“WORLD WAKES UP TO CLIMATE HELL!”
Journal of a Futurist, 7 February 2007

Many have known for thirty years this day would come. Among the ones “surprised” by Warming are media magnates, fossil fuel pushers and deaf politicians. Millions of citizens have long been alert to the ominous inklings of eco-collapse, yet powerless to ignite a change of consciousness. Why? Before we ponder this, a frightening future presents itself. Instead of teary remorse & noble resignations, the politicians who blundered us into the carbon trap are demanding the right to lead us into a sustainable future, one to be achieved with “cleaner coal”, a desalination plant and a change of light bulbs. Yep, that should do it. Let's go skiing.

And where better to ski than in the desert? In fact, where else to ski than in the desert, now that the snows are melting? Welcome to Dubai, where the signs at the airport read Welcome to Tomorrow. People kept asking, why are you going? No history, no culture, no yesterday. Sounds like the future, I said, and there's “a kilo of gold to be won every week”. (Receipts from jewellery purchases are put in a raffle). Half of this enormous insta-city is a construction site, with apartment blocks flung up overnight and a free Jaguar for those who buy off the plan. This puts you in the running for yet another raffle prize, the latest model Lear jet, a replica of which dangles from one the city's many malls. Like Washington, Dubai thumbs its nose at Global Warming, but it's having more fun. In fact, it's so bizarre, I'm starting to wonder if the whole place is an elaborate parody.

BEYOND AL QAEDA.
WHY THE WEST HAS LOST THE PLOT

The Mall of the Emirates mirrors the Mall of America, but goes further. To reach it, you pound forever across the desert in an air conditioned taxi, breaking the land-speed record. The fare's next to nothing, because Dubai is built on an oil glut. (As far as the eye can see, empty motorways are illuminated all night). When you reach the massive Emirates mall, bursting with every brand name you ever heard of, and a million you haven't, you glance at a plate glass wall. Is it a mirage? Yes, like the whole of Dubai, which gives tangibility to the impossible. It's a ski resort. The full quid. Chair lift. Kids zooming in toboggans, immaculate skiers imitating the winter Olympics, huddled onlookers, heaps of snow, real snow. Hard to disagree with another of the city's self congratulatory signs, “Beyond Perfection”. Which is of course ironic.

The road of excess leads to the Palace of the Emirates. Isn't this the message of Dubai? A fake future city without beggars, rubbish or second hand cars. An exaggerated emulation of the Western fantasy of shopping our way out of climate change, even as two islands sink off Bangladesh and Davos economists finally discover ecology. Could the Sufi magicians have knowingly built Pompeii on the slopes of Vesuvius - oil can't last forever - in order to wake us up to the futility reaping more than we sow, to jolt us out of the eternal Truman Show that life in the West has become. A “culture” is being installed through a series of festivals, a huge one now in full swing. Can you guess its theme? A Festival of Shopping. True. On top of the malls, the markets, the souks, the hotel arcades, the airport acres of duty free, etc, there are huge pavilions devoted to promoting the joy of acquisition. The thrill of the discount. One pavilion is called the Global Mall. I tell you, these white robed Muslims are messing with our minds. It's culture jamming on a massive scale. Much more subtle than Al Qaeda, they are choking capitalism with its own cream. Dubai dada. It forces you to find a better way, which brings us back to the mystery mentioned earlier.

DID YOU TURN OUT THE LIGHTS?

For the last thirty years a growing swell of scientists and greenies from many nations tried to alert politicians to the dangers of unmitigated growth. Political parties were formed, countless books published, vivid images of decay filled the airways. Where was a Churchill, a Ghandi, a Franklin D. Roosevelt to take up the challenge? While it is tempting to be angry at today's politicians for missing the boat, and maybe sinking the boat, we still voted them in. Somehow we let them off the hook and went on feathering our nests, living high on the hog and mistaking entertainment for wisdom, conversation for activism. My own recycling endeavours are pathetic, I still leave lights on in the office and avoid the bus. Not to mention the holiday season air tickets.

