In this video Professor Steffen explains how we have entered a new geological age shaped by humans. In this link he shows how peoples' income inequality correlates tightly with unhealthy social conditions in the developed countries. The Anthropocene and inquality
He first presents a graph showing how human impact on the planet through production is concentrated in the wealthy developed countries, and then shows a graph showing how inquality has grown fast in English speaking countries since 1980. It is we in these rich countries, especially the USA, who have shifted the world into the anthropocene and its potentially dire consequences, and increasingly so since then. We can't blame the poor countries for most of the pollution and global warming. Then he shows this diagram of how unequal income within the wealthier nations tightly correlates to all kinds of greater social and health problems for the people of those nations:
The threat to our lives today is dire, as Professor Steffen explains in his video; which shows how we have entered a new geological era shaped by humans, and how if we don't change our behavior very soon we will endanger our civilization and our lives. The climate tipping points are coming in the next decade or two.
https://youtu.be/HvD0TgE34HA
If we want the anthropocene to go in another direction, we must shift course. Why do I say that politics is one of the key ways to do this?
Because as you can see, our society is unequal, especially in the USA. The power now resides with the wealthy. This condition was a deliberate political choice that we made in 1980 to support a specific political program and ideology that has dominated our politics and society for 40 years--- a deliberate scam to shift wealth and power to the rich. And as you can see from the graphs Steffen shows, it has greatly succeeded. But the results of this power are horrific. Not only have our health and social conditions worsened in over a dozen major ways, but for 40 years it has also prevented any significant action on global warming or pollution. If we leave this ideology and its politicians in power, we will cook the planet beyond the point of no return.
This ideology is called neo-liberalism or free-market economics, because it is a new more-blatant and ambitious form of classical liberal economics, formerly called laissez faire: let business do whatever it wants, with less regulation, trade unions, taxes or social-safety spending. Let success or failure in the market (the magic, all-knowing market) determine what happens. Give all the tax breaks to the rich, says this philosophy, and allow full freedom for the corporations and the wealthy to do whatever they want, regardless of who gets hurt, because they are the "job creaters" from whom prosperity trickles-down to the rest of us. Put all responsibility into the hands of atomized individuals to shape their lives, and "get big government out of the way." Take away the democratically-elected officials and their policies which restrain or direct this "free market" of wealth uber alles, they say, and we will all benefit.
I discuss this free-market, neo-liberal ideology more thoroughly in this essay here, mostly written in 2010 and updated since:
The Plague of Free-Market Ideology
George Monbiot explains the neo-liberal philosophy here:
https://youtu.be/jOuzABjrAo4
Some people are still waiting for the trickle from the "job creaters", as Mike Pence calls them in this video on Reaganomics:
https://youtu.be/z5CCRI1vdwE
What does this mean? Just this: if we want to save the planet from pollution and global warming, we have to realize, among other things, that politics is important. We cannot be satisfied just knocking politicians and calling all politics divisive and unworkable. We need to GET POLITICAL! We need to vote. We need to help elect the right people who will take the actions that we need. We need to realize that we can't do this by ourselves as individuals, or even as a movement in the streets. We need laws, regulations, taxes and programs to restrain the enormous wealth and power of corporations and the wealthy, and to steer them to do what they should be doing anyway: providing products and services that foster a sustainable and high quality of life, not just more wealth and consumption geared toward a few rich people like themselves. And we can't give up and be cynical just because we don't get everything we want immediately. Once we get decent people in office, we (especially younger people) need to continue to support them in every election, including midterms.
Former President Obama lays out what we need to do to save democracy, what threatens it, why politics is important, and what the answer is to the rule of a powerful few. The finale of his most powerful, pertinent and eloquent speech:
https://youtu.be/7hZgg_KjvDQ?t=2837
As Rachel pointed out, one political party is more responsible than the other for neo-liberal trickle-down economics: the Republican Party. Not that the Democrats escape responsibility either. Over the last 40 years, as Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, Donald Trump and George Bush I and II have persuaded the USA to follow their narrative, it has become too hard for Democrats to fully avoid it, so they have compromised with it to varying degrees. When Bill Clinton proposed some major shifts away from Reaganomics in 1993, his power in congress was swept away 2 years later, and he had to bend to its power. This happened to Barack Obama too, although he was able to get a few changes passed in 2009 before the Republican tide swept his power away too in 2010. Because of these reversals, Republicans held a lock on congress for most of the years since 1980, no matter who the president was.
