06 May 20
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06 May 20
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Michael Moore | We Are in a Planetary Emergency
Michael Moore, Michael Moore's Facebook Page
Moore writes: "We are in a planetary emergency. And I'm not talking about the coronavirus."
This is their planet, too. They are a form of life. And like another species I know well, they are killers. The current pandemic is simply acting as a gentle warning from Mother Nature. Gentle?? Over 3 million infected worldwide, and a quarter million dead? Gentle?
Yes, it is truly awful. But take it as the Earth’s slap on our collective face: nature telling our species to back off, slow down and change your ways.
For many years, we have been in the middle of what scientists call the world’s Sixth Extinction Event. This planet can remove us all in a snap of its fingers. Thank god it doesn’t have fingers. Nonetheless, if you think Covid-19 has been a bummer, well, trust me, you literally can’t imagine just how awful Earth’s revenge is going to be against us for trying to choke it to fucking death.
Yes, we are in a serious, multi-level planetary emergency - and it involves climate, water, food, topsoil, overconsumption, missing species, ocean life and humans. Mostly humans, and our various nonsensical greed-induced behaviors and systems.
Now for the bad news. Many of the people and organizations who are working hard to save us, aren’t. It’s not that they haven’t tried. They have. And we are proud of them and ourselves and all the the work we’ve done in the environmental movement. We are very grateful to our environmental leaders. Brilliant research, writings, protests, successes.
Except it hasn’t worked. The climate battle has been lost or it’s being lost. We all know that we are WORSE off since the first Earth Day 50 years ago. Here’s what’s been achieved since 1970:
- 90% of the large fish (cod, halibut, salmon, etc) in the oceans are gone. We ate them.
- 60% of all the mammals are gone - and 95% of the mammals that are left are either humans, our pets, or our dinner.
- Somewhere between 2,000 and 10,000 species are going extinct every year;
- We have lost HALF of all our topsoil. Some predict it will all be gone in 60 years. It takes 1,000 years to regenerate just three centimeters of new topsoil;
- Of the Earth’s 37 main aquifer systems (our underground fresh water), 21 of them are at near-collapse.
- We lost 1.2 billion acres of rainforest in 2018. In just one year.
- We were not supposed to go above 350 parts per million of the carbon we spew into our atmosphere. We are now at 415. Which means we are beyond the point of no return.
We will have no chance of even coming close to halting the coming collapse if we cannot first admit we have failed. We can no longer solar panel and windmill our way out of this disaster. I’m so sorry I have to say this, but friends, we are no longer on the right road. And if we don’t change course immediately, if we’re too proud to ask for directions, new directions, to start a bold new discussion of what must be done - and do so without “green” hedge fund managers at the table - then we might as well keep driving this electric Buick off the cliff.
I cannot remain silent about this any longer. I’ve devoted myself to the environmental movement since I was a teenager. I was part of the first Earth Day. I was 15 and had just made my first documentary with the exciting title, “Pollution in My Hometown.” It was my Eagle Scout project where I showed all the businesses that were poisoning our air and water. It deeply upset the local Chamber of Commerce and they tried to stop me from showing it around town at the churches and schools and Kiwanis clubs. Six years later I started my own alternative newspaper, “The Flint Voice.” One of our first cover stories was entitled, “Here Comes the Sun,” my full-fledged effort to get Michigan — a state in which only one in four days each year is considered “sunny” — to go solar. The next year I founded the Huron Alliance, a Flint-based anti-nuclear group. We organized massive demonstrations to block the building of the Dow Nuclear plant in Midland, Michigan. Remarkably we were successful in its cancellation.
All of that took place before I was 23-years old. I’ve spent the rest of my adult life trying to figure out how to stop those who are hell-bent on destroying our home, the Earth. I also came to sadly see that some of the Earth’s worst enemies were the people who claimed to be on our side but couldn’t resist taking corporate money, thinking this would help the cause. It hurt the cause. I began to believe little of what we were being fed. I subscribed to the motto of investigative journalist I. F. Stone: “All governments (and corporations) are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.” But soon after I started my newspaper, I had to confront some awful truths that I truly didn’t want to acknowledge: that some activist groups I supported, and some liberals who were my good friends and allies, were not always doing good for the people. Often they were well-intentioned, or occasionally misguided, or just simply wrong. And a few were up to no good. I saw unions hop into bed with management. I covered Democrats who were really Republicans. In my last film I called out Barack Obama for going to Flint and pretending to drink Flint water and telling people that their tainted water was safe — when it wasn’t. I love Obama. But there’s the rub of my quasi-lonely life as a citizen and filmmaker: I will never, ever cover for anyone who’s not doing right by the people, who is harming the least among us, who, even with good intentions, has contributed to the eventual death of this planet.
