As the Planet Burns, Why Is the Media Still Downplaying the Severity of Climate Collapse?
20.7.23
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The world is on fire, like never before. As the author Gaia Vince explained in the Guardian on July 18, “This June was the hottest ever recorded on Earth. July led with the hottest ever day, swiftly followed by a hotter hottest ever day, then the hottest week — and, possibly, the hottest month. A few years hence, during the ceaseless climate catastrophes of the 2030s, as my kids’ generation reaches adulthood, they might ask about that terrifying summer of 2023 when 120,000-year-old heat records were smashed day after day: how did everyone react?”
For the ever-growing number of people who are aware of the scale of the crisis, in which catastrophic climate collapse is happening much quicker than even the most pessimistic climate scientists predicted, our options, sadly, are severely limited.
While brave protestors take to the streets, and interrupt significant events to try and raise the alarm, they face arrest, often through draconian new laws introduced specifically to try to prevent them from raising the alarm, and often face hostility, from mildly inconvenienced drivers, for example, whose disproportionate rage is often genuinely alarming, or from a wide array of ‘commentators’ — some ‘professional’, some not — who seem to regard interrupting a major sporting event for a few minutes, to highlight the suicidal nature of our collective inaction — as some sort of unforgivable crime.
Shamefully, those who react appropriately to the imminent demise of a liveable climate on earth are largely operating in a vacuum, because those with the power to let people know the unprecedented scale of the crisis we face — our politicians, and our mainstream media — are, almost entirely, abdicating their responsibility to tell us the truth: that climate collapse is here, that it is entirely man-made, through our prolific and almost entirely unfettered burning of fossil fuels, particularly over the last 40 years, that it is already severely threatening global food supplies, and that it will soon lead to sea level rises that will make much of the world’s coastlines — where countless vast cities are located — uninhabitable.
And the heat? Despite heat records being shattered as I write this, and as you read it — with temperatures well over 40°C (and, in some cases, climbing towards or even beyond 50°C) being recorded in southern Europe, the southern United States, China and elsewhere, and with wildfires still raging in Canada, and now ravaging Greece — it remains likely that even this will be the least hot summer of the rest of our lives.
As Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London, told BBC Radio 4’s ’Today’ programme on July 18, “As long as factories, power stations, ships, cars and planes continue to spew their exhaust gases into the atmosphere, things can only get hotter”, adding that, “depending on when we stop burning fossil fuels, in the future this might not even be a hot summer.”
To understand the failures of our politicians and our mainstream media, we need to recognise how rare it is for the media to allow climate scientists to tell the truth about an impending disaster that they have been warning about for at least 35 years.
Even with all of the evidence of catastrophic climate collapse confronting us on a daily basis, the media — at least in the West — largely shies away from pointing out the reasons for it: the ceaseless burning of greenhouse gases, which has pumped so much carbon dioxide, methane and other gases into the atmosphere that we have turned the atmosphere into a heat trap, ending, by our actions alone, what Gaia Vince described as the “congenial, relatively predictable climate” of the last 11,700 years — the Holocene, which enabled human civilisation to thrive — and replacing it with “the uncharted Anthropocene, an age brought about by human activities and characterised by global climate chaos and ecological degradation.”
Progress and backsliding over the last five years
My main reference point for understanding the scale of the climate collapse is the report issued in October 2018 by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which warned that we had just 12 years left — until 2030 — to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally to try to keep the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution to 1.5°C. Beyond that point, as the Guardian described it, “even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.”
Despite decades of awareness about climate change on my part, that report was my wake-up call, and it coincided with the appearance on the world stage of Greta Thunberg and her ‘School Strike for Climate’ movement, and of the climate activists Extinction Rebellion, who engaged in colourful non-violent direct action in an effort to get governments and the media to ’Tell the Truth.’ For a moment, the climate crisis succeeded in rising up the agenda of politicians and the media. Governments and councils declared “climate emergencies”, and polls showed that a majority of people accepted the gravity of the crisis.
Disgracefully, however, most of the political response was purely performative, and, lacking leadership, the impetus for change dwindled. Subsequent polls showed that, although people accepted the severity of man-made climate change, they didn’t really want to make significant changes to their lifestyles to do anything about it.
