Although the sun is an essential life force, we need to protect ourselves from its relentless glare.
Sunglasses? Check. Beach umbrella? Check. Tinted car windows? Check. A huge, multitrillion-dollar parasol floating in outer space to reduce global warming? Uh ... huh?
Ready or not, here come the corporate hucksters and techno-fantasists with a dazzling scheme to prevent climate change without requiring any actual change in human behavior. Amazing! It’s easy, they exclaim: Simply put a massive SpaceBrella between us and El Sol, and — voila! — it will block enough of those bad ol’ sunrays to lower the planet’s temp enough for us to keep trucking.
This is indeed simple — as in “simpleton.” It reminds me of the 1950s atomic bomb drills we had in elementary school, when we tykes were instructed to protect ourselves by crouching under our desks.
Today’s SpaceBrella hawkers offer the same sort of approach: Since political and corporate powers aren’t doing near enough to prevent cataclysmic climate disaster, they cheerfully say we can hide under their phantasmagoric space shield. That way, we won’t have to bother Big Oil, Big Coal and other money powers with our demands to convert from an exploitative fossil-fuel economy to climate-friendly fuels and sustainable systems.
It’s embarrassing that this clique of profiteers, politicians and so-called scientists should be so frivolous as to propose that humanity dodge reality and fritter away our future on such a gimmick. The real solution is right here on Earth, basically requiring that we STOP THE STUPIDITY!
These techno-money schemes are like Icarus, the mythological Greek character who created wings of wax and feathers so he could fly — but he flew too close to the sun, and his wings melted, so he plunged to his death in the sea.
In 1863, humorist Artemus Ward wrote a satire on hucksterism, making up a tale of Abe Lincoln being asked to endorse a piece of quackery about spiritualism. Not wanting to offend, the Lincoln character slyly offers non-committal praise: “Well for people who like that kind of thing, I think that is just about the kind of thing they’d like.”
But sometimes a product really needs no hype — like this new one I’ve learned about that’s damn-near magical! It’s a non-polluting, affordable, natural, job-creating alternative to plastic stuff. No, seriously — come back here — this is real!
The only fib in my pitch is the word “new.” Actually, this product is ancient. It’s cork, used for thousands of years by Persians, Egyptians, Greeks and others to make shoes, fishing gear, etc. But now, it’s a sustainable, regenerative material that all sorts of enterprising outfits are using for home construction, clothing, electric cars, spacecraft ... and more.
Maybe, like me, you’ve pulled many a wine cork without thinking where does this thing come from? Trees! In particular, the bark of evergreen, Mediterranean cork tress that live for some 200 years. But how sad to cut them down for wine stoppers! No, no — the bark is carefully harvested by skilled workers; then it grows back over about nine years and can be harvested again and again, creating steady income for small farms. The tree is climate-friendly, drought-tolerant and fire-resistant, and the cork itself is renewable, reusable and biodegradable. Even cork dust is used to produce energy.
Before we let corporate profiteers turn Earth (and us) into a throwaway plastic dump, let’s recognize that nature is the greatest technologist ever. So maybe cooperating with her can be more beneficial than constantly trying to overpower and trash her.
“Corporate crises consultants” (yes, there are such creatures) have patented a formula allowing their wrongdoing clients to champion reform while simultaneously killing it.
A classic case is now unfolding around last year’s derailment of a 2-mile-long Norfolk Southern freight train in East Palestine, Ohio. The community’s air, soil, water and people suffered a massive spill of toxic chemicals.
So, following the corporate crisis script, Step One was for the CEO to offer “thoughts and prayers” for victims. Step Two: Reject corporate blame but promise a “thorough investigation.” Three: Magnanimously pledge to work with lawmakers to prevent future disasters. And Four: Quietly unleash your pack of lobbyists to gut any effective change in the law.
Norfolk honchos are now pushing hard on Point Four. CEO Alan Shaw recently reiterated the corporation’s promise of reform, but — shhhh — he quietly orchestrated a $17 million increase in the rail industry’s congressional lobbying to kill or drastically weaken safety proposals that Norfolk had publicly embraced after the wreck. But he keeps talking reform, slyly assuring locals that Norfolk would be “continuing our engagement” with lawmakers.
“Engagement” is a euphemism for payments. Rail executives have poured beaucoup bucks into such compliant Congress critters as Rep. Troy Nehls, the Republican chair of a rail safety subcommittee. He recently wailed that Congress must not impose “more burdensome regulations and all this other stuff” on the poor multibillion-dollar giants. Also, Sen. John Thune, an industry-financed asset who formerly was a lobbyist for railroads (!), has tried to derail even modest safety proposals following last year’s derailment, callously calling them a “stalking horse for onerous regulatory mandates and union giveaways.”
May I just say the obvious? These people are disgusting excuses for human beings.
“Step right up, folks, and bite into the wondrous future of meat!” nnCheap meat! Ethical meat! Animal meat you love — beef, chicken, pork, fish, etc.— all produced without animals! It’s the miracle of “meatless meat” — a viscous mass derived from “fetal bovine serum” and then grown not on ranches but in huge vats in corporate factories. Science marches on!
Until it meets reality. Just three years ago, lab-meat hucksters had bedazzled high-tech investors and gullible media commentators into believing the food future was now. Bill Gates, Peter Thiel and other tech billionaires had jumped in with big bucks, as did Tyson Foods and global hedge funds. A New York Times editorialist exulted, “This isn’t science fiction,” demanding that President Joe Biden “supercharge this industry” by putting our government’s “money and muscle” into “a moonshot for meatless meat.”
So ... years later, where’s the beef?
Still on the hoof. The wondrous claim that food futurists could “grow” millions of tons of meat in only 15 days from a single drop of cells was just another pile of bovine excrement. They were raising money rather than doing science, so their billions of dollars and industrial vats of “cell slurry” have only produced a few sad strands of cultured protein. That’s not a hamburger ... much less a future.
Even if these monetized technocratic “geniuses” could eliminate animals from animal agriculture, that’s not real change, for it leaves the monopolistic industrial structure and the profiteering anti-democratic ethic of today’s food system in place. Moreover, agriculture is not a technology; it is a rich blend of culture, history, family and community. Change will not come from the hubris and dull imaginations of plutocratic tech billionaires, but from long-term cultivation of these organic, grassroots sources of progressive policies.
Jim Hightower is a former Texas Observer editor, former Texas agriculture commissioner, radio commentator and populist sparkplug, a best-selling author and winner of the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship. Write him at info@jimhightower.com or see www.jimhightower.com.
From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2024
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