They’re all at it: Nicholas Stern, George Monbiot, Mark Lynas, James Hansen, Al Gore…name your environmental campaigner of the day, week or month, and read what they write. No question there is good sense — oh yes, the science is there, and all sorts of backlash and hard words aimed at the powers that be — but the same mistake is made time after time, scattered through the books, articles and papers, like a relentless 2/4 marching forwards to the beat of the system’s internal drumbeat.
We need change: total change. Unequivocal, radical, unprecedented change that tilts us with a giddy rush of welcome adrenaline away from the fiery pits of climatic hell and ecological malevolance.
The writers and the campaigners can see the urgency, they understand it, but they do not accept it! Acceptance of our situation, in all its horror, means acceptance that the very institutions that comprise Industrial Civilisation — the corporations, the political parties, the media conglomerates, the advisory panels — are intrinsically evil, like rafts of malignant tumours that corrupt every bit of goodness they touch. Acceptance of the catastrophe we face means acceptance that these institutions cannot change: they are the very stuff of civilised society, wholly culpable for our condition.
A corporation that doesn’t make a profit will fail; a political party that represents the people has no power; a media conglomerate that no longer sets the agenda cannot control its audience; an advisory body that writes destruction from its agenda no longer speaks for civilisation. They are what they are: change them and they no longer exist.
It is no longer excusable to request, even demand, institutional change. Only people can change. Start speaking to them before it’s too late.