Then came Covid, and the lockdowns that gave us a glimpse of what a calmer, quieter, cleaner world could look like, but when the restrictions were lifted, governments frantically sought to revive the environmentally ruinous “business as usual” that had existed before, and far too many people forgot about whatever lessons they had briefly learned about the destructive effects of our frenetic sense of entitlement, and leapt back into the frenzied merry-go-round of over-consumption.
Shamefully, despite their promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions — by 50% by 2030, leading to net zero in 2050 — the world’s governments have almost entirely failed to rein in the polluters for whom profits mean more than life itself, and, as a result, greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise, rather than to fall, with the UN reporting last November that, based on reality, rather than on whatever ‘commitments’ to cuts countries had made, the world was now facing a 2.5°C temperature increase rather than 1.5°C.
As the Guardian explained, the UN’s November 2022 report showed that current agreements “would lead to an increase in emissions of about 10.6% by 2030 compared with 2010 levels”, far removed from the IPCC’s assessment that “greenhouse gas emissions need to fall by about 45% by 2030 compared with 2010 levels, to give the world a chance of staying within 1.5°C.”
This is disturbing in and of itself, of course, but what 2023 is showing us, in no uncertain terms, is that the models of climate collapse, with their targets of 2030 and 2050 — always comfortably in the future — have been overwhelmed by reality. At just 1.2°C above pre-industrial levels currently, the climate is now collapsing in ways that have erased any notion that we have any time left to prevaricate or delay. That totemic temperature rise of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels — until recently thought of as far-off — now seems likely to be breached as early as next year, as the El Niño weather pattern, a natural warming phenomenon last felt in 2016’s ferocious heat, pushes the fossil fuel-heated atmosphere into overdrive.
What we need now is revolutionary change. All new oil, gas and coal extraction must be stopped, and we must finally recognise that, to stand a chance of the planet remaining habitable even by 2030, severe cuts to greenhouse gas emissions — of at least 50% — must take place immediately.
As the climate scientist Bill McGuire described it on Twitter, in response to a Guardian article about the heatwave in Europe, which had led to red alerts being issued for 16 Italian cities, “Our once stable climate is falling apart before our eyes and governments and world leaders remain relaxed about net (not real) zero in three decades time or even longer. This is literally insane. We need to be on a war footing now.”
The media MUST tell the truth
Because our governments have failed to honour their commitments, suicidally allowing new oil and gas extraction, while failing to do anything to meaningfully reduce emissions, it is up to the mainstream media to take action.
It shouldn’t need spelling out, but the climate crisis is by far and away the biggest story of all our lifetimes — bigger than all the wars we’ve experienced, bigger than any disaster that has previously happened, and certainly far bigger than the endless diversions we are presented with on a daily basis.
TV channels should be featuring the climate crisis prominently in all of their broadcasts, permanently spelling out the existential threat it poses to a habitable planet, permanently pointing out the gulf between the emissions cuts required, and the continuing rise of emissions, and permanently illuminating the fact that the collapse we face is entirely man-made.
In June 2021, Mark Hertsgaard, the environment correspondent of the Nation, and Kyle Pope, the editor and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review, who are the co-founders of Covering Climate Now, wrote in a Guardian article, “To convey to audiences that civilization is literally under attack, news outlets should play the climate story much bigger, running more stories — especially about how climate change is increasingly affecting weather, economics, politics and other spheres of life – and running those stories at the top, not the bottom, of a homepage or broadcast. News reports should also speak much more plainly, presenting climate change as an imminent, deadly threat.”
And yet, as is readily apparent, the crisis slips in and out of the mainstream media’s consciousness, the need for drastic and urgent cuts to greenhouse gas emissions is hardly ever mentioned, and the 100% certainty that catastrophic climate change is man-made is rarely spelled out.
In October 2021, researchers at Cornell University surveyed nearly 90,000 climate-related academic studies, and established that over 99.9% agreed that climate change was man-made, making the consensus “similar to the level of agreement on evolution and plate tectonics”, as the Guardian explained, and any study of the increase in greenhouse gases over the last 60 years, and the increase in human production of those gases over that same period, will confirm that, actually, there is no margin of error whatsoever.
