COP26 is dead! Long Live Cop27? What we need is simple, the task is complex, power agenda's make it all more complicated than it needs to be

The show is not over, yet the show is over already. 

~

All the political parties are failing us. The System is failing us all. The religions are all failing us. The industrial militarised 'economic' system of competing powers extracting wealth is failing us. The adults are failing the children.  COP26 is already failing us. It is blatantly not a fair COP.

I think we urgently need a non-partisan, non ideological grass roots Political and Cultural Union of Students, Parents and Teachers - people most concerned with the medium term future - to study, understand and spread the concept that the honest appraisal and accurate understanding of the evidence is critical to healthy democratic governance.

We need a movement to advocate for evidence led policy that seeks to avoid avoidable harms at every level, from abolishing poverty to the cessation of war fare, from reducing use of fossil fuels to eliminating corruption in Government, from promoting RegenAg and Cradle to Cradle production, use and consumption to withdrawing from all undeveloped lands and their peoples, in order to meet the climate challenge. Put it like this - Poverty is avoidable, an erupting volcano is not. Invading indigenous lands to 'develop sustainably' is avoidable, and if it is not avoided the destruction of the indigenous culture is likewise not avoidable. What culture has the right to destroy those cultures who in a myriad of forms have lived sustainably in those lands for centuries?

~

COP26 is dead! Long Live Cop27?

Simple
What we need is simple. Stop causing harm. Is that so much to ask? 

Simply put we need to stop harming our shared environment, we need to stop harming the bio-diversity of living creatures with whom we share this environment, and we need to stop harming each other. Stop causing avoidable harms,  at the level of Government and Corporation, at the very least. Simple.

I am not calling for utopic behaviour. Stop causing so much harm. Is that so much to ask?

The task is complex, but competing power agendas are making it all much, much more complicated than it needs to be.
Complex

The task is complex because it demands we meet a variety of primary needs that are not being met, and it demands we find ways to balance 'competing needs'. 
For example abolishing poverty is a necessity because it is an affliction that undermines every society where it is allowed to persist. Poverty harms the entire society where it exists. Poverty is being deliberately maintained.
Abolishing poverty will dig into the wealth extraction process of the leading oligarchies, because they depend on low wages for efficiency of wealth extraction.

However, when we abolish poverty, it will reduce rather than remove their profit take. The corporations and small businesses can still make profits, without imposing poverty. Win-win. 

They do not need such immense profits, they can do with less.
Balancing real needs.

It's not rocket science. Seeking win-win outcomes is a human trait older than hierarchies of violence.

Maintaining poverty to drive people into low paid work in order to maximise profit efficiency is a serious problem, it is a harm causation.

Deforestation is low paid work, often carried out by people close to destitution, as an act of desperation, a last resort. If those people were not so impoverished, would they bother to sweat in a forest, destroying it, risking disease and nasty accidents, just so that others can make immense profits?
How do we balance the needs of people, as workers and as communities with the needs of Corporations and Shareholders for a decent return on their investments of time, energy and money?

Balancing those needs requires effort, attention to detail, it demands empathy, humane concern and technical focus to change those methods that are causing harm so that they no longer do so. This is complex, it is not complicated.

Complicated.

All of the above is made much more complicated than it needs to be because the power plays of Extracted Accumulated Wealth as a political, economic and cultural master, which I consider is a psychological illness, presenting as an hegemonic attitude, is impeding progress on every level, from refusing to abolish poverty to undermining democracy, from engaging in warfare to  Billionaires and Corporations buying political representation that disfavours the electorate - none of this activity is helping.

This hegemonic dynamic is a fabric woven with the ideological threads of 'let's conquer the world' to attain market dominance, similar in method and action as Old Empires. 

Am I repeating myself?
The abhorrent US/UK Military 'Full Spectrum Dominance' dynamic, the behaviour of Facebook, Amazon, Google -The  Surveillance Capitalists - and the intransigence of the fossil fuel industry and others seeking dominant 'market share' nationally and globally is a dynamic order that continues to refuse to address the harms they are causing, in order to continue to expand and dominate their respective domains. They also wish to avoid paying their externalised costs.
Harms are not being honestly addressed. More power is sought.

Who pays the price?
Again we can see that the same pattern of maintaining position and seeking profits is happening during this pandemic (rather than asserting unity in the purpose of protecting the global population), where wealthy global North countries are blatantly not sharing wealth and technical ability be it fair taxation or the rights to manufacture and deliver vaccines and other vital logistical elements of suppressing the virus, or resources to deploy dealing with climate change in order to protect populations exposed to risk of avoidable harm. The UN called for a cessation of warfare in early 2020. The leading powers rejected that call.

If harm is avoidable, why not make that effort? 

The tobacco smoker is addicted, and we recognise that addicts need and deserve help to break the addition, to prevent greater harm at a later date. But the big business of that addiction, and it's tax take for Governments stand as enablers of the tobacco addiction. Fossil fuel industry learned the tricks of denial from the tobacco industry.

It is the addiction to Power that is the problem that drives so many other problems. Johnson et all demonstrate that every day they sit in high office.

Global Disunity

The Global Disunity, the refusal of warring states to cease all war engagements amidst a pandemic, the refusal to waive IP rights to allow wider manufacture and distribution of Vaccines and other tools, the rejection of elimination of community transmission by USUK, Brazil, India in contrast to East Asian states and others who have better protected their populations and economies, are all down to one concern - preserving the power of the ruling class, of Accumulated Wealth to extract even more wealth, irrespective of the costs to the people or the environment.

Evil?

"The Science has been crystal clear, How dare you continue to look away, and come here and say you are doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are nowhere in sight. You say you hear us and you understand the urgency, and no  matter how sad and angry I am I do not want to believe that. Because if you understand the situation and you kept on failing to act then you would be evil and that I refuse to believe." Greta Thunberg in 2019


The Telegraph hosts this video excerpt, and it's telling that they chose this frame of Greta Thunberg as the thumbnail. They had to acknowledge her statement, yet they also needed to disparage her image, her person, wordlessly.
Making the choice to allow or enable an avoidable harm to any one who has less power, in order to maintain and enhance that power differential is evil. It is very much a matter of human behaviour, rather than some external force of 'evil', Choosing to exploiting another's vulnerability in order to gain more advantage is evil.

We are all vulnerable, and if anything the SARSCOV2 Virus is telling us it is this - "You are all in this together." 

Lying about this, gaslighting the vulnerable is evil.

What is the link?

What is it that links COP26, COVID, Warfare, Poverty and many other issues where healthy governance is most urgently needed,  (governance that acts in a timely manner to avoid avoidable harms)?
What is the impediment to appropriate action required to avoid avoidable harms?

The Underlying Problem.
The extraction of wealth, wealth which is then accumulated and deployed as political influence, to preserve the systems of wealth extraction that further enables the extractors in the exercise of the power to influence and corrupt democratic legislatures.  A vicious cycle, indeed. Venal. Economic groundhog day.
That cultural vehicle is being driven by the Wealth Extraction Party; it is a vehicle that pollutes as it rolls, because it's much more 'efficient' in generating wealth for power than it is at preventing pollution, and that cheapskate approach enhances more efficient wealth extraction. 

Who pays the price?
The masters of wealth are clearly willing to let others - the working class, the impoverished poor, the destitute - to pay the price of their wilful negligence, so that they can continue to extract wealth from the environment and the population and maintain their power to do so, against all reform.
The passengers - us ordinary citizens - are urged to play at recycling, to limit our consumption behaviours, and we are often scapegoated. We are more or less rendered impotent to make meaningful changes in the direction and speed of the cultural vehicle, and we are told to put on their safety belts and stay quiet and not distract the driver.
The 'will of the people' aka the passengers ability to choose a safer destination is not being given due attention or support. 

Wealth, Government and Democracy Undermined.
Wealth Extraction dominates the thinking of Governments where the Wealth Extraction Party prevails - their primary objective is how to maintain wealth extraction through the various crises that wealth extraction generates.

