Is 'the love of money' truly the 'root of all evil'? Is cupidity now the new black? Will we ever be able to save the planet while Capitalism rules the world and a tiny proportion of people control the vast proportion of the world's wealth and wield a corresponding proportion of the world's power? Do we need to smash the system or do we need to take back power to the people? I dunno. Do you?
Like all the 'isms' - Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, Fascism, Anarchism, Globalism, Monarchism... you name it ... they all sound great on paper. But, it's the way they are carried out that is the problem. "Reality" (human nature) is a complicating factor in all kinds of well laid plans.
What we have now operating in the 'west' is supposed to be various flavours of democratic, free market capitalism. It sounds great on paper and indeed, it's the 'best of a bad lot' system that we have. The problem though, is the way it should work as opposed to how it actually works. What we really have is an oligarchy with a veneer of democracy over the top (of varying thicknesses depending on what country you're talking about). This began in the 1960-80s with the rise of the Corporation and globalization when corporations became large enough, rich enough, internationally powerful and influential enough to challenge governments. Maybe you could even trace the start of this back to the start of the industrial revolution or more depending on how you define these things. But in any case, in the past 200 years or so Democratic Capitalism has somehow turned into the new 'ism' - Consumerism.
Capitalism has had many benefits and has many virtues, but we are in danger of the ideals of Democracy, fairness, government operating for the benefit of 'the people' rather than the elite, openess, accountability - all these things which are currently being eroded disappearing altogether, just when we need them most. It's up to 'the people' to start clawing back some power from the oligarchs. Until this imbalance can be addressed we're not going to see real, deep and swift change that we need to build a safe, healthy, bright green future for our children and grandchildren.
Let's all stop and take a long hard look at ourselves. That's all I'm saying.
Friday, 24 June 2011
The prostitution of journalism
I was thinking about the problem of the way climate change is reported a bit today. The circus surrounding the carbon tax at the moment has to be seen to be believed. If I want to find out where negotiations are up to I can find out easily enough by looking up the Greens website and hunting around. Otherwise, you'd think the problem was all about the Gillard and Abbott Punch and Judy Show.
Climate change denial, and their buddies the fossil fuel industry lobby, are not just dragging the scientific method and the peer review process through the mud. It's also journalists and journalism in general who have been tainted. Once upon a time (back when I was a kid in the 1960s for instance) journalism was considered quite a high calling, journalists were regarded as heroes; protectors of the public's right to know and seekers after truth. View any number of movies from the old days where journalists are portrayed as champions of 'the people' and all round good guys. (Superman/Clark Kent anyone?). Nowadays there are still a lot of very hard working, dedicated and honest journalists out there but sadly, there are also a lot of the other kind.
I blame Rupert Murdoch fairly and squarely for the large part of this decline in journalistic ethics and standards, but he has been aided and abetted by the 'PR' industry and their evil twins, the political spin-meisters. I'm sure Watergate was a bit of a wake up call to a lot of politicans that they'd better 'do something' about pesky journalists, but the bastardization of journalism in general has been getting worse and worse ever since the 1970s.
I read an article recently about the rise of the PR industry at the expense of journalism. These days there are about 3 PR people to every working journalist and they're usually much better paid and it's getting worse as print media contracts and ownership has been concentrated, corporatized, consolidated and globalized (Hi Rupert!).
PR Industry Fills Vacuum Left by Shrinking Newsrooms - ProPublica
To make matters worse every politician in Washington will often have up to 100 lobbyists working only on trying to influence them, night and day, whatever it takes.
Surely something is badly out of whack here? Surely this is not Democracy working as intended? The public have grown increasingly more suspicious of what they read in the paper and see on the TV news (quite rightly). They don't know who to trust or who to believe. They have grown more and more cynical and often more disengaged in a process they see as corrupt.
The climate change misinformation campaign of course plays on this innate public mistrust. Put this together with the repeated slurs thrown at the United Nations, IPCC, UNFCC and various academic institutions (such as during the climategate nonsense) and it's little wonder that the 'average punter' just switches off the whole thing.