And yet, despite this, just three days ago the BBC ran an article in which two journalists, Esme Stallard and Mark Poynting, absurdly claimed that “[i]t’s too early to say for certain whether the ongoing July 2023 heatwaves across parts of Europe, south-west US and China have been made significantly more likely by climate change.” In addition, it’s only in recent years that climate change deniers seem to have been prevented from airing their views as part of an obsession with ‘impartiality’ and ‘objectivity’, and even now many broadcasters’ default position is to report on extreme weather as though it exists in a vacuum, and isn’t, in fact, the result of humans burning vast amounts of greenhouse gases in an ever-increasing orgy of fatal pollution.
As the New Republic reported in an article last July, entitled, ‘Last Century’s Approach to Journalism Is Useless in a Climate Crisis’, “Legacy media outlets are notoriously slow to change; many reporters continue to uphold a professional code of ethics dominated by twentieth-century myths of “objectivity”, despite the fact they patently fail to meet the demands of the current moment.”
There are other explanations, of course — fraught discussions in newsrooms about how to frame the crisis so as not to induce too much panic or fear, for example, or more cynical calculations about not alienating viewers or readers, but both of these fail to address the uniquely powerful reality of the climate crisis: that, unlike any other cataclysmic event in human history, even the Second World War, this one is truly global, and there is absolutely no escape from it, so that any kind of delay in telling the truth will only mean that the genocidal crisis gets worse.
Another angle emerged in Byline Times in May, when Rachel Donald highlighted how, following the inaugural Beyond Growth conference at the EU Parliament, a three-day event on Pathways towards Sustainable Prosperity in the EU, for which “400 experts signed a letter calling for European leaders to implement a well-being economy, saying a post-growth Europe is ‘critical’ to survival as endless economic growth in high-income nations negates effective environmental policies”, not a single mainstream media outlet discussed it.
In a tweet, the academic Julia Steinberger noted that, although there were many journalists there, from major outlets all over Europe and the world, every single one that she spoke to told her, “my editor refuses to print any story critical of economic growth.” This may well explain some of the refusal by mainstream media outlets (almost all corporate-owned) to take the crisis as seriously as they should, because the only way to reduce our emissions as required is not only to bring the notion of “economic growth” to an end, but also to fundamentally challenge the very basis of the capitalist system that fetishises it, and that, of course, is the driver of all our woes. Cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 50% essentially means dismantling the current capitalist model, and, to some very real extent, admitting that it has been a disaster, as all of its supposed ‘miracles’ of technology have in fact been killing us all by degrees.
Unfortunately, for capitalism’s defenders, who, on the one hand, make up those who lord it over us, and, on the other, also make up so many of our fellow travellers on this miraculous but beleaguered planet, there is no way to even have a chance to keep the planet habitable without dismantling capitalism, seizing its ill-gotten gains and using them to mitigate the worst effects of its astonishingly myopic success, measured solely in profits. Of all Extinction Rebellion’s clever slogans, ’No Money on a Dead Planet’ remains my favourite.
And finally — and perhaps this is contentious — I can’t help but think that part of the problem is also that the gate-keepers of the mainstream media are too old and too wealthy to take the crisis as seriously as they should. No one can be in any doubt that the super-rich are hoping that their immense riches will somehow shield them from the levelling effects of a ravaged and increasingly inhospitable planet, as reports about their bunkers show, but I also suspect that, beyond the 0.01%, even the 1%, who include the media’s managerial gatekeepers, must believe that they too will be shielded by their comparative wealth from the worst effects of what is coming.
As for age, as a 60-year old myself, I know that most of my life is now behind me, and that, even if the climate collapses spectacularly by 2030, as I finally become a pensioner, I had a full life before the planet became an inferno. I have no doubt that, the older people are, the more they generally feel this, but I can’t really understand how people with children and grandchildren aren’t rising up for their future.
My only conclusion — and it’s pretty bleak — is that, when it comes down it, far too many people are fundamentally quite profoundly selfish, and don’t care as much about anyone else (even their children) as they claim to do. Otherwise, they’d be trying to do something about it, like the parents and grandparents risking arrest and violence on Just Stop Oil’s slow marches, who, like their younger companions, are compelled to act because, faced with the previously unthinkable — the collapse of a habitable earth — doing nothing is not an option for them.
