Some hard truths and hard realities to face.
If there's any point in writing a book, I'm going to title mine 'The world we could have had'. That's what's so galling, an eco-civilisation was all so eminently doable all those years ago. I'm seeing heads go down now, people admitting failure. I'll just say this, get your heads up, because at least you tried, and still are trying in this decisive year. I know all kinds of people who have been making all kinds of contributions on this issue, from scientists and academics to community builders and climate activists, to artists, poets, tree planters, the lot. You know who you are, you are out there. And the failure is not yours. Let's place that failure firmly where it belongs, with those who have had the money, the resources, the power to act for the long term common good, but instead continued to serve the systemic and institutional imperatives of accumulation and political aggrandisement. I think such people are called 'realists'. Their realism has brought us to this. I'll salute the people who have given their time and talent over the years for this, the Last Great Cause. I'm not sure if it's a Lost Cause now. The kind of changes that will work are civilisational changes, changes in patterns of behaviour, social identities, and they take a long time. We haven't got it. There has been a failure to re-design our institutions. And we lack social content and structural capacity to act. We can do nothing but rely on governments subject to economic constraints and corporate capture to somehow break free of the iron grip and impose some semblance of climate sense. John Ruskin said that we survived the Dark Ages by ‘the skin of our teeth’. But survive we did. I’m not sure the wild facts we were facing back then were on the scale of the facts we are facing now. But we have greater technological power, greater communications, greater connections now, of course …. We know the facts. The response to those facts depend on political institutions, economic relations, and social practices, and values. Have a look at ours, and see how much needs to change. This conflicts me big time. Anyone connected with, with responsibility for and love of the young, anyone with respect for those who came before, is going to do all they can and fight for the slightest possibilities for the human betterment. We are a familial species. Our tragedy has been that our cooperative sensibilities have been hijacked by a minority of free riders and turned to exploitative, destructive private ends, and we have been unable to organise to reclaim our social power. The prospects are dire, but there is something admirable in the numbers of individual men and women the world over who have found the courage and the faith, so singularly lacking in those with money and power, to try to overturn the rapacious, Earth-hating hubris that is consuming this planet, and who continue steadfastly to take a stand and give voice to values of human and planetary health and well-being. I am now reading the Pope being denounced as a communist. Frankly, in light of the global economic crisis, financial scandals and ecological degradation, I don’t think we consider that as a term of abuse any more. If it is communist to denounce naked power, stupid greed, and callous self-interest as the worthless deceits they are, and to demand their replacement by something that respects the life and dignity of all human beings and, further, embrace the fellowship of all living creatures, then we should be proud to call ourselves so. But I don’t care anything for names. We can betray principles through allegiance to a symbol. We know the values. And it is to those who share those values of social and ecological justice that I’d like to wish all the best in the dark times that undoubtedly lie ahead. It’s doable …. just. But success or fail, heads up. Like Jack Nicholson trying the almost impossible in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, at least we tried.