The effects of the climate crisis intrude with increasing regularity into our lives and yet we do not act. We are as paralyzed as past civilizations were when facing catastrophic destruction.
The truth of the ecological crisis that our technological terraforming, earth shattering civilization has set in motion is a hard truth to accept....but the science in unequivocal. We are where we are, Chris describes it accurately.........and the saddest part is, we'd rather enter the world of fantastical last minute rescues...than face the grim collective reality that is the Future.
The rise of the Christian right is a depressing reality....but so are those wild fires making life miserable in New York...takes Americans away from the equally depressing reality of daily mass shootings I suspect....but hey!!!
Why not Vacate On? Come to Canada for some fishing or hunting in our once glorious boreal?? Be part of the destruction of the lungs of the north...get a load of how we're dealing with our Summer of Fire: It's really a bit of a hoot.
In Alberta, where the disaster began as we fought a polarized election, the winner (our family calls them weiners) is a libertarian champion of the unvaccinated....who recently claims these fires have been started by arsonists.
Not off roaders....or campers with their off road vehicles and big trailors..no....ARSONISTS.
She's likely a hair breadth away from having us imagine Orange jumper clad NDP terrorists running across the country setting fires as part of our madcap efforts to defeat the ruling Conservative Right.
So its not only in America that the seeds of our common destruction are ripening Everywhere, we'd rather engage in a protracted war with each other, than deal with what we're actually facing. The War in Ukraine may be the big metaphor....but everywhere on the planet, the battle between the 'woke' and the sleep walking dead is prospering.
It's good for the arms industry. It's cathartic for many. And it more than proves Chris Hedges dire predictions.
We live in a petro-state and our 'libertarian champion of the unvaccinated;' is beholden to the fossil industry because of campaign contributions. And many who voted for her are convinced that life cannot continue unless we burn every last atom of fossil fuel. There's some irony in the fact that the province with the wildest fires has contributed the most (among Canadian provinces) to the problem.
And change the subject from what the real crisis is, to a manufactured one that gives them a few more miserable decades to devastate what's left of a livable earth.
"We were raised on robbery' as a great Canadian folks singer put it years ago.......took me a few decades to realize what she meant. But the horrors of our residential schools....our clear cutting and our water intensive tarsands operations have wised me up.
Pay closer attention to the bigger picture of what he is doing here ...
In this article he foments fear by resurrecting the globalist's phony climate crisis narrative ... do we have problems? ... yes, but he wants you to believe that it is an existential threat when it is not ...
And after pointing out many times the problem of divisiveness among us, in his previous article he cynically reached into his bag of wedge issues to resurrect the divisive TRUMP-MAGA connection ... our problem is not TRUMP and MAGA ... the problem is the globalist's relentless pursuit of AGENDA 21/30 ... and on this topic Hedges has NEVER SAID A THING!
But he did say this in 2022: "Let us stand up and resist so future generations will at least say ‘they tried.’ We cannot do this alone ... together we have a chance" ...
BTW, he has refused to comment on THE GREAT RESET, The World Economic Forum and the book THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION ...
Luxury beliefs are the same as virtue signaling. They are ideas or values that confer status on the elite, but are generally not fully embraced or practiced by them (like Chris using those marvelous Internet connected machines made from plastics, metals and other materials that require organic fossil fuel). Luxury beliefs are a distraction from more pressing social issues. Luxury beliefs put into policy practice often result in negative consequences that are self-perpetuating (certain narratives of problems exploited to signal virtue where if the problems are solved there would be no more virtue signaling opportunity).
Examples include:
- Woke
- Global Warming, Climate Change, Climate Crisis... and other extreme environmentalism
- Legalization of Drugs
- Defunding or weakening of criminal laws, law enforcement and prosecution.
- White privilege
- Implicit bias
- Everything Critical Theory
- Illegal immigration
- Government spending on social programs that create dependency
My opinionm It is is that Hedges is telling the truth. Nothing he's saying about the climate situation is at all controversial--except among the climate-denying, "I know better than all the scientists in the world" crowd. I don't know what goes on instead the heads of people like you--do you actually believe what you're saying? Since I find that incredibly hard to believe, to me more likely you have an agenda to sow doubt about what is really going on. Given that if we don't fight the climate disaster with everything we've got to have a chance of survive as a species, I find what people like you are doing dangerous. The last thing we need when we're headed toward a cliff is for people to say, "Don't Worry, Be Happy".
"Heading toward a cliff". Really? Let's assume that we are "heading for a cliff"... frankly emotive hyperbole that to me sounds just like my conservative friends commenting about the gender pronoun grooming of kids and unrestricted abortion heading us to a cliff. How can anyone believe anybody that uses that type of claim lacking anything close to facts that back it?
You do know that the climate models are wrong at predicting the weather or temperature every year and are re-calibrated. It is the same when science predicted a new ice age was coming. Al Gore wasn't around then to exploit that cult fear for money, but it was the same impulse from the elite. Just like back in the 40s they lament the world was going to be over-populated and people would starve.
You know that the science pinning all the warming to human activity is circumstantial and theoretical.
And most importantly, even if the world stopped burning fossil fuels today, nature emissions of carbon plus what is already in the system would prevent the earth from cooling for over 50 years. That is the science man.
Did you know that artificial nitrogen fertilizer requires fossil fuel and by the politics of "climate crisis" is making fertilizer scarce and over-priced and putting family farms out of business and causing looming food shortages all over the world in the poorer regions?
You know that the electrical grid throughout the nation is a pittance of what is required to replace fossil fuel energy with electric.
You know that people are starting to reject wind turbines and solar farms for their ecological impacts.
So whom are we thinking we are saving by these policies to combat "climate crisis."? Oh yes, elites that have enough money to pay more for their groceries, HVAC and travel. Hence, the luxury beliefs label.
You do know that 10-times the number of people die every year from cold than from heat?
You know that China is building a new coal-fired electrical plant every week.
Science has documented a warming-trend, but they have not predicted what it means for the world and the people of the world. It is nonsense and dangerous to make policy based on these irrational fears of "crisis" because it justifies massive human harm without any justified basis. We see that human harm now as stupid Biden Admin policies have resulted in higher energy costs that have fueled inflation and causes a massive increase in debt.
That was not in any way a personal attack. I was just describing your views. What did I get wrong? By the way, you are the one doing the personal attacking. Calling someone crap and bitch is beneath contempt.
You forgot "the notion that spending an inordinate amount of time convincing people of your half-baked opinions on comment threads is making good use of your time on the planet"
I don't write to try and change minds of the people I am debating. Not at all... I first attract them like flies and then swat them so the other picnic goers reading the comments can draw their own conclusions for which opinion is half-baked political cult mythology and which is and objective assessment based on facts and sense.
What Leon Trotsky wrote in May of 1940, some 10 months into World War II, could, with minor updating, be used to describe present conditions:
The world of decaying capitalism is overcrowded. The question of admitting a few hundred extra refugees becomes a major problem for such a world power as the United States…
Amid the vast expanse of land and the marvels of technology, which has also conquered the skies for man as well as the earth, the bourgeoisie has managed to convert our planet into a foul prison."
1940 accusations that the world was over-crowded are laughable today given what we have seen since that time.
The hand-wringing malcontents in positions of influence and power can never stop imagining the next existential threat to humanity... never actually grasping that it is them and only them.
