By Raúl Ilargi Meijer, editor-in-chief of The Automatic Earth. Originally published at Automatic Earth
So PIMCO was going to fire Bill Gross over the weekend, and he chose to leave on his own accord and work for Janus. So what? Gross is 70 years old and still joins another firm geared towards making money, and nothing else at all. As if making money, and nothing else, is a valid goal in a human life.
As if someone who’s done nothing else his entire life, and who’s richer than Croesus, should have nothing else to do with the times that remains him, and is somehow right and justified about not being able to find anything more worthwhile.
As if that singular focus does not make his life a useless one, or the man an empty shell. And yeah, I’m sure he gives away some cash from time to time to make himself feel even better. Though I doubt he ever feels truly fine. Perhaps the disappointment of being a billionaire and still feel like he’s wasted his life is what drives him on. Or maybe his wife beats him. And he enjoys it.
And it’s not just Bill Gross, it’s just as much the way the mainstream press covers the ‘event’ of Gross’ departure, the fact that they bother to cover it in the first place, and the details they focus on, that shine a chillingly clear cold and revealing light on what we have become, as individuals and as societies.
The hollow single-minded worshipping of money, which Gross can be said to embody, is the single biggest scourge on each and every one of us, on all the bonds we form between each other, on the communities and nations we live in, and the planet they’re located on. The bible is full of allusions to this, and the world is full of people who call themselves Christians, but the twain are like ships passing in the night.
if you would want to prevent a war, or you want to stop the destruction of rivers and seas through pollution, or for the earth’s climate from entering a cycle that neither we nor the climate itself can control, would you think first of people like Bill Gross when you’re looking for support? If you do, that would not be wise. Nevertheless, at every single climate conference it’s people just like him, such as Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, who made sure they’re in the spotlight.
People who’ve never done anything in their lives that was not directed at self-gratification. People who cause, not prevent, the mayhem. Even the big demonstrations last week were shrouded in a veil of corporatism, not unlike the one Greenpeace has been enveloped in for many years.
And of course you can argue that it serves a purpose, because it’s the only way to get people pout on to the street. But still, if millions of dollars have to be spent to make a few hundred thousand people in New York leave their homes, what exactly are we doing?
Where does that money come from? Does anyone want to deny that in general the richer people in the world are the ones responsible for the destruction? That we ourselves cause more damage than the average Bangla Deshi or Senegalese, and that the richest and most powerful people in our own societies do more harm than the poorset?
If you don’t want to deny that, why do you walk in a heavily sponsored protest march? Or does anyone think those marches are spontaneous eruptions of people’s true feelings anymore? Why then do they feel scripted, in a way the anti-globalization ones (Seattle) absolutely did not?
There is no doubt that there are well-meaning people involved, and a lot of grass-roots identity, but isn’t there something wrong the very moment money becomes a factor, if and when we can agree that the pursuit of money is the 8 million ton culprit in the room in the first place? Do we really feel like we can’t achieve anything without money anymore? And moreover, shouldn’t we, as soon as we feel that way, start doing something about it?
There’s a nice interview in Slate with Naomi Klein, who says capitalism is the bogey man. I find that a little easy; in the end man him/herself is the bogey man. Klein sits on the board of Bill McKibben’s 350.org, which I have no doubt is full of people full of best intentions, but which also sees money as way to achieve things:
Naomi Klein Says We Must Slay Capitalism to Fight Climate Change
Everybody that’s trying to get anything progressive done in this country knows that the biggest barrier is getting money out of politics. Climate can be a shot of adrenaline in the pre-existing movement to get money out of politics. So, it’s not a brand-new movement. [..] All these new reports say that the transition to that next economy will be cheap. So why isn’t it happening? Elites like to think of everything as a win-win, but it’s not true.* It’s the wealthiest corporations on the planet that will win; everyone else will lose. No number of reports is going to change that. You actually need a counter-power.
