Category: CLIMATE CHANGE - The Greanville Post

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TECHNO-FIX ILLUSIONS

First iteration on December 14, 2017

“The Big Bad Fix: The Case Against Climate Geoengineering,” published by ETC Group, Biofuelwatch and Heinrich Böll Foundation

Technologies that promise easy solutions to the climate crisis actually pose high risks to people, ecosystems and security, and are dangerous distractions from the urgent need for deep emission cuts.

A new report warns that geoengineering, the large-scale manipulation of the climate, is gaining acceptance as a would-be technological fix for climate change in key emitting countries, as these countries refuse to break away from their fossil-fuelled economies.

Geoengineering research programs and projects planned by industry and state-funded and private research institutions are proliferating, primarily in high-emitting countries such as the US, the UK and China. The Big Bad Fix analyses the context and risks of geoengineering, and reveals the actors, vested interests and political developments underway to advance the large-scale technological schemes to manipulate the Earth’s natural systems.

Although considered reckless and unacceptable by many scientific and political experts, geoengineering is now increasingly being pushed into the mainstream of climate policy debates, where it creates the illusion of a technological shortcut to manage the symptoms of climate change without addressing its root causes.

However, as the report details, geoengineering poses many risks for people, ecosystems and security. It relies on excessive land, water and resource consumption, threatens food security, and undermines democratic control over the world’s commons because its untested technologies are also developed by patent-holders for profit.

Therefore, the report states, irreversible harm to biodiversity and ecosystem integrity is highly probable. There are also serious concerns about geoengineering governance, including the potential for unilateral deployment, the risk of conflict in the event of adverse regional impacts and side effects, and the risk of weaponization of geoengineering technologies.

Rachel Smolker, Co-director of Biofuelwatch: “Geoengineering is a dangerous defence of the failed status quo, not a technical or scientific necessity. In fact, the technologies put forward for geoengineering will most likely worsen rather than solve the multifaceted problems created by climate change. Claiming that we ‘must’ deploy geoengineering is saying that we would sooner do irreparable harm to our planet than alter our economic system that benefits only the very few at the top.”

The Big Bad Fix was launched in Nairobi during the 3rd United Nations Environmental Assembly and in the run-up to a meeting of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Montreal. Geoengineering is subject to a de facto moratorium under the CBD, and marine geoengineering is prohibited by the London Protocol of the London Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution. The authors of the report argue that these decisions must be upheld and must be the starting point of any legitimate, international and democratic discussion of geoengineering governance.

Silvia Ribeiro, Latin America Director of ETC Group: “Geoengineering would exacerbate the global power imbalance, creating winners and losers. It would be foolish to allow a group of countries to take control of the global thermostat. Governance must not be mistaken to mean establishing regulations to legalize and permit the development of such technologies. Banning exceedingly risky and dangerous technologies is a legitimate and prudent approach to governance, as put in practice with the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the UN’s adoption of a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in July 2017.”

Instead of resorting to unproven, risky techno-fixes, the report calls for the rapid implementation of a climate-just vision for limiting global warming to under 1.5°C.

Barbara Unmüßig, Director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation: “Proponents of geoengineering are feeding the illusion that we can escape our climate crises without having to adjust our emission-heavy lifestyles. But reality is not that simple. Not only do geoengineering technologies come with new risks and side effects, they also distract from the only proven solution for climate change: a radical reduction of climate changing emissions. Before geoengineering is put into action, we need clear and binding regulations for these technologies. An international framework of regulation must be grounded in the precautionary principle, and technologies with associated risks that are not predictable, justifiable or manageable must be prohibited outright.”

The report concludes that the numerous high-impact risks of geoengineering, and the political, social, cultural, economic, ethical, moral, intergenerational and rights-based problems it implies, render geoengineering unacceptable. Further, the authors argue that it is a dangerous distraction from the urgent need to support viable alternatives: making deep emission cuts in the near-term and rapidly transforming our economies to allow for a socially and ecologically sustainable and just future, rather than locking the world into a long-term dependence on non-existent, high-risk technologies.

Click here to download The Big Bad Fix (pdf).

(Adapted from an announcement by Biofuelwatch)

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HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. BREAK THE EMPIRE'S STRANGLEHOLD ON INFORMATION.

By Robert J. Burrowes

Several years ago in Cameroon, a country in West Africa, a Western Black Rhinoceros was killed. It was the last of its kind on Earth.

Hence, the Western Black Rhinoceros, the largest subspecies of rhinoceros which had lived for millions of years and was the second largest land mammal on Earth, no longer exists.

But while you have probably heard of the Western Black Rhinoceros, and may even have known of its extinction, did you know that on the same day that it became extinct, another 200 species of life on Earth also became extinct?

Western Black Rhinoceros: Stamped out almost by cavalier indifference to its fate.

This is because the sixth mass extinction event in Earth's history is now accelerating at an unprecedented rate with 200 species of plants, birds, animals, fish, amphibians, insects and reptiles being driven to extinction on a daily basis. And the odds are high that you have never even heard of any of them. For example, have you heard of the Christmas Island Pipistrelle, recently declared extinct? See 'Christmas Island:

Pipistrelle declared extinct by IUCN'.

https://petermaas.nl/extinct/news/christmas-island-pipistrelle-declared-extinct-by-iucn/

Apart from the 200 species extinctions each day however, and just to emphasize the catastrophic extent of this crisis, myriad local populations of many species are driven to extinction daily and millions of individual lifeforms are also killed. See 'Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines'. http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/E6089.full

Christmas Island Pipistrelle: Also gone, along with many others most people never heard of and probably don't care.

