Jeremy Lent is proving to be an interesting and stimulating thinker. This is from a recent blog post: An attempt to answer the single relentless question to the current destruction of out planet's lungs and the extinction of many of the myriad non-human creatures living withing this unique environment.
HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?
'Of
all the terrifying news bombarding us from the burning of the Amazon,
perhaps the most disturbing was the offer of $22 million made by
France’s President Emmanuel Macron and other G7 leaders to help Brazil
put the fires out. Why is that? The answer can help to hone in on the
true structural changes needed to avert civilizational collapse.
Scientists have publicly warned that, at the current rate of deforestation, the Amazon is getting dangerously close
to a die-back scenario, after which it will be gone forever, turned
into sparse savanna. Quite apart from the fact that this would be the
greatest human-made ecological catastrophe in history, it would also
further accelerate a climate cataclysm, as one of the world’s great
carbon sinks would convert overnight to a major carbon emitter, with
reinforcing feedback effects causing even more extreme global heating,
ultimately threatening the continued existence of our current civilization.
Macron
and the other leaders meeting in late August in Biarritz were well
aware of these facts. And yet, in the face of this impending disaster,
these supposed leaders of the free world, representing over half the
economic wealth of all humanity, offered a paltry $22 million—less
than Americans spend on popcorn in a single day. By way of context,
global fossil fuel subsidies (much of it from G7 members) total roughly $5.2 trillion annually—over two hundred thousand times the amount offered to help Brazil fight the Amazon fires.
Brazil’s
brutal president Bolsonaro is emerging as one of the worst perpetrators
of ecocide in the modern world, but it’s difficult to criticize his
immediate rejection of an amount that is, at best a pittance, at worst
an insult. True to form, Donald Trump didn’t bother to turn up for the
discussion on the Amazon fires, but it hardly made a difference. The
ultimate message from the rest of the G7 nations was they were utterly
unable, or unwilling, to lift a finger to help prevent the looming
existential crisis facing our civilization.'
In 'The Patterning Instinct' Lent refers to the wholly arbitrary nature of symbolism. This comment on its own, fills me with distrust for the work.
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