Capitalist Media, Biden’s Climate Deceptions; The Race to Save Earth
https://socialistaction.org/2021/06/15/capitalist-media-bidens-climate-deceptions-the-race-to-save-earth/
June 15, 2021
By James Fortin
It just keeps getting worse.
Never in the memory of any living person on Earth, has it been this bad.
Climate change is occurring; it is getting worse, and time is running
out to save the planet from catastrophe. Scientists urgently note the
globe is rapidly approaching the catastrophic threshold of a 1.5 degree
Celsius increase in temperature from pre-industrial times, a level at
which irreversible global damage will occur. In the words of George
Monbiot, author, journalist and environmental campaigner,“The Earth is
in a death spiral. It will take radical action to save us.”
Major Media Colludes to Hide Climate Severity
So why is it then that much of the corporate media remains
underwhelmingly avoidant of dealing with the existential crisis faced by
humankind? Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope, two journalists writing at The
Guardian, recently noted that despite several major news outlets having
beefed up their coverage, most newsrooms – particularly those in
broadcast journalism – were still more likely to cover fluffy events
like dance competitions than the effects of climate change.
The two journalists cited a Yale study that shows less than 25 percent
of the public hears about climate change in the media at least once a
month. This, despite the deadly climate threat of epic proportions that
is at our doorstep, fulfills the intent of such media to avoid what they
term “controversial” matters. They want to avoid the appearance of
taking sides, you see. Avoiding the discussion, however, is taking sides
– the side of the fossil fuel industry that chooses to tamp down
discussion or opposition to their ongoing carbonization of the planet.
This self-imposed muzzling by a significant portion of the media is not
accidental. It starts at the top and works its way down through the
reporting ranks. The major broadcast news organizations at NBC, ABC,
CBS, CNN, and Fox are owned and controlled by massive conglomerates that
have consolidated ownership over the decades and now dominate the news
that most Americans receive. In turn they are mostly owned by the ruling
1%, the social class that dominates the economic, social, and political
life of the country. The top layers of these corporations are from the
ruling class, or, if not resident in the class, they are hired, paid,
and obedient to it, nonetheless. It is the same class that dominates
the fossil fuel energy and finance sectors of the U.S. economy. Puzzle
solved.
Ruling Class Wins, Climate Loses
All of this is not to say that there may be differences of opinion
within the ruling class, that the class is not homogenous in its
beliefs. Just as one wing of the ruling class may favor Democrats (or
some of them at least), another wing may align Republican, but the class
coalesces uniformly around the right to profit and exploit human labor
and the natural environment. The differences within the capitalist class
are tactical, not strategic, and continually change appearances based on
the ruling class’s needs – not ours — over time.
So it is not at all inconsistent that opposite political ends of
capitalist political thinking strike different notes. While The New York
Times may push for rapid development of solar and wind-based
electrification, The Wall Street Journal is much slower to tamper with
the fracking heyday of Big Oil and Gas. Both wings of the class would
prefer that market-based solutions to climate disaster be found in lieu
of government intervention. One organ of ruling class thought is simply
more willing to engage with greater environmental destruction than the
other, but both are steadfast in defense of the system that allows it.
We have known for decades that the Earth is overheating from the
greenhouse gasses emitted through the burning of fossil fuels. Yet the
illusion that something can be done to solve the problem within the
system has repeatedly sidelined the major movements to stop this
criminality. Although the U.S. government has appeared hopelessly
incapable over the course of 4 decades to implement sufficient measures
to save the Earth, most climate activists keep looking to elect the
“right” President, Congressperson, or Senator – most often a Democrat –
to finally bring us onto the path toward environmental milk and honey.
Unbeknownst to them is that the U.S. government is not inept. It is
performing just as it was designed – to protect the interests of its
benefactors, the ruling strata.
Illusions, Not Solutions, from Biden & Democrats
Take a look at the climate program of Joe Biden for the most recent
evidence. In general terms Biden plays it big as he did in the election
run-up to his presidency. While his government says it is for developing
clean, renewable energy sources, it has done next to nothing about the
horrors of fracking. More fracked oil and natural gas is being produced
today than at the start of his term, along with more negative health
impacts to those living nearby fracking fields, more destruction of the
adjacent lands, more ground-water pollution, more carbon dioxide, and
methane spewed into the air.
Going further, Biden’s climate agenda includes the fraud of a “net-zero”
by 2050, allowing the fossil-fuel criminals to keep polluting
indefinitely. Of course, they offer tools to deceive the public into
believing in such “solutions.” They can magically “offset” their carbon
emissions with casino-like purchases of carbon credits that another
polluter has acquired and is now selling. Or they can proceed with
“carbon capture,” the mirage of unproven technology not likely to be
developed at a scale that can cleanse the earth of carbon dioxide. And,
of course, neither Biden nor the Democratic-controlled Congress will act
to end the largest single U.S. contributor to greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere – the U.S. military.
Democrats dither, fossil fuelers fantasize, and the capitalist ruling
class celebrates with abandon, its profits protected.
Taking Control of Our Climate
The single-most hopeful sign in all of this, however, is the growing
number of mostly younger climate activists who now demand “system
change, not climate change.” They and others who participated by the
millions in the Black Lives Matter movement want no more of phony
promises the system has offered on most issues for decades. They demand
action.
The question is posed: In the absence of meaningful effort to halt the
capitalist climate catastrophe, what should the movements for social
change be doing? The answer is increasingly obvious: Everything, by any
means necessary. Life on earth as we know it is at stake.
For starters, mass, united-front demonstrations in the streets are
essential to win over the majority of working people, those comprising
the 99%. Augmenting this strategy is mass civil disobedience at points
of fossil fuel exploitation such as the Line 3 water protectors;
strategic actions against corporate and financial enablers of climate
destruction such as the Stop the Money Pipeline; teach-ins on the
campuses and in high schools where majorities already think beyond token
and fraudulent “solutions.” These and others are the combined sorts of
actions that have led to social victories in the past. The struggles for
Black freedom, women’s and gay rights, defense of Indigenous lands and
treaties, and an end to the Vietnam War offer exemplary winning examples
for all of us.
We must continuously demand:
Declare a climate emergency to halt and reverse global warming!
Fire the corporate climate mis-managers! Nationalize the fossil fuel and
banking industries!
Empower a Climate Congress of scientists, working people, the oppressed
and other organizations of the 99 percent to defend our interests!
For a mass mobilization of resources to convert the economy to a clean,
renewable, and just instrument serving all!
End foreign military interventions!
Abolish the $trillion war budget!
Redirect military funds to climate solutions and social needs!
Tax the rich to solve the climate problems they have created!
And one final suggestion to all. Join the revolutionary socialist
movement of Socialist Action where our vision of a just, carbon-free
future correlates with yours. As the young Swedish environmental
activist Greta Thunberg has framed it, “I want you to act. I want you to
act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on
fire, because it is.” Join us!
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Irvin D. Yalom “Truth," Nietzsche continued, "is arrived at through
disbelief and skepticism, not through a childlike wishing something were
so! Your patient's wish to be in God's hands is not truth. It is simply
a child's wish—and nothing more! It is a wish not to die, a wish for the
eveastingly bloated nipple we have labeled 'God'! Evolutionary theory
scientifically demonstrates God's redundancy—though Darwin himself had
not the courage to follow his evidence to its true conclusion. Surely,
you must realize that we created God, and that all of us together now
have killed him.” ― Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept