To confront power, one must first name it: Neoliberalism and the sustainability crisis. This post, inspired by Resilience.org, deals with what Neoliberalism is and that so few people can define neoliberalism. So, if we are to be effective in what we wish to do, we have to educate ourselves in this area. There is a link to a speech by George Monbiot in the article itself, see Read more at the bottom for a link that works (as opposed to the one in the picture copied at the left.
“It’s important to understand that this ideology animates much of the governing class on the planet. It’s important because this ideology almost completely opposes doing anything serious about climate change or any of the other environmental and social ills which afflict us.
Certainly not every politician left and right embraces the neoliberal ideology; but it is now largely an article faith on both the left and the right that markets are the preferred solution to any problem.
Of course, the marketplace alone cannot address climate change, soil depletion, fisheries decline, deforestation, toxic waste disposal, and pollution in general. And so, in order for the neoliberal program to succeed it must prevent ideas about limits in nature from taking root. In general it must pretend that the problems mentioned above either do not exist or are a subject to ready technical fixes.
This message is inconvenient for both right and left in that it suggests that we must dispense with the growth economy and structure our economic lives based on other principles, say, sustainability above all and solidarity through shared sacrifice. These principles have the possibility to be inspiring, but they simply do not fit into the neoliberal vision of perpetual growth and concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.”
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