This is truly now a “moment in history”, the like of which doesn't happen too often, a moment to do or die. We've got to get past the “told you so” stage, (as with the Iraqi bloodbath) and realise that no untarnished superhero waits in the wings. We are it. Unless we change our ways at every level, unless we re-energise our dissent, unless we toss the diehard sceptics from office, unless we make huge leaps into a post carbon lifestyle, then the future our children inherit will be uninhabitable. Gucci or Armani won't matter then, nor the 5 star dining, nor the beach front cottage, sinking slowly into the sand. All that we'll have is the pain of knowing it need not have happened.

Time to buy a worm farm.

POST SCRIPT: STILL NOT CONVINCED?

Check out this recent clipping from the emirates newspaper, The Gulf Today Jan 14/07, which was accompanied by an explanatory feature, What is a Hailstone?

If there's such a thing as “world opinion”, I got a bellyfull on my recent trip. The overwhelming unanimity of media comment on America's role in the world took me by surprise, coming as I do from a country that has been slow to face up to the bastardry of the Bush era. From Chile to Mexico, from the Caribbean to Cuba (of course!), in Britain, Dubai and Bangkok, the song was the same - the nation of law is a cesspool of lawlessness, exporting murder and mayhem, while blaming the victims. Now back in Australia, I find the electorate is waking up, largely because of the mistreatment of David Hicks. For the first time in his life, Prime Minister Howard is being forced to face the truth about a regime he has championed ad nauseam. As with climate change, the carnage in Iraq and much else besides, Howard's tactic is follow-ship. Never to take the path of enlightenment, until he is dragged kicking and screaming into the future by the power of an educated public.

Mette Enstrom.

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CLINGING TO THE DEVIL’S COAT TAILS
Journal of a Futurist, 20 December 2006

A bushfire focuses the mind. Trees crackle, embers rain. People with a hose in their hands and a home to protect speak plainly. As the flames engulfed our neck of the woods, the fire fighters often said “this bush isn’t behaving normally”. It flares up even after being hosed down. Its path is erratic, unpredictable. It seems to defy the laws of nature. One night I heard a fire fighter scream,“get out, get out!” as she herded her crew back to the trucks while flames leapt across a wide dirt road and embers soared to the sky, masking the stars and igniting the undergrowth. Experts agreed this was a new type of fire front, “one that is unstoppable and wreaks permanent damage”, a bushfire out of control and redolent with menace, just like the Bush in the White House.

The world at large is now well aware that America’s “commander in chief” is deranged and malicious; a Caligula with nuclear weapons. That he has not been dragged from his throne kicking and screaming is a mystery to anyone not drugged by the mystic aura of his office. To the shame of millions of Australians, our own political leaders feast at his table and pledge teary allegiance. If George Bush were to appoint his horse ambassador of Australia, our Prime Minister would welcome the news. Then he would sell the idea to the electorate. Worse, most would buy it. As long as our massive coal exports keep the economy humming and the planet heating, most of us couldn’t care less who runs the show. Tra la la, time to go shopping again.

Jody Harmon

So often in the last few years I have watched a web-simmering horror story percolate into the mainstream – CIA torture flights, the rape of Fallujah, lies about “rebuilding the infrastructure”, use of illegal weapons, trashing habeas corpus, etc - and thought, oh, now the public will come to its senses, our politicians will apologise and resign. Nope. The killers are still at large, still smiling and pretending aggression is noble. Still kissing babies. What can we do? Shame has become part of our mental landscape.

PARIS & BRITNEY, TOOLKITS & SWEAT

There is no point expressing anger anymore, apparently, as I am supposed to be too mature for that and such an emotion is considered a “turn off”. Instead, we are expected to care about Paris & Britney & gorge ourselves on the fruits of planetfucking - $3 toolkits, a $6 boxed set of mixing bowls, a fantastic vacuum cleaner for $107, all teased out of the earth and built from the sweat of Asian slaves. Tra la la, Christmas is coming, the icecaps are melting and Uncle Sam flogs obscene military hardware like there’s no tomorrow.

