Everything is going to change

I know this sounds pompous and overgrand, but I believe that this is in fact the truth. In order to appreciate this, I think it's necessary to connect some very big ideas, and perhaps introduce a few politically incorrect blasphemies in the process. But I think there is a compelling case to be made that everything is going to change. Not immediately -- thoug a Democratic victory in November would be a significant milepost -- but we will all soon be caught up in an unfolding of events that will feel disorienting, confusing, and exhilirating. It will be like riding a rocket, and could end either very well or very badly. We have to begin thinking about these things NOW in order to help shepard the world into a better future, because everything will be on the table. EVERYTHING.

The most important of these blasphemies is that terrorism doesn't matter very much. I have come to view the global war on terrorism as primarily a political tool used by the current Administration, and not the chief threat facing the United States. I know, I know: There are very bad people who want to do very bad things to us. They're nasty and hateful, and I don't mind it too much when such people die. But if you think we can kill our way out of this problem, you're in the ever-shrinking deluded minority. Five years after 9/11, maybe the fog is lifting, and we can dis-enthrall ourselves of this obsession. Bigger problems are afoot. As a nation, we are obsessed with the mosquito buzzing about the passenger cabin while our Hummer bears down on the precipice. Swatting the mosquito will feel satisfying, but ultimately prove rather pointless.


The World Trade Center attacks were spectacular and shattering for our country. Our initial response was anger and righteousness, but I think we're seeing, after 5 years, that we need to reflect and act wisely from here. The proper response may not be a reflexive reaction, a lashing out. The proper response is to produce a vision for a political future of the planet that the rest of the world can sign onto. The proper reaction would have been to deflate our enemies by being the good guys -- by using the moment of international comeraderie that followed to change the game on the terrorists, and solidify our place as the "City on the Hill." Instead, we began morphing into Fortress America, to the great fame and profit of a select band of leaders of the military-industrial complex.

Instead of thinking about this in terms of a PG-13 action movie, where tougher=better, let's think about it in bigger terms. We have the potential to be wise, and thoughtful, and see farther than the blinded and hurt men who want to wage jihad against the West. It is time to act like the grownups, and not respond to the infantile and ultimately feeble attacks that Al Qaeda and their like can muster. 3,000 died at WTC. There were 23,000 casualties at Antietam and up to 2 million at Stalingrad. The firestorm of rhetoric about the War on Terror is appalling and the idea that "9/11 changed everthing" is almost laughable. 9/11 was a very rude wake-up, but terrorism is hardly new.

All of this will begin to look very silly when we have to begin confronting the reality of climate change in an honest way. Terrorism and Al Qaeda will seem like a sidelight, a minor conflict, compared to the ways Peak Oil and global warming will revolutionize our lives. In the great Shakespearean drama that is the climate crisis, terrorism will be the plot device which distracted our protagonist from his real mission.

While the Global War on Terror required Americans to wait longer for plane rides and to go shopping, the Global War on Carbon Dioxide will require us to dial back our consumer lifestyles, revolutionize our food chain, collaborate with every other nation on Earth, and may tear up our economic and political systems. Really.

The sooner we act, the less wrenching the consequences. But at this point, I see no real way to avoid a series of global catastrophies. Really, and I don't mean to sound too much like a pessimist, the question is, "How bad will it be?". If we act swiftly and begin planning now, the answer can be, "Bad, but manageable." If we don't act swiftly and delay too long, the answer will be, "Cataclysm."

Think back about the transformations in human thinking which have remade the maps of the world, and you'll find episodes like colonialism, the enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, etc. These are game-changing, world-spanning evolutions of human history. We are at the doorstep of another such period of change.

Doing nothing will simply NOT be an option.

Global warming changes everything. Everything is going to change.

I don't know if it will be this year, but in the future -- probably the very near future -- the Republican Party as we all know it must cease to be. It is founded on a system of economics that uses mass accumulations of capital to fund campaigns. The GOP is fundamentally based on the alliance of huge corporate interests with grassroots Christian fundamentalism. They have been able to build a majority that way, but that vision will not produce future majorities. It CAN'T produce future majorities. It is also fundamentally based on lies: Global Warming is a myth; Iraq is the central front in the war on terror; The American "way of life" is defined by consumption; Gays are the enemy; etc.

The lies are being exposed, and the party must fall apart. What then? Can anyone really tell me where they go after Bush? What will you build the winning coalition around?

We will have to rip up and scrap our energy system. The things we buy at the store will change. The economics of shipping internationally will change. The luxury built into our lives -- made possible by an insulated America which didn't have to compete with Indians or Chinese people for work -- is going to slip away. And we will be confronted with the reality that failing to act dooms hundreds of millions of people to die.

It is all connected, and it is all going to change.

Regardless of how things work out in the action flicks and cowboy-movie scripts that obviously shape our President's consciousness, this isn't about being tough. You can keep the plane from crashing by willing it, or by pulling up harder on the controls. If it ain't gonna fly, it ain't gonna fly, and that's not a reflection on the pilot's character. But refusing to tell the passengers to grab their chutes because, dammit, you know you can land this baby -- well, that does say something about the pilot.

So here's our reality: The oceans are rising -- fast -- and we face desertification, the freezing of Europe, a collapse of oceanic food sources, massive migrations of climate refugees, global poverty, epidemics associated with concentrations of massed refugees, wars caused by political instability, shocks to our agricultural system, etc.

This will reform the world's religious and political beliefs. It will reform our institutions. It will reform our daily lives.

It's almost biblical.

This is what we face. It will play out in slow-motion, but it's real.