It’s time for us as a people to come together, to form an understanding about our natural environment, and our connection to it. If we are to survive long into this century and beyond, our society will have to learn to re-indigenize itself.

This will be a painful process for those dependent on creature comforts – on the electrical grid’s continuous power supply, on the streams of TV, Netflix, even the Internet itself, on factory-made pharmaceuticals, etc.

It will be difficult too for those whose illusions are about to be shattered, for those who thought they could live for so long and have it so good at the expense of others and to the detriment of their natural, wild surroundings.

We aren’t going anywhere. There will be no moon and Mars colonies to flee to. Isn’t it suspicious, though, how little talk there is about the parallels between the past colonialists of North America and the sci-fi dream of future colonies in space? Any potential future space colony wouldn’t be a glitzy affair: it would be similar to past and present immigrants and refugees streaming across continents, trying to escape death, privation, despair.

In short, the dream of human habitation of the solar system exists because of the utter destruction of landscapes and the indecency of human societies in many parts of our planet.

Imagine if we actually decided to collectively care for our own world instead of having daydreams and wasting billions on rockets and gadgets to propel us towards the “final frontier”.

Doesn’t that sound nice?

Luckily for us, the resilience of our planet towards habitat degradation is very, very strong. That is why a policy of rewilding must be introduced into mainstream thinking and politics.

Coined by David Foreman, rewilding refers to conservation methods that strengthen and maintain wildlife corridors and large-scale wilderness areas, with an emphasis placed on carnivores and keystone species which act as linchpins for ecosystem stability. Rewilding leads to increased connectedness across previously fragmented habitat due to roads, railways, urban sprawl, etc.

In the Americas, please consider educating yourself and others about these issues, and donating to a few of the fine organizations promoting wildlife corridors, such as: the Yellowstone to Yukon Initiative, the Paseo del Jaguar program led by Panthera, and the American Prairie Reserve.

Strengthening our ecosystems will provide a higher quality of life for future generations, as well as your children and grandchildren. Now that’s a return on investment.

Forget about yourself, your fragile ego, and your “standards of living”, for a moment. Western capitalism and colonialism has been degrading habitats for centuries, with benefits mostly accruing to white, older men. Only by giving back to the land, and in many cases, non-intervening and letting our soils and waterways heal on their own, will allow for a more equal distribution of wealth. It is natural resources, not money, which are the real inheritance we will leave behind to our youth.

The distribution of the “common-wealth”, by the way, used to be far more equitable hundreds of years ago, when land was freely available for hunting, fishing, foraging, and farming. Yes, there is less abject poverty in Europe and the US today compared to centuries ago, but it has come at a steep cost: there is no self-reliance, no collectively and culturally stored traditions of farming, crafts, weaving, pottery, home-building.

Corporations have swallowed all this, citing the “need” for specialized divisions of labor. Self-sufficiency and homesteading are looked upon with scorn, and we are told to buy everything we could ever need (and desire), instead of co-producing tools, clothes, food, and more.

Sharing of community resources needs to be re-instilled in the populace. The average garage, shed, or extra closet of today’s Westerner is filled with useless crap used maybe a few times a year, all purchased from a few companies. Recycling usable equipment and renting for small fees throughout the communities would significantly decrease consumption and foster closer neighborhood ties.

Today, the legal webs and labyrinths of “property laws” and low-wage work have imprisoned the average person. So has the spread of capitalism and unequal distribution of money, division of labor, separation of classes. The lives of masses of working people – the precariat – are just as unstable and misery-inducing as they were centuries ago, when Frederick Douglas said: “Experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and rushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other.”

This all underscores the need for a rewilding of the American people, not simply expanding our National Forests and wildlife refuges. It calls for a transformation in consciousness, to promote understanding of different cultures, openness towards change, and advocating for compassion and peace.

We can begin by starting to support a 15 dollar wage, to fight for climate science funding, to promote renewable energy. Yet there needs to be an understanding that those actions, while a good start, are simply a few first baby-steps towards re-orienting our culture.

Ultimately, the longing for spiritual rejuvenation and community empowerment will break through the cage of modernity – if we are not first destroyed by ecological devastation and/or economic collapse.

