A reckoning is inevitable. It will come one of two ways. Soon, as an act of collective awakening, or too late.
It will involve a fundamental shift in our relationships, with each other and with the planet.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

"Get in the game."?

Crazy egocentric fantasies that my predictions will come true. We might imagine that Obama's speech to the Chamber of Commerce, asking them to "get in the game," just might be prescient. I'm predicting that this "radical insight" will occur to a significant global minority and trigger a new global environmental movement, couched in a global, peaceful rebellion demanding TGR, Total Global Reparation. When it sinks in that the damage to the biosphere is directly mirrored, or accounted for, in the held total of global wealth, it will become merely obvious that it's time for mandatory global reinvestment in a new green / sustainable economy, bottom up and top down. By regulation, by taxation, by a moral awakening among the super-rich, by pulpit bullying or whatever. So 2011's ("come on boys") "get in the game" will evolve into "OK you myopic greedy pigs it's time to payback what you stole, exploited, slave-labored, skimmed, gutted, took as subsidies and bailouts, exported and externalized." by investing it in a global economy with a new set of organizing principles. It will become blatantly obvious that so much value has been extracted from the labor force and the planet's resources, and so much toxic waste has been dumped, that the profits from those misdeeds cannot be held as cash reserves, or yachts, or mansions, or furs, or yet more resources bought up as a hedge. Those gigantic profits, resulting in the widest, most obscene gap between rich and poor, and in the disgusting gap between the high rise and the slum, must be reinvested. And when that becomes obvious, the means to get there, i.e. to get the money back, will be trivial, also obvious, wrenching but fair, and will be the path away from global eco disaster.

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