4 reasons conservatives love global warming, won’t stop it

All efforts to stop the deadly impact of global warming will ultimately fail. Yes, fail. Our leaders are destroying us from within. Blame GOP, conservatives, Big Oil, capitalist billionaires, Koch Bros. Also the president. Harper’s quotes John Podesta, Obama’s senior adviser, warning: “History will judge Obama’s climate-change efforts as sadly insufficient.” 

Morning rush hour traffic moves along the I-10 freeway in Los Angeles.

America’s leaders are failing us, will never act, till it’s too late to plan for an economic catastrophe. We have lost our soul.

There are four big reasons our leaders will not act in time: First. Overwhelming opposition by the GOP, conservatives and capitalists ... Second. Our blind failure to see our planet cannot feed the 10 billion people predicted by 2050. ... Third. Our addiction to “more is never enough” consumption ... Fourth. The irrational, unscientific and ultimately self-destructive belief of capitalism in perpetual economic growth, o

n a planet of finite resources.

We know most will continue believing in all four, trapped in denial. Eventually reality will expose our fantasies, but not soon enough. Global warming will continue causing irreparable damage, destroying our world, pushing us past the point of no return and driving us into a “chaotic era” where few humans will survive.

Here are the details, the four reasons why we’re now an addicted nation that can’t stop self-destructing as we’ve reached a critical mass that’s sabotaging all efforts to stop global warming:

1. Relentless opposition of conservative capitalists to climate science

Conservative opposition is everywhere, emanating from the economic fears of the energy industry, Big Oil, coal, gas, other polluters. They fear regulation and taxation of carbon emissions will have a major negative impact on their corporate earnings, shareholder dividends and will increase production costs, limit access to resources.

They spend hundreds of millions lobbying politicians and it works. California Gov. Jerry Brown says there’s “virtually no Republican” in Washington that accepts climate science and most GOP governors “openly deny climate science,” despite widespread scientific evidence.

Worldwide, conservative leaders like Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott celebrated the repeal of his country’s carbon-emission tax, despite the increasing damage to his country’s environment and over the unanimous objections from Anglican Church leaders opposing repeal .

In fact, even as the new U.S. EPA regulations were announced, Abbott was touring the world to create a “conservative alliance among ‘like-minded’ countries, aiming to dismantle global moves to introduce carbon pricing and undermine a push by America to push the case for action through forums such as the G20.”

Conservatives are getting even stronger, neutralizing efforts by power-players like Michael Bloomberg, Hank Paulson, billionaire Tom Steyner and their “RiskyBusiness.org” project intended to educate businesses and politicians on the real costs and “economic risks from the impacts of a changing climate.” Intense opposition from conservative capitalists like the Koch Bros. is also there to blunt Risky Business and similar climate-science advocates.

And what about Obama’s new EPA regulations? The impact will be watered down, much as conservatives did with big bank regulations after the 2008 disaster. Plus, global warming regs will kick in too slowly, get watered down by Big Oil lobbyists. Moreover, in spite of all the scientific evidence, sadly, surveys reveal widespread public apathy about future damage to the planet. It’s not a big motivator for most. What is? Cheap gas for their cars is a higher priority.

2. Out-of-control population is the biggest driver of global warming

The United Nations predicts global population will exceed 10 billion by 2050, adding three billion more human beings in one short generation, on a planet of rapidly dwindling resources. Plus science is already warning us we cannot feed everybody. In his new book, “The Countdown,” Alan Weisman, author of an earlier bestseller, “World Without Us,” asks the taboo question no politician can ask: “How many people can our planet hold?”

Weisman’s answers are deadly: What if science confirms that a “sustainable population is even less than the 7 billion we already number ... how do we design an economy for a shrinking, and then a stable one, meaning, an economy that can prosper without depending on constant growth?” Weisman also offers a solution: “Social objections aside, if the entire world adopted a one-child policy” then by 2100, we’d “be back to 1.6 billion, our population in 1900.” But politicians will be silent ... till it’s too late.

Worse, even more reasonable estimates — like Bill Gates’s upper estimate of 8.3 billion or the Earth Institute’s Jeffrey Sachs’ lower 5 billion — would still require draconian efforts to cut population growth way below the 10 billion trajectory. Plus force capitalist nations, corporate CEOs, billionaires, stockholders and our entire consumer-driven public to adjust to a global no-growth GDP economy. Even that’s unlikely to stave off collapse in time.

3. Capitalism addicted to perpetual economic growth and consumerism

A belief in perpetual economic growth is essential in the economic system of conservative capitalism. Why? Demographics drive the economy, GDP must increase for corporate earnings to grow, for sales projections, shareholder dividends, analysts forecasts. But to assume endless economic growth, conservative capitalists must also assume an ever-increasing population that’s adding more and more new consumers. But that’s logically impossible on a finite planet of ever-scarcer, nonrenewable resources.

Get it? Two totally irreconcilable economic theories: On one hand environmentalists fear 3 billion more people will deplete scarce, nonrenewal resources. But conservative capitalists see the same 3 billion new humans as the underlying drivers of ever-increasing economic growth. Two irreconcilable theories.

Still, conservatives will keep winning this war until, as Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, author of “The Decline and Fall of the American Empire” warns, the coming crash is like “a thief in the night ... accelerating suddenly, like a sports car” ... you won’t hear it ... till it’s too late.

4. The real war is within us, conservative capitalism has lost its soul

America’s trapped in a great partisan divide ... in an gapping inequity chasm ... in our collective brain’s inner battles that reflect the inability of world leaders to work on common goals to reverse global warming. This world has fragmented, is now an anarchy of 206 sovereign nations, each obsessing over its own myopic version of the American Dream hypnotized by capitalism, driven by new billionaires with massive egos, more interested in their own short-term economic growth than saving the global environment.

Yes, our world has a bizarre death wish, one few will admit. It will take a global catastrophe to awaken us. Capitalism has lost its soul, has no moral conscience. Instead, capitalism is now just an addictive drug that has turned everyone into consumption addicts who need money for the next fix, the next new thing. We’ve lost the ability to stop the cravings ... are in denial of our addiction ... blind to the coming disaster.

Naomi Klein has a new book coming soon, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate,” about how capitalists are destroying Planet Earth. She asks us, “Is our relentless quest for economic growth killing our planet?” Yes. Can we ever “slow down an economic machine that is careening out of control?” We can, but we won’t. Why? Because our leaders, from Obama to GOP conservatives and billionaire capitalists worldwide will never do enough ... will keep blunting efforts to halt global warming ... until it really is too late.

Until, as Australian Ethics Professor Clive Hamilton warns in his “Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth about Climate Change,” the planet enters “a chaotic era lasting thousands of years,” a time when human beings may no longer be “a force on the planet, nor even survive,” but a “time when “one thing is certain: there will be far fewer of us.”

Most of us will not survive. Planet Earth may well fall down to Bill Gates’s upper estimate of 8.3 billion, to Jeffrey Sachs’ 5 billion, maybe even down to the 1.9 billion of 1900. 

Paul B. Farrell is a MarketWatch columnist based in San Luis Obispo, Calif. Follow him on Twitter @MKTWFarrell.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/4-reasons-conservatives-love-global-warming-wont-stop-it-2014-07-09