The following two articles below by Bill McKibben and Chris Hedges illustrate a key point of debate in thinking about how to solve our environmental crisis. Environmental activist and writer McKibben, in YES! Magazine on October 15, writes that we can't let the atmosphere contain more than 350 million parts per million of carbon dioxide, or else face total environmental catastrophe, problem being that we've already passed this number. He's helped organize a day of action on October 24 to push and make it happen. Chris Hedges' response in TruthDig channels the radical thinking of Derek Jensen and argues that there is no possible way to address the release of carbon dioxide without addressing the way industrial society without addressing corporate power: "The reason the ecosystem is dying is not because we still have a dryer in our basement. It is because corporations look at everything, from human beings to the natural environment, as exploitable commodities. It is because consumption is the engine of corporate profits." A very important debate, arguably on potentially the most important issue of our lives.

 

 

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Saturday, October 24, is the international day of action on carbon emissions. But that is only the launching time for an ongoing campaign that requires our full involvement. Below we give some ideas of how to be involved and some useful background information.
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Rep. Dennis Kucinich explains why he voted against the climate bill that narrowly passed the House Friday: “It sets targets that are too weak, especially in the short term, and sets about meeting those targets through Enron-style accounting methods. It gives new life to one of the primary sources of the problem that should be on its way out—coal—by giving it record subsidies.”
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Lorna Salzman comments on the minimum needed to save the envronment
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The Waxman-Markey Bill is misugided, says analyst Robert J. Shapiro
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The newest pandemic is not just an accident of nature--it has everything to do with the materialist ethos of global capitalism and the reliance on eating animals.
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The argument below should be used by those who understand the futility of a "cap-and-trade" approach to saving the environment.
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David R. Loy, Besl Professor of Ethics/Religion and Society at Xavier University in Cincinnati, and author of The Great Awakening: a Buddhist Social Theory, tells us that, as regards climate change, which is "the greatest threat ever to our species..., the only solution that will actually work requires something much more profound than political horse-trading or limits to carbon emissions."

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How We Talk About the Environment Has Everything to Do with Whether We'll Save It
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