RANT: FALLING LEAVES AND POEMS

After Carthage

Begin with the ashes.

Rasp the air with tools of grit and despair

until the soft walls of the world are clear once more.

Then attend here, where the rot of wood

is coloured with dry skins whose pigments flake

and scatter beneath your rough hands.

Leave nothing of them behind.

Scour the pillars and pediments,

the brave arches and domes,

all the struts and mainstays

of once-proud architecture,

long-grimed by the hot fires of sacrifice.

“From days of glory,” as some would say.

Cleanse it; clear it all away.

Clean the temples, the towers,

the inns and hostels.

Sweep the roads and main ways,

and the alleys where beggars gather

with their trays of trinkets,

ready to sell to the new buyers of the world.

Have once all gone.

Then pack up your bright tomorrows,

those careful gifts of tribute

for our new lords’ altars and plinths.

By far our most precious, 

and fragile, of cargoes.

 

 

WELL, THEY'VE FINALLY STARTED CONSTRUCTION NEXT DOOR—right next door. I’d hoped they would put it off until next year when I’d like to move out of my current digs. Gentrification is in the air, and thars money to be made in reeeel estate, Billy! Arr! Next door was a large, vacant lot with lots of scrub brush and bush, and apparently not worth much on its own. I’d never walked around there—the lot was a hangout for party-goers and drug deals, but the citified wildness was a pleasant landscape to look at, and I miss it. It reminded me of places I played in as a child.

Then they brought in a backhoe and weed whackers and stripped it down to the dirt. A few days later a pile driver arrived to break up the soil and everyone’s sanity. When that machine started its business, man, I bailed out of my bunker! My place jumped around like a politician at a fundraiser. I took several prints off the wall, so they wouldn't fall while dishes rattled on their shelves like we were in the middle of an earthquake or something. Scheesh! But so far the old place is still standing. They finished a few days ago and I'm watching for what comes next. Life is exciting, until it’s not.

Is It Time to Wake Up, Yet?

In these gloomy days of Covid-19, when large numbers of people are homeless, or jobless, my little excitement pales by comparison, so I'd like to turn to the cheerier topic of climate change and our inadequate response to it. A few days ago I read an article by American journalist Max Blumenthal that examined recent criticism of the documentary Planet of the Humans, a movie I've discussed in a previous post. Max provides an important exposè on green financing within the mainstream environmental movement. By "green finance" I mean, the funders of those large, well-known NGOs that have been at the forefront of environmental activism for decades. His article elaborates on where the money to run many of the NGOs is sourced, and the findings are disturbing. Organizations like Greenpeace, 350. Org., the Rocky Mountain Institute and others, as well as so-called "green" foundations and start-up funders, take significant amounts of money from companies and individuals associated with the fossil fuel industry or other large corporate sectors such as "Big Ag" or "Big Pharma". Furthermore, a disturbing number of green NGOs have as board members, partners, 'advisors', etc. people from those same industries that the NGOs hope to transform or eliminate. When billionaires and mega-rich companies donate time and money to green causes and promote green political agendas, it begs the question: "What do they want in exchange?" And for me the simplest answer probably works best: 

They want what those in power invariably want—to remain in power. They want business as usual, but with a green smile-face as their logo. They want their profits wrapped with a bow inside a pretty, green package. They are willing to change their designs, product lines, manufacturing processes and so on, as long as they are free to sail on the (green) currents of today’s environmentalism, and as long as their business model remains securely in place. Blumenthal references this in his discussion on the growth of the solar and wind generation sectors:   

 

"But was the presentation of renewable energy sources in “Planet of the Humans” actually false? Ecological economist William Rees has claimed that 'despite rapid growth in wind and solar generation, the green energy transition is not really happening.' That might be because it is chasing energy growth instead of curtailing it. [Italics mine] Rees pointed out that the surge in global demand for electricity last year 'exceeded the total output of the world’s entire 30-year accumulation of solar power installations.'

Are there not reasonable grounds then to be concerned about the practicality of a full transition to renewables, especially in a hyper-capitalist, growth-obsessed economy like that of the United States?" (“Green Billionaires”, The Grayzone, 09/07/20)

 

Max’s article exposes the financial web that weaves its way through much of the environmental advocacy sector, and how this money may be shaping and co-opting the ideals and actions of many green organizations. The “Green New Deal”* being touted in the United States and elsewhere as the way forward in our struggle to combat climate change, may be leading us down the proverbial garden path. There is a great deal of money to be made transforming our economies using clean energy and renewables, hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars! But at the end of the day, having put all our eggs, so to speak, into the renewables’ basket (primarily wind and solar, and EV development) will we have altered the course climate change? Will levels of Co2 and other pollutants in the air decline significantly? And more to the point—will renewable energy prove to be the panacea as so many believe? Will it work?

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that I don’t think it will, and for this reason: As long as our economies are based on the capitalist/growth model of unlimited growth on a finite planet (our world, our home; our only home)—then our future will be a one-way dead-end into history’s dumpster.

Max’s article examines the efficiency claims of renewable power generation and its ability to scale-up to grid-level production, and there are more than a few questions concerning whether such an endeavour is possible. More importantly, a paradigm shift is needed—a fundamental re-ordering of how we live on this little blue planet, and how we live with each other and the other organisms that inhabit it. Jeff Gibbs and Michael Moore, in their ‘inconvenient’ Planet of the Humans documentary and articles such as Max Blumenthal’s “Green Billionaires” challenge the green vision of today’s environmentalism, and they provide a needed corrective to what, in my opinion, is often greenwash and misaligned priorities.

It’s like we’re on-board a speeding train, and all of us have a single purpose—to make our train the most efficient, speedy and sturdy in existence. We work day and night to refurbish, streamline, and power it as it roars faster and faster down the track. We finally achieve our goal of making our train the greatest in the world. Unfortunately, there is a sharp bend in the tracks somewhere ahead, below which is an all but bottomless gorge. And no matter how perfect we’ve made it, our train cannot straighten out the tracks that lay before it or build a bridge across the shadowy gorge. So, instead of wondering where all the answers are, perhaps we should begin with the questions. And Paul Gauguin’s famous 1897 painting comes to mind, with the enigmatic words he added to his canvas: “Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?” Let’s begin there before we continue along on our journey. 

 

 

Cheers, Jake.

 

 

*Interesting aside: I was looking up Green New Deal online and the top search item provided in the new “Ad” section at the top of Google’s search page results was for  the webpage “New Ideal” found at the website aynrand.org. Which is ironic on so many levels. It reminded me that search engines, like corporations, powerful elites, and subscribers to the (barely-not) fascistic philosophy of Ayn Rand, will play both sides of the aisle, so long as there’s a profit to be made. The article, here, is of course critical of renewables, and lauds “the ability to harness energy on an industrial scale [using fossil fuels]… as an unprecedented liberating force, freeing mankind from the unrelenting hardship of brute physical labor,” which is hard to disagree with, as long as you don’t ask too many questions, of course, and is right as (acid) rain if you’re a member of the Übermensch class.