I live in Brooklyn, New York. As the smoke crisis was easing, a friend asked about what starts the fires, and two of us listed a few possibilities—lightning, unextinguished cigarette butts, sparks from electricity, etc. She replied, "No, I think there's something they're not telling us." Someone else said that his wife believes the same thing. I felt both enraged and depressed afterward. Half a century of observation and analysis, most of it already proved true, hasn't made a dent on most. Thank you, Chris, for continuing to hammer away in the hope of making a dent.
A wonderful sermon on the coming end of times. One suggestion for you, Chris, why not read - yourself - all your articles, and attach the written article as well. Your voice, when heard, sounds like the "voice of authority", or a low-key Jerimiah "crying in the wilderness". We live in a "wilderness", a wilderness of illusions you often speak to, a wilderness of great greed, etc. Your wife does a great job in reading your articles, but [stating the obvious] she's not you. Your voice reading your articles [often sounding like sermons] brings gravitas and your whole experience to your words and message.
Thank you, Chris, for your hard work, your words of wisdom, and your deep, enduring love for humankind.
The collective West has become amnesiacal, where we see war as virtue signalling and have long forgotten the cycles of nature and the truths of history.
Sorry about the fires Chris, but our dumb ass cretinous government is too busy pouring gas on the empire's imperialist wars to bother putting out our forest fires.
It seems we have so many ways of burning down the future in the self-denigrating West.
1- CO2 is currently 420 ppm, which is 0.042%. Humans are responsible for 3% of that, which is 0.00126%. Thus, 99.99874% of all CO2 is created naturally.
2- At under 270 ppm CO2, plant life dies, and everything else dies with it.
The atmosphere has had periods where CO2 was up to and higher than 4000 ppm. Plant and animal life thrived, Alaska was a jungle.
3- When Mt. St Helens erupted in the early 1980s, it released the same amount of pollution as 270 years of human industrial activity in 1970. That's 270 x 1970 industrial activity--IN ONE DAY.
Let's cut the bullshit. Climate Change (global warming) benefits the oligarchy as they will tax us and starve us to create this 'perfect' world. Anyone tell me why Kyoto Treaty applied to the US but not China? Sorry but anyone with a thinking brain is going to look at the facts and see that this is a scam.
Before you send hate my way, I am ALL FOR taking care of our environment. Let's force recycling...let's force Monsanto to stop forcing Roundup on the world. Let's stop jetting to Davos and maybe use Zoom? Let's stop dumping plastics in the oceans. Let's stop abusing animals with these corporate farms. Let's stop military actions by the US which destroys the environment. Let's stop penalizing family farms at the expense of corporate farms. There is so much to do at the global corporate level but instead the little man has to do all the sacrificing.
C'mon Chris Hedges...are you a corporate sycophant or are your REALLY looking out for the common man? A true leftist? I wonder sometimes.
Whatever. The point is we are talking very small numbers here. I am all for climate change as long as the corporations feel the pain and not the little man. Last I checked, there was talk about a carbon tax...and where does that money go? Hmm...let me guess..the Ukrainian Nazis?
Matt we have reached the point where the little man and the corporations are feeling the pain and we all need to do something. There is no more time for waiting for somebody to act.
Agreed but what is the solution? Do we impoverish the lower and middle classes for a carbon dioxide problem that isn't? This is a scam because the beneficiaries are the corporations and the elite. If it truly was something serious, folks would not be jetting to Davos. Why not start with some obvious solutions such as getting rid of plastic bottles and reducing the use of RoundUp and other cancer causing chemicals? What about stopping war and wasting fuel to maintain the 800+ military bases around the world? What about allowing diesel autos in the US which have great fuel economy? What about using nuclear fuel so we can stop stripping the land and putting sulfur in the air? In all of these cases I have listed, corporations (and the military) stand to lose millions of dollars. That is why this is never talked about. However, let's take the cars away from the peons. Let's make them eat bugs. Let's charge them a tax, etc. See the pattern? I am mystified how leftists have it SO right about most things but are SO wrong when it comes to 'climate change.'
Hard to convince any climate denier about the reality of our pending doom. They probably will suffer more than the rest of us because of their feeling of guilt for not trying to avoid the collapse will be added . This is a great report from Mr. Hedges that hopefully will sink in some of those minds. in the report there is a link about the billionaire class trying to scape the catastrophe, and I'm extracting the words of professor Douglas Rushkoff when invited to talk about technology to a group of bankers.
" ...Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked: “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the Event?” "That’s when it hit me: at least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology. Taking their cue from Elon Musk colonizing Mars, Peter Thiel reversing the ageing process, or Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape."
That these people have an intense disliking for life is one of the clearest attributes of each of them. It shows up in everything they believe, say and work for. And yet still we defer to them.
When I was an undergraduate at the University of British Columbia in the 1970's, parking on campus was forbidden, except in gravel parking lots some distance from the heart of the campus. Having walked 15 minutes from my car to the main library, I would carry on farther, and make an attempt to cross a large, flat expanse of bare earth, which from September until at least April or May would be guaranteed to be an ocean of mud. Across this expanse, someone had laid a wooden path, consisting of 1" x 12" planks laid end to end. It helped a lot but not enough. Each day, all day, a vast funnel of pedestrians would converge on each dry end of this bridge. When two walkers going in opposite direction would meet somewhere in the middle, a tacit negotiation would occur, usually involving an awkward sharing of the plank; usually each person would get at least some mud on their shoes as one or both pedestrians would have to take at least one step off of the plank and into the mud. One day, as I walked the plank between Brock Hall and the Student Union Building, I definitely slipped and immediately fell right into the sucking mud. As I cast about looking for one of my shoes from my new, ground level vantage point, I saw a field of white labels attached to sticks placed at regular intervals all over the sea of mud. They weren't actually sticks; no more than 30 to 40 cm tall, they were twigs that the university had planted. As I picked myself up and prepared to carry on, I remembered my Grandmother's saying, repeated often by my mother and her sisters, which had become a family motto of sorts. "Always plant a tree". Now, almost half a century later, all of those twigs have grown into and awesome, engineered canopy of Carbon Dioxide capturing, Oxygen dispensing, Solar Energy powered trees. "Always plant MANY trees" in places where trees will grow. If every human plants one tree for each and every year they have been alive and does so for as long as they have strength or breath, would the doomed planet object? Would things be marginally better, or worse? Resist. Plant many trees; now and forever.
As an x-tree planter, who has planted over 3,000 trees in one day, the answer is free contraceptives for all. Trees store carbon dioxide, and when they die and rot they release it ALL.
Well, no they don't release it all into the atmosphere. Much is recirculated in the soil by fungi, bacteria, termites, and others, and ends up as ... guess... new trees.
Bill wolfe's suggestion is apt. Restrictions on industrial logging may need to be curtailed -- and will be curtailed once the energy and ancillary costs reach cross the threshold where costs exceed any potential for profit.
Bob Johnson has planted over 3,000 trees in one day and has suggested the answer is in providing free contraceptives for all. I respectfully submit that planting 3,000 trees in one day may be a form of contraception in its own right -- and should be continued -- among all those seeking to avoid both 'boutique activism' and parenthood.
Steve Woodward has correctly observed that dead, rotting trees don't release all of their stored carbon dioxide into the atmosphere: "much is recirculated in the soil and ends up as . . . new trees."!
Although my suggestion about planting one tree for each year every individual human being has been alive has been subjected to criticism as 'boutique activism', it might still be effective, especially if taken on with a conscious attitude of religious reverence; it could become a spiritual practice that could well provide genuine renewal for the practitioner, with obvious continuing benefits to the community and beyond.
Ronald Wright's "A Short History of Progress" is an astonishing little book. Read it in an afternoon and change your life. His observations and images are succinct and lucid. Most moving among these was his recounting of how the Easter Islanders destroyed their bountiful island: inexorably, every tree was cut down to service a status arms race, as different tribes tried to top each other's moa, the giant stone heads we all know. The passage where he describes cutting down the last tree--they knew it was the last tree, that no more could be coming because rats ate all the seeds, everywhere they looked they could see desolation--but they cut it down anyway.
I turned 53 this year. My life has been a front-row seat to technical civilization destroying itself, bit by bit, in the service of a small sociopathic aristocracy. I can remember life before 1980; even as a child, it was clear the bottom fell out after Reagan, and every Reagan clone after. I knew things would get bad by the late 80s, but had hope during the brief green renaissance we had then, centered around the 1987 Montreal Protocol which banned ozone-destroying CFCs. But the 90s were wasted, and idiot boy-king W sealed the deal.
I'd challenge two things Chris writes.
The common refrain that "the Earth will continue even with all of our damage" belies a lack of understanding Earth's past. The changes we have wrought are of such magnitude and speed there is only one equally destructive event in Earth's history: the asteroid impact that doomed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But our changes compress tens to hundreds of thousands of years of change into a couple centuries. There is really no precedent for what the Earth is experiencing. Hansen's latest paper describes 5°C of warming this century, with up to another 5°C to 2300. This is a sterilization event. Complex life cannot survive such temperatures, and likely changes to a toxic, anoxic atmosphere. It's possible Earth could go back hundreds of millions of years, to where there are only worms, maybe some hardy insects, and algae and similar plants. It will be too hot for everything else.
Second, while it's true that the mass of humanity (or at least rich, Northern humanity) is sleepwalking to their collective doom, I have to give them a break. Since global warming surfaced in the collective consciousness in a big way in the 1980s, the 24/356 disinformation machine cranked into overdrive. As if in denial, or as part of our elites' Ghost Dances, the aristocracy stomped the gas. People are happy to enslave themselves in jobs, so long as they can buy toys to compensate. The commercials will keep people doing that as long as they're on.
There really is no good news. Extinction Rebellion and other groups are well-meaning, but I don't think they really understand the kinds of changes that would really make a difference, and the implications. Any hope of "doing something" about biosphere collapse was really over by 2000. Maybe covid and succeeding diseases will cut human numbers enough to make a difference, but even that I doubt.
Wright also notes that Marx called capitalism "a machine for demolishing limits." It worked...for a while. But then the rubber band snaps back.
It's true the future looks bleak, to understate the case. But, when your explaining this to your kids and theirs, what are you going to say when they ask, "Did you put up a fight?" There is the moral imperative. Cheers
Three years ago, I think, when the forests in the US northwest were on fire, my stepson, his pregnant wife and toddler son were living in Springfield, OR, just across I-5 from Eugene. Then, at least, the EPA had no rating for anything over 500 ppm. When it reached 775, he made a break for it, going north on smoke-covered I-5 to the Portland airport, and all 3 got on a plane they reasonably feared would be a super-spreader of Covid and flew east. Spent a few weeks in the southern Midwest until the fires finally were extinguished, and went back. Until they could move permanently.
But there is no real shelter from this storm. And, if we do get rid of fossil fuels entirely, after it is way too late, what will happen is the end of the aerosol masking effect of all of this particulate matter that has actually decreased the warming effect of the sun, just as this catastrophic level of particulate matter has seriously decreased the amount of sunlight hitting solar panels. That stuff comes back to earth in a week or two. As opposed to the carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere with it, which stays for many decades. The result of our 100% transition away from fossil fuels will be roughly an almost immediate 1 degree Celsius increase in average global temperature, while any benefit will remain decades away.
But he could have mentioned it here and he didn't ...
This is classic post-COVID Hedges ... scared to lay the blame before the people he will no longer directly confront ... he's just not the same guy since the lockdowns ... just an actor now, no longer an activist ...
@PITA Contrarian - I knew something was off with Chris Hedges during COVID - we saw the biggest fascist move ever - forcing people to take a vaccine against their will and government granted corporate immunity to any one that was injured. If there was any reason to step in as a TRUE leftist and speak out that was the time. Chris as silent...and the silence was deafening. My guess is he screwed up but does not have the balls to admit it.
Could not agree more ... I firmly believe he has allowed himself been co-opted by the DS as controlled opposition ... and as an established author, you know he's been told to "stay in his lane" ... may I suggest you make the same post with those stats on his audio version of this article ... the audio versions here on Substack typically have fewer comments and much less "noise" ... the info you shared is just too damn important ...
I am sorry but you should stay away from what you are smoking ... chemtrails - really? - what about the aliens and the UFO's - the good government has a new agency for this ... WHAT COMES NEXT?? If this US government does not get its act together we are heading for Thermonuclear War and that not the climate crisis will be the end of us ..
The ultimate pathos of our times is that we are fighting military wars, when we should be fighting the war on climate change . Both can kill us. Now it is only a question of which will do it first.
Climate change is just another cynical tactic of the globalists ... it's working and Hedges knows better ... he's just here to protect his place in the safe-end of the "independent" media food chain ...
If you don't like the concept of climate change try "environmental degradation." There is a lot of if it ongoing and the reckless capitalists that run the West have for decades been enemies of the environment. Big Oil was aware of this degradation in the 1970's and kept it under wraps.
Incredible BS, shame on you. So you don't believe in science? Do you believe the world is flat because science says it's round? You are spewing dangerous nonsense. Please go somewhere else with your drivel.
I would explain it by saying it's all in line with the plan laid out in the AGENDA 21 handbook made available at the 1992 EARTH SUMMIT in Rio ... 142 countries signed on to it ... what's happening Canada IS NOT an accident ... A21 is a literal rezoning of the entire planet ... I still have an original copy of the A21 handbook, and the orchestrated mayhem in Australia and California BEFORE COVID aligns with a color-coded map that depicts their vision ... BTW, the area in which I live has been designated for "highly regulated use" ...
This is not the forum to hodgepodge an argument about climate change.
The arguments are lengthy and time consuming regarding climate change.
They deserve a hearing but not a pecking letters hearing.
You are a discordian wasting people's time in an attempt to attack and have someone defend an 'individual'.
Discordians abound as civilization collapses.
Chucking the Enlightenment for uncritical reasoning is why we are in the predicament we are in today.
THE APOCRYPHAL TWAIN said it best:
“Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and bat you with experience."
This is the biggest problem we face: the lack of critical thinking.
Best use your time, especially if young, to figure out with others how you are going to survive, if you do.
None other than Hitler captured the spirit of un-reason present at the time when he declared:
“We stand at the end of the Age of Reason.… A new era of the magical explanation of the world is rising, an explanation based on Will rather than knowledge.
There is no truth, in either the moral or scientific sense.”
---------- Hitler quoted by Herman Raushning, Gespräche mit Hitler (New York: Europa Verlag, 1940), 210, translated in Gerald Holton, “Can Science Be at the Centre of Modern Culture?,” Public Understanding of Science 2 (1993): 302. For a slightly different translation, see Herman Raushning, Voice of Destruction (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1940), 222–23.
Substack is THE very best forum for exposing the duplicity of Chris Hedges since the lockdowns were declared ... that's why I'm here ... I am not here to annoy you ... I'm here to remind him that there is one person out there who listens very closely to every word he says ... he's no longer one of us, not since the lockdowns ... Hedges has a spouse and a family and ideological soul mates, but anybody outside of his immediate circle is now fair game, including his cult followers who can find no fault with him ... he does not give a hoot about his followers ... you are just a commodity to him ...
Chris doesn't waste his time reading comment threads. He values his time and, when he's not volunteering to teach in prisons, spends it edifying himself reading the work of people the enough discipline to research, write and edit their work (you know, books).
But who am I to stop a man on a windmill chase? Ride on, ya donkey!!
"Chris doesn't waste his time reading comment threads" ...
Oh really! ... how would you know? ...
I've followed him as closely as anybody these past 10-12 years, so closely it was impossible to not notice a dramatic change in him since the lockdowns ... I used to love this guy and on a number of occasions I've also acknowledged that his work with prison inmates is laudable ... but he's made a number of extremely divisive comments since the lockdowns and I've got all the details, dates and verbatim quotes for you ... all ya gotta do is ask ... BTW, so you think I'm a donkey, right? ... I too have worked with prison inmates, quite a bit actually ... I just never took the time to write a book about it ...
Bully on you then... My point in responding is that your obsession with what was a reactionary policy in the midst of an extraordinary global health episode is over the top. What are you doing now (since the lockdowns) to help people? Because pretty much every societal ill has gone off a cliff in the past few years and there is no single point of blame for that, rather a confluence of problems.
Thanks for your incredulity about my statement, but it's a sign of your arrogance to have a default assumption that it's impossible people who know Chris or have even talked to him a few times about his work might have first hand information about something as elementary as the ridiculous amount of time and energy people waste in the intellectual slums that live under actual thoughtful work like Chris's.
If you really have a campaign of information, why not put that energy into your own stack? You're what I refer to as a comment board camper. I guess it's fun and gets the adrenaline going for you... but I only interact with your type in an attempt to shine a mirror on a gigantic waste of time. On your death bed, are you going to look back at your comment board musings and call it a fine contribution to humanity? That's what I wonder...
Some of your points are reasonable ... but I will keep coming back here to remind his followers that Hedges has repeatedly, emphatically and on numerous occasions urged us to fight the good fight even when things look bleak, only to desert the working class once the lock downs were declared in MAR '20 ... don't forget that the current DS agenda for mass censorship is no less than a direct result of COVID tyranny that Hedges refuses to confront ...
Here are just two quotes from the duplicitous Mr. Hedges which now no longer ring true:
1) "I don't fight fascists because I think will we win, I fight them because they are fascists" ...
2) "Let us stand up and resist so future generations will at least say ‘they tried.’ We cannot do this alone ... together we have a chance" ...
If he truly believed these statements, he'd be out there fighting the good fight with the working class, but he cynically hoped NOBODY would remember the many times he made this noble call to action but refused to show up for work ...
I am starting to think this is AI (not a real person, but this thing that according to Mr Harari sooner or later will kill us all ... if the 'other' problems will not kill us first - ha!!)
Hi, Bob, there appear to be MAGA people trying to crowd out the website with voluminous screeds of their own manifesto in order to form some kind of perimeter within the onslaught of Chris Hedges’ and his reader-admirers’ observations. Someone told me of “Frank Lee” to “pay her no mind”, and it makes it easier to do they when she thinks she has swatted her opponents like flies for the benefit of others at her “picnic”. Do you feel swatted like a fly? I would think not. Like a fly hitting a windscreen, the last thing to go through the MAGA supporter’s mind when their leader goes to jail will be their a***. I worry that there will be more casualties as in January 6th when that happens. The intended satire of my previous comment to Frank Lee was taken as support.. what can you do ?
You're a Chris Hedges cultist ... if Hedges tells you the problem is MAGA, you immediately stand up and clap like a seal ... so don't put words in my mouth, I never said it wasn't real ... the diff between us is that you believe it's an existential threat, I do not ...
And regarding your very predictable response that I must be a MAGA type ...
Here's the response I just made in a thread above ... it still applies ...
I'm an independent progressive who walked away from the DEM party after 2004 election and I DID NOT vote for either of those sexually-obsessed bullies in the 2020 PRES election ... I think Trump is a complete horse's-ass of a human being ...
Having said that, those MAGA types actually want the same things we do ...
Not theories ... both Bill Gates and Phizer CEO Albert Bourla publicly admitted in early '22 that the vaccines are not very effective at stopping infections ...
Thank you for these hard truths Chris. I work in science and frequently people will say to me don't worry science will solve it. Of course those people who say that are not in science. Science will not solve this , only a change in the Capitalist way of living will. One billion spent on CO2 reduction using a coal fired power plant fueled by burning trees, yes burning trees. If we burned all the trees in the u.s. that would power the grid for two years. Science will not save us. Science could have saved us IF we had followed the science decades ago. A new philosophy, Scientific Accelerationism , the thought that science will save us while doing nothing because science will save us.
There are posts appearing on some media sites with photographs of helicopters shooting giant flame throwers at the woods immediately below them in Canada. Weird, huh? Whose agenda is being served with these "wildfires"?
This is a fire prevention technique. You do a controlled burn out a section of forest in the hope of containing the uncontrolled fire. Chris is right. Social media is filled with climate misinformation because it seems people REALLY want to believe that climate change isn't real.
Those posts are pure BS. And you know very well who's posting them.
A....hol...s who want us to deny Climate change and imagine Eco terrorists.
I'm in Alberta. There's real ecological reasons why the boreal is burning.....trying to pin it on your bogus creation (terrorists everywhere ahahahahah) is part of the psychosis Chris is describing.
Fantasy villains, standing in for the civilized greed and disregard for natural limits that is the actual destroyer.
WHO'S AGENDA IS BEING SERVED BY THE WILDFIRES????? Find the scapegoat Kathleen...it won't make the air your children breathe any cleaner.
The truth of the ecological crisis that our technological terraforming, earth shattering civilization has set in motion is a hard truth to accept....but the science in unequivocal. We are where we are, Chris describes it accurately.........and the saddest part is, we'd rather enter the world of fantastical last minute rescues...than face the grim collective reality that is the Future.
The rise of the Christian right is a depressing reality....but so are those wild fires making life miserable in New York...takes Americans away from the equally depressing reality of daily mass shootings I suspect....but hey!!!
Why not Vacate On? Come to Canada for some fishing or hunting in our once glorious boreal?? Be part of the destruction of the lungs of the north...get a load of how we're dealing with our Summer of Fire: It's really a bit of a hoot.
In Alberta, where the disaster began as we fought a polarized election, the winner (our family calls them weiners) is a libertarian champion of the unvaccinated....who recently claims these fires have been started by arsonists.
Not off roaders....or campers with their off road vehicles and big trailors..no....ARSONISTS.
She's likely a hair breadth away from having us imagine Orange jumper clad NDP terrorists running across the country setting fires as part of our madcap efforts to defeat the ruling Conservative Right.
So its not only in America that the seeds of our common destruction are ripening Everywhere, we'd rather engage in a protracted war with each other, than deal with what we're actually facing. The War in Ukraine may be the big metaphor....but everywhere on the planet, the battle between the 'woke' and the sleep walking dead is prospering.
It's good for the arms industry. It's cathartic for many. And it more than proves Chris Hedges dire predictions.
We live in a petro-state and our 'libertarian champion of the unvaccinated;' is beholden to the fossil industry because of campaign contributions. And many who voted for her are convinced that life cannot continue unless we burn every last atom of fossil fuel. There's some irony in the fact that the province with the wildest fires has contributed the most (among Canadian provinces) to the problem.
As an environmentalist, we don't like forest fires! The right would like forest fires in order to blame the left.
And change the subject from what the real crisis is, to a manufactured one that gives them a few more miserable decades to devastate what's left of a livable earth.
"We were raised on robbery' as a great Canadian folks singer put it years ago.......took me a few decades to realize what she meant. But the horrors of our residential schools....our clear cutting and our water intensive tarsands operations have wised me up.
Sucks to be us.
There is no "climate crisis", but there is mass psychosis for holding luxury beliefs.
So what is the massive burning of the Canadian forest and the massive pollution of the North East?
Nature for the fires. Read up on the history of weather and fires in nature. Droughts happen. Flood happen. Always have, always will.
I don't know what you are talking about "massive pollution of the North East"
You are in a complete state of denial!
Be aware that Hedges is essentially pushing the same climate crisis mush on us that is being pushed by Al Gore and John Kerry ... great company!
A lot of people are saying it’s probably the greatest non-crisis ever in the history of America and certainly the world... period.
A non-crisis sold as a crisis.
Next up, climate crisis.
Hedges IS NOT a truth-teller ...
Pay closer attention to the bigger picture of what he is doing here ...
In this article he foments fear by resurrecting the globalist's phony climate crisis narrative ... do we have problems? ... yes, but he wants you to believe that it is an existential threat when it is not ...
And after pointing out many times the problem of divisiveness among us, in his previous article he cynically reached into his bag of wedge issues to resurrect the divisive TRUMP-MAGA connection ... our problem is not TRUMP and MAGA ... the problem is the globalist's relentless pursuit of AGENDA 21/30 ... and on this topic Hedges has NEVER SAID A THING!
But he did say this in 2022: "Let us stand up and resist so future generations will at least say ‘they tried.’ We cannot do this alone ... together we have a chance" ...
BTW, he has refused to comment on THE GREAT RESET, The World Economic Forum and the book THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION ...
Meaning what?
Luxury beliefs are the same as virtue signaling. They are ideas or values that confer status on the elite, but are generally not fully embraced or practiced by them (like Chris using those marvelous Internet connected machines made from plastics, metals and other materials that require organic fossil fuel). Luxury beliefs are a distraction from more pressing social issues. Luxury beliefs put into policy practice often result in negative consequences that are self-perpetuating (certain narratives of problems exploited to signal virtue where if the problems are solved there would be no more virtue signaling opportunity).
Examples include:
- Woke
- Global Warming, Climate Change, Climate Crisis... and other extreme environmentalism
- Legalization of Drugs
- Defunding or weakening of criminal laws, law enforcement and prosecution.
- White privilege
- Implicit bias
- Everything Critical Theory
- Illegal immigration
- Government spending on social programs that create dependency
Basically you're right wing and MAGA, a troll on this thread as you believe the exact opposite of what Hedges believes in. Thanks for making it clear.
Please just post your opposing opinion instead of name-calling.
My opinionm It is is that Hedges is telling the truth. Nothing he's saying about the climate situation is at all controversial--except among the climate-denying, "I know better than all the scientists in the world" crowd. I don't know what goes on instead the heads of people like you--do you actually believe what you're saying? Since I find that incredibly hard to believe, to me more likely you have an agenda to sow doubt about what is really going on. Given that if we don't fight the climate disaster with everything we've got to have a chance of survive as a species, I find what people like you are doing dangerous. The last thing we need when we're headed toward a cliff is for people to say, "Don't Worry, Be Happy".
"Heading toward a cliff". Really? Let's assume that we are "heading for a cliff"... frankly emotive hyperbole that to me sounds just like my conservative friends commenting about the gender pronoun grooming of kids and unrestricted abortion heading us to a cliff. How can anyone believe anybody that uses that type of claim lacking anything close to facts that back it?
You do know that the climate models are wrong at predicting the weather or temperature every year and are re-calibrated. It is the same when science predicted a new ice age was coming. Al Gore wasn't around then to exploit that cult fear for money, but it was the same impulse from the elite. Just like back in the 40s they lament the world was going to be over-populated and people would starve.
You know that the science pinning all the warming to human activity is circumstantial and theoretical.
And most importantly, even if the world stopped burning fossil fuels today, nature emissions of carbon plus what is already in the system would prevent the earth from cooling for over 50 years. That is the science man.
Did you know that artificial nitrogen fertilizer requires fossil fuel and by the politics of "climate crisis" is making fertilizer scarce and over-priced and putting family farms out of business and causing looming food shortages all over the world in the poorer regions?
You know that the electrical grid throughout the nation is a pittance of what is required to replace fossil fuel energy with electric.
You know that people are starting to reject wind turbines and solar farms for their ecological impacts.
So whom are we thinking we are saving by these policies to combat "climate crisis."? Oh yes, elites that have enough money to pay more for their groceries, HVAC and travel. Hence, the luxury beliefs label.
You do know that 10-times the number of people die every year from cold than from heat?
You know that China is building a new coal-fired electrical plant every week.
Science has documented a warming-trend, but they have not predicted what it means for the world and the people of the world. It is nonsense and dangerous to make policy based on these irrational fears of "crisis" because it justifies massive human harm without any justified basis. We see that human harm now as stupid Biden Admin policies have resulted in higher energy costs that have fueled inflation and causes a massive increase in debt.
That was not in any way a personal attack. I was just describing your views. What did I get wrong? By the way, you are the one doing the personal attacking. Calling someone crap and bitch is beneath contempt.
You forgot "the notion that spending an inordinate amount of time convincing people of your half-baked opinions on comment threads is making good use of your time on the planet"
I don't write to try and change minds of the people I am debating. Not at all... I first attract them like flies and then swat them so the other picnic goers reading the comments can draw their own conclusions for which opinion is half-baked political cult mythology and which is and objective assessment based on facts and sense.
Some days I have some time. Other days I do not.
What Leon Trotsky wrote in May of 1940, some 10 months into World War II, could, with minor updating, be used to describe present conditions:
The world of decaying capitalism is overcrowded. The question of admitting a few hundred extra refugees becomes a major problem for such a world power as the United States…
Amid the vast expanse of land and the marvels of technology, which has also conquered the skies for man as well as the earth, the bourgeoisie has managed to convert our planet into a foul prison."
1940 accusations that the world was over-crowded are laughable today given what we have seen since that time.
The hand-wringing malcontents in positions of influence and power can never stop imagining the next existential threat to humanity... never actually grasping that it is them and only them.
I live in Brooklyn, New York. As the smoke crisis was easing, a friend asked about what starts the fires, and two of us listed a few possibilities—lightning, unextinguished cigarette butts, sparks from electricity, etc. She replied, "No, I think there's something they're not telling us." Someone else said that his wife believes the same thing. I felt both enraged and depressed afterward. Half a century of observation and analysis, most of it already proved true, hasn't made a dent on most. Thank you, Chris, for continuing to hammer away in the hope of making a dent.
Hi Chris,
A wonderful sermon on the coming end of times. One suggestion for you, Chris, why not read - yourself - all your articles, and attach the written article as well. Your voice, when heard, sounds like the "voice of authority", or a low-key Jerimiah "crying in the wilderness". We live in a "wilderness", a wilderness of illusions you often speak to, a wilderness of great greed, etc. Your wife does a great job in reading your articles, but [stating the obvious] she's not you. Your voice reading your articles [often sounding like sermons] brings gravitas and your whole experience to your words and message.
Thank you, Chris, for your hard work, your words of wisdom, and your deep, enduring love for humankind.
The collective West has become amnesiacal, where we see war as virtue signalling and have long forgotten the cycles of nature and the truths of history.
Sorry about the fires Chris, but our dumb ass cretinous government is too busy pouring gas on the empire's imperialist wars to bother putting out our forest fires.
It seems we have so many ways of burning down the future in the self-denigrating West.
An eloquent, truthful, mournful essay. So few voices like this. Thank you.
It's Fun Fact day!
1- CO2 is currently 420 ppm, which is 0.042%. Humans are responsible for 3% of that, which is 0.00126%. Thus, 99.99874% of all CO2 is created naturally.
2- At under 270 ppm CO2, plant life dies, and everything else dies with it.
The atmosphere has had periods where CO2 was up to and higher than 4000 ppm. Plant and animal life thrived, Alaska was a jungle.
3- When Mt. St Helens erupted in the early 1980s, it released the same amount of pollution as 270 years of human industrial activity in 1970. That's 270 x 1970 industrial activity--IN ONE DAY.
Let's cut the bullshit. Climate Change (global warming) benefits the oligarchy as they will tax us and starve us to create this 'perfect' world. Anyone tell me why Kyoto Treaty applied to the US but not China? Sorry but anyone with a thinking brain is going to look at the facts and see that this is a scam.
Before you send hate my way, I am ALL FOR taking care of our environment. Let's force recycling...let's force Monsanto to stop forcing Roundup on the world. Let's stop jetting to Davos and maybe use Zoom? Let's stop dumping plastics in the oceans. Let's stop abusing animals with these corporate farms. Let's stop military actions by the US which destroys the environment. Let's stop penalizing family farms at the expense of corporate farms. There is so much to do at the global corporate level but instead the little man has to do all the sacrificing.
C'mon Chris Hedges...are you a corporate sycophant or are your REALLY looking out for the common man? A true leftist? I wonder sometimes.
Drivel alert.
What is the drivel?
Well, to start with, your math. 420 (smoke'm if you got'm!) ppm is 0.000042%
Whatever. The point is we are talking very small numbers here. I am all for climate change as long as the corporations feel the pain and not the little man. Last I checked, there was talk about a carbon tax...and where does that money go? Hmm...let me guess..the Ukrainian Nazis?
Matt we have reached the point where the little man and the corporations are feeling the pain and we all need to do something. There is no more time for waiting for somebody to act.
Agreed but what is the solution? Do we impoverish the lower and middle classes for a carbon dioxide problem that isn't? This is a scam because the beneficiaries are the corporations and the elite. If it truly was something serious, folks would not be jetting to Davos. Why not start with some obvious solutions such as getting rid of plastic bottles and reducing the use of RoundUp and other cancer causing chemicals? What about stopping war and wasting fuel to maintain the 800+ military bases around the world? What about allowing diesel autos in the US which have great fuel economy? What about using nuclear fuel so we can stop stripping the land and putting sulfur in the air? In all of these cases I have listed, corporations (and the military) stand to lose millions of dollars. That is why this is never talked about. However, let's take the cars away from the peons. Let's make them eat bugs. Let's charge them a tax, etc. See the pattern? I am mystified how leftists have it SO right about most things but are SO wrong when it comes to 'climate change.'
Thx Matt ... your comment above was clearly THE most useful comment on this article ...
Hedges is essentially pushing the same climate crisis mush on us that globalist turncoats Al Gore and John Kerry are pushing on us - great company!
Hard to convince any climate denier about the reality of our pending doom. They probably will suffer more than the rest of us because of their feeling of guilt for not trying to avoid the collapse will be added . This is a great report from Mr. Hedges that hopefully will sink in some of those minds. in the report there is a link about the billionaire class trying to scape the catastrophe, and I'm extracting the words of professor Douglas Rushkoff when invited to talk about technology to a group of bankers.
" ...Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked: “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the Event?” "That’s when it hit me: at least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology. Taking their cue from Elon Musk colonizing Mars, Peter Thiel reversing the ageing process, or Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had a whole lot less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether and insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape."
That these people have an intense disliking for life is one of the clearest attributes of each of them. It shows up in everything they believe, say and work for. And yet still we defer to them.
True. "We hang petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. Aesop"
When I was an undergraduate at the University of British Columbia in the 1970's, parking on campus was forbidden, except in gravel parking lots some distance from the heart of the campus. Having walked 15 minutes from my car to the main library, I would carry on farther, and make an attempt to cross a large, flat expanse of bare earth, which from September until at least April or May would be guaranteed to be an ocean of mud. Across this expanse, someone had laid a wooden path, consisting of 1" x 12" planks laid end to end. It helped a lot but not enough. Each day, all day, a vast funnel of pedestrians would converge on each dry end of this bridge. When two walkers going in opposite direction would meet somewhere in the middle, a tacit negotiation would occur, usually involving an awkward sharing of the plank; usually each person would get at least some mud on their shoes as one or both pedestrians would have to take at least one step off of the plank and into the mud. One day, as I walked the plank between Brock Hall and the Student Union Building, I definitely slipped and immediately fell right into the sucking mud. As I cast about looking for one of my shoes from my new, ground level vantage point, I saw a field of white labels attached to sticks placed at regular intervals all over the sea of mud. They weren't actually sticks; no more than 30 to 40 cm tall, they were twigs that the university had planted. As I picked myself up and prepared to carry on, I remembered my Grandmother's saying, repeated often by my mother and her sisters, which had become a family motto of sorts. "Always plant a tree". Now, almost half a century later, all of those twigs have grown into and awesome, engineered canopy of Carbon Dioxide capturing, Oxygen dispensing, Solar Energy powered trees. "Always plant MANY trees" in places where trees will grow. If every human plants one tree for each and every year they have been alive and does so for as long as they have strength or breath, would the doomed planet object? Would things be marginally better, or worse? Resist. Plant many trees; now and forever.
Perhaps best to begin by stopping the massive ongoing logging.
Individuals planting trees would be an approach that Hedges has called symbolic gesture, or boutique activism.
As an x-tree planter, who has planted over 3,000 trees in one day, the answer is free contraceptives for all. Trees store carbon dioxide, and when they die and rot they release it ALL.
Well, no they don't release it all into the atmosphere. Much is recirculated in the soil by fungi, bacteria, termites, and others, and ends up as ... guess... new trees.
Bill wolfe's suggestion is apt. Restrictions on industrial logging may need to be curtailed -- and will be curtailed once the energy and ancillary costs reach cross the threshold where costs exceed any potential for profit.
Bob Johnson has planted over 3,000 trees in one day and has suggested the answer is in providing free contraceptives for all. I respectfully submit that planting 3,000 trees in one day may be a form of contraception in its own right -- and should be continued -- among all those seeking to avoid both 'boutique activism' and parenthood.
Steve Woodward has correctly observed that dead, rotting trees don't release all of their stored carbon dioxide into the atmosphere: "much is recirculated in the soil and ends up as . . . new trees."!
Although my suggestion about planting one tree for each year every individual human being has been alive has been subjected to criticism as 'boutique activism', it might still be effective, especially if taken on with a conscious attitude of religious reverence; it could become a spiritual practice that could well provide genuine renewal for the practitioner, with obvious continuing benefits to the community and beyond.
Yes Plant many trees. And take care of the ones we've got. Cheers
Ronald Wright's "A Short History of Progress" is an astonishing little book. Read it in an afternoon and change your life. His observations and images are succinct and lucid. Most moving among these was his recounting of how the Easter Islanders destroyed their bountiful island: inexorably, every tree was cut down to service a status arms race, as different tribes tried to top each other's moa, the giant stone heads we all know. The passage where he describes cutting down the last tree--they knew it was the last tree, that no more could be coming because rats ate all the seeds, everywhere they looked they could see desolation--but they cut it down anyway.
I turned 53 this year. My life has been a front-row seat to technical civilization destroying itself, bit by bit, in the service of a small sociopathic aristocracy. I can remember life before 1980; even as a child, it was clear the bottom fell out after Reagan, and every Reagan clone after. I knew things would get bad by the late 80s, but had hope during the brief green renaissance we had then, centered around the 1987 Montreal Protocol which banned ozone-destroying CFCs. But the 90s were wasted, and idiot boy-king W sealed the deal.
I'd challenge two things Chris writes.
The common refrain that "the Earth will continue even with all of our damage" belies a lack of understanding Earth's past. The changes we have wrought are of such magnitude and speed there is only one equally destructive event in Earth's history: the asteroid impact that doomed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But our changes compress tens to hundreds of thousands of years of change into a couple centuries. There is really no precedent for what the Earth is experiencing. Hansen's latest paper describes 5°C of warming this century, with up to another 5°C to 2300. This is a sterilization event. Complex life cannot survive such temperatures, and likely changes to a toxic, anoxic atmosphere. It's possible Earth could go back hundreds of millions of years, to where there are only worms, maybe some hardy insects, and algae and similar plants. It will be too hot for everything else.
Second, while it's true that the mass of humanity (or at least rich, Northern humanity) is sleepwalking to their collective doom, I have to give them a break. Since global warming surfaced in the collective consciousness in a big way in the 1980s, the 24/356 disinformation machine cranked into overdrive. As if in denial, or as part of our elites' Ghost Dances, the aristocracy stomped the gas. People are happy to enslave themselves in jobs, so long as they can buy toys to compensate. The commercials will keep people doing that as long as they're on.
There really is no good news. Extinction Rebellion and other groups are well-meaning, but I don't think they really understand the kinds of changes that would really make a difference, and the implications. Any hope of "doing something" about biosphere collapse was really over by 2000. Maybe covid and succeeding diseases will cut human numbers enough to make a difference, but even that I doubt.
Wright also notes that Marx called capitalism "a machine for demolishing limits." It worked...for a while. But then the rubber band snaps back.
It's true the future looks bleak, to understate the case. But, when your explaining this to your kids and theirs, what are you going to say when they ask, "Did you put up a fight?" There is the moral imperative. Cheers
So, homo sapiens is doomed to extinction. Just for the sake of balance, what's the bad news?
A panoply of feelings arise with this piece. And absolutely, resistance as a moral imperative and because we can, and must. Where else can love go?
Three years ago, I think, when the forests in the US northwest were on fire, my stepson, his pregnant wife and toddler son were living in Springfield, OR, just across I-5 from Eugene. Then, at least, the EPA had no rating for anything over 500 ppm. When it reached 775, he made a break for it, going north on smoke-covered I-5 to the Portland airport, and all 3 got on a plane they reasonably feared would be a super-spreader of Covid and flew east. Spent a few weeks in the southern Midwest until the fires finally were extinguished, and went back. Until they could move permanently.
But there is no real shelter from this storm. And, if we do get rid of fossil fuels entirely, after it is way too late, what will happen is the end of the aerosol masking effect of all of this particulate matter that has actually decreased the warming effect of the sun, just as this catastrophic level of particulate matter has seriously decreased the amount of sunlight hitting solar panels. That stuff comes back to earth in a week or two. As opposed to the carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere with it, which stays for many decades. The result of our 100% transition away from fossil fuels will be roughly an almost immediate 1 degree Celsius increase in average global temperature, while any benefit will remain decades away.
We have well and truly screwed the pooch.
I got caught in that same Oregon smoke - had to drive all the way south to Crescent City Ca. to escape.
A few weeks back, I got caught in even worse smoke just north of West Yellowstone, see:
Smoked Out On The Gallatin River
http://www.wolfenotes.com/2023/05/smoked-out-on-the-gallatin-river/
Bill, thank you for the comment, and the link.
I miss the old Chris Hedges, before the pandemic ...
I thought he finally backed-off this ridiculous climate crisis issue ...
But no, here he is again telling us it's real ...
C’mon, man.
Ever hear him mention that the U.S. military actually has THE biggest carbon footprint?
I haven't ...
He’s talked about the military’s contribution to climate change.
Thank you Erin - I stand corrected ...
But he could have mentioned it here and he didn't ...
This is classic post-COVID Hedges ... scared to lay the blame before the people he will no longer directly confront ... he's just not the same guy since the lockdowns ... just an actor now, no longer an activist ...
@PITA Contrarian - I knew something was off with Chris Hedges during COVID - we saw the biggest fascist move ever - forcing people to take a vaccine against their will and government granted corporate immunity to any one that was injured. If there was any reason to step in as a TRUE leftist and speak out that was the time. Chris as silent...and the silence was deafening. My guess is he screwed up but does not have the balls to admit it.
Could not agree more ... I firmly believe he has allowed himself been co-opted by the DS as controlled opposition ... and as an established author, you know he's been told to "stay in his lane" ... may I suggest you make the same post with those stats on his audio version of this article ... the audio versions here on Substack typically have fewer comments and much less "noise" ... the info you shared is just too damn important ...
Ever hear him talking about the effects of the chemtrails?
I haven't ...
I am sorry but you should stay away from what you are smoking ... chemtrails - really? - what about the aliens and the UFO's - the good government has a new agency for this ... WHAT COMES NEXT?? If this US government does not get its act together we are heading for Thermonuclear War and that not the climate crisis will be the end of us ..
Is that all ya got? ...
Is that the best you can do ... suggest I'm smoking something?
The ultimate pathos of our times is that we are fighting military wars, when we should be fighting the war on climate change . Both can kill us. Now it is only a question of which will do it first.
Respectfully disagree Robert ...
Climate change is just another cynical tactic of the globalists ... it's working and Hedges knows better ... he's just here to protect his place in the safe-end of the "independent" media food chain ...
If you don't like the concept of climate change try "environmental degradation." There is a lot of if it ongoing and the reckless capitalists that run the West have for decades been enemies of the environment. Big Oil was aware of this degradation in the 1970's and kept it under wraps.
Your point is well-taken, Robert ...
But I am not taking issue with the terminology used by the globalists ...
Incredible BS, shame on you. So you don't believe in science? Do you believe the world is flat because science says it's round? You are spewing dangerous nonsense. Please go somewhere else with your drivel.
How would you explain the massive burning of the forests in Canada and the massive, dangerous smoke pollution it caused in the Northeast?
I would explain it by saying it's all in line with the plan laid out in the AGENDA 21 handbook made available at the 1992 EARTH SUMMIT in Rio ... 142 countries signed on to it ... what's happening Canada IS NOT an accident ... A21 is a literal rezoning of the entire planet ... I still have an original copy of the A21 handbook, and the orchestrated mayhem in Australia and California BEFORE COVID aligns with a color-coded map that depicts their vision ... BTW, the area in which I live has been designated for "highly regulated use" ...
You make no sense and you are in a state of denial!
Let me put it this way ... I believe the fires were orchestrated by the Canadian govt, at the behest of the WEF ...
Please clarify ... I make no sense on what exactly?
This is not the forum to hodgepodge an argument about climate change.
The arguments are lengthy and time consuming regarding climate change.
They deserve a hearing but not a pecking letters hearing.
You are a discordian wasting people's time in an attempt to attack and have someone defend an 'individual'.
Discordians abound as civilization collapses.
Chucking the Enlightenment for uncritical reasoning is why we are in the predicament we are in today.
THE APOCRYPHAL TWAIN said it best:
“Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and bat you with experience."
This is the biggest problem we face: the lack of critical thinking.
Best use your time, especially if young, to figure out with others how you are going to survive, if you do.
None other than Hitler captured the spirit of un-reason present at the time when he declared:
“We stand at the end of the Age of Reason.… A new era of the magical explanation of the world is rising, an explanation based on Will rather than knowledge.
There is no truth, in either the moral or scientific sense.”
---------- Hitler quoted by Herman Raushning, Gespräche mit Hitler (New York: Europa Verlag, 1940), 210, translated in Gerald Holton, “Can Science Be at the Centre of Modern Culture?,” Public Understanding of Science 2 (1993): 302. For a slightly different translation, see Herman Raushning, Voice of Destruction (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1940), 222–23.
Substack is THE very best forum for exposing the duplicity of Chris Hedges since the lockdowns were declared ... that's why I'm here ... I am not here to annoy you ... I'm here to remind him that there is one person out there who listens very closely to every word he says ... he's no longer one of us, not since the lockdowns ... Hedges has a spouse and a family and ideological soul mates, but anybody outside of his immediate circle is now fair game, including his cult followers who can find no fault with him ... he does not give a hoot about his followers ... you are just a commodity to him ...
Chris doesn't waste his time reading comment threads. He values his time and, when he's not volunteering to teach in prisons, spends it edifying himself reading the work of people the enough discipline to research, write and edit their work (you know, books).
But who am I to stop a man on a windmill chase? Ride on, ya donkey!!
"Chris doesn't waste his time reading comment threads" ...
Oh really! ... how would you know? ...
I've followed him as closely as anybody these past 10-12 years, so closely it was impossible to not notice a dramatic change in him since the lockdowns ... I used to love this guy and on a number of occasions I've also acknowledged that his work with prison inmates is laudable ... but he's made a number of extremely divisive comments since the lockdowns and I've got all the details, dates and verbatim quotes for you ... all ya gotta do is ask ... BTW, so you think I'm a donkey, right? ... I too have worked with prison inmates, quite a bit actually ... I just never took the time to write a book about it ...
Bully on you then... My point in responding is that your obsession with what was a reactionary policy in the midst of an extraordinary global health episode is over the top. What are you doing now (since the lockdowns) to help people? Because pretty much every societal ill has gone off a cliff in the past few years and there is no single point of blame for that, rather a confluence of problems.
Thanks for your incredulity about my statement, but it's a sign of your arrogance to have a default assumption that it's impossible people who know Chris or have even talked to him a few times about his work might have first hand information about something as elementary as the ridiculous amount of time and energy people waste in the intellectual slums that live under actual thoughtful work like Chris's.
If you really have a campaign of information, why not put that energy into your own stack? You're what I refer to as a comment board camper. I guess it's fun and gets the adrenaline going for you... but I only interact with your type in an attempt to shine a mirror on a gigantic waste of time. On your death bed, are you going to look back at your comment board musings and call it a fine contribution to humanity? That's what I wonder...
Got nothing against you Joker ...
Some of your points are reasonable ... but I will keep coming back here to remind his followers that Hedges has repeatedly, emphatically and on numerous occasions urged us to fight the good fight even when things look bleak, only to desert the working class once the lock downs were declared in MAR '20 ... don't forget that the current DS agenda for mass censorship is no less than a direct result of COVID tyranny that Hedges refuses to confront ...
Here are just two quotes from the duplicitous Mr. Hedges which now no longer ring true:
1) "I don't fight fascists because I think will we win, I fight them because they are fascists" ...
2) "Let us stand up and resist so future generations will at least say ‘they tried.’ We cannot do this alone ... together we have a chance" ...
If he truly believed these statements, he'd be out there fighting the good fight with the working class, but he cynically hoped NOBODY would remember the many times he made this noble call to action but refused to show up for work ...
Wish you well Joker ...
It is as real as anything! Are you a MAGA person or something?
I am starting to think this is AI (not a real person, but this thing that according to Mr Harari sooner or later will kill us all ... if the 'other' problems will not kill us first - ha!!)
Good point, hadn't thought about that. Though in this case I think we may be dealing with AU (artificial unintelligence).
Hi, Bob, there appear to be MAGA people trying to crowd out the website with voluminous screeds of their own manifesto in order to form some kind of perimeter within the onslaught of Chris Hedges’ and his reader-admirers’ observations. Someone told me of “Frank Lee” to “pay her no mind”, and it makes it easier to do they when she thinks she has swatted her opponents like flies for the benefit of others at her “picnic”. Do you feel swatted like a fly? I would think not. Like a fly hitting a windscreen, the last thing to go through the MAGA supporter’s mind when their leader goes to jail will be their a***. I worry that there will be more casualties as in January 6th when that happens. The intended satire of my previous comment to Frank Lee was taken as support.. what can you do ?
You're a Chris Hedges cultist ... if Hedges tells you the problem is MAGA, you immediately stand up and clap like a seal ... so don't put words in my mouth, I never said it wasn't real ... the diff between us is that you believe it's an existential threat, I do not ...
And regarding your very predictable response that I must be a MAGA type ...
Here's the response I just made in a thread above ... it still applies ...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Ha! ... hey Mr know-it-all ...
I'm an independent progressive who walked away from the DEM party after 2004 election and I DID NOT vote for either of those sexually-obsessed bullies in the 2020 PRES election ... I think Trump is a complete horse's-ass of a human being ...
Having said that, those MAGA types actually want the same things we do ...
And you know it! ... "
Science makes it 100% clear that it's an existential threat, but you are wiser than the entire scientific community? Incredible.
Ha! ... who's science?
The same science that claimed the VAX was "safe & effective"?
Should have guessed the source of your fury comes out of anti vacc conspiracy theories....rant on.
Not theories ... both Bill Gates and Phizer CEO Albert Bourla publicly admitted in early '22 that the vaccines are not very effective at stopping infections ...
Sad.
Sorry to sadden you ...
Wish you well ...
Thank you for these hard truths Chris. I work in science and frequently people will say to me don't worry science will solve it. Of course those people who say that are not in science. Science will not solve this , only a change in the Capitalist way of living will. One billion spent on CO2 reduction using a coal fired power plant fueled by burning trees, yes burning trees. If we burned all the trees in the u.s. that would power the grid for two years. Science will not save us. Science could have saved us IF we had followed the science decades ago. A new philosophy, Scientific Accelerationism , the thought that science will save us while doing nothing because science will save us.
There are posts appearing on some media sites with photographs of helicopters shooting giant flame throwers at the woods immediately below them in Canada. Weird, huh? Whose agenda is being served with these "wildfires"?
This is a fire prevention technique. You do a controlled burn out a section of forest in the hope of containing the uncontrolled fire. Chris is right. Social media is filled with climate misinformation because it seems people REALLY want to believe that climate change isn't real.
OK
Those posts are pure BS. And you know very well who's posting them.
A....hol...s who want us to deny Climate change and imagine Eco terrorists.
I'm in Alberta. There's real ecological reasons why the boreal is burning.....trying to pin it on your bogus creation (terrorists everywhere ahahahahah) is part of the psychosis Chris is describing.
Fantasy villains, standing in for the civilized greed and disregard for natural limits that is the actual destroyer.
WHO'S AGENDA IS BEING SERVED BY THE WILDFIRES????? Find the scapegoat Kathleen...it won't make the air your children breathe any cleaner.
OK
My compliments for having the restraint to not engage these people, Kathleen ...
Many of Hedges' cult members are completely unreachable ...
St Chris can do no wrong and they can find no fault ...
Trudeau is in bed with the WEF ...
And there's no way this could happen without his knowledge and consent ...