Extinction Poverty

A report on the future of the UK's transportation system was released today in the UK in response to the Stern Report on the costs of ignoring climate change.

The report is a lesson in the insanity that hangs over this death culture. It gambles everything on technological solutions to reduce emissions and actually calls for expanding transportation infrastructure; best of all it claims that expansion won't lead to increased CO2 emissions. And this expansion is not just for less destructive solutions like rail but also airports, widened highways, and expanded ports. And all this from a government that's supposed to be serious about climate change.

It's a joke and the joke's on us.

It also demonstrates that there is only one definition of the word poor in the state's vocabulary. The Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly describes what she calls: "the false choice of being poor and green or rich and dirty". Though she can't accept it this is our only choice and I'd choose being poor though not on her terms.

Would you be poor if you had an excess of food, plastic shit, electronics, vehicles, several 2,500 square foot homes but knew that your descendants wouldn't live past a few generations after you?

I think that is true poverty. Extinction poverty you might call it.

Conversely, would you be poor if you had enough locally grown food for you and your family and a place to live, knew that your children and grandchildren would have the chance to live on a planet that could support them but you never left your community, never ate an avocado again, had to repair your own clothes and shoes, never saw Hockey Night in Canada again, might die from a disease or injury once easily curable, had to work hard and live a shorter life, couldn't do a PhD or retire.

I'd say that the survival of the species and its planet is the most important thing. Would you?
Ultimately this report demonstrates the choice that all states must make. They are choosing capitalism over a habitable planet. States cannot choose a habitable planet, not when the economy must grow. There is no possible sustainability of the capitalist system. It's a dream.
There seems to me to be two choices left to those of us who recognize this fact and are only partly insane.

1) Fight the state and bring it down, realistically using any means.

2) Withdraw from the economic system and build your own resiliency.

I think that currently the chances of bringing down the state are slim. You need a little help from hardship and privation but don't worry, those are coming. Then people might be ready to turn off their televisions. So lay your plans now and get the timing right.

While you are making your plans, build community and live without capitalism. We've all been raised to think that we can't survive without the state. But we are animals and our species has survived for hundreds of thousands of years. Let's learn together and be free.

And there comes a time, I'm not there yet, when you have to stop reading all the lies from people like Ruth Kelly, Stephen Harper, James Lovelock, Al Gore and everyone else who can't let go of this death system. I'm getting there.