KH: What the Climate Plan shows is how compassionate, emphatic and considerate Sam Carana is, and how sane. The Climate Plan is the sort of thing you would use or impose in a sane society. But this society isn't sane, this culture isn't sane. I like to quote Jiddu Krishnamurti. "It is no sign of good health to be well-adjusted to a sick society." This sums up how we got into the situation we're in. It is the profoundly sick culture that is imposed on most of the people in the world and all of the other organisms, fauna and flora. So, it should be no surprise to us that we ended up where we are, when you consider the pathology that runs the economic system of the planet.
GM: Right, now that you said it, I think the correct quote goes like this: "It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society." In any event, that's exactly where we are. This is a profoundly sick society. The links between governments and corporations have been clearly illustrated for more than a hundred years. The existence of a shadowy group of characters in the United States and probably beyond and their influence on governmental decisions has been described for more than fifty years by reliable sources and all of this indicates that we do not have an emphatic, compassionate group of people who are making significant decisions. So, that's my biggest issue with the Climate Plan. On the surface, these ten steps make perfect sense. But we don't have a society that would allow for implementation of such a plan. I don't know how long Sam has been proposing the Climate Plan, but it's been a while, it's been long enough that the occasional billionaire knows about it, in fact, they probably all know about it, because this is how they make a whole lot of their billions, it's through knowledge. So, surely a bunch of people like Bezos and Buffet and Gates know about the Climate Plan, and they choose to put their money elsewhere, probably because they know that the Climate Plan cannot possibly be implemented and also allow them to retain their enormous privilege.
KH: I think the responses from the billionaires on the planet to the crisis is indicative of how bad it is. We're talking about going to another uninhabitable planet. It's insane. These people collectively have trillions of dollars. If money could fix this predicament, there actually is enough money, they could all tip in, whatever it took, if money could do it, but that ship sailed many, many years ago.
GM: And not only that, these are the folks who will have the ear of the government. If it just meant creating money, which is what we do every day, out of thin air, then we would create the money for it, wouldn't we? So, I don't think this is a monetary issue at all, I think this is an ethical issue, a profoundly ethical issue that - as a consequence - this society will not address, because this society is overwhelmingly controlled by sociopaths and psychopaths
KH: Yes, it's a mental health issue. These people are very ill, they're very unwell, they are pathologically unwell, and they have their hands on the steering wheel, the accelerator and the digimeter button. Another thing about the Climate Plan is looking after each other. This is what we've been advocating the whole time that we've been along this journey, these are the good old days, they are going away rapidly.
GM: Absolutely. Sam makes a statement about health care workers typically pledging to do no harm and politicians at the Paris Agreement also pledged to avoid harm. I was sent a paper today, and I immediately threw it in the garbage, the email garbage, never to be seen again, because the paper in the peer-reviewed literature was indicating that, if the global temperature rises from 1C to 1.5C above the 1750 baseline, then we are going to be in trouble, as if that hasn't already happened, many years ago. Here again is the complete disconnect between the compassion shown by the Climate Plan of Sam Carana and the reality of what's happening out there in the world.
PS: . . sponsored by the world governments!
KH: Another thing that the discussion we just had brings up is that the peer-reviewed literature is ignoring the inertia in the climate system. There is a massive lag between the emissions that are in the atmosphere and where we are today. Talking about 1.5C is complete bullshit, because if you go back to 1750 we're already there. Also, there's been a lot of anthropogenic warming before that. Just look at agriculture and civilization, and burning of things, there's a lot of things that are ignored. This just goes to show how institutionalized the peer-reviewed system is.
GM: Right, absolutely! Ok, I want to take just another quick look or two at a the Climate Plan. Item 6, democracy. "Each individual should take responsibility, and be given that responsibility. This means people need to be well-informed and made conscious of their responsibility." Pauline, would you care to comment on the notion of democracy and when it was birthed, how long it lasted and how important it was at its time.
PS: So, we all know that Greece is famous for being the cradle of democracy, but I think few people realize that it didn't last very long there. It lasted maybe ten years. The idea of democracy is different . .
GM: In theory, there is no difference between a theory and practice, but in practice there is.
PS: So, in theory democracy was a wonderful idea, and I think it worked for a little bit, but you know humans are like cats and it's like herding cats, and I do appreciate this, because actually what she [Sam] meant to write is anarchy. In anarchy, each person, each individual does accept responsibility, not only for themselves, but also for the people around them, that's what anarchy is. Democracy is everyone gets a voice and we just throw it all in the kitty, you can do the maths, we see it in this country every day. We have a mess of voices and nobody cares about other people, it's all about me, me, me. But she's actually talking about true anarchy, which is people being together responsibly, educated in the fact.
GM: Edward Abbey wrote frequently about the correspondence between anarchism and democracy, he basically said they are the same thing. Do we need more democracy? You bet your sweet betsy. Through anarchism.
KH: The word democracy is very old, but the version that we have now, this contemporary version, has been bastardized by the monetary system and the corporations. When I hear the word democracy now, it makes me puke, because look at the democracy that you have in the United States, that's the very best democracy that money can buy, and if you've got the money, you own it.
