Our problems are not a series of isolated issues. They are an overarching combination of factors that predict catastrophic changes to life on earth. Now. This is mainstream reality. And our burden is caused by the forces of inanity, greed and the impulse to destroy.

The threats are formidable. Nuclear expansion, meltdown, waste and war. Unconstrained development, failed economies. Broken political systems, loss of trust in government, vicious and spiteful politics, right-wing conservatism ascending around the globe. Climate change, poverty, food insecurity, loss of species, contaminated water, poisonous air, overpopulation, hunger, cyberwar. Misogyny and the universal babble of macho values. All of these are combined with obtuseness, stupidity, crudeness and wanting vision. These are the same threats we knew about 50 years ago but of which only the intrepid dared speak. Now they have developed into a full-blown emergency which is being met by those whose values drove the actions that got us here in the first place: the patriarchal power structure.

While the earth, skies and oceans are collapsing, we continue our charge onwards. We spend more to “grow the economy” and muck about the globe trying to “restore America’s position in the world”... as though either would do any good against the forces of a disturbed and angry nature which we are hell-bent on mastering with answers obtained from the very models that brought us to the brink. Yet we remain idealistic. Recently I heard an entertainer, power-tripping on her celebrity, gush, “We created the problems! We can solve them!” Like the melting polar ice cap? Nuclear waste? Dream on, babe. (This, during the delirium leading up to the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December – whose success rate ranges from dubious at best, to abysmal at worst.)

We contradict our environmental ideals by our collective actions. Recycling is not an ideal – ceasing to create garbage and pollution are ideals. We can’t restore the earth with piecemeal and incremental solutions. And we certainly don’t have another fifty years to agree on what is better, rather than what is bigger. The quest for bigger, bigger, more, more, has caused that which imperils us.

So can we keep this up? No. This means we have to change the system. Many have tried and many have failed. Millions have perished in these follies and women’s equity and resources have vanished in every attempt. Yet we are brainwashed into thinking that we have “the best man has to offer – look what happened to the alternatives!” With globalization, countries around the world are now singing the same song. Capitalism has been re-invented and anchors the global power structure. Bigger, bigger, more, more is the global mantra.

How the so-called leaders of this berserk global system deal with these issues is what this blog is here to examine. And what we are here to do is forge rational alternatives to what they come up with – which, good or bad, they will screw up. It’s foreseeable – and historical.

Endnotes.

• Globalization connects us all with each other. This includes people, countries and regimes that are misogynist and totalitarian; which ideologically, legally and culturally oppress women, deny women’s rights and dismantle freedoms which already exist.

• The threats to the earth cannot be considered without integrating all issues that confront women directly. We know what these are. We cannot save the world at the expense of ourselves. What would be the point?

• And – to disarm the Devil’s Advocate.... Let’s say there is no threat to the earth. That there will be no global collapse. That we are too emotional and making a big deal out of nothing, or junk science – and have a death wish, even. That the idea of environmental apocalypse and its flip-flop are bogus problems.

• No – to all that. Whatever the future, we must take responsibility for our own fate. We have squandered our equity in the past by allowing men to control it. They have tainted and debased the planet and dismiss our sovereign right to define a course of action for the future. This must end. And this blog is about the development and exercise of power to end it.