Nina-Bytes: Induced Hopelessness

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They Want You to Give Up

Recently I’ve found myself engaged in multiple discouraging conversations about our rapidly unfolding climate catastrophe with a number of disheartened people ostensibly on the left. While none of these discussions have been entirely unproductive, I’ve frequently been forced to actively push back on the prevailing sentiment that “it’s far too late” and “nothing can be done” to stop climate catastrophe, or even the extinction of human life on Earth. Setting aside the fact that these arguments are both counter-productive, and ignore the scaling nature of the climate crisis problem entirely, recent statements by Selwin Hart, the assistant secretary general of the UN indicate that these sentiments are likely a product of an active propaganda campaign designed to convince folks that preventing the worst case climate scenario is too difficult, if not entirely impossible. And who might be behind that propaganda campaign? If you guessed “fossil fuel companies profiting directly from boiling our planet like soup,” you win a gold star.

 

‘Massive disinformation campaign’ is slowing global transition to green energy

“There is this prevailing narrative – and a lot of it is being pushed by the fossil fuel industry and their enablers – that climate action is too difficult, it’s too expensive,” he said. “It is absolutely critical that leaders, and all of us, push back and explain to people the value of climate action, but also the consequences of climate inaction.”

He contrasted the perception of a backlash with the findings of the biggest poll ever conducted on the climate, which found clear majorities of people around the world supporting measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The survey found 72% of people wanted a “quick transition” away from fossil fuels, including majorities in the countries that produce the most coal, oil and gas. Green parties and plans may have suffered reverses in some parts of the world, he said, but in others they have gained seats, and seen policies that would once have been considered radical enter the mainstream.”

Look, I’m not here to blow sunshine up your ass; the situation is still quite dire. As I’ve written in the past, a simple transition from fossil fuel consumption to renewable energy isn’t likely to solve all of our climate problems. This is at least in part because Pig Empire capitalism itself is unlikely to survive such a transition, and the rich people driving us all off the ecological cliff are fighting tooth and nail to preserve their wealth and power; wealth and power which is ultimately underpinned by violently enforced fossil fuel extraction and consumption. Despite these complications however, it’s important to understand that combatting climate catastrophe is not impossible and it’s not too late; everyday people overwhelmingly support doing what must be done to preserve a habitable planet, no matter how much our ruling classes and the capitalists who own everything in our society object to that proposition. The people telling you otherwise are in fact the very same people profiting from destroying our shared biosphere, and they want you to give up so they can continue stacking up obscene amounts of wealth without opposition.

While it’s true that taking action to fight the climate crisis sooner would have been better for humanity as a whole, and yes, the beginnings of some extremely negative effects on our society are already baked-in because of longstanding climate inaction, the idea that it’s too late for our species and that nothing can be done is inaccurate; it is propaganda being fed to you by the same ghouls who have a vested interest in continuing to burn the planet for profit, no matter how many people have to perish. Whether they be fossil fuel executives or ruling class capitalists heavily invested in a fossil fuel dependent world, these greedy death-clowns want you to give up hope because it’s worth not just trillions of dollars to them, but also the power over Pig Empire society that their syphoning of it enables. If it truly were too late, if fighting back against the capitalist interests boiling us all for profit was truly pointless, they wouldn’t be spending millions of dollars on propaganda campaigns and misinformation designed to get you to give up on the idea of fighting climate catastrophe and the capitalism that’s causing it. The best time to fight fossil fuel induced climate catastrophe was sixty years ago, but the second best time is right now; billions of people’s lives are depending on it, and it’s not too late to save them.

Even if it’s hard to recognize amid waves of disheartening propaganda, the truth is that there is still hope for a planet habitable by more than eight billion human beings. Unfortunately however, that hope depends entirely on ending fossil fuel consumption, and with it the capitalist order that dominates all of Pig Empire society. Furthermore, our leaders, who are wholly devoted to that capitalist order, and largely in the pockets of ultra-rich mass murderers who have every intention of killing billions to preserve their wealth and way of life, are at best unreliable partners (and at worst, an active impediment) to making the changes necessary to save our world and the human and animal species that live on it. It’s almost certainly going to take some type of global revolution to either convince them otherwise, or replace them with people who don’t see murdering billions of people for the profit of a handful of billionaires as an acceptable option. I’m certainly not promising you that accomplishing this will be easy, but given that the alternative is to watch billions of people burn to death while rich monsters turn our planet to ash, giving up is simply not an option.

 

 

– Nina Illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, and on Mastodon.

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