As the globe warms up, the blood of our rulers turns colder. Cruelty is endorsed. It doesn’t matter a bit to the foreign minister, Alexander Downer, that the US uses torture “routinely and systematically” in its global gulags, and that at least 460 inmates have so far been abused or murdered. Downer and Condi chortle on CNN about Australia’s unbending support for US actions, no matter what, while the citizens of Baghdad are exploded, brain-drilled and shot each day, as dogs feast on the dead. “Every Iraqi wants to bomb himself because of this shit life”, notes a recent observer, “everyone is sad and crying”. It’s hard to find “someone who smiles”. Meanwhile, the Australian Foreign Minister is smiling, smiling at Condi, who is smiling at the cameras, the smiling Mr Downer who facilitated bribes to Saddam Hussein to buy our wheat, prior to bombing his people, no probs. Just like his father, Alexander Downer, the Australian high commissioner to London in 1964, who cheered on the bombs and the poisons we dropped on Vietnam and beyond. Just like his grandfather, Sir John Downer, QC, who in 1891 triumphantly defended a notorious exterminator of aboriginals, Constable Willshire, on multpile charges of murder (the case funded by 60 racists). After his acquittal, this serial killer re-located to a remote area and “shot a great many more Aboriginal people".

THE POLITICS OF SURREALISM

Maybe cruelty is in the Downer DNA. It’s certainly endemic to the Liberal Party Cabinet. Both Prime Minister Howard and his sadistic side-kick, Attorney General Phillip Ruddock, regard 5 years solitary confinement in Guantanamo Bay as a “fair go”. Whereas it is becoming obvious to even to our docile mainstream that what David Hicks got was an “unfair go”. These Hicks tormentors are the ones who have decreed that aspiring immigrants to Oz should be tested on “Australian values” before being granted citizenship. Easy you might think, so long as you have mastered English and are aware that these values have flip flopped. “What’s a fair go?” People treated equal under the law with a sprinkle of compassion for special cases, you might think. Wrong. “Fair go” now means no Minister gives a shit about your plight unless you’re a tax evading scoundrel who supports the Government. We’re a franchised culture now. Our values are a replica of the values of the Bush administration.

How is it that one man has the right to murder citizens anywhere in the world? Caligula the First was restrained by the terrain and logistics, then murdered by his bodyguards. The lunatic in the White House plans to send more troops into the Iraqi hell-hole. If this happens, thousands more people will die. How can other nations stand by and allow this to happen? Will the UN impose sanctions on Washington? What the whole world is watching is a global gothic horror show in slow motion. A small number of white warmongers with a colonial mindset are endangering the future in order to shore up the status quo, the supply of oil and their own fortunes. They reject inconvenient truths, they usurp human rights, they bypass the law, they torture at will. The message on their Christmas cards will call for Peace in Earth and Goodwill to All, except for those being waterboarded.

You can talk to a thousand people each day without finding a single person who admits to supporting the Bush agenda, so why doesn’t it all fall down in a heap? That’s the mystery of modern times. Everyone knows what going on, but we are much too comfortable to storm the Bastille. Easier to watch the decline and fall of the West on TV, where it provides conversational fodder for dinner parties. The morning after the bushfires had circled my home, I walked down the hill to inspect its impact.

Endless acres of ancient shrubs are reduced to black sticks jutting from the ground, still smouldering. The crash of a mighty tree echoes through the valley, its limbs flying. Spread as far as the eye can see is nothing but bare rock, silvery ash and scorched earth. Is this what the end of civilisation will look like?

Post script

The November bush fires that savaged the Blue Mountains National Park, a World Heritage Area, were started by a couple of lightning strikes. For some reason, these were not quickly contained. When the flames spread, it was decided to “backburn”, in order to deprive the original fire of fuel and save the wilderness, an understandable strategy. But the original fire “got away”. Now there is scorched earth everywhere and heated debates about how the next fire should be handled. In a sense, this scenario parallels the 9/11 strikes on America, except that the White House reaction was hot headed, bloodthirsty, lawless and too long shielded from debate. The Blue Mountains lost half a million trees, many of which will grow back, weather permitting, but Iraq lost over half a million people. And who planned the invasion are still at large.

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THE PARADIGM SHIFT HAS ARRIVED!
War, weather, weak signals, wild cards.
Journal of a Futurist, 12 November 2006

This moment in history is a bit like a Biblical epic, the forces of light rallying against the forces of darkness, with both sides thinking they are the forces of light. The stakes are high. The issues are clear. This month they reached critical mass. The dark forces are looking stupid and shifty and selfish, but they will fight back. This is where the danger lies.

What has triggered the foggy hint of dawn?

The sudden widespread acceptance that human behaviour has screwed up the weather.