[..] we need to finance this transition somehow. I think it needs to be a polluter-pays principle. It’s not that we’re broke, it’s just that the money is in the wrong place. The divestment movement is a start at challenging the excesses of capitalism. It’s working to delegitimize fossil fuels, and showing that they’re just as unethical as profits from the tobacco industry. Even the heirs to the Rockefeller fortune are now recognizing this. The next step is, how do we harness these profits and use them to help us get off fossil fuels?
Exxon needs to pay—it’s the most profitable company on the planet. It’s also the descendent of Standard Oil. In the book, I talk a lot about Richard Branson’s pledge to donate all the profits from his airline to fight climate change. When he made that announcement, it was extraordinary. The problem is, no one held him accountable—well, besides me and my underpaid researcher. But at least Branson’s heart was in the right place. These profits are not legitimate in an era of climate change. We can’t leave this problem to benevolent billionaires.
‘Getting money out of politics’, but ‘we need to finance this transition somehow’. There’s a grand contradiction in there somewhere. Now, I’m a big admirer of Naomi, her Shock Doctrine is one of the greatest books in the past 25 years or so. But I have my questions here.
I don’t think you can argue that capitalism itself is the issue. This is about the erosion of checks and balances, laws and regulations, the erosion of a society’s ability to hold people responsible for what they do, whether they operate in the political field or in private business.
And those same issues are just as relevant in any communist or socialist society. Unless you’re very careful day after 24/7 day, all political systems tend towards ceding control to ever more psychopathic individuals. In the exact same way that bad money drives out good. In short, it’s not about ‘them’, it’s about us. It’s the psychos who want that power and that money more than anyone else, but it’s us who let them have it. While we’re watching some screen or another.
It’s about how we can keep the most money- and power hungry individuals amongst us from ruling over us. An obviously daunting task if you look at most countries, corporations and organizations today. I mentioned the three Bills already, Bill Gross, Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, and they epitomize as fittingly as any threesome where and how we go wrong, and how hard it is to keep ourselves from doing that.
If you want a better world, A) stop listening to the crazy clowns, and B) stop telling yourself you care and then just keep doing what you always did. Get real. Pursue truth, not money.
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Hello Klein’s…
“If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States.”
Henry A. Wallace
That’s not a good definition of fascist.
Fascism is the understanding that hate and malice are excellent foundations for a viable politics.
“A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends.”
Henry A. Wallace
“Fascism is capitalism plus murder.” Upton Sinclair
I have not read Klein’s book but looking at the title, I can say that the two — capitalism and climate — are separate issues and both are fixable. The climate — world energy consumption is going way up and is about 14TW. Already non-OECD consume more energy than OECD countries and that number will continue to rise. We can expect global energy usage to double by 2040, while reducing GHG. How do we do it? By an all hands on deck approach. Solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, conservation, etc… and new innovations must be implemented on large global scale, incremented a bit each year to get peak GHG emissions to come down by mid century.
As for capitalism — Ferguson and Hong Kong come to mind to get attention and demand change. That is the level of effort needed. Voting is not going to cut it.
Contrary to Klein’s title, many of us engineer types see solutions to climate change not doom. However, we must all act individually and collectively to make it happen.
we’re gone need a lot more ‘engineer types’…
“It does not suit the world to hear that people who are leading a high life, an enviable life, a privileged life are as miserable most days as anybody else, despite the fact that it must be obvious they would be – given that we are all agreed that money and fame do not bring happiness. Instead the world would prefer to enjoy the idea, against what it knows to be true, that wealth and fame do in fact insulate and protect against misery and it would rather we shut up if we are planning to indicate otherwise.”
Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles
We’ve already locked-in at least 2 degrees celsius of global temperature rise and it may be as much as 4 degrees. We won’t be able to cope with that without catastrophic dislocation, economic calamity and widespread misery. And there is no real hope on the horizon that we as a species will curtail our fossil fuel usage: all available evidence suggests just the opposite. Your confidence in engineers notwithstanding, we need actual global agreements to save ourselves and I see zero signs of that happening since Big Oil owns the world’s so-called leaders and the U.S. under this Democratic president is becoming a petro-nation.
