'Insane, Disgusting' and 'Epic Treachery' Bill McKibben reacts to Snowden's latest Revelation

[hatrack]

23. Well shit, Bill, what did you expect?

Powers-that-be do what they do, which is preserve the order of things as they are. Why? Because that's the way we've always done it.

To quote Warden Norton in The Shawshank Redemption, "Nothing stops. Nothing . . .You understand me? Catching my drift? Or am I being obtuse?"

Nothing stops. The people who "represent" us will stop at nothing to ensure that nothing stops. Holy, Sacred Economic Growth has been received from on high as the Answer to Everything, and if things aren't working out at the moment, all that means is that there hasn't been enough Holy, Sacred Economic Growth. That growth will be powered (as always) by ever-increasing amounts of flaming carbon. Why? Because that's the way we've always done it.

When Obama signs off on Keystone, what will you say? Better start preparing your remarks now, because when the announcement comes down (probably late on a Friday afternoon in November, maybe even Black Friday, when no-fucking-body is going to pay attention) we'll be waiting to hear how working within the system is working out for us. Sure, there'll be a little greenwash - maybe a solar panel tax credit extension, or a new National Monument designation (minimal acreage, bleached corals, flaming beetle-killed forests, melting glaciers, fracked springwater, disappearing wildlife) to daub a bit of rhetorical baking soda on the sting.

You might also want to consider changing the name of your organization. The world hasn't been below 350ppm since October 1989, and we won't be in that territory again until a whole lot of things are very different than they are now.

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/sio-keel-flask/maunaloa_c.dat