Longing, in all actuality, is too mild a term; actually, there is an intense craving for unique and authentic notions of identity, for belonging to a caring culture, for sharing and cultural blending. There is also, to an extent, evolutionary reasons and epigenetic possibilities for the deep desires, for instance, to want to sing and dance around a fire, to go on long walks to calm the mind, to talk to plants and animals, to feel the Earth’s joys and pains, to partake of psychedelic plants. It’s what our species has done for millennia, and no freeways, high-rises, fluorescent-lit malls, or gated communities can possibly make up for these urges.

Inner calmness and contentedness, feeling joy at other’s successes, altruistic actions of bravery, spontaneity, the creative act, and transpersonal experiences all teach us that our egos are illusions.

The drive of the ego is the drive of civilization, with all its life-denying baggage. It is this ego-based desire to dominate; to harness and pillage nature, which expands outwards to include all lifeforms, including even our close loved ones. The judgments and pain inflicted on others are projections of our own, deep inner hurting. The ego shifts the blame, projecting, always outwards onto others, always disguising and rationalizing its selfish deeds. 

Indigenous life is not without problems, but it recognizes and integrates the shadow-side of ourselves: there was no need for modern psychology until modern, Western man ramped up the process of destroying the world, all in order to fill the gaping void within the soul.

Thus, rewilding our psyches will mean dissolving the ego, recognizing it as a small part of the mind, occasionally useful in survival-enhancing or problem solving situations, but not as an absolute master of our sense of self. In short, it must be acknowledged that there are many aspects to individual minds, spectrums of ways of thinking, just as specific brain-waves exist, and differing states of sleep and dreaming.

Shrinking the ego will re-establish our commitment to protecting the Earth. As creator and protector of life, our planet, along with crops, animals, mountains and rivers, all have been venerated and deified across history. Thus, the sacredness of life and its continuity can be seen for the miracle it truly is.

New spiritual and religious groups will be founded, with cross-fertilization and syncretism causing an explosion of kaleidoscopic cultures. Shrinking petty individual desires and grievances enlarges our view of nature: it allows for free living and amicable relations, promoting an idea of an Unconquerable World which can triumph over the capitalist-dominated, chaotic, absolutist, totalitarian impulses of modern life.

This has serious implications. What cannot be used, i.e. extra physical products, food, and extra income must be given away to less fortunate countries. Open-source medicine and technology will have to be distributed to developing nations to stave off the worst symptoms of global warming and habitat degradation.

In the wealthy West, the rich should look to the example of the Indigenous, where in some tribes the chieftains distributed their personal wealth among their tribe, often to be rewarded in kind at a later ceremonial/seasonal time of the year.

Companies that produce weapons or various useless waste will be forced to shut down. Education will be reoriented to focus on the potentialities of each individual student, not as a one-size-fits-all indoctrination mill, churning out damaged, submissive, domesticated youth.

Green constitutions will have to be drafted to provide regulations to protect humans and wildlife from unnecessary pollution and production. It’s not just the West that will lead: the Chinese must realize, and be planning for, the eventuality that the demand for crappy plastic goods and gadgetry at big-box stores is going to decline, worldwide, in the coming decades.

A new international order based on the UN, or otherwise, will be needed to uphold climate change commitments, speedily develop renewable energy tech, sustainable agriculture plans, and distribution of resources. Basically, this requires a shift from an anthropocentric outlook to an ecocentric outlook.

This will require a global awakening, and a moral/spiritual transformation of consciousness. It is the only way for our societies to move forward.

Adaptability and having a broad range of skills and a wider knowledge base will be preferred over the narrow, technological elitism we see today in the corporate world and reflected in culture and the media.

Ultimately, rewilding ourselves means learning how to live free, i.e., unlearning what our consumer-based culture has brainwashed us into believing.

I don’t intend to shy away from the hard political questions of what the world and the US could look like in the near future, if the above steps are taken. Most likely, the modern nation-state will perish, America included. Our national experiment has been blood-drenched and steeped in genocide, slavery, domination by capitalists, and structural racism from the very beginning. A new era of cooperation is called for, with true democratic consensus and citizen involvement in governance as well as the workplace.

Smaller areas based on bioregionalism and the city-state will replace the nation-state (which Gore Vidal, among others, spoke out in favor of) and will be more likely to prosper, as they will be more likely to provide for their citizens. Climate refugees and nomadic ways of life will increase for those fleeing disaster, or simply seeking better opportunities. Decentralization of power as well as a closer connection to the land will foster a reawakening of the tribal ways of life, where tight-knit communities care for the sick, the elderly, disabled, and troubled souls, instead of shunting them into various soul-crushing institutions like jail, care homes and mental hospitals, etc.

