Friday, November 4, 2011

cinquante-deux: Stand and Fight For Life

Holga
Fuji Provia
Antelope Island State Park, Utah
Summer 2009

"I fight for my children. It is not about me. It is about them. The deep despair I feel over our collective inability to acknowledge, much less confront, the catastrophic dislocations ahead of us is offset by a fierce desire as a father to make sure I have summoned all my energy and resilience to defy the corporate systems of death that are exploiting human beings and the natural world until their exhaustion or collapse. At least, I hope, my children will look back and see that their father did not remain passive as the ecosystem was destroyed in the name of profit, and the world was reconfigured by corporations into a terrifying neofeudalism, a kind of totalitarian capitalism. At least they will see, I hope, pictures of their father being hauled off to jail in defiance. I resist not out of hate but out of love, a love for all the things the deformed culture of corporate profit finds meaningless and sentimental - children, lakes, mountains, trees and the song of a wood thrush deep in the forest.

The consequences of severe climate change are unavoidable. The freak weather patterns, the wild fires and tornadoes sweeping across Midwestern states, along with the drought and severe flooding in China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Australia, along with the soaring temperatures across the Earth, are upon us. And this is only the start. But what is most frightening is that the rapid and terrifying acceleration of global warming, which is disfiguring the ecosystem at a swifter pace than even the gloomiest scientific studies predicted a few years ago, have been met with collective denial and self-delusion. Global temperatures have already gone up one degree and begun the rapid melting of the Arctic. Every rise of one degree Celsius means a ten percent reduction in grain yields. If we stopped all carbon emissions today temperatures would continue to rise by at least a degree, perhaps more. A sudden epiphany would not save us from drastic climate change, large scale human migrations, rising sea levels, famine and endemic food shortages. Welcome to our brave new world.

The only viable option to save the human species from self-immolation - ending our dependence on fossil fuels - is ignored by the industrialized world's power brokers, who have shredded the tepid climate agreement made at Kyoto. The last thin hope for reform and reversal will come through sustained acts of civil disobedience and open defiance of the formal systems of power. It means getting arrested. This is the conclusion drawn by many of our most prescient and important voices, including Wendell Berry and Bill McKibben.

Working within the system to reform it has failed. Working outside the system to defy it may also fail. Let's be honest about this. The corporate structures of power are indifferent to the needs, rights or desires of the ordinary citizen - not to mention the planet - and have hijacked all systems of power from mass communications to electoral polictics to the courts.

It is understandable that a realist would despair. And if I was to retreat into self-absorbtion I would find a small plot of land where I would never have to hear another leaf blower, and find what comfort I could in my family, my books and the whispers and beauty of the natural world. But to give up is not morally permissable. It is to condemn, as Sitting Bull reminds us, the born and the unborn, as well as the flora and fauna, which Sitting Bull also considered sacred, to misery and death. We have no right to do that. We must stand and fight for life."

- Chris Hedges, American Author, Activist and Pulitzer Prize Winner

My photo show is tomorrow!
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