For a taste of the vast literature on this subject touching only on impacts in relation to insects, see 'Death and Extinction of the Bees',

https://www.globalresearch.ca/death-and-extinction-of-the-bees/5375684

'Insectageddon: farming is more catastrophic than climate breakdown'

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/20/insectageddon-farming-catastrophe-climate-breakdown-insect-populations

and '"Decimated": Germany’s birds disappear as insect abundance plummets 76%'.

https://news.mongabay.com/2017/10/decimated-germanys-birds-disappear-as-insect-abundance-plummets-76/

Is anything being done to end this omnicide (the destruction of all life)? Not really, although there is plenty of rhetoric and limited action in some contexts as all bar a few committed individuals and organizations ignore this onslaught while even fewer take action that addresses the underlying cause and/or fundamental drivers of this killing. Unfortunately, most effort is still wasted on lobbying elites.

For example, in the latest example of the foolishness of lobbying elites to take action in our struggle to defend Earth's biosphere, the European Union has again just renewed Monsanto's licence to keep poisoning (and otherwise destroying) our world – see 'German vote swings EU decision on 5-year glyphosate renewal' https://euobserver.com/environment/140042 –despite the already overwhelming evidence of the catastrophic consequences of doing so. See, for example, 'Killing Us Softly –Glyphosate Herbicide or Genocide?'

https://www.globalresearch.ca/killing-us-softly-glyphosate-herbicide-or-genocide/5617502

and 'GM Food Crops Illegally Growing in India: The Criminal Plan to Change the Genetic Core of the Nation's Food System'.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/gm-food-crops-illegally-growing-in-india-the-criminal-plan-to-change-the-genetic-core-of-the-nations-food-system/5617473

Of course, massive poisoning of the biosphere is only one way to destroy it and while elites and their agents drive most of this destruction they nevertheless often rely on our complicity. To itemize just a few of these many techniques for destroying our biosphere in most of which we are complicit, consider the following. We destroy rainforests – see 'Cycles of Wealth in Brazil's Amazon: Gold, Lumber, Cattle and Now, Energy'

http://www.ipsnews.net/2017/10/cycles-wealth-brazils-amazon-gold-lumber-cattle-now-energy/

– we contaminate and privatize the fresh water – see 'Groundwater drunk by BILLIONS of people may be contaminated by radioactive material spread across the world by nuclear testing in the 1950s'

https://www.transcend.org/tms/2017/05/groundwater-drunk-by-billions-of-people-may-be-contaminated-by-radioactive-material-spread-across-the-world-by-nuclear-testing-in-the-1950s/

and 'Nestlé CEO Denies That Water is an Essential Human Right'

https://www.activistpost.com/2013/04/nestle-ceo-denies-that-water-is.html

– we overfish and pollute the oceans – see 'New UN report finds marine debris harming more than 800 species, costing countries millions'

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=55724#.WEdCk1yYrIV – we eat meat despite the devastating impact of animal agriculture on Earth's biosphere – see 'The True Environmental Cost of Eating Meat'

https://inhabitat.com/infographic-the-true-environmental-cost-of-eating-meat/

– we destroy the soil – see 'Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues'

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-farming-left-if-soil-degradation-continues/

– and we use our cars and air travel (along with our meat-eating) as key weapons in our destruction of Earth's atmosphere and climate with atmospheric carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide levels all breaking new records in 2016. See 'Greenhouse Gas Bulletin'.

https://ane4bf-datap1.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/wmocms/s3fs-public/ckeditor/files/GHG_Bulletin_13_EN_final_1_1.pdf

So, in essence, the problem is this: Human beings are destroying the biosphere and driving countless lifeforms, including ourselves, to extinction. And there is little strategic resistance to this onslaught.

But if you think that is bad enough, did you know about the out-of-control methane releases into the atmosphere that we have triggered – see '7,000 underground gas bubbles poised to "explode" in Arctic'

http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/news/n0905-7000-underground-gas-bubbles-poised-to-explode-in-arctic/?nf=News

and 'Release of Arctic Methane "May Be Apocalyptic," Study Warns'

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/39957-release-of-arctic-methane-may-be-apocalyptic-study-warns

– and did you know that scientists at the University of Leicester warn that we are destroying the Earth's oxygen? See 'Global warming disaster could suffocate life on planet Earth, research shows'

https://phys.org/news/2015-12-global-disaster-suffocate-life-planet.html

and 'The Extinction Event Gains Momentum'.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/08/08/the-extinction-event-gains-momentum/

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n addition, relying on our ignorance and our complicity, elites kill vast areas of Earth's biosphere through war and other military violence (without even considering the unique, and possibly life-ending, devastation if the recently and repeatedly threatened nuclear war eventuates) – see, for example, the Toxic Remnants of War Project

Wounded Lives' http://www.scarredlandsfilm.com/ – subject it to uncontrolled releases of radioactive contamination – see 'Fukushima Radiation Has Contaminated The Entire Pacific Ocean - And It's Going To Get Worse'

http://www.trueactivist.com/fukushima-radiation-has-contaminated-the-entire-pacific-ocean-and-its-going-to-get-worse/

– and use geoengineering to wage war on its climate, environment and ultimately ourselves. See, for example, 'Engineered Climate Cataclysm: Hurricane Harvey',

http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/engineered-climate-cataclysm-hurricane-harvey/

'Planetary Weapons and Military Weather Modification: Chemtrails, Atmospheric Geoengineering and Environmental Warfare',

https://www.globalresearch.ca/military-weather-modification-chemtrails-atmospheric-geoengineering-and-environmental-warfare/5356630

'Chemtrails: Aerosol and Electromagnetic Weapons in the Age of Nuclear War'

https://www.globalresearch.ca/chemtrails-aerosol-and-electromagnetic-weapons-in-the-age-of-nuclear-war-4/5617879

and 'The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction: "Owning the Weather" for Military Use'.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-ultimate-weapon-of-mass-destruction-owning-the-weather-for-military-use-2/5306386

Of course, all of this is done at immediate cost to human beings, particularly indigenous peoples – see, for example, 'Five ways climate change harms indigenous people' [Not to mention animals, the most vulnerable creatures of all.]

http://www.climatechangenews.com/2014/07/28/five-ways-climate-change-harms-indigenous-people/

– and those who are in the worst position to resist – see 'Global Poverty: How the Rich Eat the Poor and the World: The Big Lies'

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-davos-blind-eye-how-the-rich-eat-the-poor-and-the-world/5503273

– but elites know they can ignore our lobbying and occasional, tokenistic and disorganized protests while relying on the fear and powerlessness of most of us to ensure that we do nothing strategic to fight back.

