In which the main news of the week, whether actually covered well, at all, or whatever, is put in a proper framework.
"You mean, it's about Theresa May's body language during her resignation speech? I'm interested!"
Uh, actually, it's more like this:
Imagine, for example, a Russian dissident living in the UK who had published copious evidence of Russian war crimes, and who had then sought political asylum in an embassy in London. Imagine if that dissident were then expelled from the embassy, under pressure from Russia, immediately imprisoned in a high-security prison here and faced with the prospect of extradition to Russia to face life imprisonment or the death sentence. There would be a massive uproar in the Western media. Western political leaders would issue strong statements of disapproval and demand the freedom of a brave dissident. The case of Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, is much worse. He is being pursued relentlessly by a powerful country, the United States, of which he is not even a citizen.
And also like this: "In 1982, Exxon scientists predicted that atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide would reach 415 parts per million (ppm) by around this year; which is exactly what has happened."
Question: Why is ExxonMobil allowed to exist when it knowingly hid data about how its product would destroy civilization? Why is it Assange and not several executives from ExxonMobil that will be put away for life? Why is it Wikileaks that's fighting for its life, as opposed to ExxonMobil?
Here's the deal:
Bill McKibben and Elizabeth Kolbert, two well-respected writers on climate, believe that although 'the political tide could be turning on climate change', they are both deeply concerned that it is too little, too late.
McKibben, whose book 'The End of Nature' was published thirty years ago, told journalist David Remnick in a New Yorker interview:
'The argument about climate change was over by the early nineteen-nineties, when scientists had reached a very robust consensus. We'd won the argument. We were just losing the fight, because the fight was not about data and reason and evidence. It was about the thing that fights are always about: money and power.'
Kolbert, author of 'The Sixth Extinction' about the human-driven mass loss of species, warned in the same interview:
'We have not yet experienced the full impact of the greenhouse gases we have already put up there. And once we do [in] a decade or so, there's a sort of a long tail to that, we will have put up that much more. So we're always chasing this problem [...] Once we decide, "Oh, we really don't like this climate," you don't get the old climate back for [...] many, many, many generations. So we are fighting a very very, very uphill battle. [...] maybe we can avoid the worst possible future. But I don't think at this point we can avoid a lot, a lot, a lot of damage.'
The outlook is so pessimistic that the best McKibben can hope for is that global warming is slowed down 'to the point where it doesn't make civilizations impossible.' But it is 'an open question' as to whether even that is attainable.
McKibben added:
'There are scientists who tell you we're already past that point. The consensus, at least for the moment, is that we've got a narrow and closing window, but that if we move with everything we have, then, perhaps, we'll be able to squeeze a fair amount of our legacy through it.'
This is terrifying, and it should drive media coverage of the problem with huge urgency and scope. The real prospect that all of humanity's achievements – in art, science, music, literature, philosophy – might be wiped out of existence, should compel dramatic action.
Journalist Jonathan Cook, freed from the need to kowtow to state or corporate interests in his reporting, states our predicament clearly and honestly:
'Climate collapse is so close at hand, the window to avert our fate so narrow, that only the insane, the deeply propagandised and those so alienated from the natural world that they have lost all sense of themselves and what matters can still ignore the reality. We are teetering over the precipice.'
Now is the time, says Cook, for 'genuine populism': a widespread, grassroots struggle to overturn 'turbo-charged neoliberal capitalism', including the corporate media, before it destroys us all.
Read.
(PS: No, I don't agree with Craig Murray or ML that the Intercept has buried the Snowden documents. Nor does Snowden to my knowledge. ML tends to go overboard; tends to exaggerate splits inside the tiny left, and badly, too. Annoying, but the rest is on point.)
"You mean, it's about Theresa May's body language during her resignation speech? I'm interested!"
Uh, actually, it's more like this:
Imagine, for example, a Russian dissident living in the UK who had published copious evidence of Russian war crimes, and who had then sought political asylum in an embassy in London. Imagine if that dissident were then expelled from the embassy, under pressure from Russia, immediately imprisoned in a high-security prison here and faced with the prospect of extradition to Russia to face life imprisonment or the death sentence. There would be a massive uproar in the Western media. Western political leaders would issue strong statements of disapproval and demand the freedom of a brave dissident. The case of Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, is much worse. He is being pursued relentlessly by a powerful country, the United States, of which he is not even a citizen.
And also like this: "In 1982, Exxon scientists predicted that atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide would reach 415 parts per million (ppm) by around this year; which is exactly what has happened."
Question: Why is ExxonMobil allowed to exist when it knowingly hid data about how its product would destroy civilization? Why is it Assange and not several executives from ExxonMobil that will be put away for life? Why is it Wikileaks that's fighting for its life, as opposed to ExxonMobil?
Here's the deal:
Bill McKibben and Elizabeth Kolbert, two well-respected writers on climate, believe that although 'the political tide could be turning on climate change', they are both deeply concerned that it is too little, too late.
McKibben, whose book 'The End of Nature' was published thirty years ago, told journalist David Remnick in a New Yorker interview:
'The argument about climate change was over by the early nineteen-nineties, when scientists had reached a very robust consensus. We'd won the argument. We were just losing the fight, because the fight was not about data and reason and evidence. It was about the thing that fights are always about: money and power.'
Kolbert, author of 'The Sixth Extinction' about the human-driven mass loss of species, warned in the same interview:
'We have not yet experienced the full impact of the greenhouse gases we have already put up there. And once we do [in] a decade or so, there's a sort of a long tail to that, we will have put up that much more. So we're always chasing this problem [...] Once we decide, "Oh, we really don't like this climate," you don't get the old climate back for [...] many, many, many generations. So we are fighting a very very, very uphill battle. [...] maybe we can avoid the worst possible future. But I don't think at this point we can avoid a lot, a lot, a lot of damage.'
The outlook is so pessimistic that the best McKibben can hope for is that global warming is slowed down 'to the point where it doesn't make civilizations impossible.' But it is 'an open question' as to whether even that is attainable.
McKibben added:
'There are scientists who tell you we're already past that point. The consensus, at least for the moment, is that we've got a narrow and closing window, but that if we move with everything we have, then, perhaps, we'll be able to squeeze a fair amount of our legacy through it.'
This is terrifying, and it should drive media coverage of the problem with huge urgency and scope. The real prospect that all of humanity's achievements – in art, science, music, literature, philosophy – might be wiped out of existence, should compel dramatic action.
Journalist Jonathan Cook, freed from the need to kowtow to state or corporate interests in his reporting, states our predicament clearly and honestly:
'Climate collapse is so close at hand, the window to avert our fate so narrow, that only the insane, the deeply propagandised and those so alienated from the natural world that they have lost all sense of themselves and what matters can still ignore the reality. We are teetering over the precipice.'
Now is the time, says Cook, for 'genuine populism': a widespread, grassroots struggle to overturn 'turbo-charged neoliberal capitalism', including the corporate media, before it destroys us all.
Read.
(PS: No, I don't agree with Craig Murray or ML that the Intercept has buried the Snowden documents. Nor does Snowden to my knowledge. ML tends to go overboard; tends to exaggerate splits inside the tiny left, and badly, too. Annoying, but the rest is on point.)