We need to get political, and that now means to get partisan, if we want to save civilization and life on Earth. It is that simple. We need Democrats in, and Republicans out.
All those who might be skeptical about my claim that the differences between Republicans and Democrats on ecology, conservation and climate change are now very stark, please review the League of Conservation Voters scorecard for congress.
Let's take a look at what these two parties stand for to drive the point home further.
Here are some excerpts from the Republican Party platform for 2016. I refer to 2016 because their platform in 2020 consisted only of following their dear leader.
We believe the Constitution was written not as a flexible document, but as our enduring covenant.
We believe political freedom and economic freedom are indivisible. When political freedom and economic freedom are separated both are in peril; when united, they are invincible.
We believe that the people, not the government, are the best stewards of our country's God-given natural resources. Wherever tax rates penalize thrift or discourage investment, they must be lowered. Wherever current provisions of the code are disincentives for economic growth, they must be changed.
Government cannot create prosperity, though government can limit or destroy it. Prosperity is the product of self-discipline, enterprise, saving and investment by individuals...
We are the party of America's growers, producers, farmers, ranchers, foresters, miners, commercial fishermen, and all those who bring from the earth the crops, minerals, energy, and the bounties of our seas that are the lifeblood of our economy. Only a few years ago, a bipartisan consensus in government valued the role of extractive industries and rewarded their enterprise by minimizing its interference with their work. That has radically changed.... We must also ensure that domestic policies do not compromise our global competitiveness through overregulation and undue interference in the marketplace... ranching on public lands must be fostered, developed, and encouraged....
The Democratic Party's energy policy can be summed up in a slogan currently popular among its activists: "keep it in the ground." Keeping energy in the earth will keep jobs out of reach of those who need them most. The Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of the President (Obama's) war on coal, has been stayed by the Supreme Court. We will do away with it altogether. The Democratic Party does not understand that coal is an abundant, clean, affordable, reliable domestic energy resource..... Climate change is far from this nation's most pressing national security issue. This is the triumph of extremism over common sense. We will forbid the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide. We propose to shift responsibility for environmental regulation from the federal bureaucracy to the states and to transform the EPA into an independent bipartisan commission... The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a political mechanism, not an unbiased scientific institution. We reject the agendas of both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement.
As Republicans, we oppose tax increases and believe in the power of markets to create wealth and to help secure the future of our Social Security system.
Medicare's long-term debt is in the trillions, and it is funded by a workforce that is shrinking relative to the size of future beneficiaries. That is why we propose these reforms: give (those under 55) the option of a premium-support model designed to strengthen patient choice... set a more realistic age for eligibility in light of today's longer life span.
Over-regulation is the quiet tyranny of the "Nanny State." It hamstrings American businesses and hobbles economic growth.... We will revisit existing laws that delegate too much authority to regulatory agencies and review all current regulations for possible reform or repeal.
https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/media/documents/DRAFT_12_FINAL%5B1%5D-ben_1468872234.pdf
Of course, the whole platform is a persuasive document that may seem more palatable at times. But the thrust of their policy, and the polices that resulted during the Trump presidency, is clear. Deregulate business. Oppose action to stop climate change. Lower taxes. Uphold individual self-discipline and reduce government to create prosperity, and deregulate business to spur economic growth (trickle-down economics). Unleash exploitation of our natural resources, and take away protection against abuse by industry. Reduce social security and medicare and begin to tear down these programs. And when they complain in this platform about federal regulation, and talk of shifting of authority and land ownership to the states, remember that Republican Parties offer the same deregulation policies at the state and local level too.
Let's look at some excerpts from the Democratic Party platform, and for even balance, let's stick with 2016.
We believe that today’s extreme level of income and wealth inequality where the majority of the economic gains go to the top one percent and the richest 20 people in our country own more wealth than the bottom 150 million makes our economy weaker, our communities poorer, and our politics poisonous.
We believe a good education is a basic right of all Americans, no matter what zip code they live in.
Climate change poses a real and urgent threat to our economy, our national security, and our children’s health and futures. Americans deserve the jobs and security that come from becoming the clean energy superpower of the 21st century.
The system is not working when we have a rigged economy in which ordinary Americans work longer hours for lower wages, while most new income and wealth goes to the top one percent. The current minimum wage is a starvation wage. We believe Americans should earn at least $15 an hour and have the right to form or join a union.