And given the unrelenting criminal onslaught of the insane global elite – see 'The Global Elite is Insane'

http://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/columnists/06-02-2014/126767-global_elite-0/

– directed against Earth's biosphere, together with the elite's many sycophantic academic, bureaucratic, business, legal, media, military, political and scientific servants who deny science and threaten human survival in the interests of short-term personal privilege, corporate profit and social control, it is long past time when those of us who are genuinely concerned should be developing and implementing a strategy that recognises the elite and its many agents as opponents to be resisted with a careful and powerful strategy.

So, in essence, the problem is this: Human beings are destroying the biosphere and driving countless lifeforms, including ourselves, to extinction. And there is little strategic resistance to this onslaught.

There is, of course, an explanation for this and this explanation needs to be understood if we are to implement a strategy to successfully halt our omnicidal assault on Earth's biosphere in time to save ourselves and as many other species as possible in a viable ecological setting. This is because if you want to solve a problem or resolve a conflict, then it is imperative to know and act on the truth. Otherwise you are simply acting on a delusion and whatever you do can have no desirable outcome for yourself, others, the Earth or its multitude of creatures.

Of course, most people are content to live in delusion: it averts the need to courageously, intelligently and conscientiously analyse what is truly happening and respond to it powerfully. In short: it makes life 'easier' (that is, less frightening) even if problems keep recurring and conflicts are suppressed, to flare up periodically, rather than resolved.

And, of course, this is how elites want it. They do not want powerful individuals or organizations interfering with their scheme to (now rapidly) consolidate their militarized control over the world's populations and resources. This is why, for example, elites love 'democracy': it ensures disempowerment of the population. How so? you might ask. The fundamental flaw of democracy is that people have been deceived into surrendering their personal power to act responsibly – in relation to the important social, political, economic, environment and climate issues of the day – to elected 'representatives' in government who then fearfully represent the elites who actually control them (whether through financial incentives, electoral support or other means), assuming they aren't members of the elite themselves and simply represent elite priorities out of shared interest (as does Donald Trump).

And because we delegate responsibility to those powerless politicians who fearfully (or out of shared interest) act in response to elite bidding, the best scientific information in relation to the state of the Earth is simply ignored or rejected while conservative 'scientific warnings' advocating 'strategies' that must fail are widely circulated. See, for example, 'World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice'.

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/doi/10.1093/biosci/bix125/4605229

So this widespread failure to respond thoughtfully and powerfully is a fundamental reason that we are killing the biosphere and destroying life on Earth. Too few humans are willing to accept personal responsibility to understand why the violence is occurring and to participate in a carefully designed strategy to avert our own extinction, let alone save countless other species from premature entry into the fossil record. It is easier to leave responsibility to others. See 'The Delusion "I Am Not Responsible"'.

https://www.thenigerianvoice.com/news/222631/the-delusion-i-am-not-responsible.html

And, clearly, time is running out, unless you are gullible enough to believe the elite-sponsored delusion that promotes inaction, and maximizes corporate profits in the meantime, because we are supposed to have until 'the end of the century'. Far from it, however. As some courageous scientists, invariably denied access to mainstream news outlets, explain it: near-term human extinction is now the most likely outcome.

One of these scientists is Professor Guy McPherson https://guymcpherson.com/ who offers compelling evidence that human beings will be extinct by 2030. For a summary of the evidence of this, which emphasizes the usually neglected synergistic impacts of many of these destructive trends (some of which are noted above) and cites many references, listen to the lecture by Professor McPherson on 'Climate Collapse and Near Term Human Extinction'.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/guy-mcpherson-on-climate-collapse-and-near-term-human-extinction/5386102

Why 2030? Because, according to McPherson, the 'perfect storm' of environmental assaults that we are now inflicting on the Earth, including the 28 self-reinforcing climate feedback loops that have already been triggered, is so far beyond the Earth's capacity to absorb, that there will be an ongoing succession of terminal breakdowns of key ecological systems and processes – that is, habitat loss – over the next decade that it will precipitate the demise of homo sapiens sapiens. In relation to the climate alone, another scientist, Professor Kevin Anderson, who is Deputy Director of the UK's premier climate modelling institution, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research,

http://www.ecoshock.info/2012/11/kevin-anderson-what-they-wont-tell-you.html

So be wary of putting any credence on 'official' explanations, targets and 'action-plans' in relation to the climate that are approved by large gatherings, whether governmental or scientific. Few people have the courage to tell the truth when it guarantees unpopularity and can readily manifest as career-extinction and social and scientific marginalization.

As an aside, it is perhaps worth mentioning that most people have long forgotten that a decade ago (when the global temperature was .8 degrees above the pre-industrial level) it had been suggested that a decrease in global temperature to not more than .5 degrees above the pre-industrial level was actually necessary to achieve a safe climate, with the Arctic intact (although there was no clear feasible method for humans to reduce the global temperature to this level with any speed). Sadly we have made little progress in the past decade apart from to keep raising the 'acceptable' limit (whether to 2 degrees or 'only' 1.5). Most humans love to delude themselves to avoid dealing with the truth. Hence, for those of us committed to responding powerfully to this crisis, the fundamental question is this: Why, precisely, are human beings destroying life on Earth? Without an accurate answer to this question, any strategy to address this crisis must be based on either guesswork or ideology.

However, any argument that human beings are genetically-predisposed to inflict violence is easily refuted by the overwhelming evidence of human cooperation throughout the millennia and there are endless examples, ranging from the interpersonal to the international, of humans cooperating to resolve conflict without violence, even when these conflicts involve complex issues and powerful vested interests. There are also plentiful examples of humans, particularly indigenous communities, living in harmony with, rather than destroying, nature.

Other analysts argue that human violence and destructiveness are manifestations of political, economic and/or social structures – such as patriarchy, capitalism and the state, depending on the perspective – and while I agree that (massive) structural violence actually occurs, I do not believe that these structures, by themselves, constitute an adequate explanation of the cause of violence.

This is simply because any structural explanation cannot account for violence in all contexts (including the violence that led to creation of the structure in the first place) or explain why it doesn't happen in some contexts where a particular perspective indicates that it should. So is there another plausible explanation for human violence? And can we do anything about it? Let me offer an explanation and a way forward that also takes advantage of the insights of those traditions that have critiqued structural violence in its many forms.

I have been researching why human beings are violent since 1966 and the evidence has convinced me that the origin of all human violence is the violence inflicted by adults on children under the guise of what sociologists call 'socialization'. This violence takes many forms – what I call 'visible', 'invisible' and 'utterly invisible' violence – and it creates enormously damaged individuals who then personally inflict violence on themselves, those around them (including their own children) and the Earth, while creating, participating in, defending and/or benefiting from structures of violence and exploitation. For a full explanation of this point, see 'Why Violence?'

http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence and 'Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice'.

http://anitamckone.wordpress.com/articles-2/fearless-and-fearful-psychology/

Hence, in my view, the evidence is overwhelming that if we want to end human violence, whether inflicted on ourselves, others or the Earth, then the central feature of our strategy must be to end adult violence against children. See 'My Promise to Children'.

https://feelingsfirstblog.wordpress.com/my-promise-to-children/ I claim that this must be 'the central feature of our strategy' for the simple reason that each damaged child grows up to become a willing and active perpetrator of violence when, if they were not so damaged, they would be powerful agents of peace, justice and sustainability committed to resisting violence and exploitation in all contexts until it is eliminated.

This profound evolutionary inheritance – to be an individual of integrity who consciously chooses and lives out their own unique, powerful and nonviolent life path – has been denied to virtually all of us because humans endlessly terrorize their children into mindless obedience and social conformity, leaving them powerless to access and live out their conscience.

And this makes it very easy for elites: By then using a combination of our existing fear, indoctrination (via the education system, corporate media and religion) and intimidation (via the police, legal and prison systems), sometimes sweetened with a few toys and trinkets, national elites maintain social control and maximize corporate profits by coercing the rest of us to waste our lives doing meaningless work, in

denial of our Selfhood, in the corporate-controlled economy. As I implied above, however, we need not be content with just working to end violence against children. We can also work to end all other manifestations of violence – including violence against women, indigenous peoples, people of color, Islamic and working class people, and violence against the Earth and its natural creatures– but recognize that if we tackle this violence without simultaneously tackling violence at its source, we fundamentally undermine our effort to tackle these other manifestations of violence too. Moreover, tackling structural violence (such as capitalism) by using direct violence cannot work either. Because violence always feeds off fear it will always proliferate and remanifest, whether as direct, structural, cultural or ecological violence, however beneficial any short-term outcome may appear.

Importantly then, apart from understanding and addressing the fundamental cause of this crisis, we must implement a comprehensive strategy that takes into account and addresses each and every component of it. There is no point working to achieve a single objective that might address one problem no matter how important that particular problem might be. The crisis is too far advanced to settle for piecemeal action.

Hence, if you wish to tackle all of this violence simultaneously, you might consider joining those participating in the comprehensive strategy simply explained in 'The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth'.

http://tinyurl.com/flametree If you wish to tackle violence in a particular context, direct, structural or otherwise, consider using the strategic approach outlined in Nonviolent Campaign Strategy https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/ or Nonviolent

Defense/Liberation Strategy.

https://nonviolentliberationstrategy.wordpress.com/

And if you would like to publicly commit yourself to participate in the effort to end all human violence, you can do so by signing the online pledge of 'The People's Charter to Create a Nonviolent World'.

http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com

Killing the biosphere is the most effective way to destroy life on Earth because it destroys the ecological foundation – the vast array of incredibly diverse and interrelated habitats – on which organisms depend for their survival. And we are now very good at this killing which is why averting human extinction is already going to be extraordinarily difficult.

Hence, unless and until you make a conscious personal decision to participate strategically in the struggle to save life on Earth, you will be one of those individuals who kills the biosphere as a byproduct of living without awareness and commitment: A person who simply over-consumes their way to extinction.

So next time you ponder the fate of humanity, which is inextricably tied to the fate of the Earth, it might be worth considering the unparalleled beauty of what Earth has generated. See, for example, 'Two White Giraffes Seen in Kenyan Conservation Area'.

https://www.rainforesttrust.org/news/two-white-giraffes-seen-kenyan-conservation-area/

And as you do this, ask yourself how hard you are willing to fight to save life on Earth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of 'Why Violence?' http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here. http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

ROBERT J. BURROWES—Hence, unless and until you make a conscious personal decision to participate strategically in the struggle to save life on Earth, you will be one of those individuals who kills the biosphere as a byproduct of living without awareness and commitment: A person who simply over-consumes their way to extinction.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. BREAKING THE EMPIRE'S MEDIA MONOPOLY IS UP TO YOU.

