AlternativeRadio

When language has been mutilated and drained of meaning how are we to understand democracy? Its mere invocation by politicians and their media echoers generates a chorus of hosannas. The reality is different. Democracy has been reduced to elections, awash in money, where there are marginal choices. Sometimes the candidates are so bad one can say: Pick your poison: cyanide or arsenic. The Great Recession has shaken things up. From the cradle of democracy: Greece, to the self-proclaimed beacon of it today: the U.S., people are asking fundamental questions. Democracy has been off-stage and in the wings for decades as corporations, enabled by political elites, have amassed unprecedented power. During elections democracy is trotted out to center stage and then disappears behind the curtains again. That could be changing. The Occupy movement is rocking the comfort zone of the 1%.

Fifty years ago Rachel Carson wrote “Silent Spring.” It gave birth to the environmental movement. Within a few years there was Earth Day, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Environmental Protection Agency. Those were heady days but that was then. Today, around the world the threat to our environment is acute and growing. The majority of solutions on offer, from driving a hybrid, to recycling plastic, to using efficient light bulbs, focus on individual lifestyle choices of mostly privileged people. Yet the scale of the crisis requires a far deeper and fundamental transformation. As global warming accelerates, carbon-fueled industrial capitalism is systemically incapable of making the necessary radical changes to protect the planet. Its insatiable appetite for profits precludes it from doing so. It is time to think about a different economic system.

There is almost a mystical belief in growth. Nature’s bounty was there to be exploited by man. There is endless palaver about growth as an economic panacea that will cure all ills. Economists have long postulated that growth is normal and natural and could go on forever. But can it? Conventional views of growth are incompatible with the capacity and well being of the planet. The Earth Policy Institute says, we are “on an economic path that is environmentally unsustainable, a path that is leading us toward economic decline and collapse. Environmental scientists have been saying for sometime that the global economy is being slowly undermined by the trends of environmental destruction and disruption, including shrinking forests, expanding deserts, falling water tables, eroding soils, collapsing fisheries, rising temperatures, melting ice, rising seas and increasingly destructive storms."

Stalin, once cynically remarked, If you kill one person it is a tragedy, but if you kill a million, it is a statistic. It is difficult to comprehend large-scale horror. The crime of genocide in some ways has defined modern times. With technology, states have become more efficient at mass murder. But the term genocide is sometimes promiscuously used. Take for example the case of Libya. Supposedly its now murdered leader Qaddafi was going to launch a genocidal campaign against his opponents. The media compliantly whipped up fears of wholesale slaughter. The charge had little substance but it was used to justify U.S. and NATO military intervention in that oil-rich country. In other instances, there are deniers of actual genocide, such as Turkey, which continues to deny what it did to its Armenian population.

Mordor is the realm of the evil Sauron in “The Lord of the Rings.” Tolkiendescribes it as “a barren wasteland, riddled with fire and ash and dust,the very air you breathe is a poisonous fume." If you look at Canada’sAlberta tar sands you might imagine it’s something like Mordor. Thegigantic effort to extract oil has turned the province into a hydrocarbonkingdom. And it may be one of the most environmentally destructiveprojects on earth. Tar sands burn more carbon than conventional oil;destroy forests; kill wildlife; poison the water supply and communitiesdownstream; drain the Athabasca, the river that feeds Canada’s largestwatershed, and contribute to climate change. The Keystone XL pipeline fromAlberta to refineries in the U.S. has been put on hold because of protestsbut it is likely to resurface. Interview by David Barsamian.

What do you do if you are fortunate enough to have some extra money? Stuff it under your mattress? Invest in Wall Street? Put it in a bank? For various reasons those may not be your best options. The economic crash and the Occupy movement have widened the space for alternatives and new thinking. A once fledging choice, investing locally has greatly expanded and taken root in a variety of places. It makes sense. By making the dollar switch to Main Street there is at least the possibility of creating more vibrant, self-reliant communities. Local investing can be done using a variety of approaches from cooperatives and community ownership to local exchanges. Exploring these options is critical. The big banks and investment firms, where most people have their money, are not overly concerned with building community.