And now, 50 years after that first Earth Day, I have to stand here and tell you, with my support of Jeff Gibbs’ film, that we must ask the difficult questions of the people we love on our side of the political divide: Is “green” capitalism really our savior? Are we being manipulated with fear and forced anxiety so that we will buy more, more, more? To what ends? When the pandemic is over, do you want to go back to the old way of being wage-slaves, no real power over your own lives, accepting that the democracy is probably over, that you’re no longer citizens, you’re simply consumers, and that your contribution to the Earth’s decline is to continually feed the beast.
It is amazing that we have all put up with this for so long, and that we have been afraid to admit our losing record on our precious environment. Something has to change. And it has to change now.
Planet of the Humans has no personal bone to pick with anyone. We’ve all messed up and we’ve all been on the wrong road. What’s our way out? Besides planting a billion trees (yes!), ending capitalism/greed/the 1%, nationalizing the energy companies as a matter of national security, bring back teaching civics in our schools, instituting a guaranteed annual income, universal health care, and free child care — and how about we apologize to our children, our students, our young adults under 40 for the Destroyed Earth we’ve handed them and then let them lead us out of this madness. The youth have already risen up to create the new movements we desperately need. We, the adults, the lifelong environmentalists, have failed to stop climate change. The Western world uses too much crap, too much energy and eats too many cows and chickens. As Greta rightfully, angrily said to us adults: “You have stolen our future! You have stolen our youth!” Indeed we have. I’ve admitted it. I want the rest of the movement to admit it, too.
I am most heartened and encouraged by the bull’s-eye focus of youth-led movements on the real target. I totally agree with Greta’s condemnation, "People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosytems are collapsing. We are at the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”
I think that she was not just directing that at the oil, gas and coal industry. I believe she’s aiming it, rightly so, at all of us. Many on our side have told us that capitalism is the solution to the problem it created. That strategy has failed. While decimating the planet is “good business,” it is bad for the people and all the living creatures on it.
I urge you to join me in committing to support and fight alongside the Student Strike for Climate, Sunrise Movement, Black Lives Matter, March for Our Lives, Women’s March, Extinction Rebellion, etc. to change this world immediately. We need new blood! Fresh ideas! People who won’t be co-opted! We must commit to following their lead. Some of our beloved environmental leaders may have to step aside and help in other ways. We need these young people to do what we haven't had the guts to do: Slam the door shut on the “green capitalism” that funds and poisons the movement. The youth will refuse to participate in the eco-industrial complex. Let them lead!
That’s not a lot to ask for if it means that Mother Nature gives us one last chance to get it right. I’m hoping she sees, as I do, that the kids are all right.
S.C.O.T.U.S. (photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP)
The Supreme Court Hears the Biggest Presidential Immunity Cases Since Nixon
Ian Millhiser, Vox
Millhiser writes: "Next week, the Supreme Court will hear three cases that could upend one of the most basic assumptions that the Court has maintained since the Nixon years - that the president of the United States is not above scrutiny or immune from investigation."
READ MORE
The Fearless Girl statue stands nearly alone in front of the New York Stock Exchange near Wall Street during the coronavirus pandemic on April 25, 2020 in New York City. (photo: Justin Heiman/Getty Images)
The Disconnect Between the Stock Market and the Real Economy Is Destroying Our Lives
Hamilton Nolan, In These Times
Nolan writes: "Prosperity is advertised in aggregate, but it is only experienced by individuals."
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Republican congressman John Ratcliffe: 'at least he can form coherent sentences', said one former official in the office of the director of national intelligence. (photo: Gabriella Demczuk/AP)
Trump Loyalist Set to Become National Intelligence Director on Second Attempt
Julian Borger, Guardian UK
Borger writes: "A Trump loyalist nominated as director of national intelligence looked set to sail through Senate confirmation hearings on Tuesday, only nine months after being forced to withdraw for having exaggerated his security experience."
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Korene Atene, a nursing assistant, gets information from people lined up to get tested for COVID-19 in Oljato-Monument Valley, Navajo Nation. (photo: Kristin Murphy/The Deseret News/AP)
Navajo Nation Suffers Third-Highest COVID-19 Infection Rate in US with Limited Healthcare and Water
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "The rural community has reported having nearly 2,300 known cases of COVID-19, 73 deaths as of Sunday."
e get an update from two doctors treating patients with the Navajo Nation, the largest Indigenous reservation in the country, which has been hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Dr. Michelle Tom is a member of the Navajo Nation and a family physician treating COVID-19 patients at the Winslow Indian Health Care Center and Little Colorado Medical Center in northern Arizona near the Navajo reservation. In Gallup, New Mexico, Dr. Sriram Shamasunder is leading a medical volunteer group of 21 nurses and doctors from the University of California, San Francisco as part of the HEAL Initiative. He says the coronavirus hit harder on the Navajo Nation due to a “trajectory of an underfunded health system,” and notes the Indian Health Service is funded at one-third the rate per capita as Medicare. “The level of inequity that you’re seeing … it’s part of this pattern.”
Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro attends his supporters during a protest in favor of the government and against the lockdown amid the coronavirus outbreak in front of the Planalto Palace in Brasília, Brazil, on May 3, 2020. (photo: Andre Borges/NurPhoto/Getty Images)
Brazil: Bolsonaro Goes to War With Democratic Institutions - and Hopes the Military Has His Back
Andrew Fishman, The Intercept
Fishman writes: "Hundreds of diehard, far-right protesters were gathered on Sunday in Brasília, the capital of Brazil, to rally against the quarantine imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus and in support of what would amount to a military coup against the legislature and judiciary."
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The Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort arrives in New York Harbor to support the national, state and local response to the COVID-19 pandemic, March 30, 2020. (photo: Kenneth Wilsey/FEMA)
Spending Trillions on 'Defense' Left America Unprepared for Real Disasters
Kate Yoder, Grist
Yoder writes: "If federal discretionary spending were a pie (yum!), you'd definitely want to want to pick the piece labeled 'Defense,' taking up over half the pie."
ith an annual budget of $700 billion and climbing, the military has bought some seriously fancy planes. Take the F-35 fighters, with a price tag of $100 million per plane. Known as the Joint Strike Fighter, it’s the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons program yet, expected to cost $1 trillion over its lifetime. Then there’s the Navy’s newest aircraft carriers: The ships have a toilet problem requiring “specialized acids” that run $400,000 a flush.
Imagine if all that money had been spent on stockpiling ventilators and efforts to stop pandemics before they started.
In the “war” on coronavirus, the U.S. military has assumed a key role in responding to the pandemic, sending ships to help overburdened hospitals in New York City and Los Angeles, bringing millions of N95 masks out of its reserves, and getting to work on a coronavirus vaccine.
But America’s military was designed for blowing things up and moving things around (logistics!), not necessarily saving lives. Those hospital ships, for instance, were built for treating injuries from combat, making them imperfect vessels for containing infectious diseases. Experts have criticized the military’s COVID-19 response as sluggish, with ventilators and masks coming too late.
The military, despite its best efforts, is not the best tool for taking on a raging public health crisis. That’s a job better suited for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Health and Human Services, and state and local agencies. “We want to be the last resort,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper told the Associated Press in March. The military isn’t supposed to get too involved in domestic affairs — the United States declared independence from Britain, after all, over frustrations with soldiers’ unwanted presence in the daily lives of colonists.
If federal discretionary spending were a pie (yum!), you’d definitely want to want to pick the piece labeled “Defense,” taking up over half the pie. Overpriced weapons have consumed federal spending for decades, depleting funding for areas like public health and climate change. A recent primer from the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, which lays out the many connections between climate change and the military, focuses on how funneling trillions of dollars into “defense” has left the country unprepared for other shocks. If anything, with its gigantic carbon footprint, the Pentagon has made climate change worse.
The federal government’s discretionary spending is lopsided. The United States spends more money on its military than the next 10 countries combined, for instance. Compare the Pentagon’s $700-billion-plus budget with what the country spends on other threats we face. It’s almost 100 times more than the money spent on preparing for pandemics and disease outbreaks. (Congress gave the CDC a little less than $8 billion for 2020.) It’s 270 times more than on energy efficiency and renewable energy, according to the National Priorities Project.
The Pentagon has been talking about the dangers of climate change for decades, and much more candidly than Congress or the White House, said Lorah Steichen, Outreach Coordinator at the National Priorities Project and a coauthor of the report. When it comes to taking on climate change, however, the military is mainly concerned with improving its own ability to cope with the effects. As seas rise and temperatures heat up, the Pentagon is moving its military bases, building sea walls, and staking out land in newly accessible parts of the Arctic.
The Department of Defense also consumes a ridiculous amount of greenhouse gases. If the Pentagon were its own country, it would emit more carbon dioxide than most nations, beating out Sweden, Denmark, and Portugal. While the military has been slowly shrinking its carbon “boot print” over the years, moving troops and fighter jets still burns through an astronomical amount of fuel. It’s the biggest greenhouse gas emitter of any government agency on the planet, according to a report from Brown University’s Costs of War project, and has emitted more than 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide since 2001.
“The U.S. military is often framed in the national interest, the best interest of American people,” Steichen said. “But it’s pretty clear that military operations are tied to protecting the economic interests of the fossil fuel industry.” She pointed to studies that oil is the leading cause of war globally, estimated to be the primary contention for between a quarter and a half of wars between countries over the last half-century.
For people who want to see government action on the climate crisis, labeling it a “national security threat” is tempting, given its potential to submerge cities, amplify migration and unrest, and supercharge hurricanes and wildfires. The label could be seen as a way to redirect the already-robust military funding to a better cause and push policymakers to take the crisis more seriously.
But Steichen said that this framing has a hidden cost. “In reality, this militarized framing just invites a search for military solutions,” Steichen said. The risk is that the federal government just funnels more money into the military, rather than into solutions that could address our public-health and climate crises at their root.
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