From Indonesian Borneo (Kalimantan): Andre Vltchek and Mira Lubis
All photos by the author. Click on images for best resolution.

She was just standing there, in the middle of burning land, surrounded by stumps of trees, fire everywhere, smoke rising towards hopelessly gray sky. The expression on her face was mischievous, almost girlish. I had no idea how old she was: she could have been 28, just as she could easily have been 55. This island, this village, this charred land: it all looked like hell to me, but obviously not to her: it actually made her laugh, burst with pride.

After all, it was her island, not mine; it was her land, her trees, and it was all getting royally fucked. She was personally participating in this carnage of nature - she, as well as her husband, her entire family, her neighbors.

Her name was Bu Elvi. ‘Bu’ means mom, or mam or Misses, in Bahasa Indonesia. Her scorched land spans near the village of Dusun Terusan, and Dusan Terusan is near Sintang, in the heart of Borneo, on the largest island in Asia, which is also the second largest island in the world, on what we habitually call ‘our Planet Earth’; although frankly, this moonscape of Indonesian Borneo/Kalimantan has very little to do with what used to be the ‘blue planet’.

“I follow stock exchange regularly”, Bu Elvi brags, boastfully:

“I know that prices of rubber went down at least three times, lately. Now we will burn all this down, since the government refuses to give us any substantial compensation... and then, we will plant some vegetables, at least for a while.”

“And then?” we ask. “What if the prices of rubber go up again?”

“Then, well...” she hesitates, but for just a few moments. Regaining her bearings, she declares, defiantly:

“If that happens, we will burn the vegetables and reintroduce the rubber plantation.”

Now it is all black around her. It is desperate and depressing. But she doesn’t look suicidal, miserable, or even guilty. She does precisely what she was told to do under General Suharto’s military dictatorship, which was sponsored by the United States and the rest of the West. She does what she was taught to do right after the dictatorship collapsed (at least on paper) - in the present era of savage capitalism and unbridled thieving, which has also been clearly supported from abroad. She is making money. She is simply producing dough. She does not rely on anybody, she is well aware of the bottom line: nobody will give her anything. Even if she were starving to death, she would get nothing. And so she opts to be ‘independent’, as well as strong, aggressive, arrogant and observed from some distance, mildly insane.

SLIDER PRESENTATION: IMAGES OF DEVASTATED BORNEO
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TO STOP SLIDER, PLACE CURSOR INSIDE THE IMAGE. YOU CAN ALSO USE THE ARROWS TO MOVE THE SHOW IN EITHER DIRECTION

She is of course religious, as everyone in this country is forced to be from his or her childhood. Most likely, she doesn’t give a damn about this life, as there is, she believes, something much better, ‘somewhere else and big’, right after this suffering on Earth.

She is a tough woman, a ‘survival of the fittest’ kind of person, in short a ‘new Indonesian’.

Can one blame her? Perhaps yes. Perhaps no. She has to live, to survive in this inhuman, savage system, designed and injected from somewhere, from far away.

Still, the land is burning. Here and all around Sintang, all around Borneo, and in all corners of this entire Indonesian archipelago.

Would she opt for the independence of her island, if such an option were to be available?

She doesn’t need to think; she is suddenly absolutely certain. She clenches her right fist, grinning at us: “Merdeka! Independence!”

I am wondering whether it matters, whether it matters at all, who is ruling over this island. Fascism, savage capitalism, as well as the collaboration with foreign powers and institutions, has created a monoculture in this once great archipelago whose motto stated proudly: ‘Unity in Diversity’.

If there is merdeka, and if Bu Elvi rules, would the land stop burning?

I spoke to a woman near the city of Samarinda, in Eastern Kalimantan. She was selling some fruits and crackers in a small store, predominantly serving workers from the immense plantations located literally behind her back. No primary forest was left anywhere in the vicinity. Everything in the area was black, or green, but if green it covered by sawit, the Indonesian word for palm oil.

Her business was so-so, she said, nothing spectacular. Frankly, she was hardly making ends meet, and she had no health insurance, no housing subsidies, and no financial support from the government. Despite all this, she appeared to be content. Or at least she said that she was:

“We don’t have any fires around here, anymore. Before, when there was still some tropical forest left, there were constant fires. Now it is all quiet.”

“Isn’t it because the palm oil companies and mining multi-nationals finally got what they always wanted?” I wondered. “Now they do what they desire. They cut down everything. Why would anyone burn things now? Forest is gone... Island is totally ruined. Palm oil, open mines and rubber plantations are covering almost entire surface of it...”

She stares at me, blankly. She does not understand what am I talking about, at what am I hinting at. She is confused. No one speaks like this, here. No one thinks this way. No one thinks, anymore, full stop...

“I used to come here every weekend,” whispers Ms Mira Lubis, a professor at Tanjungpura University in Pontianak city:

“It used to be so serene, so beautiful. This beach... My beach... My father was a doctor. He worked very hard. When he got tired, he took us all here, an entire family. I used to play in the pristine sand, with my brothers... I used to swim here. Now just look around...”

She shows me her childhood photos. I can see ‘her beach’, as it used to be, decades ago. I can see it now. She has tears in her eyes.

I look around. And it is all ruined: someone poured concrete over the sand: terrible job, thoroughly amateurish. Ugly stalls are everywhere, like sores. The sand area was reduced to just a couple of meters. Some huts and ugly, crumbling structures double as a ‘seaside hotel’.