We will fight every effort to cut, privatize, or weaken Social Security, including attempts to raise the retirement age, diminish benefits by cutting cost-of-living adjustments, or reducing earned benefits. Democrats will expand Social Security.
The climate emergency and the need to expand the middle class demand that we make ambitious investment(s) in infrastructure. We will put Americans to work updating and expanding our roads, bridges, public transit, airports, and passenger and freight rail lines. We will build 21st century energy and water systems...We will protect communities from the impact of climate change and help them to mitigate its effects. Democrats will also create an independent, national infrastructure bank.
To restore economic fairness, Democrats will fight against the greed and recklessness of Wall Street. We will vigorously implement, enforce, and build on President Obama’s landmark Dodd-Frank financial reform law, and we will stop dead in its tracks every Republican effort to weaken it. We will stop Republican efforts to hamstring our regulators through budget cuts. We will nominate and appoint regulators and officials who are not beholden to the industries they regulate.
At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, we believe the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations must pay their fair share of taxes. Democrats will claw back tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas, and eliminate tax breaks for big oil and gas companies....We will ensure those at the top contribute to our country’s future by establishing a multimillionaire surtax.
Disparities in wealth cannot be solved by the free market alone. The federal government must play a role in eliminating systemic barriers to wealth accumulation for different racial groups and improving opportunities for people from all racial and ethnic backgrounds.
https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/2016_DNC_Platform.pdf
Democratic policies sharply contrast with Republican ones. Democrats support the government taking action on climate change. They support government spending, not just the market, to rebuild our infrastructure and make the USA a clean-energy superpower. Whereas Republicans reduce regulations and taxes on business to unleash the "free market," Democrats support higher wages, unions, regulations on Wall Street and on corporations, and social and economic programs to make our society less unequal and abusive and more respectful of diversity.
President Biden's election in 2020 and a small Democratic majority in congress allow some of these programs to be enacted.
I am not a spokesperson for the Democratic Party. I am speaking from my own observation. I just want people to realize how important politics is now. The survival of a sustainable and livable planet is on the ballot. The two parties represent a stark choice between hope and destruction.
We need a new narrative, a new story, as George Monbiot says. An inclusive story that might even eventually win over some non-Democrats, and appeal broadly. We depend on stories and narratives to understand in clearer terms what is happening in our complex world, what we need to do, and who we need to be. Here is one of George's efforts to help pull a narrative together from what many people have written. He explains the structure of the stories that have actually worked in politics that I think is similar to Joseph's Campbell's "hero's Journey" pattern. But we have been stuck without the new story that we need to succeed the still-dominant neo-liberal one, which itself is now the new villain which needs to be "overthrown" by the heroes in the new story. Without imagination our politics fail and we fall into despair, George says. And he says elsewhere that the pattern told by Jeremy Lent is perhaps the best he has heard so far, and this one is linked in the list at the end of this article.
The new political story that could change everything
Perhaps I can write one too in this very space. I will work on it here, as if I can contribute to the "collective effort" Monbiot mentions toward creating the new story. So here is my version:
Today we are on a collision course with destruction. The policies of the last 40 years have left us up the creek without a paddle. We no longer have a working peoples' government we can trust. The last 70 years or more has revved up material growth and consumption beyond what our planet can tolerate. And yet most people get less and less from all this wild expansion of human material power. Our society is broken; our sense of purpose and community is gone. Too many people look to sensational symbols, slogans and empty fantasies to fill the void of distrust and to explain what's happening, which only further disconnects us from realities. Plagues and pandemics, wildfires and floods, more guns and more shootings, crime and racial strife, drug epidemics, lonliness, despair, anger, closed opportunities, poverty and poor health, and spreading tyranny at home and abroad rage across the land.
Ever since the 1960s, the people of the USA and many countries have lost trust in their government and its politicians. The United States of America has waged wars based on lies that cost millions of lives. We spend so much on war and defense that we have no means to build peace. Since the 1980s, the ideology that says to unleash the market so that prosperity will trickle-down from phony job creaters has only served to create a grossly unequal and unhealthy society. The promised trickle was just a trick; it never arrived. We badly need rebirth and renewal now, in so many ways.
But riots, violent revolutions and occupations in the streets, although they might relieve our frustration or start conversations, do not build anything. Our democratic system has developed over two centuries, and we need to revive it and use it again now. We need to get political to overthrow the ruling oligarchy. Our laws and our government can only be of, by and for the people IF we rise up and make it so, and remain eternally vigilant and active. Our democratic system does not work for us unless we participate and vote. We need to believe in politics, government and society again, and rebuild democracy for all again, in which power and prosperity grows and rises up from the people, not trickles down from the top!
We will rise up and create this new world, and heroically and bravely defeat its enemies. We will by persuasion and law restore a decent society. This will happen because a new and higher value has arisen amidst all these years of chaos, mistrust and decline, like a new growth quietly bubbling up through the cracks. It is the ecological green principle and it will rule in place of the acquisitive and unending material growth principle.
In this green society all resources and power are recycled, and none are concentrated. Soon no resources will any longer be mined and extracted; no humans exploited. All our activities will be based on the ecological idea of inter-dependence on each other, all contributing to the whole. This is what we need to restore our lives!
We will see brilliant, inspired, inventive business leaders create the most incredible new enterprises that fill real needs. But the new green principle inspires mutual sharing and support, not ambitions for power over others. Labor-saving, productive technology will belong to everyone by law, as well as to patent holders; not to the owners alone, so that greater leisure and wealth can be guaranteed to all. We will band together in new local communities of common dedication and purpose, and join idealistic political and cultural movements and peoples' organizations to uplift our nation and our world. We will use our political power to transform our corporations and businesses into contributors to a rich and fulfilling society in which workers and consumers have power within those companies. We will have vibrant public utilities, infrastructure, schools and services that lift people up, supported by generous public investment paid for by fair taxes and contributions. More and more we will hold our land and workplaces in common. Fairs and gatherings will proliferate.
The ecological principle invites us to let Nature back into our lives and create graceful living spaces. We will see restored and supervised forests and lands from coast to coast, new parks everywhere, public art galleries and recreation spaces, electric-car highways, and fully-green renewable energy. We will build beautiful cities with great architecture, art and culture where people of all groups and incomes can live side by side and all can prosper. Our climate will be stable again soon too. No more floods and fires will destroy our cities after a while. We will rediscover the cycles of nature and the cosmos, and flow with them as ancient peoples once did. We won't anymore see ourselves as entitled to dominate Nature, and we will no longer reduce life and reality to a machine or a set of numbers, or to resources to manipulate and exploit just for our benefit. Instead we will hold all of life as sacred spirit, and act accordingly.
The ecological principle of restored life means that we are all becoming more alive, more flexible, and more imaginative. We can depend on our limitless power of innovation so we don't need an ever-grosser national product that our planet-home can't support. We'll have a national invention inventory instead. We'll be smarter, not bigger. In a society that provides for all, no-one needs to hoard money or capture it from others. If we can restore our own health through better, more youthful and more-natural diets and lifestyles, we don't need to spend so much for expensive health care. If we support those who create the arts that inspire us, we'll all feel less like robots and regenerate our souls. If we understand we are all part of a living whole, we will not separate ourselves so much from other living beings, but rediscover the altruistic empathy that is our birthright.
Greed, racism, prejudice, superstition, fear, indulgence and anger may not be fully and forever abolished yet, so we still need fully-adequate rules and regulations, reformed police, multi-lateral foreign policies, fair taxes willingly paid, good education and spiritual guidance, and safety-nets for all in need, to keep our misbehavior in bounds. These will be developed according to the ecological, democratic principle in which all beings participate, and everyone counts. We will think globally, in reverence of Planet Earth, our unique home, but act locally using local power and local politics as much as we can, growing and rising up from below among the people, and using national and state power too when we need it.
If we hold to the ideal of a decent, living, organic society for all people and all of life, and to the Spirit within us and among us as our foundation, there's no limit to how far we can evolve and grow creatively and personally. Our longing for belonging will be answered. Love and harmony will spread across the land, as we all feel a part of the greater soul connecting us-- like a sphere of consciousness that rises like a sparkling, pulsing fountain that nourishes and enlivens us, lights up the sky above us like fireworks, and lives again in all our hearts.
Some further reading and watching:
HERE is a good article that summarizes the climate change issue
Jeremy Lent on the principles and creation of an ecological society
Full description of free-market economics aka neoliberalism with many links for further information
Democracy for America
Democratic Underground
Repower America.org
Our Future.org
Democrats.com (progressive Democrats)
Meece index and editorials
Eric's Activism and what we can do blog