Climate emergency is political
Toward a rational View of Society: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 , 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 & 13a
This follows the previous post Climate emergency and the geologic record, and precedes the follow-on series A new/old World Order begin with Faith and climate practice.
Shown above is my thesis avisor, who 35 years ago next year said “human activities now involve an annual flux of earth materials equal to that of plate tectonics” (Geotimes). This is a stark measure of the Anthropocene (Wikipedia), followed recently with “the materials used by humans now weigh more than all life on Earth” (The Conversation), & “we’ve pumped so much groundwater that we’ve nudged the Earth’s spin” (physics.org).
This is the quiet unseen evidence of what we’re doing to Mother Earth under ground: Contrast this with record heat and fires or violent storms and floods above ground… and very much in the news nowadays!
Equally quiet are the political effects that undermine our ability to mitigate the Climate Emergency. The Guardian today “revealed: UK plans to drop flagship £11.6bn climate pledge”, thus “betraying populations vulnerable to global heating”… That’s $15b! How can that be? It’s simple maths…
Under the UK Health Security Agency under today’s Prime Minister then Chancellor, “in the past two years, the DHSC has written off £15bn of stock…” (Guardian). Not only is that figure bad, but its rate of increase is even worse, under the now Prime Minister: “ government fraud has nearly quadrupled under the watch of Rishi Sunak, reaching an alarming £21 billion from the previous £5.5 billion during Theresa May’s government” (The London Economic).
a) there is simply no money left for foreign aid after such eye-watering waste! And the hidden part is the worst: he who oversaw the waste as Chancellor is now the Prime Minister! Our democracy is sleep-walking into financial disaster, isn’t it?
Note: UK Prime Ministers are picked by the ruling party rather than elected.
b) this is furthermore manna from heaven: add to these the controversies over reduced civil rights under increased policing powers (BBC News) and the NHS on the ropes on its 75th anniversary (Guardian)… who has both time and energy to devote to the Climate and Ecological Emergency (CEE)?!
c) a CEE slogan is “climate justice is social justice” (Nature), and contrary to that, politics are yet another form of “misdirection” (Medium). As described above, climate justice is contravened by local politics in the UK.
This ends the three-part progression that the current climate crisis is:
- social
- in the geologic record
- and political
