“Now everyone needs to be an activist!”

If you think the Hydrogen Bomb is bad, wait until you hear about the Methane Bomb

UNFETTERED INDUSTRIALISM fueled by the sociopathic values of capitalism has managed to mortally wound the biosphere in less than 300 years, a mere instant in geologic time scales.  Now, as laid out by Anthony Marr in this must-watch-and-act presentation, humans’ almost total indifference to environmental health and its consequences has detonated a crisis of truly incalculable lethal proportions.  The predicament we face—of our own making— can be summed up in three words: The Methane Bomb. PHOTO: Anthony Marr during his presentation in New Jersey, July 5th (2010) [CREDIT: Carol Davis].

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INTRODUCED BY PATRICE GREANVILLE | [print_link]

The oil addiction is killing the world (but we know that, you say)

The main engine for this crisis, likely to spell the mass extinction of millions of species, and of life as we know it, is the climate change spiral currently enveloping the planet as a result of global warming, soon to become a far more pernicious phenomenon as it transforms itself into global heating. As has been explained on multiple venues (largely to deaf ears), global warming and eventually heating occur as the inevitable result of growing accumulations of “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere, emissions produced by unrestrained human activities chiefly related to the consumption of hydrocarbon fuels, as well as meat products.  (Factory farms housing cows, pigs, and chickens currently emit more methane and other greenhouse gases than all forms of human transportation combined.  They also waste unconscionable amounts of water, while polluting rivers, the water table and even the oceans with their frequent toxic runoffs. As has become increasingly clear from numerous studies, water for irrigation, drinking, and basic needs is already in acutely short supply around the world, with desertification gobbling up more habitable land every year. The projections are for severe, famine-causing shortages in the next decade and beyond.)

While global warming, per se, has already caused innumerable problems and victimized countless creatures in areas of the planet where their normal habitats have begun to disappear—notably the oceans and the arctic and antarctic zones, plus low-lying areas such as Bangla Desh—global heating, once triggered, is liable to be thousands if not millions of times worse, and proceed at a much faster pace.

The immediacy of this problem, the sheer urgency implied by a situation so dangerous and colossal as to defy interpretation, a crisis that should be on the headlines of every major medium with the kind of obsessive intensity normally accorded the inane activities of politicians, sports figures and other celebrities, but isn’t, was recently brought home to me by ANTHONY MARR, a physicist by training, and a  longtime environmental and animal defense activist, at a lecture I attended in New Jersey during Marr’s North American tour expressly undertaken to mobilize publics across the continent. The video (see above) is eloquent enough so I will not belabor its central points here. Suffice it to say that this is no Chicken Little exercise and the threat is all too real. In fact the “threat” to our civilization posed by retail terrorists such as Al-Qaida and their ilk, who supposedly soak up so much of our ruling elites’ time, national treasure, military lives, and mindspace, is ludicrous by comparison, with the only point of congruency being that both Al-Qaida and the Methane Bomb were created by the same plutocracy’s policies of constant war, criminal meddling in other nations’ affairs, and self-enrichment at all costs (literally).

The tipping points are subterranean, invisible, until it’s too late.

The attitude of complacency and denial about ecoanimal destruction—vociferous at times among “climate deniers”—and common among right-wing zealots, libertarians, Tea Party activists, Republicans, and even many Democrats—is to be expected in a society riddled with ignorance and literally awash in manufactured distractions, corruption, and confusion. Thus, while, as I’ve indicated in a previous piece, the problem is global, the issue is especially acute in the United States, a nation whose nefarious environmental footprint puts it at the head of the world’s environmental scofflaws. The reason why such malignant ignorance has taken such deep root in America has been and continues to be explored in depth on this site and its companion site Cyrano’s Journal (http:/www.cjournal.info/), so we don’t need to spend time here analyzing that aspect of the problem. Just do a search with “media” or “corporate media” as your string, and a lot of articles will pop up. As well, visit Cyrano’s special section, THE CRIMINAL MEDIA (http://www.cjournal.info/CJO/criminalmedia.htm), for a quick start-up curriculum on the topic. What you need to know can be encapsulated in just a few points:

• The impending destruction of the planet is the product of a system that has run its course historically and whose marching values of profit before people, animals and nature can now be easily shown to be diametrically opposed to the survival and well-being of all life–human and non-human—on Earth, as well as to peace and democracy. That system is capitalism, a system whose name, like that of a common criminal, needed to be whitewashed with cute and chauvinistic euphemisms such as “Free Enterprise” or the more high-handed still, “The American Way of Life.” No ecological peace can ever be attained with a system that has as its central belief the idea that the infinite exploitation of a finite planet is both possible and beneficial.
• The system’s mainstream media (MSM) will not alert you (properly, if at all) to problems and crimes caused by the system they serve, nor attempt to mobilize you to demand corrective action. (They do that, though, very well when it comes to whipping up hysteria directed at “enemies” fingered by the system). The “professional media” will go as far as describing an issue and even propose solutions, but will never dig at the roots of the problem, or expose the real culprit, which is the system itself.  Thus you need to rely on information sources outside the mainstream media, independent places like this site. Be careful, however, for a lot of rightwing wackos are also peddling their notions on cyberspace, and they can be sometimes worse than the more polite status quo defenders found on the MSM.
• As noted by Marr in this lecture, the tipping points for this catastrophe are subterranean, and therefore invisible to most people until it’s too late. This false sense of security MUST be overcome by dedicated education and mobilization efforts undertaken by people like yourself, in conjunction with free citizens’ media and qualified activists like Dr. Marr.

The time has come for everyone not compromised by the system’s lies and blandishments to become an activist for change. Real and urgent change. The time for complacency and vacillation is over.  The Methane Bomb is a present and real danger and it won’t go away by merely putting our trust in the very ultra corrupt elites that created the problem in the first place. Their habitual pace for remedial action—assuming they were sincere this time, a foolhardy assumption considering their record—is simply ludicrous and suicidal in this case. Bottom line is, the ball is now finally in your court. Your life and that of everything you hold dear is in your hands.  I wish I didn’t have to say this, but there’s not an ounce of hyperbole or Chicken Little in that. —PG

ABOUT ANTHONY MARR

Born in China, Dr. Anthony Marr has an extensive background in activism related to defending the earth and its non-human inhabitants. Marr, whose training is in physics, and who has worked as a field geophysicist and an environmental technologist, was recently appointed Science and Ecoanimal Editor for The Greanville Post and Cyrano’s Journal Online. Marr is the founder of Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE ); and author of the book OMNI-SCIENCE and the Human Destiny (2003). He also wrote Homo Sapiens! SAVE YOUR EARTH from Mass Extinction due to Global Warming. For all the above and more, see www.HOPE-CARE.org. Dr. Marr can be reached at Anthony-Marr@HOPE-CARE.org

Patrice Greanville is editor and publisher of The Greanville Post (https://www.greanvillepost.com/) and founding editor of Cyrano’s Journal Online (http://www.cjournal.info/).

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