This essay of mine is also my own small effort to do something rather than nothing, in the absence of what I’d truly like to see — a people’s revolution, overwhelming the tired old killers in their corporate offices, and their pimps in Parliament, and working like crazy to salvage what we can from our burning atmosphere.
But for that to even have a chance to happen, people need to know not only that their home is on fire, but also who is responsible, so that they too might wake up to the unparalleled severity of now. And for that to even have a chance of happening, the mainstream media need to be doing far, far more than they’re doing now.
* * * * *
Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here, or you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.50).
In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.
Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here.
To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.
Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.
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33 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:
In my latest article, I ask why it is that, as heatwaves of unprecedented ferocity grip so much of the world, the mainstream media are still unable to recognise that climate collapse is the biggest disaster in human existence, and that they have an obligation to cover it as much as possible, particularly in the absence of any meaningful action from our political leaders.
As I explain, “It shouldn’t need spelling out, but the climate crisis is by far and away the biggest story of all our lifetimes — bigger than all the wars we’ve experienced, bigger than any disaster that has previously happened, and certainly far bigger than the endless diversions we are presented with on a daily basis.”
And yet the mainstream media refuse to take it seriously enough. I criticise their constant hedging about the extent to which climate collapse is man-made (there can be no doubt – it is 100% our problem), and I also ask if their refusal to take a leadership role is because the gatekeepers refuse to accept that it devastatingly undermines capitalism’s notion of itself as a success, and cannot contemplate a world in which success is no longer measured through economic growth.
I also probe whether their problem is their tired obsession with ‘impartiality’ and ‘objectivity’, complain about the tendency to still report on extreme weather as though it exists in a vacuum, even though it is “the result of humans burning vast amounts of greenhouse gases in an ever-increasing orgy of fatal pollution”, and also suggest that one major problem might be that the gatekeepers are too old to take it as seriously as the young, and too well-off not to believe that this somehow shields them from its worst effects.
I hope you have time to read it, and I’d appreciate your thoughts.
...on July 20th, 2023 at 7:07 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Ed Calipel wrote:
Exactly.
The goal of continuous economic growth.
The measurement of “success” In purely financial terms.
The Protestant Work Ethic so instilled it defies logic; the drones (“ordinary, hard-working people”) who really don’t have the capacity to accept what’s happening. Blank denial.
...on July 20th, 2023 at 11:00 pm
Andy Worthington says...
That’s definitely what I’m seeing here, Ed. Generational indoctrination that’s extremely difficult for people to overcome, hence the violent attacks on Just Stop Oil campaigners.
I do, however, think that putting the mainstream ‘liberal’ media’s gatekeepers on trial is worth pursuing. They need to be held accountable, and hopefully I’ll be able to interest other activists in trying to make that happen.
...on July 20th, 2023 at 11:01 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Lyndsey Perrott wrote:
It’s horrific. Keep fighting the good fight x
...on July 20th, 2023 at 11:01 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Lyndsey. Good to hear from you.
...on July 20th, 2023 at 11:02 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Dorian Haqmoun wrote:
People are suffering, and hopefully that will shake them out of their denial, and the penny will drop (if not melt). There needs to be pressure on the media and governments.
...on July 20th, 2023 at 11:02 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I hope you’re right, Dorian. I certainly think you’re right to point out that people who are suffering from the effects of extreme weather should be in a position whereby staying passive isn’t an option anymore.
...on July 20th, 2023 at 11:03 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Assange Vigil Melbourne wrote:
Wake up people and start engaging in reality, start thinking and analysing.
...on July 20th, 2023 at 11:03 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Good to hear from you, Assange Vigil Melbourne. Sadly, what should be obvious – thinking and analysing – can no longer be taken for granted, after 40 years of consumerist brainwashing and the encouragement of passivity.
...on July 20th, 2023 at 11:04 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Natalia Rivera Scott wrote:
I think it’s a great article, Andy. I wish millions read it. As I’ve said before, the climate crisis not only worries and anguishes me terribly on a daily basis, it also breaks my heart. I try to do things and to get people to care and it seems to me like, at least, the people around me don’t care. People seem not to care about such a terrible thing! They’re like “the world will end eventually” or “I’m not going to be alive by then” but the heat is happening now. We are burning and people are not paying attention. We are monsters hurting animals, land, humans …
...on July 20th, 2023 at 11:22 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for the supportive words, Natalia. I really appreciate it. I put a lot of effort into this article, and it was really hard work over two days. I too wish I could reach a wider audience, but I fear that, even here, amongst my global Facebook family, many people are avoiding the colossal and unprecedented importance of what’s happening, all of which only reinforces my belief that activists need to come together to publicly challenge the ‘liberal’ media’s gatekeepers to explain openly why they’re not prioritising it sufficiently, and why the media as whole is still largely a cacophony of pointless diversions.
