It was great to see millions of students and others across the globe striking for climate change yesterday. I also feel deeply discouraged, believing a conglomerate of conditions seem to indicate we are past the point where we could have stopped runaway global burning. Our apathy and embrace of a materialistic culture allowed us to avoid confronting the changes that needed to be made in the past.

I wish this global climate concern would have occurred years ago, when we could have prevented the situation we are in now. But as a person of faith I can’t discount a miracle might happen. I’ve heard stories of Indigenous people who changed the weather.

Some of the barriers to significant greenhouse gas reductions are the huge consumption of fossil fuels by the military, and the significant reliance on coal for energy in countries such as China.

“China And The Prospects For A Global Ecological Civilization” is the title of an interesting article by David Schwartzman on the website Climate and Capitalism, September 17, 2019.

Abstract: While the emergence of a global ecological civilization (GEC) in this century is still possible in spite of the ongoing conflicts we now witness, an ever-narrowing window of opportunity exists to prevent the onset of catastrophic climate change (C3) which would make such an outcome virtually disappear. The military industrial complex and its imperial agenda are the main obstacles to freeing up the necessary resources and creating a regime of global cooperation essential for C3 prevention program. As the world leader in renewable energy capacity and production, China has the potential to open up a path for global ecosocialist transition, creating a GEC, but is contingent on class struggle of sufficient power growing out of both the huge negative impacts of its industrial infrastructure and the paradox of its capitalist development with remnants of 20th century socialism still in place.

“China And The Prospects For A Global Ecological Civilization” by David Schwartzman