Things are hotting up – all too literally! The Stern Report has been given wide publicity, and forced government to acknowledge the reality of global warming, and the urgency of drastic change to the way the economy is evolving. Still, however, action falls far short of rhetoric, as do Stern’s recommendations – see George Monbiot’s article about it on page 160.
Politicians and policy makers and their pay-masters must be aware of the threats to their own and their children’s future, but be feeling increasingly trapped in a situation of their own making.
The Green Party has been developing its policies since its start, in recognition of the links between social justice and environmental needs, and now has a sound collection of policies to move toward these goals – with one glaring omission: recognition of the role of the money system in driving the economy on its present, destructive course of eternal growth, and the accompanying eternal growth of debts. Some of us are working to remedy this.
Meanwhile, those who do recognise this issue are growing in number. The recently formed American Monetary Institute has opened chapters in the last two years around the States to develop support and understanding of the situation, and has published a draft Monetary Reform Act. Around the world, awareness of the role of debt, and the fundamental cause of its growth, is fast developing, as it did in the 1930s. The 2nd World War intervened to halt that movement, but the threats we now face are far more serious than even that. The worst case scenario is the extinction of the human race, along with most or even all of life on Earth! The rate of species extinction has already risen to an unprecedented level.
The reality of the dominance of an elite over the rest of the population, and the change over the centuries from brute force to more subtle means of maintaining their power, through laws of property, privatisation of ownership of land, and over the last few centuries, of the right to create money, is still little appreciated. Ownership and control of the mass media is a powerful means of maintaining this Orwellian situation.
The Internet, developed for military use but now democratised, has become, to the alarm of the vested interests, an increasingly powerful antidote to the spread of official disinformation, and Medialens makes good use of it – see for example this issue’s leading article.
The early goldsmith-bankers developed their misuse of depositors’ gold, and then false receipts for it, to increase their own wealth, which they then used to bribe and influence policy makers to protect their scam. This has developed into the modern banking and military-industrial system, which is a house of cards: if the growing debts cannot continue to be serviced, then the system must collapse, as has already been happening around the World; and the USA, the dominant world power, is in serious trouble. It is the World’s biggest debtor nation. Yet the reality is that ‘economic growth’ physically cannot continue. This makes reform of the debt-money system desperately urgent! The imminent arrival of ‘Peak Oil’ could be the trigger for the collapse.
Eliminate the debts, stop wasting resources and share the Earth’s bounty equitably, and we could drastically reduce the drain on resources and use of fossil fuels rapidly yet at the same time improve the quality of life for everyone. Educate women (especially) and ensure security in old age, and the alarming growth of the human population could be reversed. This growth is mainly in impoverished, exploited ‘Third World’ countries. To eliminate the debts without creating chaos, reform of the debt-money system is essential.
Brian Leslie