Just received this email from MIT:
“Global temperature is likely to rise 3.3–5.6°C by the end of this century, unless international climate negotiations in Paris next year are more effective than expected, according to a report released Monday by the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. The predicted temperature increase surpasses the threshold identified by the United Nations as necessary to avoid the most serious impacts of climate change, altering precipitation patterns and heightening the pressures of population and economic growth.”
More here:
http://globalchange.mit.edu/news-events/news/news_id/411#.VCl5FrQ0s-g
That is fucking disaster. And it’s just around the corner.
Yes, it is. And the outcome is predictable. Easily. We know the coastlines of the world will be inundated for centuries. And rivers and deltas will flood out everybody regularly. All those cities will have to be abandoned and populations moved inland and upland. Maybe some cities can turn themselves into Venice – but it doesn’t change the reality. Soon Venice will be completely submerged. There’s nothing we can do to stop this reality. It is going to happen.
“There’s nothing we can do to stop this reality. It is going to happen.”
I agree that things are grim but at least we can stop making AGW worse. We have no choice but to try to adapt to the heat increase we have already locked into the system. It will be very painful and cost trillions but it can probably be done without sacrificing civilization. But if we don’t change course immediately and curtail our use of fossils fuels we cannot adapt to what will be unleashed.
When you’re in a hole stop digging. Common sense.
the two are linked at the hip. Capitalism, with its innate expectation of eternal growth (because only by way of growth can there be a return on investment that capitalists can be comfortable with), is what drives the continued extraction and exploitation that is destroying the climate in the first place. Kill the race growth and the climate should settle, tho we are likely already past the point of return.
Agreed. You can’t solve global warming without revolutionary restructuring of the economy, effectively dismantling capitalism which is directly linked to overproduction and overconsumption. And to those who think the rich are miserable, they are not, they are happier than the poor and everybody who isn’t a wishful thinker knows this (studies show after 70,000$ it doesn’t make that much difference, but think about how many people are below that line even in the vanishing “middle class”, let alone around the world living on 1$ or less a day). It would be great if we lived in a moral universe where green capitalism (an oxymoron) could be achieved and the rich suffered the burden of their wealth (there’d be a whole lot less of them if this were true).
the problem is in order to pursue truth you need a little money. you can’t feed yourself with truth. you can’t clothe yourself with truth. you can’t raise a family with truth. 99% of the time a woman coming across a man pursuing “truth” will run the other way — even if the man is hot (for a man anyway). she might hang out for a few months for the joy ride, but if there’s no money at the end of the truth rainbow than see ya later. the population would collapse. it’s collapsing anyway in some places, even where people don’t pursue truth. Truth is overrated. “What is the truth?” asked Pontius Pilate. Now THERE was a Roman! that’s the thing to notice, if your a man and want a woman to raise a family with, you have to think beyond truth, or the truth is, you’re screwed (metaphorically speaking, sorry for the double entendre). that’s the truth.
Temperatures have been falling for 17 years. does anybody even understand the math? No. The ice age cometh. HOWEVER, get particulate emissions out of the air and bring on green energy. That’s the truth. As for Mr. Gross. Big yawn, wake us up when the soporificism wears off. The big news, coming tomorrow, is Aretha’s release of a new album containing a cover of Adele’s Rolling in the Deep. And she don’t mean money. It’s gonna be hotness in sound! It might raise the temps at least 10 degrees by itself. Now that’s news that keeps you awake!!!
Temperatures have been falling for 17 years. does anybody even understand the math?
Ah. Falling temperatures explain glaciers retreating, less snow-cap on mountains, and August 2014 being the “hottest on record,” and every year we break more records for being hottest on record.
And you ask does anyone understand the math? No, not even you.
Tell us, are Norm and Woody and Carla impressed with this nonsense when you spew it all over them, Cliff?