The growing acceptance that the Coalition has screwed up Iraq, and that those who ordered the invasion are complicit in the deaths of HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of civilians and should be put in the dock.

The torturers are already being pursued:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1557842,00.html http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/11/20/torture/

In most cases, the warmongers not only exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq, they dismissed the threat posed to the environment by global warming. Like flat-earthers, they stuck to their falsehoods in the face of the evidence. Probably because the denial served to advance their careers and/or political agendas. It allowed world leaders to ignore the scientific warnings of death and destruction that lay in the wake of wild weather. The mishandling of war and warming at the highest level is the most catastrophic failure of leadership since 1938, when Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich, fluttering a scrap of paper and said “peace in our time”. Six months later, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia.

RAGE OR TRANSFORMATION?

Despite the extraordinary sea change of public opinion in the past weeks, the policies of George Bush and John Howard remain fossilised. Such leaders will continue to put their own interests above the wellbeing of people and planet. And continue to put “the national interest” above the interest of the world at large.

Why is this?

Because such types – still the majority - have not crossed the threshold into a new way of thinking. They are trapped in a dying paradigm, sinking in a Darwinian swamp, armed with a Newtonian worldview, spouting imperial claptrap. Us against them, etc. An attitude which infects my own prose (and may require therapy); an obstacle to growth, a curse on the world.

Instead of spin, we need dialogue. Instead of hate speak, we need vision and a shared purpose. In a world where admired leaders
come up with disgusting weapons, legalised torture and the race to dominate space, how can we create common ground? (Last year Washington spent $416 million on renewable technologies and $75 billion on military research). So many citizens are gearing up to save our eco-systems, yet so many politicians seem only to want to save their skin. (Polls show over 90% of Australians are concerned about global warming and over 60% are prepared to pay more in taxes help).

The new paradigm has arrived, but the old guard are still out to lunch, slugging the last of the wine. And the oil.

A LANDSCAPE OF 5 STAR FORTRESSES

The true motive for invading Iraq was to put a garrison on top of an oilfield – one of the biggest and purest fields in the world. Washington has long been aware that the reserves of oil are diminishing and that world demand is accelerating. According to energy investment banker Mathew Simmons, the current supply of 85 million barrels a day will shrink to almost a quarter of that in 13 yeas. As he told the US Department of Defense in June, “THIS IS A BIG DEAL!” Simmons urges the military to “plan, organize and fight to win the energy war”.

Designing houses which merge and grow with living ecosystems

But what kind of energy will be used to fight and energy war? As the era of cheap and abundant fossil fuel declines, hardly a government in the world has a blueprint for total sustainability. At the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, a clue to US thinking was revealed by President Bush senior: “The American way of life is not negotiable”. Meaning? Uncle Sam grabs the world’s oil and everyone else lives off potato skins, wearing windmills on their hats.

Whatever the Pentagon is planning, I do not believe the majority of citizens will accept an US/THEM world; a landscape of five star fortresses overlooking a global archipelago of gulags.

Though fossil fuels are failing, the global brain continues to evolve. Connect, co-operate, create – this is the way to outwit neo balkanisation, immigration camps and state terror. (A scenario powerfully depicted in the latest futurist movie, Children of Men). This is a moment of awakening – of learning how to live lightly off the planet 24/7. When you think about it, how can the world have a massive change of climate, without a change of consciousness? The creation of alternative energy will also require an alternative way of thinking. Even our relationship with the wind, sun, crops and waves will become more intimate, interdependent, and productive. Maybe the hovering state of emergency can be transformed into a state of emergence.

COMMUNITIES OF THE FUTURE

This triumph of the individual as heroic consumer is promoted relentlessly by the media, and seems to have resulted in the decline of a sense community. The income gap gets ever wider, both within nations and worldwide (587 billionaires now own more wealth than 50% of the rest of humanity, and it doesn’t rate a headline). In a sustainable future, tomorrow’s leaders will need to extend their horizons beyond winning the next election. In fact, to break the mindset that is largely responsible for creating today’s deadly perils, they will need to embark on a journey “personal transformation”. Yes, this sounds hopelessly hippie. But it is starting to happen in today’s organisations that pursue innovation and social responsibility. “New leadership is about working in teams and building transformative capacities in colleagues” according to Communities of the Future (COTF), which describes itself as an “evolving network of people and organizations working in collaboration to develop new concepts of governance, economic development, leadership, and education/learning for a fast-paced, interconnected, and increasingly complex society”. It’s a fine sentiment and a vital goal, but time is melting away, like glaciers.

