The other night I went off to a showing of "An Inconvenient Truth", the Al Gore, global warming film so dear to activists the world over. True to form, the showing was sponsored by the local branch of Attac, a French association working against neo-liberalism and globalisation.
Not much to say about the film itself. There is a lot of data about the fact of global warming, a fact that I have no problems with. Yes, there are some very ugly things happening on the planet at the moment: the melting of the glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic, drought and the increasing power of hurricanes and typhoons, the increase in disease as mosquito populations increase and spread, the extinction of many species as their natural habitats are destroyed, and on and on. We have a very serious problem here.
The problem comes with Gore's explanation of the causes of global warming: manmade production of carbon emissions in the atmosphere. Undoubtedly, our production of carbons is one factor, but it is not the only one, and if we look a little more closely, we might discover that our contribution is not the one that is the most dangerous for our survival.
After the film, there was a discussion moderated by a member of the local Attac group. As was to be expected, it was all about what we could do as individuals to save the planet: better insulate our houses, walk or use a bike instead of using our cars, recycle. The moderator listed about ten things that we could do that could reduce carbon emissions to below 1970 levels.
Then I raised my hand....
I said that, yes, global warming is a very serious issue and we are in deep trouble, but given that the Earth is not the only planet subject to global warming, it is happening on Mars, on Saturn, and the last time I looked, there was neither a neo-liberal economy nor a problem of globalisation on either of these planets, so maybe the real problem may be elsewhere.
Well, the moderator knew his global warming talking points, and he said that, yes, we knew that the sun was responsible for X percent of the increase in temperatures...
To which I responded, yes, but that is not what I was talking about. I asked if anyone in the audience had heard the report of the Chilean jet that had almost been hit my a meteorite that day. Murmers in the audience. I then referred to a scene in the film when Gore is explain the conveyor belt of the ocean's currents, how the warm and cold water circulates keeping Europe warm. He shows an image of North America 12,000 years ago with the glaciers of the last ice age. He explains how a large quantity of fresh water from the glaciers broke through an ice dam and flooded the North Atlantic with water, cutting off the conveyor belt and plunging Europe into an ice age. Gore didn't explain how the water was created or why the ice damn broke.
We know from the research by Richard Firestone and others, as discussed in their book "The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: Flood, Fire, and Famine in the History of Civilization", that the glacier melted because of a cometary impact in Hudson Bay. I mentioned this overlooked fact of Gore's film, and the nature of the nuclear winter we would undergo, those of us left alive, should such a meteor or comet hit the planet in the near future. I wanted to go on and further explain the nature of the cyclic catastrophes, but I only got as far as mentioning that if we are all still here in ten years to continue our activism, we'll be very lucky. Activists want problems about which they can be active, can do their busy work to find solutions, and their attitude was that if we are struck by a meteor, there isn't anything we can do about it, so let's concentrate on recycling and riding our bikes.
So I sat down. The people behind me started asking me questions about what I was discussing, and I explained about the binary star system, the sun's dark companion, and the increasing moons of Jupiter, Saturn, etc, as explained in our article Forget About Global Warming: We're One Step From Extinction!. They asked for the URL of the Signs page, which I happily gave them.
Four out of 150 ain't bad, all things considered.
After the discussion, we moved out to the sidewalk in front of the theatre. I was feeling really depressed. I had done what I had come to do, raise an issue that is extremely important, and, as usual, the crowd didn't want to hear the message. I was talking to one of the Attac organizers and said I thought it was because what I had to say was too depressing.
He said that, no, it wasn't that it was depressing, but that there was nothing that we could do against a meteor.
I said that the point is that all of this is known by the powers that be. They are building themselves their underground cities where they are going to hide, and they are creating chaos on the planet in order to reduce the population by at least 80% with disease, war, and starvation, and they are sowing disinformation by explaining the obvious fact that the Earth's ecology is getting more and more screwed up by saying it is our fault, thereby diverting our attention from the real issue: the pathocracy and their plans to exterminate the rest of us.
His response was that by working for a decentralized power, with power on the local level, we could get the power away from the psychopaths in the centre.
He really needs to read Political Ponerology on how social movements get infiltrated by pathological types!
Well, by then I could see his eyes glazing over, and behind his polite attitude, I could tell he was thinking, "This guy is a nutter!"
He said that psychopaths have always been in power, an easy way to dismiss the problem... or so I think.
On the way home, spewing carbon into the atmosphere from the car, it seemed hopeless. Will it really take a first or second or third meteor impact to break these people out of their sleep? And, by then, will it be too late?