The beach appears to be totally abandoned and forgotten. The only thing that is never forgotten in Indonesia is an entrance fee; charging random visitors for entering anything, even this devastated place. In this country, nothing is public, nothing is free, and nothing is for the people. Even destruction is promoted as an attraction, as a ‘tourist destination’. You stop your car near the emergency room of a hospital: you have to pay... You enter a disaster area, a place ruined by a mining company somewhere in East Java: you are forced to pay. Scarred nature, ruined land quickly becomes a sightseeing attraction! You essentially pay for everything in Indonesia, especially if you are dirt poor.

Mira is walking slowly along ‘her beach’. She is deep in thoughts; she looks devastated. Her calm childhood memories are now confronted by reality, which appears to be simply monstrous. Her green island inhabited by ancient cultures and thousands of species of animals, birds and plants, now resembles a computer-generated image from a second-rate horror film.

She specializes in water communities, but the water is poisoned, mighty waterways polluted.

Far away, there is a brilliant, purple-red sunset covering the entire horizon. The sun is setting down behind a cluster of offshore islands. It is a brilliant, stunning sight. Borneo used to be one of the most beautiful places on Earth. But now, only contours are left; contours, memories and bitterness.

Again, I work; we work - filming, photographing and talking to local people. I don’t need any data. There is no need for theories. This is all clear, raw, absolutely undisputable.

Everything can be ‘explained’ and ‘neutralized’ by complex and ‘scientific’ theories, by going round in circles, by blurring the reality. Indonesian ‘science’ and academia, after 1965, has produced nothing useful for the country and for humanity, but they do one thing well: ‘muddying the water’, confusing and complicating things, making sure that what is obvious from the first sight, is squarely disputed, denied. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of PhD’s are made this way and for this very purpose, annually.

And the island is burning. Filthy chemical streams are everywhere. There is “illegal” gold mining on the land and in the middle of the mighty but horrendously polluted rivers of Borneo; mining is visible from the air and surface, but controlled by ‘influential individuals’, even by armed forces, and therefore untouchable.

Borneo is now synonymous with mining and logging, as well as with terrible plantations that have already cannibalized most of the land. Nothing is being produced, but everything has been extracted.

People are losing their land. They are losing health, even lives. The world is losing its ‘lungs’ - the tropical forests - or more precisely, it has already lost them all around this unfortunate archipelago.

Savage capitalism, moral and financial corruption, multi-national companies on the loose; this is a sad, even horrifying reality of the country, which totally lost its bearing.

Borneo, it appears, is nearing the end. The entire Indonesia is nearing the endgame, but it is considered ‘politically incorrect’ to mention it in the West, particularly in the mainstream media. Indonesia is, after all, ruining itself, so the West can prosper. It was like that during colonialism, and it has been like that, again, ever since the US-sponsored military coup of 1965.

I work feverishly in Borneo: I film, I write and photograph. Others are standing by me, trying to help. Are we going to achieve anything? I hope we will; we have to, otherwise, soon, here and elsewhere, everything will be finished, privatized, commercialized and eventually destroyed.

I also work in Afghanistan, in the Middle East and in several fully ruined countries of Africa. Everything here, in Borneo, appears to be extremely familiar. Is it really peace that is reigning here? I’m highly doubtful. To me it looks like a war, like an extremely brutal war. It looks like the war of people against their own people, the war of people against nature, against all living beings and species; a war against the forests and river, and even against life itself.

It looks like a neo-colonialist nightmare. It once used to be the most beautiful place in Asia, now it is scarred, charred and in terrible pain. But it is still breathing; it is alive. And what is alive is always worth fighting for.

[Originally published by NEO (New Eastern Outlook)]

About the Author

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are his tribute to “The Great October Socialist Revolution” a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter. [/su_box]

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

by ROBERT HUNZIKER

We share this planet; we do not own it.
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR THE ANIMALS TODAY? WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO DEFEND OUR PLANET FROM THE ONSLAUGHT OF BUSINESS?

Dateline: OCTOBER 30, 2017

Each and every year an avalanche of toxic chemicals, amounting to 250 billion tonnes, drips over Earth, which, over time, will sanitize all life, turning the planet into a massive gooey glob that glistens dazzlingly orange, not vividly blue. Already, scientists categorize Earth as a “toxic planet.” (Source: “Scientists Categorize Earth as a ‘Toxic Planet,” Phys.Org, Feb. 7, 2017)

“Earth, and all life on it, are being saturated with man-made chemicals in an event unlike anything in the planet’s entire history,” says Julian Cribb, author of ‘Surviving the 21st Century’ (Springer International 2017), Ibid.

Nothing is spared. Mercury is found in Arctic polar bears. Honeybees are dropping like flies. Insect abundance is falling off the edge of a cliff, down 75%, which itself is an extinction event. And, drumroll please, Mt Everest’s snow is so polluted it doesn’t even meet EPA drinking water standards, absolutely true. Dangerous levels of arsenic and cadmium have been found in snow samples taken every 1,000 feet up, according to Samantha Langely-Turnbaugh, professor of environmental science, University of Southern Maine.

So, how does this affect the human species?

Well, for starters, man-made chemical emissions are, far and away, the largest human footprint on the planet. And, here’s the strange scary aspect: It’s one of the least understood or regulated. So, even though Earth is turning into a chemically soaked sphere above and beyond the wildest of imagination, according to UN Environment Program, most of those chemicals blanketing the planet have never been screened for health concerns.

According to WWF Global research, only 14% of chemicals used in largest volumes have the minimum amount of data available to make an initial basic safety assessment. Oh, well!

So, not only is the planet saturated dripping wet with chemicals, it is largely being done in the blind. Nobody knows for sure the upshot of the biggest most gigantic of all time chemical spray in all of history as toxic chemicals literally drip off the planet. Witnessed from outer space, aliens must be horrified. No wonder they haven’t landed.