GM: Or, as Paul and Anne Ehrlich wrote in their book One with Nineveh, many years ago, what we have in this country is socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor, because under capitalism, the poor don't make out very well, never have. So, we socialize any corporation that might come close to failing, that's owned by a 1%er, and that's a point of the videos we've been putting out most mornings lately, is that the links between governments and wealthy people and the corporations they own are solid. The links between the government and small business, owned by mum and pap on the corner, they aren't nearly so strong. It's a tragedy.
KH: I'll give you an indication of how corrupt it has become in New Zealand. James Shaw is the co-leader of the Green Party in New Zealand. Their policy on their website is that they're opposed to private schooling. Just recently, he signed off on a gift of $12 million to one private school in New Zealand. The leader of the Green Party of New Zealand is an economist. Most people know about a guy called William Nordhaus, who is an economist, who set the 2C Rubicon that we shouldn't cross. It had no basis in science. Zero. It was all based on what he thought that capitalism could get away with. He got a Nobel Prize for that. These are the pathological psychopaths who are making these decisions.
GM: And he made that statement in 1977. We've learned a little bit about climate change since 1977, and he was given the Nobel Prize last year, right. And in those ensuing years, we have actually learned quite a bit about climate change.
KH: This is how Orwellian it has become, he got a Nobel Prize for guaranteeing the extinction of most, if not all complex life on this planet. And you have a President in your country that got a Nobel Peace Prize for dropping more bombs than anyone else before him.
GM: To be fair, he got the Peace Prize before he dropped all these bombs.
KH: Yeah, that was the deal.
GM: Exactly. OK, I want to make a comment on item 7 of the Climate Plan.
"Open information. Share information to enable people to make decisions. I like to make people think. I welcome discussion. Unlike politicians who take decisions out of the hands of people, I like people to decide for themselves and I like that to be a well-informed and well-thought-through decision." Well, he says it right there in item 7,
I like to make people think. Unlike politicians who take decisions out of the hands of people. Governments don't like people to think, it's really bad for the government when people think, look at the American cultural revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. What was a serious threat to the continuation of 'life-as-normal' for the sociopaths, the millionaires - at the time, that was a lot of money - who are pulling the strings of empire in the United States. We can't have people thinking, that's the worst thing ever to happen to any oligarchy of a country. So, that's just not going to happen, Sam, I'm sorry, I appreciate these great ideas, but the implementation, I just do see it ever happening in this country or any country in the world, because governments throughout the world have pretty much revealed themselves to be all headed in the same direction, which is the direction that the really wealthy people want the country to go.
KH: I like the expression that you used when we first met that we're all born into captivity. Just like most liing organisms on this planet are born into captivity. I read a report the other day that said that we've lost
68% of the wildlife on the planet in the last fifty years, and of course most of that would have been in the last ten of that fifty.
GM: Right, and it's accelerating. As we've discussed many times, the exponential function is something difficult for us to wrap our minds around, for any of us, because we're not hard-wired that way, evolution by natural selection did not in any way set us up to deal with the exponential function, to understand it by any stretch of the imagination.
PS: And it is ironic that, because of our innate nature to be altruistic, that we have allowed sociopaths to survive and to take over, because our altruistic nature always gives people the benefit of the doubt, and believes in the better angels, and unfortunately we have in the last six millenia changed everything, that doesn't work anymore for us. Once we industrialized, once we went into cities and created leaders, kings, priests, gods, county commisioners . .
KH: I believe that capitalism is a vortex of sociopathy and psychpathy to the top. So, the longer it went on, of course, the more unwell and sick the leadership would be, and that's where we're at, you know, in New Zealand, the Green Party members in New Zealand voted an economist to be their co-leader, you know, it's like voting for thieves.
GM: I guess the vote there for all of us is quick or painful. For death. Since we're voting for death.
PS: I understand that, a lot of our conversations look at these ideas and suggestions about what we could do to save our but, and we're able to really critically think our way through them with actual analysis that shows that this is not going to happen, it hasn't happened in the last forty years that we have been asking for these things to happen, they haven't happened yet, Einstein reminded us that, if you keep repeatng the same thing and expect a different result, that is the definition of insanity. What could we do then? There are things we could do. Maybe not to save our buts, but to have a gentler landing, or crach, or fall, whartever you want to call it, off the edge. You know, every day we are dealing with people who are homeless or houseless, every day we are dealing with people who are suffering from terrible diseases that they didn't ask for, every day people are losing their families, they are losing their jobs, their homes, I feel like what we could ask our goverments to do is to address that, that would be a real thing they could do. Instead, in this country, people still have this idea that you can lift yourself up by your bootstraps, and we've known from history, anyone with any sociological background, knows that's not a real thing. Not even the billionaires, they didn't get there by their bootstraps, they got there on the back of people.
GM: They make money the old-fashioned way, they inherit it. That's the way it works. And I like to spend a few minutes . . first of all, I want to make sure that we're done wrapping up the conversation for today, and then I like to talk a little bit about Ken Avidor, next month's guest, and put out a call to our listeners for a call for questions for an artist
See also:
NBL Radio Pre-Recorded for 6 October 2020
https://guymcpherson.com/2020/10/nbl-radio-pre-recorded-for-6-october-2020Q & A between Nature Bats Last and Sam Carana author at the Arctic News Blog - by Kevin Hester
https://kevinhester.live/2020/10/07/q-a-between-nature-bats-last-and-sam-carana-author-at-the-arctic-news-blog