At the very least, however, I insist on talking about it, pretty much to everyone I meet. Sometimes they don’t want to know, but often I get the very strong feeling that it’s appreciated, because it cuts through the increasingly absurd loneliness of pretending that it’s not happening, and, in the absence of any other leadership, perhaps also helps to create the conditions in which we the people will eventually have to assume the leadership roles that everyone else with power and authority is so clearly avoiding.
...on July 20th, 2023 at 11:23 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Damien Morrison wrote:
Climate change should be front page news worldwide … but its not … people are in denial even as the world burns … right in front of their eyes.
...on July 21st, 2023 at 7:54 am
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, and the distractions are just relentless, aren’t they, Damien? Today it will all be about ULEZ, and the voters of Uxbridge, and I bet none of the media commentators will even mention how environmentally toxic the unfettered car culture that has expanded remorselessly over the last six decades really is, and how it needs to come to an end. Not only does London have atrocious air pollution, caused almost entirely by vehicles; it’s also evident that road traffic also produces untenable amounts of greenhouse gases.
ULEZ is actually quite a mild measure, designed to reduce air pollution, but completely failing to tackle the real problem – that we need to remove at least half of the vehicles on our roads, permanently, and as swiftly as possible, and that no politician will even dare to mention that, because of the chronic sense of entitlement of car drivers.
Ironically, while the media will, predictably, be pandering to selfish car drivers today, amongst the general London population, where car ownership is actually quite low, there’s an untapped enthusiasm for getting rid of them, and for pedestrianising as much of the city as possible.
Once people realise, as I did eventually, quite how toxic and polluting car culture is, and how it has so thoroughly taken away our concept of public space, making everywhere into poisoning conduits facilitating endless movement from A to B rather than celebrating the possibility of clean communal space, they recognise how we have all been drawn into a dystopian world dominated by the internal combustion engine, and yet everywhere that pedestrianisation is implemented, the results are really rather wonderful.
...on July 21st, 2023 at 7:55 am
Andy Worthington says...
Damien Morrison wrote:
I loved the lockdown, everything was still, everywhere was cleaner, there was space … now it’s worse than ever, the entitled rich around here think nothing of driving right on your arse they don’t like it when I bellow … get back … they drive around in their £150.000 suvs thinking they are the chosen ones coming from their 20 million pound houses … these c..ts are societal locusts and parasites, environment catastrophe is happening now … but nothing nothing must stop the flow of money, the endless acquisition of material wealth … even a burning dying planet. The human race really has become a pestilence.
...on July 21st, 2023 at 8:57 am
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, it’s profoundly dispiriting how the lessons of the lockdown were so swiftly forgotten, Damien, and how so many people’s sense of entitlement seems to have become turbo-charged since, as they apparently believe that they have the right to pollute even more as they “make up for lost time.”
I try not to focus too much on the pestilential aspects of humanity, but it’s hard not to. Eventually, though, the environmental licentiousness of now is going to have to give way to genuine emergency measures – and that’s why we really need the media to start paving the way for that, to start spelling out to people that our entire over-consumptive way of life is killing us, and that, without concerted action to change our ways, the only possible outcome will be that we kill ourselves even quicker.
...on July 21st, 2023 at 8:58 am
Andy Worthington says...
Anita Tuesley wrote:
Notably, the biggest mainstream “print media” that isn’t owned by oligarchs is the Guardian and the Guardian is covering climate, biodiversity and other environmental breakdowns with the gravitas it deserves. (I know there are class issues it hasn’t covered as well). All other mainstream media outlets that I can think of are owned and controlled by interests that want to minimise the multiple environmental crises.
