The creation of abstract digital money requires nothing more than entering ones and zeroes in a database. We depend on a fragile electronic system few people have any control over. We have gone from using food and gold to Internet accounting. It is this abstract scheme on which our very lives depend.
We are all at the mercy of our demented leaders. There will be no 'revolution' of 'the people' to take over the reins and guide us away from our now certain fate on planet Earth. Anything that resembles 'revolution' will simply be civil wars in various locations and on various scales as we fight among ourselves for food.
As 'the people' scramble for food, the 'corporate persons' (complete with religious rights) will scramble among themselves for profits and will very likely conduct wars to 'protect' themselves right up to the very end.
In the article below, Tom says, "the full impact of Trump’s climate terror won’t strike home until the era of our grandchildren or even great-grandchildren". Tom certainly recognizes the truth (contained in his many writings). His counting of the generations places the final devastation in the era of grandchildren and great-grandchildren whereas calculating the length of a generation differently (is that the difference?) moves the 'end' forward at least one branch on the family tree.
Mainstream proposes that catastrophic and environmental mechanisms such as extraterrestrial impacts, supernovas, volcanism, superplumes, earthquakes, and climate change trigger mass extinctions. Here we argue that such extrinsic agents cannot in and of themselves account for these periodic disasters. The common denominator of all mass extinctions is starvation. By definition a mass extinction is the disappearance of an entire food chain. Therefore, the Third Horseman plays a central yet inconspicuous role in any mass extinction theory; no theory can do without him. We propose that a mass extinction occurs when the Ecological Pyramid overturns, reversing the quantitative relation between trophic levels. This is what Man is about to experience. The gradual, inevitable and irreversible slowing down of global economic growth conduces to a dead end for our species. The complete disintegration of our global economy entails spiraling layoffs and the end of money. Agricultural companies no longer have pecuniary incentives to produce essentials or to distribute them to the masses. Billions of unemployed find themselves stranded in cities, towns and villages with nothing to eat. Man’s Ecological Pyramid overturns on him just like it did on the dinosaurs. Technology and intelligence are powerless to resist these imminent events; neither serves as an antidote to extinction.
Bill Gaede, in his article, We are the last generation of humans on Earth, puts reality into human perspective...
"We will assume that humans are mammals, a species of omnivores that belongs to the order of primates and the family of apes. This clarification would seem to be unnecessary; it offends intelligence to even mention these facts. Yet we seem to forget and perpetually need to be reminded that Man is a member of the Animal Kingdom. We regard ourselves as caretakers of Eden, as being above the laws of nature."
"We will assume that humans are mammals, a species of omnivores that belongs to the order of primates and the family of apes. This clarification would seem to be unnecessary; it offends intelligence to even mention these facts. Yet we seem to forget and perpetually need to be reminded that Man is a member of the Animal Kingdom. We regard ourselves as caretakers of Eden, as being above the laws of nature."
The laws of nature are firmly in place and we are firmly placed within those laws, and that's the truth !!!
Running Over Future Generations
Terror on a different time scale
from Common Dreams by Tom Engelhardt
Terror on a different time scale
from Common Dreams by Tom Engelhardt
Terror attacks like the recent one in London send a shudder through Americans. Since 9/11, they have been the definition of what TomDispatch regular Rajan Menon calls “national (in)security.” They've also been the lifeblood of a media machine that loves to focus 24/7 on immediate and obvious horrors (especially against folks like “us”). In the age of Donald Trump, preventing such attacks has, if anything, become even more the essence of what American security is all about.
And yet, in the context of the insecurity to come in this world, they are essentially nothing. It is, of course, a terrible thing when some disturbed fanatic or set of fanatics gun down or run down innocent civilians in London, Berlin, Paris, or San Bernardino (as it should be, but in our American world isn’t, when a U.S. plane or drone kills innocent civilians in distant lands). But if, for a moment, you stop to think in either nuclear terms (as in the pairing of North Korea’s unnerving leader Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump) or in climate change terms, then those attacks are the smallest of potatoes when it comes to national insecurity.
If you really want to think about acts of “terror,” consider what Donald Trump and his climate-denying crew at the Environmental Protection Agency and elsewhere in his administration would like to do to the environmental policies of the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
Trump's urge is clearly to negate every positive act of the Obama administration when it comes to reining in the use of fossil fuels—from the Paris climate agreement to the Clean Power Plan aimed at shutting down coal-fired power plants. In the end, if a Trump presidency takes this country out of the climate change sweepstakes entirely, if it opens the flood (and fracking) gates yet wider on the development of fossil fuels of every sort while tamping down the development of alternative energy sources, you’re talking about an act of terror on a scale that would once have been inconceivable.
What the Trump administration is already trying to do should lead to constant headlines of a sort that would put the recent London ones to shame. However, because the full impact of Trump’s climate terror won’t strike home until the era of our grandchildren or even great-grandchildren, because his version of terror will be enacted on a time scale that plays havoc with our usual sense of history and of our own lives, he’ll undoubtedly get only the most modest of attention for it—while Khalid Masood, the London killer, and his successors will remain the eternal headliners du jour.
Still, make no mistake about it, in his rented vehicle of choice President Trump will run over future generations. Even on a less drastic time scale, as Rajan Menon makes vividly clear today, he will certainly prove to be a heavyweight in the national (in)security business.
And yet, in the context of the insecurity to come in this world, they are essentially nothing. It is, of course, a terrible thing when some disturbed fanatic or set of fanatics gun down or run down innocent civilians in London, Berlin, Paris, or San Bernardino (as it should be, but in our American world isn’t, when a U.S. plane or drone kills innocent civilians in distant lands). But if, for a moment, you stop to think in either nuclear terms (as in the pairing of North Korea’s unnerving leader Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump) or in climate change terms, then those attacks are the smallest of potatoes when it comes to national insecurity.
If you really want to think about acts of “terror,” consider what Donald Trump and his climate-denying crew at the Environmental Protection Agency and elsewhere in his administration would like to do to the environmental policies of the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
Trump's urge is clearly to negate every positive act of the Obama administration when it comes to reining in the use of fossil fuels—from the Paris climate agreement to the Clean Power Plan aimed at shutting down coal-fired power plants. In the end, if a Trump presidency takes this country out of the climate change sweepstakes entirely, if it opens the flood (and fracking) gates yet wider on the development of fossil fuels of every sort while tamping down the development of alternative energy sources, you’re talking about an act of terror on a scale that would once have been inconceivable.
What the Trump administration is already trying to do should lead to constant headlines of a sort that would put the recent London ones to shame. However, because the full impact of Trump’s climate terror won’t strike home until the era of our grandchildren or even great-grandchildren, because his version of terror will be enacted on a time scale that plays havoc with our usual sense of history and of our own lives, he’ll undoubtedly get only the most modest of attention for it—while Khalid Masood, the London killer, and his successors will remain the eternal headliners du jour.
Still, make no mistake about it, in his rented vehicle of choice President Trump will run over future generations. Even on a less drastic time scale, as Rajan Menon makes vividly clear today, he will certainly prove to be a heavyweight in the national (in)security business.
we will not be saved by gene-editing technology, or evolution, or migrating to other planets...
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book is, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World (with an introduction by Glenn Greenwald). Previous books include Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050 (co-authored with Nick Turse), The United States of Fear, The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's, The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.
History of Extinctions: It is estimated that over 99% of the faunal species that ever lived are now extinct.
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