A new era of solidarity and care for the meek must begin. This will mean feeding the millions per year who die of starvation, drought, lack of medical care, etc. This will mean reprioritizing our lives, with no excuses.

Radical egalitarianism and faith in the boundless potential of each and every person must be instilled in our societies. Some will denounce this as radical, utopian, unachievable. Those who say so are without hope, without faith, having been indoctrinated by mainstream media and enshackled by capitalist ideology.

Recently, in an interview, China Miéville explained this quite well: “We underestimate at our peril the kind of onslaught of received opinion from the media, from the sort of cultural establishment, basically kind of ruling out of court any notion of fundamental change.

“Ridiculing it as ridiculous, to the extent that, you know, when you start to talk about wanting a better world you see the eyes rolling. What kind of despicable pass have we come to, that that aspiration raises scorn? And yet that’s where we are, for huge numbers of the political establishment.”

What sort of ideology can replace this cynicism, this nihilism? What kind of world to we want to create? I defer to Carl Rogers: “Let me summarize my own political ideology, if you will, in a very few words. I find that for myself, I am most satisfied politically when every person is helped to become aware of his or her own power and strength; when each person participates fully and responsibly in every decision which affects him or her; when group members learn that the sharing of power is more satisfying than endeavoring to use power to control others; when the group finds ways of making decisions which accommodate the needs and desires of each person; when every person of the group is aware of the consequences of a decision on its members and on the external world; when each person enforces the group decision through self-control of his or her own behavior; when each person feels increasingly empowered and strengthened; and when each person and the group as a whole is flexible, open to change, and regards previous decisions as being always open for reconsideration.” (1)

 (1) May, Rollo, et al. Politics and Innocence: A Humanistic Debate. Saybrook Publishers, 1986, p.6

This Author

William Hawes is a writer specializing in politics and environmental issues. His articles have appeared online at Global Research, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, The World Financial Review, Gods & Radicals, and Countercurrents.org. He is author of the e-book Planetary Vision: Essays on Freedom and Empire. 

You can reach him at wilhawes@gmail.com

This article first appeared at counterpunch.org

There seems to be a consensus that we are in a political crisis.

I don’t dispute the claim, but I would suggest that this crisis predates Brexit by a long way.

It’s a crisis that cuts right to the heart of our society and has been worsening over a period of decades.

The failure to recognise it, and adequately respond, has played a decisive role in creating the conditions for Brexit, Trump and the politics of hate that has been gaining momentum across Europe.

There are various aspects to it. One of the most obvious is inequality. For decades, inequality has been rising in this country. People have been working longer for less, and wealth, rather than trickling down, has been flowing upwards. An investment deficit, soaring house prices, insecure, low-paid work and rising tuition fees created a population with dwindling disposable incomes.

To function, the economy required vast sums of private debt. A deregulated financial sector was happy to oblige, engaging in reckless lending. As we now know, this paved the way for the financial crash of 2008.

The response to the recession that followed has been a politics of austerity that continues to punish the most vulnerable in our society. It’s led to over a million people using food banks; to 16 million Britons with savings of less than £100; and to 4 million children living in poverty, the vast majority of whom have at least one parent in work.

It’s led to roughly 24,000 elderly people a year dying because they can’t afford to heat their homes properly, and to workers suffering the biggest fall in wages among the world’s richest countries.

The worst off are being hit hardest. A couple of years ago, it emerged that the most deprived area in the country was suffering cuts worth £807 per household while the most affluent area was getting away with per household cuts of just £28.

Today, many children and chronically sick people are being hit by multiple cuts all at once. The impact on disabled people has been so extreme that a UN inquiry recently concluded that there have been “systematic violations” of the rights of people with disabilities. This was after ten thousand people died shortly after being declared ‘fit for work’ by our government.

At the other end of the spectrum, the richest 10% of UK households own more wealth than the other 90% combined, and we have more billionaires than ever before. Compounding the problem, researchers estimate that over £100 billion a year is lost to tax avoidance, with some of the largest corporations paying no tax at all.

Was austerity necessary?

Now was this austerity necessary? Not according to textbook economics which tells us that reducing spending during a recession is pretty much the worst thing that can be done.

In fact, economic historians have shown that policies of austerity have never managed to revive a flagging economy. Oxford economist Simon Wren-Lewis found that austerity after 2010 slowed our recovery, costing the nation over £100 billion.

Austerity was and is a crisis for millions of people in this country – it has destroyed lives, well-being, wealth and mental health on a significant scale.

Yet it was widely accepted as necessary by both major parties and the media. A banking crisis that had its origins in the irresponsible and illegal behaviour of the private sector was repackaged as a crisis of government spending.

The question was not whether we needed cuts but where and how quickly they should fall. Mervyn King, while Governor of the Bank of England, summed up the situation, when he said “The price of this financial crisis is being borne by people who absolutely did not cause it”; and “I’m surprised that the degree of public anger has not been greater than it has.”

Austerity was widely accepted as necessary by both major parties and the media.

Market fundamentalism

Growing inequality is bound up with another aspect of the crisis we face: the erosion of democracy. The last few decades have been marked by a turn towards market fundamentalism – an approach that has transferred wealth and power from the public sphere to the private, and on a global scale.

Today, 1% of humanity owns as much wealth as the other 99% combined, and some of the largest corporations control more wealth than many nations.

The most powerful actor in the market, the corporation, is driven by the profit imperative. This commitment to profit not only results from market competition, it’s enshrined in law – corporations have long been legally obliged to maximise profits for their shareholders.

A corporation can increase profits in various ways. Some of these can benefit society as a whole, such as creative innovations. But there are many easier ways to generate profits that are seriously damaging: increasing demands on workers while reducing wages, using natural resources without paying for them; polluting while leaving others to pick up the bill; manufacturing unhealthy wants through manipulative advertising; and extracting subsidies, tax breaks, and bail-outs from the state.

Here’s a striking example: the IMF calculated that the world’s governments are subsidising the fossil fuel industry to the tune of $10 million a minute. In the UK, while cutting vital subsidies to renewable energy, the Tory government’s contribution to the fossil fuel industry stands at £9 billion a year.

All of this is going on as climate scientists warn that we are on course to create a planet able to support less than a billion people by the end of the century. In other words, business as usual for the fossil fuel industry means wiping out most of humanity – and our taxes are helping them do it.

And because of the warming that’s already occurred, millions are dying and being displaced each year. Today, few acts are as violent as the burning of oil, gas and coal.

When democratic power fails to regulate the market to protect the public interest, market power will regulate democracy to protect corporate interests. To defend citizens, workers and the environment, a democratic state must limit the ways in which corporations are allowed to pursue profit.

The state has the power to impose regulations, extract taxes and cordon off parts of the economy from the market, such as healthcare and education. This enables the public to obtain with their votes what they cannot afford in the market.

From the perspective of the corporation, a well-functioning democracy is an obstacle to profit. The obvious solution is to take control of the state through the capture of regulatory agencies, the lobbying of government, the funding of political parties, the establishment of think thinks, and by ensuring that the revolving door between high level industry and government keeps on spinning.

Market power will regulate democracy to protect corporate interests.

Manufacturing consent

There have always been two ways to gain the consent of the governed. The first is to change the government to please the public. The second is to change the public to please the government.

Almost a century ago, the influential US intellectual Walter Lippmann wrote about the need to “manufacture consent” as a solution to the threat of democracy. Since then, techniques for controlling the flow of ideas, facts and perspectives through society have been increasing in sophistication.

There’s a rich, though little known, history about how public relations, informed by psychological research, have been used to subvert democracy – it ought to be widely studied. The latest developments draw on big data.

You may have heard of a company named Cambridge Analytica, owned by a US billionaire. According to a recent Guardian investigation, by exploiting the growing field of psychometrics and drawing on vast stores of personal data, this company has played a decisive role in influencing electoral outcomes, including the EU referendum.

People are rightly outraged by this. But such meddling isn’t new. Every election is interfered with by politically motivated billionaires – some foreign, like Rupert Murdoch, others domestic such as Lord Rothermere. Almost all our media is owned by a handful of billionaires. This elite group controls close to 80% of the press.

Being billionaires, their interests tend to conflict with those of most ordinary people. In their hands, media becomes a political weapon to ‘manufacture consent’.

This isn’t simply a matter of opinion. Decades of academic studies have demonstrated the systematic right-wing biases of the UK media – including the BBC – on a range of issues, and poll after poll shows how public opinion reflects this distortion and bias.

Ignoring history and economic orthodoxy, the media has functioned as a megaphone for the government’s austerity narrative. Researchers at University College Dublin examined the coverage of austerity after the 2010 UK election, looking at four leading national papers: The Daily Telegraph, The Times, the Financial Times and The Guardian.

They found a clear pro-austerity bias. Of 347 articles, only 21% showed any opposition to austerity. Another way of demonstrating this bias is to analyse which ‘experts’ were invited to comment on the cuts. Most were bankers, politicians and economists who failed to predict the crash. Only 1% came from a trade union.

A look at public opinion over the period shows how influential the austerity narrative became. According to YouGov polls, from 2010, public opposition to austerity steadily declined with each passing year. As this decline occurred, the proportion of people who believed the cuts were ‘too slow’, doubled.

The most popular cuts were often those that targeted the most vulnerable: the disabled, the unemployed and those receiving housing benefit. By 2014, an ICM poll showed that the public, by a wide margin, trusted the Conservatives most ‘to manage the economy properly’.

As Malcolm X put it, “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

Ugly scapegoating

This year the UK has dropped to 40th in the press freedom world rankings. This suggests that journalists in the UK are less free to hold power to account than those working in Jamaica, Chile or South Africa.

Although we all have the same freedom to speak, we do not all have the same freedom to be heard. Most of the time, that freedom belongs to the wealthy few who own and subsidise our media. It’s a freedom that comes with a hefty price tag.

There’s much to say on these issues, but the central point is this: in our society, the principle of one pound one vote has overwhelmed the principle of one person one vote. We have a system dominated and corrupted by concentrated wealth, one that has left millions of people behind to struggle on under increasingly adverse conditions.

Combined with our hopelessly outdated first past the post system and ongoing gerrymandering, it’s clear that our system is in crisis. But it’s a system that exploits the crises it creates, feeding off its own failures.

The financial crisis is being exploited to dismantle the welfare state and the NHS. And Brexit is being exploited to tear up workers’ rights and environmental protections. It’s a system that exploits the crises it creates, feeding off its own failures.

Many who today are outraged by Brexit have long failed to recognise and respond to the deeper systemic crisis. Sheltered by privilege, and taking our lead from the media, too many of us have been complacent about the multiple ways in which our system is failing, and the scale of the suffering and anger it’s causing.

When we fail to respond to crises that do not yet affect us, we pave the way for others to exploit them for their own gain. Invariably this takes the form of ugly scapegoating which channels people’s anger where those doing the channeling find it politically useful.

In recent years, people of colour, Muslims, Jews, LGBTI communities, disabled people and immigrants have all been targeted. The resistance to acknowledge, let alone confront, the root causes of our failing system created the conditions for Brexit, Trump, and the rise of hate politics.

So yes, Brexit is a significant and unwelcome development, one that if mishandled may compound many of the problems we face. But it’s a symptom not the disease.

Business as usual

Many commentators appear to have learned the wrong lesson from the turbulence of 2016. Former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and John Major have identified the problem as one of ‘political extremes’. Blair has warned against the ‘far-right’ and ‘far-left’, positioning himself as the defender of the voiceless middle ground, while Major recently urged us to return to the ‘solid centre’.

But the centre ground of political opinion, where many feel most comfortable, is not where extremes are avoided, it’s where they are normalised.

Today’s centre ground is part of an ideological spectrum distorted by concentrated power. It’s a social construct, commanding most loyalty from those whose privilege protects them from the ravages of the system they support.

There is nothing moderate, reasonable or balanced about occupying this political terrain. To do so is to favour business as usual: the ongoing erosion of democracy, the acceleration of inequality, the support of abusive regimes, the destruction of the conditions for our existence, and the dehumanisation of those whose suffering is politically inconvenient, whether they be drowning in the Mediterranean or queuing up at food banks.

So how should we respond? We should reject the centre ground and embrace radical, compassionate, bold politics, and support it in all its forms: whether we’re talking about general elections or public protests.

To clarify, the meaning of the word ‘radical’ is bound up with the idea of getting to the root of something, getting to the core or origin of a problem. And that’s what we must do.

For many years we’ve been facing at least three profound crises: a democratic crisis, an inequality crisis, and an existential, environmental crisis. There’s simply no way to tackle these crises without subverting the wealth-concentrating, expansionist logic of capitalism.

