Please read Naomi Klein’s recent article in New Statesman…How Science Is Telling Us All To Revolt… on the reason why human life on the planet is in deep danger that must be addressed immediately.
Her article contains this observation…
The fact that the business-as-usual pursuit of profits and growth is destabilizing life on earth is no longer something we need to read about in scientific journals. The early signs are unfolding before our eyes. And increasing numbers of us are responding accordingly: blockading fracking activity in Balcombe; interfering with Arctic drilling preparations in Russian waters (at tremendous personal cost); taking tar sands operators to court for violating indigenous sovereignty; and countless other acts of resistance large and small. In Brad Werner’s computer model, this is the “friction” needed to slow down the forces of destabilization; the great climate campaigner Bill McKibben calls it the “antibodies” rising up to fight the planet’s “spiking fever”.
It’s not a revolution, but it’s a start. And it might just buy us enough time to figure out a way to live on this planet that is distinctly less f**ked.
The entire article can be found here…
And would you then please read the proposed Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the ESRA) at www.tikkun.org/ESRA and read the Spiritual Covenant with America at www.spiritualprogressives.org? These present a strategy for dealing with the issues raised by Naomi Klein.
In practical terms, the ESRA is a major step toward reversing what Naomi Klein is describing in her article.
Unrealistic? No, what is most unrealistic is to not take these kind of major steps before it is too late to save life on earth. Can it pass? Well, the Equal Rights Amendment (the ERA) never passed, but the struggle for it changed public opinion dramatically and took feminism from being a side-show to mainstream acceptance.
That is what the ESRA is meant to do for the idea of seriously challenging corporate power by establishing democratic control or review of their impact on the environment and on the values of the society.
It is actually evolutionary, but at least it speeds things up enough so that more complete steps at global restraints on corporate destruction of the environment can be taken seriously.
One part of it, the “Money out of Politics” clause, not only overturns Citizens United but goes much further by requiring that state and federal elections must be publicly financed and no other source of money (from corporations OR from individuals) will be permitted; thus the ESRA democratizes both the political system and a major part of the economy.
We are inviting you to come to our Transformative Activist Training so that you can have the skills to bring these kinds of ideas into the public sphere. For info: www.spiritualprogressives.org/training. Please join us.
Rabbi Michael Lerner
Editor, Tikkun and co-chair, The Network of Spiritual Progressives
NOTE: Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and syndicated columnist and the author of the international and New York Times bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, now out in paperback. Her earlier books include the international best-seller, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (which has just been re-published in a special 10th Anniversary Edition); and the collection Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (2002). To read all her latest writing visit www.naomiklein.org. You can follow her on Twitter: @NaomiAKlein.
Leave a Reply