New research shows the Earth's climate could change quickly, and violently. “Average sea-level rise has increased from two millimetres a year in the early 1990s to more than three millimetres a year now”. Jim Hansen of NASA, predicts sea-level rise will be 10 times faster within a few years, as Greenland destabilises. In short, “scientists are panicky about the sheer speed” of disruptions. "Building an ice sheet takes a long time," says Hansen. "But destroying it can be explosively rapid."

So what might be the qualities of community in a post carbon world?

A balance of materialism and spirituality.

Integrity…emphasis on wholeness…and the importance of family & friends. The focus is interdependency.

A new concept of the common good….helping each other succeed.

Collaborative individualism … and connective listening.

Living systems as models for society.

Seeking to be self reliant, self empowered and “off the grid”.

Accepting the future can no longer be taken for granted – it needs to be rescued.

The choice is clear: evolve or regress, adapt or stagnate.

The Magnificent Seven

WEAK SIGNALS OF STATE AGENDAS

When this pic surprisingly appeared in the Oct 21 Melbourne Age, it was presented as a Government initiative to humanize the seven spy agencies. Budgets inflated, tentacles extended, these heroes are poised to protect Australians from the repercussions of illegally invading a people that had done us no harm. Oh, sorry, we went to Baghdad to stop a tyrant from killing his citizens and to slip him a secret commission on our wheat sales, and to build hospitals and schools that never got built, never troubling to stop and count how many died as a result of our intervention. As the Prime Minister says, “we’re a generous people”. And we’re especially generous to spy agencies.

Okay, so here are the Magnificent Seven looking well groomed and Delphic, and I’m wondering why. Could this be a weak signal; a message that conveys a deeper meaning. Are these spooks being groomed as the unsung heroes of the war on terror, toiling through our text messages to bring Osama to his knees. Thank you, oh mighty information warriors, kiss my babies. A week later ASIO struck.

Ruhal Ahmed, a star of the movie, Road to Guantanamo Bay, has traveled the world to promote this horror story: Germany, France, Iceland, Turkey, Spain, Ireland, Holland, etc. Next South Africa, Slovenia, Denmark, Kosovo …. . It’s a junket Ruhal deserves, having been held in solitary for two years and released without charge. The British Government returned his passport and now he roams the world a free man, except he won’t be roaming down under. A nod from a spy, a pen stroke from a an Attorney General (torture enthusiast Phillip Ruddock), and the victim if Guantanamo is refused a visa to visit. Sleep easy Australia, as I know most of you already are.

THE DAY THE PISSING STOPPED

You have to feel sorry for the minions of MurdochWorld, who spent over a decade attacking the notion of climate change. Environmentalism is a fad, water shortages a myth, sustainability a greenie plot. The hired tongues were still at it in The Australian a few weeks ago, with a fusillade of headlines on WHY AL GORE IS WRONG ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE. (No matter that 90% of scientists think otherwise).

Like most things Murdochian, the sneer campaigns are global .
"Look carefully at Gore's charts and you'll see that the worst horrors take place in the future of his imagination”, thumped the New York Post, whose own imagination is mostly stimulated by memos from the proprietor. So what happens now Rupert has discovered that emissions matter? Watch out for the gradual U-turn.

Will Murdoch retreat from Baghdad? Not anytime soon, judging from his recent confirmation of support for the bloodbath. Hell, the US death toll was "minute" , he said, from a “historical perspective”. Naturally, no mention was made of the Iraqi death toll (655,000) because he wouldn’t have a clue what it was and wouldn’t give a hoot anyway. 175 of his editors worldwide still champion one of the cruellest attempts at regime change in modern history, and will spin their “noble war” until every last Iraqi has been maimed or blown up. It’s what they seem to want.

Martin Sharp, “Seven Minutes to Four”, 1965, before he ever took LSD.
(Showing at Ivan Dougherty Gallery, 16 Nov -23 Dec:
The Everlasting World of Martin Sharp).

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From Hype To Hysteria: Fox News Selling Pre-emptive War Against Iran

FASCISTS? Look whose talking