What you say about the incompatibility of truth-seeking and romantic entanglements is very true, at least in my experience. Despite protestations to the contrary, I think that most women are looking for a provider in a male companion–or at least the ability to provide is a necessary (if not sufficient) condition for mating. It sounds sexist and prejudiced of me, I’m aware, but my personal experience and observations have lead me to this inevitable conclusion: when it comes to women, I’m a good person to have a conversation with, but not a good person to have a relationship with.
The stories of the Hasidic Jewish rabbis, the zaddikim, are full of tales of marital strife. Same goes for the Sufi stories about Mullah Nasruddin and his wife. One that I especially like:
And really, who wants a hubby like that? No one that I’ve found yet (Mike in NY excluded ;-)
dip, that story warms my heart.
Even more!
Even solid relationships can have their rocky moments. I remember one time I took a couple of decades longer than expected getting back from a trip. It sure was awkward to see all of these other dudes shacking up with Penelope in our pad! We sorted all that out, thanks be to Zeus, and now everything is peachy keen at home once more.
Maybe Craazyman, with all his poetic talents, can help build up your rep, inventing cool stories to impress the ladies…
Women seeking and marrying a “supporting” man is kinda obvious. Women, despite the talk of women’s freedom and independence, still feel vulnerable. A man with big pockets, and other parts, reassures her in a world that makes it tough to raise a child/ren.
So women seeking a sugar daddy simply reflects them seeing the world as uncharitable, unpredictable, and hostile.
Change the world, make it more welcoming for women, and they will go for guys like Craazyman and diptherio, but not until then.
“Temperatures have been falling for 17 years.” Is this a test to see if we were awake?
Climate Change will be addressed when it can be used for rent extraction.
yes
or branding… i can sort of envision a future where a few major corporations rebrand themselves as super green and the others follow suit, making it the new coolest thing ever… i realize that its already sort of happening but in all honesty something like this will for sure blow up in the next ten years. Being green will become an upper-class signification, against dirty irresponsible poor people who still drive their cars to work and smoke ciggerettes. It will be annoying, clickbaity, and everywhere… even Jesus will be on board
Climate control was a staple theme in classic golden age science fiction, whether on earth or another planet: a technological triumph greatly to be desired. Rain when you want it, where you want it; room temperatures all the time; sufficient breeze to blow the pollution out to sea, etc.Bubbles over cities to purify the local climate, which had gone to hell due to mad-made or natural events.
It never happened, because the earth is bigger than technology, and because the Clean Air and Water Acts made a significant difference, improving the quality of life and the environment for significantly affordable costs, for the benefit of all people and plants and animals and ecologies….
Of course, the Obscenely Wealthy were pissed. They couldn’t just dump their industrial wastes on the unsuspecting poor in the middle of the night anymore.
Why do I think the whole Climate Change issue is yet another scam? Because the earth is bigger than technology, barring a Nuclear Winter event which would ensure the removal of Man from the face of the Earth forever.
I do not like or trust the publicity, the evidence, the promoters. If after 70 years of trying, we still can’t make it rain, what kind of thinker thinks that we can fix/control the climate by decree and taxes and fines? Would anyone want to live in such a world? Would life be possible?
I am a practitioner of green and passive solar and the appropriate technology movements, when I can afford them. Why aren’t they affordable? Because some would rather have us consigned to hell and taxes and deprivation, rather than fix up this place into the closest approximation to heaven on earth that available technology offers.
It’s a question of making choices…not having someone else’s choices forced down one’s throat.
So the fact that certain gases insulate the Earth because of their properties doesn’t count for anything? If I drop toxic chemicals in your backyard the Earth will take care of it? Does that absolve me of responsibility? So climate science is bogus because you have fantasies about hoe this planet functions? Just sayin’….
Excellent reasoning. I’m convinced. Or:
“Olson Johnson: [after Gabby Johnson’s speech] Now who can argue with that? I think we’re all indebted to Gabby Johnson for clearly stating what needed to be said. I’m particulary glad that these lovely children were here today to hear that speech. Not only was it authentic frontier gibberish, it expressed a courage little seen in this day and age.”
