About:
a really inconvenient
truth
Al
Gore’s 2006 An Inconvenient Truth
woke the world up to the dangers of global warming. But, argues Joel
Kovel, while we should be grateful to Gore for sounding the alarm,
we also need to go far beyond his reading of the causes of this crisis
and of what needs to be done about it.
What
is “really inconvenient” is the truth that global
warming is directly related to the uncontrolled growth of the dominant
world capitalist system—a system in which Al Gore has played
a leading role, for which reason he (and the whole movement he represents)
avoids the heart of the matter and distracts us with moral uplift
and technological fixes. Joel Kovel insists, rather, that we need
to address—and transform—the basic social dynamics that
lead to the regime of cancerous production and mindless consumption.
Only by facing up to what is ”really inconvenient” can
we win through to a livable future.
Joel
Kovel is author of The Enemy of Nature, 2d edition (Zed:
2007) and editor of the quarterly journal Capitalism
Nature Socialism. In 2000 he sought the presidential
nomination of the US Green Party.
Cambiz
A. Khosravi
Joel Kovel