Yesterdays session, on the matter of Owen Patterson's 30 day suspension, in the House of Commons proves the point.

A corrupt Government using it's majority to derail the censure of an elected MP who was taking more than his MPs salary for part time work lobbying for Companies to be awarded commercially lucrative contracts, (which is a breach of Parliamentary Rules). To avoid a by election, which would have followed as a recall was likely. To avoid the possibility of the loss of a seat, the loss of a by election which would be a public humiliation for Johnson and the Conservative Party.

Crony Capitalism Thrives

All of this is happening within a culture of no bidding process, VIP contract lanes, crony contracts and woefully inadequate provision that exacerbates the situation it is contracted to deal with. From PPE to Test and Trace

#COP26 is not much different than COP1, 10 or 20 in this regard. In spite of lots of genuinely decent, serious and well informed people working on these problems, globally, COP26 delivers promises and inadequate action amid much talk about private finance chucking $150 trillion at the problem, with an eye towards the profits to be made from the proposed 'green revolution' above all else. 

For me, the profit we need is a cleaner environment, a population protected from harm caused by climate change, war fare, SARSCOV2 and imposed poverty.

That is a profit that has deep human value.
How can we as ordinary people get the driver to change course?
1. Refuse to vote for or support any politician who backs Wealth Extraction over public and societal health, the health of the people and our shared environment - feasible.  Recall them all! 
2. Vote instead for politicians informed and advised by grounded evidence led science and applicable practice who will preserve public health, cease the harm causation by helping to develop and enable practices that do not cause such damage. - feasible.

3. Giving the people well paid work to prevent further harms, to carry out the repair of and clean up of our shared environment would be really useful. Oddly enough, if we have enough resources to live well,  and are happier, then we have less 'need' or desire to engage in comfort shopping and more desire to do work that helps the whole community.

Universal basic income is one way to support that shift. Why not pay 8 billion people to do the work of 'going green'?
4. Reduce private car use in cities by funding green public transit systems, taxing fossil fuel cars in cities - the drivers must understand they are driving on externalised costs, and they must pay, now - make more work local and promote working from home, provide goods that can be proven to not cause harm, reduce eating meat, stabilise property values and rents - these are not immediately feasible until we find ways to abolish baseline and real value poverty.

The poor and low paid worker depend upon public transit, the wealthy use private transit. Private transit clogs the roads, making public transit less efficient. The poor suffer the most spread of this virus, the wealthy have better health outcomes. 
Abolishing poverty is a core component of how we move from harm to nurture as human culture.

5. Change to low electricity use light bulbs, use less plastic, use cloth shopping bags, conserve water by flushing the loo less frequently and thousands of other small measure - all these are reduced to symbolic gestures as long as the Wealth Extraction business and it's externalised costs are allowed to prevail. 
When the PR of the Neoliberal Ideologues claim the buyer determines the market, that if we reject a product it will not be made, they are gaslighting. It is not true. The shopper does not control the market. 

Legislate and Regulate.

Civilisation depends on the constraints imposed by legislatures to protect the vulnerable, to define and assert standards, to frustrate criminals and to wage peace, honestly. Government could be fine utility in the right hands. 
I think that what we need to do is to regulate industry and wealth extraction, and to do that we need to remove their ability to influence and corrupt Government.  

This can be done.

It requires an immense rebalancing of power: the power to act as an informed, evidence led collective, entire populations working for each other's best interests must take priority over the competing powers dynamic working to achieve hegemonic status.

Competition to become dominant is war fare. Competing to improve outcomes for each other is another level of civilised humanity, and it is where we must go.
We need to use the resources to hand 
a) - the creation of currency - to abolish poverty, impoverished peoples cannot work to address the issues we face. We need to redeploy our working in order to repair and protect the environment - 
b)  the democratic legislatures - we need the power of Government to legislate to regulate industry to shift gear and drive towards systems of raw materials extraction, production and consumption that prevent externalised costs from being generated, so that they generate nutrient cycles that nurture environment and people alike.

This can be done. It is not impossible.




Kindest regards

Corneilius

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