We really are doomed, aren’t we? That anyone can write this below, or read it, with a straight face. The tragedy is that the writer is whip smart and saw all of this unfolding almost thirty years ago – I learned so much from his book Divided Planet (I read a sneering 1997 review by Tom Burke in The New Statesman and realised it was probably quite good, if it pissed off Burke.)
And here we are, three decades of piss and wind, protest and process later, so thoroughly defeated and doomed and making ever-longer shopping lists of all the impossible things we have to believe before breakfast in order not to… see that we’re doomed, and quite possibly sooner than we can comprehend.
The only way winning back 1.5°C can become possible is if the fossil fuel cartel is decisively beaten. The banks must stop funding fossil energy. There will have to be energy leapfrogging in Africa, and around the world, and a global finance and technology sharing system to support it. Huge amounts of international debt will have to be written off, so that Global South countries can prioritize their development needs. The Chinese central government will have to move against its energy security concerns and its provincial governors and rapidly phase out coal. The Indian elites will have to join them, even if it means undermining local fossil interests. The multilateral finance institutions will have to be reimagined and redirected.
All of this is necessary, and possible, but only if the global right, which has become so entwined with the fossil fuel cartel as to be effectively part of it, is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned. And only if the climate movement steps forward with a program designed to catalyze a major social pivot that embraces, but goes far beyond, the renewable energy buildout. This is what we need now, as we hurtle toward the 1.5°C line.
marchudson.net 
It does seem that a lot of countries need to work together to solve the climate crisis. Which – as the world currently stands – suggests we’re f****. Good old New Statesman. Although supposedly “liberal” and “left” just seems to patrol the borders of what it is acceptable to say. After reading Chomsky – whatever red lines people like Burke find seems to be an indication of where you need to look beyond to find answers. Also regarding your title about self delusion. It called to mind a great quote from Michael Parenti “the capacity for selective perception in regard to class, race and gender [and i would add the environment] is limitless.”
Thanks.
The main thing is not to see the obvious. There was an American crime novelist called Jeremiah Healey. In one of his books a Mafia kingpin is executed by another mafia kingpin, in front of an underling. The underling blinks once and then accepts the executor’s “you saw him shoot himself” command. Healey has some quip about the ability to be able to accept your boss’s version of reality as a crucial skill in staying alive. Always stuck with me…
And thanks for the podcast recommendations – i will add some of the episodes you suggest to my phone for my next canal walk…
Great example and I agree the issues are often so obvious it is ridiculous that people don’t see them – I’ve heard it termed “practical consciousness”. The idea that it is a matter of pragmatism that you have to wilfully ignore some things just to operate in the world. We all have to do it to a certain extent but when the stakes are this high it is worrying that people aren’t able to say and do the necessary things.
Sadly Marc, it is not going to happen, conditions will have to become far, far worse and the impact will have to be felt world wide.
How can you deny those living in third world countries, what we are enjoying today?
Until such time as the impact of environmental degradation is explained to the world’s population and accepted by them, nothing will change.
We must curb GROWTH.