This is a column I have been mulling over for a while but, for reasons that will be instantly obvious, I have been hesitant to write. It is about 5G, vaccines, 9/11, aliens and lizard overlords. Or more accurately, it isn’t.
While governments’ responses to the Covid-19 pandemic proves significant resources can be marshalled quickly in a crisis, there is little evidence official Canada sees global warming as a comparable emergency.
The prophecies are here and it is a foregone conclusion: the post-coronavirus world will look fundamentally different from anything that we have seen or experienced, at least since the end of World War II.
Even before the ‘curve flattened’ in many countries that have experienced high death tolls — let alone economic devastation — as a result of the unhindered spread of the COVID-19 disease, thinkers and philosophers began speculating, from the comfort of their own quarantines, about the many scenarios that await us.
While many countries grapple with the health, social and economic costs of the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s another, much more serious disease infesting our world that goes largely un-noticed and usually un-treated.
Tragic and traumatic as COVID-19 undoubtedly is for the individuals affected by it, when seeking answers about how, why, and how fast it happened, most of us are missing the point.
The final message of Jeff Gibbs’ new documentary Planet of the Humans can hardly be faulted: rejection of the centuries-old anthropocentrism which has justified dominion over, and exploitation of, all other life-forms. Without mentioning Deep Ecology or the anti-industrial critiques of radical environmentalists, the movie does implicitly follow the lead of earlier thinkers such as Arne Naess. For decades, such a radical critique of the Industrial Revolution, presented by maverick theorists (Mumford, Ellul) and developed in obscure ‘zines (e.g., Fifth Estate), was on the i
Celebrating 50 years of Earth Day, Michael Moore, executive producer and the director Jeff Gibbs re-released their daunting and alarming documentary about the heart and soul of America’s Green Movement in a compelling film: Planet of the Humans (2019).
According to Michael Moore: “This is perhaps the most urgent film we’ve shown in the 15-year history of our film festival.” (Traverse City Film Festival)
American Surgeon General Jerome Powell’s recent announcement that America would begin using real data and real trends instead of the World Health Organization-Bill Gates driven ‘predictive models’ came as a breath of fresh air for many who were beginning to lose hope that reason had been banished from world policy.
Although we do not tie our organizing to the election cycle, the 2020 election is an opportunity for the people to set the agenda for the 2020s. We need to show that whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden are elected, the people will rule from below. We need to build our power to demand the transformational we need.
Fifty years ago, the first Earth Day brought out 20 million Americans across the land – to parks, schools, college campuses, stadiums, the Mall in DC, and for hundreds of river/beach/trail clean-ups.