Al Gore has written a nice piece for Rolling Stone this month on the way the media has handled the climate change 'debate' which speaks directly to this problem and is well worth a read.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...enial-20110622
Climate change denial, and their buddies the fossil fuel industry lobby, are not just dragging the scientific method and the peer review process through the mud. It's also journalists and journalism in general who have been tainted. Once upon a time (back when I was a kid in the 1960s for instance) journalism was considered quite a high calling, journalists were regarded as heroes; protectors of the public's right to know and seekers after truth. View any number of movies from the old days where journalists are portrayed as champions of 'the people' and all round good guys. (Superman/Clark Kent anyone?). Nowadays there are still a lot of very hard working, dedicated and honest journalists out there but sadly, there are also a lot of the other kind.
I blame Rupert Murdoch fairly and squarely for the large part of this decline in journalistic ethics and standards, but he has been aided and abetted by the 'PR' industry and their evil twins, the political spin-meisters. I'm sure Watergate was a bit of a wake up call to a lot of politicans that they'd better 'do something' about pesky journalists, but the bastardization of journalism in general has been getting worse and worse ever since the 1970s.
I read an article recently about the rise of the PR industry at the expense of journalism. These days there are about 3 PR people to every working journalist and they're usually much better paid and it's getting worse as print media contracts and ownership has been concentrated, corporatized, consolidated and globalized (Hi Rupert!).
PR Industry Fills Vacuum Left by Shrinking Newsrooms - ProPublica
Quote:
| "You would go into these hearings and there would be more PR people representing these big players than there were reporters, sometimes by a factor of two or three," Barstow said. "There were platoons of PR people." An investigative reporter for The New York Times, Barstow has written several big [4] stories [5] about the shoving match between the media and public relations in what eventually becomes the national dialogue. As the crowd at the hearing clearly showed, the game has been changing.... |
To make matters worse every politician in Washington will often have up to 100 lobbyists working only on trying to influence them, night and day, whatever it takes.
Surely something is badly out of whack here? Surely this is not Democracy working as intended? The public have grown increasingly more suspicious of what they read in the paper and see on the TV news (quite rightly). They don't know who to trust or who to believe. They have grown more and more cynical and often more disengaged in a process they see as corrupt.
The climate change misinformation campaign of course plays on this innate public mistrust. Put this together with the repeated slurs thrown at the United Nations, IPCC, UNFCC and various academic institutions (such as during the climategate nonsense) and it's little wonder that the 'average punter' just switches off the whole thing.
Al Gore has written a nice piece for Rolling Stone this month on the way the media has handled the climate change 'debate' which speaks directly to this problem and is well worth a read.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...enial-20110622
Quote:
| "...Admittedly, the contest over global warming is a challenge for the referee because it's a tag-team match, a real free-for-all. In one corner of the ring are Science and Reason. In the other corner: Poisonous Polluters and Right-wing Ideologues. The referee — in this analogy, the news media — seems confused about whether he is in the news business or the entertainment business. Is he responsible for ensuring a fair match? Or is he part of the show, selling tickets and building the audience? The referee certainly seems distracted: by Donald Trump, Charlie Sheen, the latest reality show — the list of serial obsessions is too long to enumerate here..." |
Wednesday, 22 June 2011
So what would you do about climate change if it was up to you?
I think by now most people with any brains have got their head around the whole 'climate change is real' thing.
In any case, the question of 'what's going on' has been pretty thoroughly gone over by now until I for one am certainly becoming rather bored with it. The next question is 'what shall we do about it'? It's not an easy question to answer probably because there is no single answer, but I think it's a much more interesting discussion than 'is this really happening'.
If you were in charge - if you were the magical ruler of the world and could do anything you wanted - what would you do first and why? It's easy to carp and criticize what others are doing, but what would you do if it was up to you?
Given that we have about one decade, maybe slightly less, to turn this thing around before there's no going back, where would you start? Bear in mind, you could say things like 'ban all coal fired power stations tomorrow' but that would plunge the global economy into instant meltdown and would cause all kinds of problems, so maybe that's not the right approach.
In any case, the question of 'what's going on' has been pretty thoroughly gone over by now until I for one am certainly becoming rather bored with it. The next question is 'what shall we do about it'? It's not an easy question to answer probably because there is no single answer, but I think it's a much more interesting discussion than 'is this really happening'.
If you were in charge - if you were the magical ruler of the world and could do anything you wanted - what would you do first and why? It's easy to carp and criticize what others are doing, but what would you do if it was up to you?
Given that we have about one decade, maybe slightly less, to turn this thing around before there's no going back, where would you start? Bear in mind, you could say things like 'ban all coal fired power stations tomorrow' but that would plunge the global economy into instant meltdown and would cause all kinds of problems, so maybe that's not the right approach.
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