...on July 21st, 2023 at 8:59 am
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, the Guardian does a good job on the climate crisis, Anita, as does the FT. It’s also apparent that there are good climate editors elsewhere in the print media (at the Times, for example), and also in the broadcast media – at Sky News, for example, and also at the BBC. The real problem, therefore, is those who run the newsrooms, hence my efforts to try to stir up some discussion of how they need to be tasked publicly with explaining their position.
In my research, it became apparent that there’s a lot of internal discussion in the media about what angles to take to not alienate readers and viewers, although my main point is that the severity of the crisis is such that they need to prioritise it anyway, simply because the longer they delay, the worse things will get; there’s simply no running away from it.
...on July 21st, 2023 at 8:59 am
Andy Worthington says...
I’m pleased to note that Eurasia Review, which often posts my articles, has also picked up on this one, which will hopefully help it reach a wider audience: https://www.eurasiareview.com/21072023-as-the-planet-burns-why-is-the-media-still-downplaying-the-severity-of-climate-collapse-oped/
...on July 21st, 2023 at 9:03 am
Andy Worthington says...
Antoinette Slingsby wrote:
Well written and informative.
...on July 23rd, 2023 at 9:42 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for the supportive words, Antoinette. Great to hear from you.
...on July 23rd, 2023 at 9:42 am
Andy Worthington says...
Micha Ramsay wrote:
One strong voice from Andy Worthington.
...on July 23rd, 2023 at 9:43 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for the supportive words, Micha!
...on July 23rd, 2023 at 9:43 am
Andy Worthington says...
Here’s a good Los Angeles Times’ editorial, taking aim at the oil and gas companies – “Instead of propping up and legitimizing fossil fuel companies, we ought to be stigmatizing them as morally repugnant for continuing to add fuel to a house that’s on fire”: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-07-21/editorial-its-not-enough-to-be-frenemies-with-fossil-fuel-companies-we-have-to-kick-them-to-the-curb
...on July 23rd, 2023 at 9:44 am
Andy Worthington says...
Anita Tuesley wrote:
Andy, I can’t believe, 40 years on from really knowing the impact of these companies, we’re still at this stage.
...on July 23rd, 2023 at 9:44 am
Andy Worthington says...
I’ve long been fascinated by the fork in the road that was apparent at the end of the ’70s, Anita, when industrial capitalism was struggling, and there was significant existential discontent. We should have continued to learn from it, and to invest in a lower-impact future, but instead we got Thatcher and Reagan, and the promise of an economic miracle if we all agreed to embrace materialism and become less challenging.
And fossil fuel-based capitalism has driven this remorselessly, pandering to all our thoughtless gratifications – more and better cars, more and cheaper flights, the miracles of plastic, cosmetics and man-made fibres.
The CEOs of the oil companies really need to be on trial for their crimes against humanity, given that they knew all along what the impact of all this over-consumption would be, but the biggest uphill struggle, I think, is in convincing people that everything they’ve celebrated has been based on a lie; that all of the supposed ‘miracles’ of technology, creating the appearance of a ‘better’ life for humanity than ever before, has in fact been destroying us all along. That’s a bitter pill to swallow for people who have bought into it.
...on July 23rd, 2023 at 9:45 am
Andy Worthington says...
Damien Morrison wrote:
The media in this country has a lot to answer for … we are at the Edge of extinction yet nothing’s being done your right Andy the greed the aggression has become turbo charged I just feel disappointed that despite all the warnings nothing’s changed and I’m not a doomer or people hater but ffs we shouldn’t be in this situation … the human race should have evolved into a peaceful species custodians of a pristine green planet not the greedy warmongering savages that we are … it’s such a shame and disappointment … I watched the original 1968 Planet of The Apes recently I suggest watching it Andy … the film is spot on … and Dr. Zaius was right.
...on July 23rd, 2023 at 10:04 am
Andy Worthington says...
I still remember the shocking last scene of ‘Planet of the Apes’, Damien, which I must have seen when I was a teenager.
How right you are in your analysis: “the human race should have evolved into a peaceful species, custodians of a pristine green planet, not the greedy warmongering savages that we are.”
All these decades of ‘progress’ in our lifetimes and it’s all so meaningless. We choke on our own pollution, and have become so detached from nature that vast numbers of people aren’t even in touch with their senses anymore.
...on July 23rd, 2023 at 10:05 am
Andy Worthington says...
