Thom Hartmann/Michael Mann Bullshit Alert [28:18 / 57:25 Full Show 11/10/15: Understanding Climate Change: A Conversation with Michael Mann]
McKibben’s
Divestment Tour – Brought to You by Wall Street | Part XI: 2
Degrees of Credendum
Excerpt:
"Conclusion:
We have the United Nations, scientists, governments, global media,
corporations, educational facilities, etc. etc. all echoing the three
syllable term, the “2ºC target.” This term has been
unremittingly reverberated throughout the echo chambers of corporate
and so-called progressive media in tandem with the non-profit
industrial complex. This constant reiteration did not reflect the 2ºC
terminology, rather, it constructed it. Misleading statements,
videos, interviews and both academic and scientific papers carefully
and deliberately tone down any sense of immediate urgency, lending
further “target” legitimacy to the 2ºC target, to which we
acquiesce. Remember that the chosen word “target” is defined as
“a goal to be achieved,” which strikes a chord, even if only on a
subconscious level – which is far more powerful.
It
has become normalized. The spectacle, comprised of a single number
united with a single letter (with a little circle between them), must
be considered a feat in 21st century hegemony – a creation by those
whose interests are served by the spectacle; a pasquinade for the
impoverished and those not yet born. The 2ºC discourse must be
considered perhaps the most deadly game of psychological warfare ever
played on human society. Using simple language and steadfast
repetition, the acceptance by civil society of this so-called
“two-degree target” represents an unsurpassed feat in modern
psy-ops."
The
planet is in the middle of a mass extinction event, where life on
earth is dying off at an alarming rate. And scientists are clear
about the fact that this extinction event is a direct result of human
activity. But the climate change deniers refuse to let us take action
as a country. America’s
Lawyer, Mike Papantonio, and radio and TV host Thom Hartmann talk
about this.
The
study, which was conducted by a group of scientists from some of
America’s leading universities, found that over the past
century-plus, vertebrate species have gone extinct at a rate almost
114 times faster than average. That’s right -- not one, not two,
not 50, but 114 times faster than average!
The study also
found that as many 477 different vertebrate species have disappeared
since 1900, a mind-boggling statistic because it usually takes
between 800 to 10,000 years for that many species to disappear. In
terms of the bigger picture, we really haven’t seen this kind of
planet-wide holocaust since an asteroid wiped out T. Rex and friends
over 65 million years ago. And that isn’t a coincidence.According
to the scientists behind the vertebrate study, their
data reveals an “exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity over the
last few centuries, indicating that a sixth mass extinction is
already under way.” So that raises the question: if a sixth mass
extinction is under way -- what’s causing it?
The
answer, it turns out, is easy -- arrogance, greed, and the belief
that we as a species can continue to exploit natural resources
without any regard for the effect that such behavior has on the world
around us. One of the most important points the Pope makes in his new
encyclical on the environment is that the source of our current
ecological crisis is actually an ideology, the ideology of
unregulated capitalism.
"The idea of infinite or
unlimited growth,” he writes, “which proves so attractive to
economists, financiers and experts in technology…. is based on the
lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth's goods, and this
leads to the planet being squeezed dry at every limit."
As
the Pope goes on to explain, we have now turned unregulated
capitalism into the new God, and as result, we now see the Earth as
something to dominate as a opposed to something we hold in trust as
part of the great chain of being. This is really the story of Western
civilization as a whole, but things have gotten a lot worse since the
Reagan revolution and the “greed is good” era of the
1980s.
Before Reagan came to town, we were actually having a
conversation about how to moderate our culture’s tendency towards
greed and exploitation. The EPA was created, and so was Earth Day.
And thanks to people like Rachel Carson, we were actually taking the
time to think about how the hunger for profit was hurting our planet
and our health.
But ever since the Reagan Revolution, we’ve
become addicted to the pursuit of “growth.” Instead of thinking
about how to become better stewards of the Earth, we now worry about
how to make markets more “efficient,” and the environment be
damned. Unregulated capitalism - also known as Reaganomics - is our
new religion, and we’re just as fundamentalist about it as the
Taliban are about Islam. And that’s a really important
point.
Going forward, we’re going to have to make some
important policy choices if we want to stop most life on earth from
vanishing forever - including, perhaps, us. We’re going to have to
better manage natural resources, abandon fossil fuels, and
decentralize our energy system. But we also need a revolution in
terms of the way we think.
As the Pope said, “We need to
reject a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that
the problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of
companies or individuals."
For too much of our history,
but especially since the 1980s, we in the Western world have seen the
planet as something to be exploited for profit. We’re now addicted
to an extremist ideology and that extremist ideology is literally
killing us.
So if we want to save the planet, the environment,
and probably the human race, we’re going to have to let our belief
in unregulated capitalism go extinct.
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