The chief block to positive outcomes right now is the betrayal of our western governments with regard to their chief purported responsibility, to keep a country safe and raise the quality of life for its citizens.

Human imagination is limitless, if positive actions to slow down climate change were incentivised by governments we would have democracy working as intended. Instead we have corporate capture of environmental agencies and tax breaks for the fossil fuel companies, with very few sops in other directions.

Eco-cidal companies like Shell and BP run roughshod over regulations, control the media after disasters, and receive slaps on the wrist for their crimes.

The brains at the heart of corpo-capitalism know no other fealty than profit. For all their vaunted intelligence, they are the ones piloting humanity off a cliff, chortling over their so-called victory over the 'market'.

Loath as I am to admit it, people are our own worst enemies. Sheer force of habit is slowing down positive change. Breaking habits is hard. Capitalism has a hypnotic force over peoples' imaginations due to its internal logic of 'work hard and profit', which seems axiomatic on its face.

Where the cognitive dissonance comes is when you apply external logic to capitalism, at which point it becomes swiftly apparent that the Grand Bargain it offers is fundamentally Faustian.

The Omo people will lose their traditional lands to Corpo-Ag, but they will be able to enjoy electric toenail-clippers and $1 screwdrivers in return for their sacrifice, (sold to them as 'economic growth' and 'progress').

So the changes we need can only come from a giant spell-breaking. Art can serve this purpose. A little more romanticisation of Nature wouldn't hurt, IMO either. Seeing our habitat through strictly utilitarian
frames surely isn't helping much.

The most direct approach would be to transform democracy from within, throwing out old-paradigm pols and allowing fresh, uncorrupted intelligence into the system.

Not much evidence of that around, though the M5* has given me hope that it could be possible.


'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty