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This article on the climate-change-denial culture (from Alex
Steffen, in mid-Dec) is important I think. It turns the
gee-it's-so-difficult-to-all-come-together
how-will-we-ever-come-to-agreement kind of discussion of climate
change, and turns it into a class-struggle argument.<br>
<br>
The idea: We are living in an economic carbon bubble, liable to
burst. The (monetary) values of things we rely on to be stable,
like land values in coastal cities, or the basis of shareholders'
value in fossil-fuel companies which assume that fossil reserves can
be extracted & sold, are subject to enormous shifts as climate
change goes forward. This would be a far greater shift than the
2008 banking collapse. <br>
<br>
With this framing, we understand that climate-change deniers in
government and industry are playing a confidence game. They may
well understand that the bubble will burst in time, due to physical
changes and political ones. What they're trying to do is to keep
the bubble inflated for as long as possible before people stop
believing in it, because the longer it persists the longer they can
profit from it.<br>
<br>
So it's not us vs. the marshmallow of international consensus, it's
us vs. fossil-fuel profiteers on a grander scale than the Wall St.
bankers.<br>
<br>
Steffen does take up the Dems' line on the Russians, using this as
an explanation for why they'd be interested in the US election.
But you don't have to accept that to find the rest of the argument
illuminating.<br>
<br>
(Thank you to environmentalist Katie Mimnaugh, Bcc'ed here, for
pointing out this article!)<br>
<br>
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<div class="section-inner sectionLayout--insetColumn"><b>Trump,
Putin and the Pipelines to Nowhere</b><b><br>
</b><i>You can’t understand what Trump’s doing to America without
understanding the “Carbon Bubble”<br>
</i>Alex Steffen<i><br>
</i></div>
<br>
<a
href="https://medium.com/@AlexSteffen/trump-putin-and-the-pipelines-to-nowhere-742d745ce8fd#.7xynwnxff">https://medium.com/@AlexSteffen/trump-putin-and-the-pipelines-to-nowhere-742d745ce8fd#.7xynwnxff</a>
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