Damien Morrison wrote:
I read recently the technology has become the brain while the humans have become more primitive and they have. I’ve been watching these reaction videos where a young person goes out onto the streets and asks young people basic general knowledge questions things like … how many seasons in a year, what is 2 +2 +2 who is the president these kids didn’t know even the basics these were people late teens to mid 20s … we knew these things by 10 at the latest but ask them to name the Kardashians … they didn’t miss a beat it’s absolutely tragic not all were like this but most were … maybe their passivity and ignorance will be bliss they are not aware of what is upon us and they will die quickly because they don’t have any survival skills or common sense … what a fate for these kids Ive noticed with friends who have post millennials these kids have given up … it’s all fucked … they know … but this is your world now … at least try
...on July 23rd, 2023 at 10:07 am
Andy Worthington says...
That’s a scary analysis of what mobile phones and social media and advertising are doing to susceptible young minds, Damien, and it’s also disturbing to hear your anecdotes about the resignation of some post-millennial kids, which is not psychically helpful, even if it’s understandable. We all need hope.
As you say, young people need to at least try. The thing about political struggle, as I’ve come to appreciate, is that it’s not just about the hoped-for outcome; the struggle itself arguably has even more value, because perpetual active resistance is the best antidote to either being brainwashed, or sinking into despair.
...on July 23rd, 2023 at 10:07 am
Anna says...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/25/gulf-stream-could-collapse-as-early-as-2025-study-suggests … !!!
As all the lofty political climate speeches still are leading to zero reduction of CO2 emissions, it seems to me that the uncertainty is not whether this will happen, just when.
With the current El Nino just taking off, world-wide scorching wild fire smoke and melting ice & permafrost, how much longer can this gulf stream tipping point be delayed ?
Some 20 years ago I lived & worked for a couple of months with T.’s of up to 52 C – and no electricity to speak off. In other words, already the daily life for at least part of the year for millions of people, possibly soon to be billions. It made me renounce renewing my contract for another year, in spite of loving the work.
How many will have the luxury of opting out of living & working in such an oven – with the borders of countries with less extreme living conditions being tightly walled & razor-wired ? It’s beyond my imagination.
...on July 25th, 2023 at 10:08 pm
Andy Worthington says...
I was absolutely shocked when I saw that headline too, Anna – as shocked as I was when I saw the headline ‘We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN’ back in October 2018, which alerted me to the severity of the crisis that hadn’t, until that point, been at the forefront of my mind, although I’d been aware of it for 30 years: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/global-warming-must-not-exceed-15c-warns-landmark-un-report
I saw warnings two years ago about the gulf stream ‘switching off’ that alarmed me, but right now, with climate breakdown happening so fast and so ferociously, it somehow makes perfect, grotesque sense that it might be almost upon us.
This is such an extraordinary summer of heat and wildfires that the mainstream media seem finally to be starting to wake up from their slumber, but I still can’t see what, if anything can kick-start the major changes we need to see – essentially the swift dismantling of the entire capitalist system that, especially for the last 40 years, has been killing us while telling the moderately- to well-off that the drivers of our over-consumption have never been so clever, and we have never been so deserving (and all while the poor of the earth have been suffering more and more).
I’m offline for the next six days, at the WOMAD world music festival, where, ironically, it’s expected to rain pretty consistently because of the low pressure that Europe’s heat dome has pushed over the UK. I’ll be glad to be away from the headlines for a few days, but I suspect it will be a rather reflective time, and I can’t help feeling that we’ll all look back on this particular summer in the UK as the last manifestation of the world as it was, before everything irrevocably changed.
...on July 26th, 2023 at 12:28 am
Anna says...
Enjoy WOMAD while it is possible and hopefully you might be able to ‘forget’ about the state of the world for these few days as blissfully – and unexpectedly – as I did in June when visiting an old friend with big, wild garden in Ariège in southern France. Time seems to have stood still there since the sixties. Incredibly soothing & revigorating.
...on July 26th, 2023 at 5:51 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Anna. I was definitely able to escape the otherwise relentless bad news about the climate crisis for a few days, although it wasn’t the natural oasis that your friend’s garden sounds like. There was some wonderful music, of course, but any large collection of humans inevitably erodes the appreciation of nature!
...on August 1st, 2023 at 9:02 am