[Paleopsych] [Fwd: Fears For A Finite Planet - The Climate Crisis]

[Christian Rauh]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Fears For A Finite Planet - The Climate Crisis
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 11:50:13 +0000 (UT)
From: Medialens Media Alert Precis <noreply at medialens.org>
To: Christian Rauh <christian.rauh at uconn.edu>

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

February 16, 2005


MEDIA ALERT: FEARS FOR A FINITE PLANET

Rampant Corporate Globalisation And The Climate Crisis

"Our continuing uneconomic growth makes us complicit in a process that 
is triggering an ecological catastrophe for our children and generations 
beyond them. They will justifiably sit in judgment on our failure to 
have prevented its devastating consequences knowing that we chose to 
look the other way." (Mayer Hillman, environmentalist and author)


A Fat Cat Laments

The audacity of corporate propaganda still has the capacity to make us 
gasp. Consider the astonishing attack on nongovernmental organisations 
launched at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, by 
Sir Digby Jones, director general of the Confederation of Business 
Industry. "The pendulum is swinging too far in favour of the NGOs", 
Jones claimed. "The World Economic Forum is caving in to them. Davos has 
been hijacked by those who want business to apologise for itself."

According to Jones, business is the only route to cleaner water, better 
healthcare, better education and better roads. "Have I heard that in 
Davos? Have I hell. We have heard how we are greedy and how we pollute, 
and how we have got to help Africa. But a celebration of business? No."

Jones is "fed up with business being characterised as greedy". He goes 
on: "Has anybody ever thought about the greed of the consumer? The 
consumer consistently wants more for less and business is expected to 
deliver it." (Larry Elliott 'CBI chief claims Davos hijacked by NGOs', 
The Guardian, January 31, 2005)

For the World Economic Forum to be "caving in" under the onslaught of 
grassroots groups really must feel like the end of the world to those 
who like to shape the planet's affairs in their own narrow interests.

But Jones's concern is misplaced. The legal obligation to shareholders 
to maximise profits in pursuit of endless economic growth, even as the 
finite planet groans, does face a real obstacle. Namely, that the wealth 
generated by global capitalism - shared ever more unequally in society - 
is rapidly being overtaken by the damage that the system itself is 
wreaking. If existing trends continue, the Global Commons Institute 
estimates that damages due to climate change will actually exceed global 
GDP by 2065. (http://www.gci.org.uk/papers/env_finance.pdf)

Global capitalism has an inbuilt death wish that will likely take most 
of us with it - if we let it.

To read the rest of this alert, please go to:

http://www.medialens.org/blog/index.htm

Best wishes

The Editors


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