Humanity could be at risk like never before but nobody really knows for sure how or why at the very moment when worldwide capitalism is cranking faster than ever before now that state-run capitalism is so popular and ingrained in Oligarch-Heaven Russia and Red Communist China. The upshot: Considerably more unregulated chemicals at the rate of 2,000 new chemicals released every year. That’s five (5) brand new chemicals soaking the planet every day. As a result, industrial toxins are now found worldwide in newborn babies. When will humans start glowing in the dark?

Meanwhile, medical science is increasingly linking issues such as obesity, cancer, heart disease and brain disorders like autism, ADHD and depression to the massively growing titanic volume of toxic chemicals dripping off the planet.

Notably, only recently, the global threat is coming to surface, for example, a recent landmark study of insects showing a 75% falloff of abundance over 27 years. That in and of itself is an extinction event! (See Caspar A. Hallmann, et al, More Than 75 Percent Decline Over 27 Years in Total Flying Insect Biomass in Protected Areas, PLOS, October 18, 2017)

Problem: People need insects a lot more than insects need people. Without insects 80% of plants will die. The plants are angiosperms, meaning they need pollination. Mass starvation ensues. There’s no way around it.

Now that the UN and the chief scientist of the UK have come out in protests of rampant peacetime chemical warfare lodged against humanity, it is all the more interesting, actually disheartening, to follow America’s leadership role in the wide, wide world of chemicals.

Beyond U.S. policy, here’s what the world, via the UN, says about pesticides: “The current assumption underlying pesticide regulation – that chemicals that pass a battery of tests in the laboratory or in field trials are environmentally benign when they are used at industrial scales – is false,’ say the scientists,” (Source: Damian Carrington, Environmental Editor, Warning of Ecological Armageddon After Dramatic Plunge in Insect Numbers, The Guardian, October 18, 2017)

What to do? After all, it’s claimed the world will go hungry without pesticide control. However, according to a UN study, it’s a myth that pesticides are essential to feed a fast-growing population, See: “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Human Rights Council,” UN General Assembly Thirty-fourth Session, Agenda item 3, Jan. 24, 20170, to wit: “Pesticides cause an array of harms. Runoff from treated crops frequently pollute the surrounding ecosystem and beyond, with unpredictable ecological consequences. Furthermore, reductions in pest populations upset the complex balance between predator and prey species in the food chain, thereby destabilizing the ecosystem. Pesticides can also decrease biodiversity of soils and contribute to nitrogen fixation, which can lead to large declines in crop yields, posing problems for food security… Despite grave human health risks having been well established for numerous pesticides, they remain in use.”
..
Try organic farming on for size and see if it fits and crop rotation and crop-cover natural farming techniques rather than industrialized chemically grown crops.
A recent New York Times exposé, “Why Has the E.P.A. Shifted on Toxic Chemicals? An Industry Insider Helps Call the Shots” (10-21-17), delves into details about toxic changes at EPA, figuratively as well as literally a real killer of a story.

When it comes to peacetime chemical warfare, the Trump administration simply gives the finger to both the UN and the UK chief scientist, and for that matter, all scientists. Who needs’em? The Trumpeters think it is just dandy, just great to loosen up the regs. “Cease and desist overregulation” is their mantra. Let the chips fall were they may, and stop the crazy over-regulation becuz it hurts making America great again. Indeed, the Trumpeters are pure fodder for the Sixth Mass Extinction. Just what Dr. Doom ordered.

Contrariwise, there are times when science verbiage makes common sense, a lot of common sense, for example: “Our data indicate that beyond global species extinctions Earth is experiencing a huge episode of population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization. We describe this as a “biological annihilation” to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s ongoing sixth major extinction event.” (Source: Paul R. Ehrlich, et al, Biological Annihilation via the Ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction Signaled by Vertebrate Population Losses and Declines, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 114, no. 31, May 23, 2017)

In other words “biological annihilation” is right around the corner. Isn’t that just great! Thus therefore and furthermore, ponder for a moment impending biological annihilation in the context of the Trump presidency.

But, thank heavens, in stark contrast to Trump administration officials obliterating EPA, the UN is on the warpath, warning of “catastrophic consequences” from use of pesticides, claiming manufacturers systematically deny any harm and use unethical marketing tactics. After all, it’s a $50B industry on a dollars and cents basis worth the risk to chemical manufacturers to hoodwink the public as long as possible. Legal fees are easily paid out of profits to defend lawsuits. According to the UN, 200,000 people die each year from acute poisoning, and who could possibly know of the numbers of cases of cancer or Parkinson’s or liver failure. Nobody knows, and therein lies the heart of the problem of “not knowing” what nobody knows (not a quote by Donald Rumsfeld).

It is worthwhile taking note that pesticides are found in honey around the world. Yes, honey, the stuff people like to spread on bread and eat, lots and lots of honey. Here’s a quote from Science Magazine, Pesticides Found in Honey Around the World, Oct. 4, 2017: “Insecticides are cropping up in honey samples from around the world, a new study finds, suggesting that bees and other pollinators are being widely exposed to these dangerous chemicals.”

No kidding, that’s exactly why insect abundance has plummeted by 75%. Nothing could be worse, other than a Trump nuke attack simultaneously on both North Korea and Iran. That would likely knock out the remaining 25% insect population. Then, who knows what?

About the Author

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at roberthunziker@icloud.com

ROBERT HUNZIKER—Problem: People need insects a lot more than insects need people. Without insects 80% of plants will die. The plants are angiosperms, meaning they need pollination. Mass starvation ensues. There’s no way around it. Now that the UN and the chief scientist of the UK have come out in protests of rampant peacetime chemical warfare lodged against humanity, it is all the more interesting, actually disheartening, to follow America’s leadership role in the wide, wide world of chemicals.

