What we witnessed at the Copenhagen Climate Summit is only a preamble to future more intense clashes between opposites, I’m afraid. In all my sincerity, I hope that I am wrong in the analysis of my observations though it is a well-known fact that current events create future trends. Just as much as we accept the inevitability of fossil fuel depletion as being our reality, and the urgent need to develop transition communities, should we equally acknowledge how governments, corporations and their economists must wake out of their excessive desires to acquire or possess more than what they need or deserve, comprehend without defiance the need for large-scale reform of environmental and economic policies, implement systemic strategies to increase efficiency within their bureaucracies and reverse the trend of increasing centralization of government and technological services. So far all I’ve seen out of this summit are not the decisive actions to reduce global GHG emissions, but rather a competition between takers and givers of billions of dollars. The bottom line in this summit was to determine who are the governments that should expropriate personal incomes in the form of carbon taxes, and transfer these plundered funds to deprived governments with blind confidence that money will reach the people who need it most. With the current rate of excessive taxation, that keep most Canadian citizens at levels of subsistence, Canada was right to abstain from any commitments.
Large coercive political and economic institutions are anathema and must be held directly accountable for their irresponsibility, intentional obscurity and dishonesty. These decision makers have squandered much of their moral authority leaving us, the commons, with little hope that they will change egocentric trends; seriously address the issues of global warming and implementation of renewable energy sources without the distinctive dithering. They continue to betray the publics trust. Their deplorable actions implant the entropy that accelerates the deterioration of our societies and hinders every effort in preparation for a sustainable future. Incompetent leadership disrupts the process to achieve sustainability and self-sufficiency: the people in charge don’t take the appropriate action, because this would require a dramatic change of policies; instead, they intensify existing efforts, which usually only makes matters worse. Investments in the status quo on the part of corporations and governmental bureaucracies are preventing efforts that are advocated by everyone who is familiar with the facts of global warming and fossil fuel depletion. Meanwhile those with the will even to begin to change the system are excluded from the decision-making positions.
As we devolve into a set of autonomous regions, we can expect a chasm of economic and political order on a scale that will leave the unprepared in various modes of desperation for the basic elements necessary for the sustenance of healthful life. Government policies that are not owned by the people will not sustain themselves. We must make sure that we utilize our democratic rights of free vote to ensure that politicians adopt, and adhere to, a system of governance that has citizen primacy as its basic tenet and a political system that has checks and balances that give people the means to hold their politicians constantly accountable. Central governments, unwilling to relinquish their potency to control and manage, could resort to authoritarian rule servicing legalized thugs, police and military to indiscriminately incriminate, confiscate, expropriate, and incarcerate any person or groups who present challenge or opposition. Fear will become the principle instrument of domination.
This is why it is imperative that we, the commons, develop faculties of discernment for what is true, right and lasting; be on the alert, closely observant and sagaciously evaluate current trends and conditions; pay rapt attention to the deepening poverty and environmental ruin around us; commiserate for the victims of capitalism, industrialism and for those who feel a strong sense of loyalty to malevolent, morally reprehensible political and corporate elite; wake out of dangerous complacency and rise above the level of thinking and doing business as usual that has brought us to today’s state of the world. People everywhere must be vigilant and stand on guard against unconstitutional laws backed by the will of an entrenched government that has decided on a course of action and has at its disposal the significant resources of unwitting taxpayers. We need to muster the courageous to fight oppression, empathetically compel governments to adhere to the tenet that all humans are created equal and have natural and unalienable rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, security of the person and his private property, together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.
We tend to forget how each and every one of us has a birthright of conscious awareness and freewill. Sustainability and self-sufficiency cannot be achieved until the modern individual musters courage to reconcile his cognitive dissonances, reclaim his birthright of conscious awareness, assert his free will and assume responsibility to question the assumptions of the operant societal worldview rather than just blindly living life in submissive accordance with dominant, out-dated norms and geriatric assumptions. Only then will the individual overcome his state of despondence, break out of societal paradigm paralysis and confront the current state of the real world and take control of the tyranny, fanaticism and ignorance that takes true knowledge away from people to keep them in darkness and subdued.
However the history of liberty is the history of resistance and limitation of governmental power. We must now choose to use our collective powers of free will to change the trends and course of history or suffer the results of disturbing tyranny, environmental and energy crises that could be in apocalyptic proportions. A resort to political atheism and acceptance of libertarian ideals may help to strengthen immunity to political bribery, propaganda and the methods employed by governments to shape thought. Truculence is particularly strong among the movements who urge the dispersing of political power and wealth, rather than further concentrating them; human rights organizations, who counter political repression, confront entrenched patterns of social inequity and injustice; environmentalists who understand the ecological impacts of global warming and fossil fuel resource depletion and are opposed to the increased rates of resource extraction and destruction of the Earth’s fragile ecosystems; preservationists of abstract knowledge and important skills who persist in acts of service that make them indispensable to the regional population and who seek peace, cooperation, equity, freedom and justice. These, and many others, are the advocacies whose views are radically different from that of the ruling elite; though prevail by their perseverance, moral example and persuasion. In their perseverance for democratic and economic freedom, rights and civil liberties in pursuit of self-sufficiency, they hold the moral high ground and may be marginalized and demonized by the ruling elite.
Divided, they are like so many gnats pestering the elite leviathan. To reduce vulnerability to political incentives and constraints, these movements will need to work together and present a united front. The interest and loyalty of multitudes will be their incentive and will increase their potency. But whether this mass dissatisfaction can be channeled into a dynamic movement depends on the underlying cause of it - global warming and dwindling oil supplies can be that cause.