— Blazing Saddles
Why should anyone pursue truth? Truth is very painful. The truth is that those of us who live in the US live in an oligarchy ruled, at this point in history, by a coalitions of the most ruthless men and women in our society who have no moral center and recognize no restrictions. We also have to face the fact that there is virtually nothing we can do other than resist without hope of changing much of anything. However, the vast majority likes it this way, despite complaints and are active partners in denying truth in every way possible. The worse it gets the worse the denial.
For all their nastiness the oligarchs manage to keep order and stability so who wants truth?
“If you speak the truth, keep a foot in the stirrup.” ~Turkish proverb
this is an excellent post. thank you. so agree with Ilargi on this.
and re that you can argue that big corporate-imbued demonstrations like last week serve a purpose because they’re the only way to get people out on to the street. but, you could also argue that participation in these provides a useful shunt for any of those negative emotions like anger that the elite find threatening.
a safety valve. And a useful shot of feel-good into the participants, just the right amount needed (and within a fun, almost self-celebratory environment) to neuter anything potentially ugly. Before the drift back into the preferable state of complacency. And of course the elite maintain control at these kinds of events.
Precisely the reason I will no longer march in such demonstrations–they aren’t necessarily bad and I don’t feel organizers are entirely cynical but I do know that it did precisely nothing to change anything. The MSM largely ignored it.p anyway and it will continue to ignore the issue.
@trish: +100
How many feel anger about the climate issue anyway rather than just despair and hopelessness? And I don’t think anyone finds those feelings all that threatening. What’s the opposite of fun? Getting beaten down by the police, brain damaged for life due to police beatings etc. like Occupy protestors did. There could be a place for that too. Is that what “get real” means?
“The hollow single-minded worshipping of money, which Gross can be said to embody, is the single biggest scourge on each and every one of us…..”
No! Bill Gross just failed to diversify. He was all about bonds and interest yield, not capital returns and appreciation like in stocks!
“And it’s not just Bill Gross, it’s just as much the way the mainstream press covers the ‘event’ of Gross’ departure, the fact that they bother to cover it in the first place, and the details they focus on, that shine a chillingly clear cold and revealing light on what we have become…..”
But they covered Chelsea Clintons birth to daughter too so the media really does care about us! It wasn’t the media fault they put in front page by mistake instead of back page/events/personal.
Some dots are revealing themselves. Peak energy and the coming difficulties supporting our current civilizations in the west are requiring elites to deploy schemes that cull the herd. Under the rubric of protecting the earth by cooling it via solar radiation management and other climate engineering solutions, a nice byproduct (for those who rule us), is sickness and death of weakened individual via toxins and pollutants.
Increasingly it is difficult to ignore these happenings even though they continue to be labeled conspiracy theory.
Seems there is a italics tag leaking into the comments.
“Can money save the climate?”
I think it’s possible but would look at it in different ways. As Naomi Klein said http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/09/climate-change-is-an-opportunity-to-dramatically-reinvent-the-economy/380429/?single_page=true
“Klein: If we were to adopt what the Europeans call a “strategic de-growth policy” where we were to engage in that kind of serious transition and try to lower our emissions in line with what scientists are telling us, then we need to make sure we do that equitably. The only way you are going to have sign-on is if people are not being asked to choose between having a job and destabilizing a climate. One of the ways to do that is to have a stronger safety net, because when you have no safety net, and people’s lives are much more precarious, they’re going to be more prone to putting the immediate needs of feeding their family, entirely understandably, before what’s seen as a longer term goal of making sure your kids have a stable climate to grow up in.
So we need to introduce policies that give ourselves better choices. ”
And Ellen Brown who wants a pubic banking system to seve the public purpose One of Frederick Soddy’s main 5 principles was to use government deficits in a non-cyclical manner And Joe Firestone..
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/09/real-fiscal-responsibility-chris-hayes-said.html#more-8569
“And we can also expand Social Security benefits, and deficit spend on new energy foundations, and deficit spend on an enhanced Medicare for All program. We can do all these things and more without running out of money, because, as the currency issuer, the Government can do all sorts of things and never run out of money.
So, let’s be clear, shall we? Real Fiscal Responsibility is whatReal Fiscal Responsibility does (h/t you know who), and people refusing to deficit spend to provide those benefits just aren’t acting in a fiscally responsible way, but are doing the opposite for the sake of greed and for the sake of those, who, reading too much Ayn Rand, think that their inherited wealth, and previous success entitles them to reject any obligations they may have to other people. If we want our democracy back, we must firmly reject their claims to entitlement, since they have no moral foundation, and make them fulfill their obligations either through increasing their tax bills, or subjecting them to whatever impact increased deficit spending has on their accumulated wealth.”
Shorten the work week!
“the Government can do all sorts of things and never run out of money”
That’s quite true. But it cannot do it without consequences.
As to effects on climate change, Dr. Richard Muller, Professor, Dept. of Physics, UC Berkeley pointed out several years ago the realistic limits for controlling global emissions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=VbR0EPWgkEI
Even the most valiant efforts to reduce emissions in advanced nations are essentially irrelevant in the context of an ongoing explosion of emissions by developing nations (particularly China and India). Short of a major switch by those nations to cheap, abundant, and safe nuclear power, that future growth path will not be denied.
“cannot do it without consequences” Match for that straw?
I’d tweet this out, but I don’t want to hear shit from feminists who have a problem with the “maybe his wife beats him” joke. The fems are a vicious lot on Twitter.
Just a note about capitalism being incompatible with saving the environment. Capitalism is a melting pot theory. It can accommodate both profit and non-profit enterprises. The thought that is offensive is that capitalists might “capitalize” on the misfortune they created in the first place… but that is the nature of the beast. Capitalism also allows us to have non-profit enterprises, rife with other abuses like graft, and skimming and exaggerated expenses – but non-profits can exist under capitalism. Which means we can have paychecks for a multi-layered industry dedicated to cleaning up all our godawful messes. It would be better to get rid of the grifters altogether – but even grifters have been known to come to jesus.
Re: Money being the problem, an excerpt from an excellent essay on this topic is here:
Monetary Intelligence Agency
Excerpted from Golden Handcuffs – An Essay on Money by David E. Martin.
http://www.invertedalchemy.com/2014/09/monetary-intelligence-agency.html
Initial paragraph:
We’ve been indoctrinated to eschew this conversation. And the reason is quite simple. If you want to control a society, the single best way to do so is to create an idol so inextricably linked to everything so as not to invite the meddling examination of a conscious mind at liberty. Make the idol seemingly innocuous – maybe out of something entirely impermanent like paper – so its gravity cannot be considered. Let it be the seduction whereby parents first instill incentives for good behavior or household chores with their children. Encourage religions to use it as the agency of laudable values like charity. Separate society between those “with” and those “without” to instill the essential dogma of scarcity and control. And before long, power, greed, dominion and oppression become entirely justifiable based on an alleged uniformity of perverted human ‘nature’.
I do agree that Capitalism has played an enormous role in contributing to climate change but we should also consider that every economic system has its own faults. Climate change is going to happen whether we like it or not, it is how fast it occurs that lies upon us. At the same time, we cannot blame the Capitalist system for it. The world Communism, it doesn’t offer people the incentive to work, but Capitalism simply gives people to work harder. Although these businessmen are making a lot of money by polluting, they still manage to make our lives easier. It is the consumer’s choice whether they choose to drive the car and emit greenhouse gases, or if they choose to live a a life where they leave less of a carbon footprint.
In conclusion, capitalism isn’t perfect but it is a system that exceeds all the other systems in capacity. If we could only get the government to be more involved in decreasing the rate at which global warming is occurring. Climate change was bound to occur sooner or later and there is nothing we can do about it, so we should simply stop complaining and try to find solutions.