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HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

by TED STEINBERG

As Hurricane Harvey lashed Texas, Naomi Klein wasted no time in diagnosing the “real root causes” behind the disaster, indicting “climate pollution, systemic racism, underfunding of social services, and overfunding of police.” A day after her essay appeared, George Monbiot argued that no one wants to ask the tough questions about the coastal flooding spawned during Hurricane Harvey because to do so would be to challenge capitalism—a system wedded to “perpetual growth on a finite planet”—and call into question the very foundations of “the entire political and economic system.”

Of the two choices, I vote for Monbiot’s interpretation. Nearly forty years ago, the historian Donald Worster in his classic study of one of the worst natural disasters in world history, the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, wrote that capitalism, which he understood as an economic culture founded on maximizing imperatives and a determination to treat nature as a form of capital, “has been the decisive factor in this nation’s use of nature.”

Care must be taken not to imagine capitalism as a timeless phenomenon. Capitalism has a history and that history is important if we are to properly diagnose what happened recently in Texas and is about to happen as Hurricane Irma bears down on Florida. What we need to understand is how capitalism has managed to reproduce itself since the Great Depression, but in a way that has put enormous numbers of people and tremendous amounts of property in harm’s way along the stretch from Texas to New England.

The production of risk began during the era of what is sometimes called regulated capitalism between the 1930s and the early 1970s. This form of capitalism with a “human face” involved state intervention to ensure a modicum of economic freedom but it also led the federal government to undertake sweeping efforts to control nature. The motives may well have seemed pure. But the efforts to control the natural world, though they worked in the near term, are beginning to seem inadequate to the new world we currently inhabit. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built reservoirs to control floods in Houston just as it built other water-control structures during the same period in New Orleans and South Florida. These sweeping water-control exploits laid the groundwork for massive real estate development in the post–World War II era.

All along the coast from Texas to New York and beyond developers plowed under wetlands to make way for more building and more impervious ground cover. But the development at the expense of marsh and water could never have happened on the scale it did without the help of the American state. Ruinous flooding of Houston in 1929 and 1935 compelled the Corps of Engineers to build the Addicks and Barker Dams. The dams combined with a massive network of channels—extending today to over 2,000 miles—to carry water off the land, and allowed Houston, which has famously eschewed zoning, to boom during the postwar era.

The same story unfolded in South Florida. A 1947 hurricane caused the worst coastal flooding in a generation and precipitated federal intervention in the form of the Central and Southern Florida Project. Again, the Corps of Engineers set to work transforming the land. Eventually a system of canals that if laid end to end would extend all the way from New York City to Las Vegas crisscrossed the southern part of the peninsula. Life for the more than five million people who live in between Orlando and Florida Bay would be unimaginable without this unparalleled exercise in the control of nature.

It is not simply that developers bulldozed wetlands with reckless abandon in the postwar period. The American state paved the way for that development by underwriting private accumulation.

Concrete was the capitalist state’s favored medium. But as the floods
mounted in the 1960s, it turned to non-structural approaches meant to keep the sea at bay. The most famous program along these lines was the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) established in 1968, a liberal reform that grew out of the Great Society. The idea was that the federal government would oversee a subsidized insurance program for homeowners and in return state and local municipalities would impose regulations to keep people and property out of harm’s way.

At the same time that the U.S. government launched the NFIP, a Keynesian crisis that would extend over the course of the next decade and a half began to unfold. Declining corporate profits were brought on by rising wages, mounting class conflict, escalating competition from Japan and western Europe, and increased consumer and environmental regulation. The profit squeeze combined with stagflation and widespread fiscal problems to produce major economic dislocation.

A new form of capitalism began to slowly emerge as business responded to the crisis. Major institutional change occurred in the global economy, in the relationship between capital and labor, and most important for our concerns here, in the state’s role in economic life. In the early 1970s the Business Roundtable was established as a corporate lobbying group. Among its tasks was to undermine various forms of consumer and environmental regulation.

This was the context for the assault on the liberal flood insurance program. By the 1990s, under the Clinton Administration, the pretense of regulating land use on the local level was all but dismissed in favor of a policy that simply encouraged localities to do the right thing to ensure the safety of people and property. It is not an accident that one of the worst-hit developments in Houston—southern Kingwood—was built in the last years of the twentieth century and the aughts right in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s designated 100-year floodplain.

Nor is there anything the least bit natural in how cities in the postwar United States have functioned as profitable sites for capital accumulation. Developers have been able to derive profits from capitalist urbanization in coastal locations because of what was effectively a giant subsidy by the American state.

Flirtation with disaster is in a sense the essence of neoliberal capitalism, a hyperactive form of this exploitative economic order that seems to know no limits. Some might find comfort in the words of Alexander Cockburn: “A capitalism that thrives best on the abnormal, on disasters, is by definition in decline.”

Others, myself included, worry that the current organization of this market economy to benefit the interests of capitalists, with its blind, utopian faith in the price mechanism, is likely to head in precisely the direction that the economic historian Karl Polanyi predicted in 1944. An institutional arrangement organized around a “self-adjusting market,” he warned, “could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness.”

Ted Steinberg teaches history at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America.

About the Author

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TED STEINBERG—A day after Naomi Klein’s essay appeared, [basically leaving capitalism off the hook], George Monbiot argued that no one wants to ask the tough questions about the coastal flooding spawned during Hurricane Harvey because to do so would be to challenge capitalism—a system wedded to “perpetual growth on a finite planet”—and call into question the very foundations of “the entire political and economic system.” Of the two choices, I vote for Monbiot’s interpretation.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

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