So without a surge in radical politics, these crises will only deepen. After all, the political and corporate elite has shown itself more ready to accept the destruction of the ecosystem, and with it most of humanity, than to question capitalism.

Radical politics – or social democracy?

Radical politics, even diluted versions of it, have always been opposed by the establishment. Its figureheads have always been attacked.

We saw this very clearly during the Democratic primaries, when it was well understood that Bernie Sanders stood a far better chance of beating Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton. Polls indicated that Bernie’s rejection of establishment politics, his willingness to confront Wall Street, big business and the corporate media resonated with more Americans than Hillary’s message.

Despite this, the liberal media and the Democratic establishment rallied behind Hillary: a defender of Wall Street with a history of supporting new wars and escalating existing ones, who wrote during the campaign that environmental activists fighting to protect life should instead “get a life”. Frankly, if you’re not yet radical, you haven’t been paying attention.

By failing to provide an honest, compelling, analysis of what had gone wrong with society and how to make it right – something Bernie came far closer to offering – the liberal establishment paved the way for a dangerous demagogue who gave the wrong answers to some of the right questions.

Hillary’s defeat is symptomatic of an establishment, on both sides of the Atlantic, committed to holding the amiable mask of liberalism firmly in place over a corrupt, exploitative, unsustainable, system.

Since the election of Jeremy Corbyn we have seen our own version of this dynamic play out. Under the leadership of Ed Miliband, Labour was committed to ‘austerity-lite’: cuts were needed, they claimed, but not quite as many or quite as fast as the Tories were planning.

After losing the 2015 election, Miliband resigned, and the only anti-austerity candidate on the ballot, outsider Jeremy Corbyn, surged to victory on a wave of popular support, earning the largest mandate ever won by a party leader.

The media onslaught that followed has been quite remarkable. As subsequent research has shown, the British press, including the BBC, have “systematically undermined” Corbyn with “a barrage of overwhelmingly negative coverage”.

It’s worth noting that in Scandinavia, Jeremy Corbyn would be regarded as something like a mainstream social democrat, which only shows how far the UK centre ground has shifted to the right. This is Tony Blair’s legacy, and the reason Margaret Thatcher described him as her greatest achievement.

This legacy helps to explain why it’s not just been the Tories and the media attacking Corbyn – from day one he’s been actively sabotaged by an intransigent bureaucracy and powerful figures within his own party. What we’re seeing is an ideological struggle for the soul of the Labour Party.

Thatcher’s legacy

How far the UK centre ground has shifted to the right is Tony Blair’s legacy, and the reason Margaret Thatcher described him as her greatest achievement.

In truth, the Labour Party has always been two parties crammed into one. Since its creation, a struggle for what it would stand for has raged between those who offer a deeper critique of society – let’s call them ‘radicals’ – and those who embrace and defend the status quo but want to curb the worst excesses of the system – let’s call them ‘liberals’.

Over the last century, time and again, the liberals have shown that they are willing to undermine their electoral chances rather than allow Labour to be turned into a vehicle for radical politics. For much of the party’s history, this group has maintained a tight grip on the Parliamentary Labour Party. For the first time in my life, that grip has been seriously loosened. This is a rare and valuable opportunity.

It should be said that the campaign against Jeremy Corbyn has been extremely effective. Even now, weeks before a general election, you’ll find prominent authors, journalists and celebrities – themselves Labour supporters – using their substantial public platform to chip away at Corbyn’s credibility.

Given that this election is a life and death affair for many of the most vulnerable in our society, this is deeply irresponsible behaviour.

Personally, I find much to admire in Corbyn. Of course, he’s not perfect – mistakes have been made – but to focus on this is to miss the point. It’s foolish to echo the superficial narrative of the establishment and personalise this historic political moment.

Our focus should always be on the broader struggle for democracy, equality and survival – a struggle in which the virtues of unity and solidarity are paramount. It’s foolish to personalise this historic political moment.

Shifting from personality to substance

When we shift from personality to substance we find that Labour are committed to scrapping Theresa May’s Brexit plan on day one.

They are committed to introducing a bill to ensure workers’ rights are protected, to guaranteeing that EU nationals can remain in the UK, to negotiating tariff-free access to the European market and to allowing MPs to vote on the final deal.

Beyond Brexit, Labour are offering one of the most progressive manifestos in living memory and the boldest environmental policies of any major party in British history.

