Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In his new book Internationalism or Extinction, Noam Chomsky traces the duality of existential threats from nuclear weapons and climate change. He argues for the urgency of international climate and arms agreements, and shows how global popular movements are mobilizing to force governments to meet this unprecedented challenge to civilization’s survival.
It is of the utmost importance to establish the right framework of values for the deep transformation of civilization that is needed. As I have laid out in The Patterning Instinct, different cultures have constructed vastly different systems of values, and those values have shaped history. Similarly, the values we choose today as a society will shape our future. The stakes for getting it right could hardly be higher.
We’re feeling a tipping point emerge, and it’s not just ecological. It’s cultural, political, and institutional. We’d best do the emotional work and be ready.
Like the White Queen in Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, I have been practising, doing my best to believe impossible things before breakfast. Could these experiments with slower, deliberative modes of democracy carry the currents of indignation, transform them into a turning aside from business as usual? Could there be political leaders who come around to the need for such a turning, in the face of the enormity of the climate crisis?
When I asked Barábas what his party’s main messages were in the election, he was able to recite three immediately: a green city (more green space, fewer cars), spend money on healthcare not more of Orbán’s endless stadiums, and a wealth tax to redistribute the proceeds of corruption into healthcare – which allowed them to talk about Orbán’s oligarchs. Surprisingly few progressive parties have such good message discipline.
In Active Hope, Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone argue that there are three dimensions of our ‘Great Turning’—the transition to a sustainable future, rather than just accepting collapse or the ‘Great Unraveling,’ or denying that we’re in a transition at all (the three possible stories we can tell ourselves about the future).
You would have thought the time for obfuscation is over. But there’s a new game in town for those who still think there’s time left for business as usual. It’s called ‘net zero by 2050’ and its prevalence shows how many of those with power and influence still don’t really ‘get’ climate change.
My call for enabling the Earth Charter to speak directly to critical contemporary events and policy issues and for continuing the global ethics dialogue that led to the Earth Charter is not alone: many persons who have played significant roles in the Earth Charter movement since its inception in the 1990s have likewise argued for its importance.
When looking for solutions to climate change, this case reminds us that we sometimes already know what we should do, but are reluctant to choose options that involve cultural or behaviour change or challenge deep-seated social norms and practices.
If capitalism is still the dominant economic system in 2050, current trends suggest our planetary ecosystems will be, at best, on the brink of collapse. Bushfires will become more monstrous and wildlife will continue to be annihilated.
It’s too late, of course – too late to turn aside from the language of emergency. I’m not here to argue that we should, only to invite my friends who are using this language to think harder and speak more clearly about what it means; to recognise that there is fire in this language and to have a care for what might get burned down.
The Web can spread hate and fake news at an unbelievably fast speed. In Italy, the COVID-19 epidemics arrived just a couple of days ago and the social media are already exploding in a wave of hate against the current untori, in this case supposed to be the Greens, the Government, the Communists, Immigrants, Africans, and in general the “do-gooders” (in Italian, buonisti), supposed to have done nothing to avoid the spreading of the pandemics when it was still possible to stop it.
