number one issue at every global meeting. And the way out of the climate crunch and the credit crunch is the same - a Green New Deal.
Our leaders are divided about whether we need a fiscal stimulus at all. Obama, Gordon Brown, and the Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso are leading the charge for a burst of big government spending to jump-start the global economy, while Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, David Cameron and the US Republicans are arguing this will simply be a debt-funded splurge to nothing.
It's a strange debate to have now, because the opponents of any stimulus seem to be mired in a row that was resolved back in the 1930s. John Maynard Keynes transformed the way that we think about recessions. Before him, everybody believed the Merkel-Cameron-McCain line that recessions are like bad weather: you just need to wrap up and sit it out, even though it hurts. But Keynes transformed all that.
He showed that recessions are actually caused by a failure of consumer demand. When people sense that they might lose their job, they - perfectly sensibly - cut back on their spending. They buy fewer DVDs or restaurant meals or holidays. But this causes a fall in demand for services - and more people lose their jobs, causing demand to fall further in turn, and on and on, in a spiral. He called it "the paradox of thrift": what is rational for an individual consumer is irrational for the society as a whole.
But he also showed there is a way out: the government needs to spend large sums of money, financed by borrowing, to get all the workers waiting idle back into action. This government spending brings consumer demand back - and reverses the downward trend. Then, once you've recovered, you pay off the debt.
Keynes stressed you can spend this money on anything: at one point he proposed burying wads of cash and paying people to dig them up. But today, we face an incredible coincidence. At the same moment, we need to spend lots of money on something, anything - and we need an immediate transition to a low-carbon economy.
And it gets better: it turns out a green stimulus is best for the economy. A major study by the University of Massachusetts compared the effects of an old-style stimulus that simply gives people more cash to a green stimulus. They found that a green stimulus creates four times more jobs, and three times more "good jobs", defined as those that pay more than $16 per hour. Why? Because a green stimulus is labour-intensive: you spend more money on people and less on machines. And the money you spend stays at home, making it easier to sell: you can only insulate a loft in Hull in Hull; you can only build a wind farms in the Mid-West in the Mid-West.
But it's not happening. A study by HSBC has found that only 6 percent of Britain's stimulus so far has gone to green projects. In the US, it is just 16 percent. It's nonsense to claim there aren't enough green projects "shovel-ready": during World War Two, the industrial capacities of our countries was transformed from making consumer goods to making tanks and weaponry in less than sixty days. We could do the same.
But this alacrity shouldn't surprise us. The weight of conventional wisdoms and the sway of powerful corporations with vested interests in the old sickening world holds back even the better leaders. The first New Deal wasn't handed down by Franklin Roosevelt as a benevolent gesture. On the contrary: he came to power as a budget-balancing centrist, and only became a great President because he was confronted by massive riots and civil disobedience across the United States. The American people pushed him in a more radical direction, often with behavior that made this week's riot in London look like a Buckingham Palace reception.
On Wednesday, one of the young protesters sat in a tent at the edge of the City of London, looked out towards the glistening towers of the financial district, and said to me: "The dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid. Suddenly, we are realizing that we are our own asteroid." She shook her head. "How can so many people just sit at home and watch it happen?"
Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent newspaper. To read more of his articles, click here or here.
To read an archive of his articles about global warming, click here.
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
eere.energy.gov
GET OFF YOUR B*TTS AMERICA! THIS IS NOT A MOVIE OR A REALITY SHOW!
THIS ISN'T JUST ABOUT YOU!!! IT'S ABOUT THE PLANET AND THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY!
April 4 March on Wall Street - TOMORROW (United for Peace and Justice)
April 11 A New Way Forward (http://www.anewwayforward.org)
April 25 End The Fed (http://restoretherepublic.us)
Krugman and Stiglitz have been criticizing Summers for a long time.
Summers and Geithner are moving in the wrong direction; they are supporting Wall Street aka The Fed bankers.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a2PHwqAs7BS0
"But when you talk about destruction don't you know that you can count me out . . ."
EXECUTIVES HAVE SKIMMED THE AMERICAN CORPORATIONS AND AMERICA TO THE BONE!
The SKIMMING of AMERICAN CORPORATE WEALTH by Executives, Managers, Sales Staff, Analysts, and others into employee pockets has left America with weak "Ghost" Corporations that can NOT survive even moderate Economic Downturns without robbing the Taxpayer!
"Wall Street/Corporate CUT-THROAT Culture" has been taken to its rightful conclusion and a NEW Culture will Emerge. One more balanced with the rest of America, more just, less dependent on the Taxpayer, more able to survive, accountable to Americans and their Government, and able to make and keep its profits.
______________________________________________
The BANKSTER Executives homes in CT and Ham_ptons are Pretentious costing MORE that 400 Main Street Homes!
THE ENTIRE WASHINGTON-WALL STREET/FED CYCLE OF CORRUPTION MUST BE CHANGED!
The next wake up call will be louder and much more intense than this one. They will continue until we learn our lessons or perish. Humanity is at a crossroads - and we've basically been sent down a very similar road to what got us here in the first place. With what I've seen, we will have to get to a point where drastic change is the only option, for humanity as a whole will only change when no other way is possible.
It is fascinating because this new way of being is being presented to us now, yet we do not see the grand scope of what is happening. So many are clinging to the old ways even though they do not work at this level. We are shifting into a higher state of being, yet the old, lower vibrational crap is having its last hurrah and captivating those running the big economies of the world. Our priorities are so out of whack that we will basically need to be hit over the head to bring the change that is necessary. Hopefully we wake up and listen.
Let's pay bankers the same way teachers get paid. Then, you will only have people going into it for the love of numbers, rather than love of money. And, if the bankers get upset at their lack of respect and low pay, they can "work to contract" like teachers do in order to show their upset.
Problem solved.
It's over.
The discourse on who is emitting what is meaningless and we need to prepare for the worst right now. We need to store vast amounts of pure water, change from mud farming to hydroponics on a scale that is unbelievable. We need to fortify our perimeters and DEFINITELY build vast natural resource based energy production systems. It's quite possible that the temperatures in certain zones will rise by a full 10C. That's massive. That will mean radical rethinking about the use of air conditioning and the power sources and grids required to sustain it. Millions will die from heat stroke and dehydration alone.
I know it sounds dramatic. But, I believe the scientists behind all of this evidence has been downplaying the consequences because they believe no one will listen if the TRUE knowledge is released to the public. It's just too much.
Sit home on your couch and let your earth be destroyed, your rights be violated, your voice be silenced. Don't think for one minute your elected representatives have your interests at heart - their hands are open behind their backs, waiting for the lobbyists and special interests to slap the big bucks down.
i'm going to break your windows and your neighbors.
that'll show you.
By then i will be boarded up. Fat chance.