If such a desperately needed policy platform proves to be unelectable, it will not be one man’s failure. It will be the failure of each and every one of us to create the conditions for its success.

But we still have time. Let’s use it well.

Raoul Martinez is a philosopher, artist and award-winning filmmaker. Creating Freedom, a radical and highly provocative rethink of freedom, is his first book. It was described by the Guardian as “Exceptional … this year’s essential text”.

Related Articles: Jeremy Corbyn – a mainstream [Scandinavian] social democrat by Jonas Fossli Gjersø.

Read it: Labour’s 2017 election manifesto.

This article was originally published here by openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

The 2017 federal budget has axed funding for the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF), an agency that provides information to decision-makers on how best to manage the risks of climate change and sea level rise.

The NCCARF received A$50 million in 2008 to coordinate Australia’s national research effort into climate adaptation measures. That was reduced in 2014 to just under A$9 million.

For 2017-18, a mere A$600,000 will be spread between CSIRO and NCCARF to support existing online platforms only. From 2018, funding is axed entirely.

This decision follows on from the 2014 streamlining of CSIRO’s Climate Adaptation Flagship, and comes at a time when a national review of Australia’s climate policies is still underway.

Despite a growing global impetus to address the risks of climate change, there is evidence that Australia is being hampered by policy inertia.

A review of 79 submissions to the Productivity Commission’s inquiry on Barriers to Effective Climate Change Adaptation, published in 2014, found that “adaptation first and foremost requires clear governance, and appropriate policy and legislation to implement change.”

‘Lives and money will be saved by strong climate adaptation measures’

Earlier this year the World Economic Forum listed “failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation” as one of the top five risks to the world, in terms of its potential impact. Meanwhile, in Australia, local governments, professionals and community groups have consistently called for more national policy guidance on how best to adapt to climate risks.

The government’s decision to slash funding for climate adaptation research is therefore at odds with the growing urgency of the problem. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its most recent major assessment report, pointed out that Australia can benefit significantly from taking adaptation action in highly vulnerable sectors.

These areas of vulnerability include: the risk of more frequent and intense floods; water shortages in southern regions; deaths and infrastructure damage caused by heatwaves; bushfires; and impacts on low-lying coastal communities.

To put it simply, lives and money will be saved by strong climate adaptation measures.

Australia needs a coherent policy approach that goes beyond the current focus on energy policy, although climate adaptation is indeed an important issue for our electricity grid as well as for many other elements of our infrastructure. A coherent, whole-of-government, approach to climate risk is the economical and sensible approach in the long term.

Federal government should do its job

Like it or not, the federal government has to take a leading role in climate adaptation. This includes the ongoing need to address existing knowledge gaps through well-funded research.

The federal government is the major funder of leading research in Australia, delivered through CSIRO, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Cooperative Reserach Centres, the Australian Research Council and universities. This role should not be divested.

Without climate adaptation research, Australia can expect significantly higher infrastructure damage and repair costs, more death and disease, and more frequent disruption to services – much of which would be avoidable with the right knowledge and preparation.

The damage bill from the 2010-11 Queensland floods alone exceeded A$6 billion. Since 2009, natural disasters have cost the Australian government more than A$12 billion, and the private sector has begun trying in earnest to reduce its risk exposure.

In response to these known risks, there is demand for robust policy guidance. Effective partnerships between government, industry and the community are crucial. One such example led by the NCCARF is CoastAdapt, an online tool that collates details of climate risks and potential costs in coastal areas.

For projects like this, success hinges on full engagement with all relevant spheres of government, industry, research, and the community. There is more to be done, and it needs leadership at the highest level.

Tayanah O’Donnell is Research Fellow, University of Canberra.

Josephine Mummery is Research Fellow and PhD Candidate, climate change policy, University of Canberra.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Big oil is getting smaller. Many of the oil services companies that are employed when new fields are being developed have been laying off workers, and oil companies have been writing down their assets.

The problem is the persistent low price of oil. Despite the best efforts of OPEC – the organisation representing the developing world’s oil producing countries – to limit production and put a squeeze on supplies, oil prices have risen only slightly.

This has put many potential fields in the category of being too expensive to exploit – particularly in the case of the tar sands of Canada, and in the Arctic and difficult-to-reach offshore locations.

One of the areas where small fluctuations in the price of oil make a big difference is in the expansion of the fracking industry in North America, which led to the glut of oil on the world market.