My son Joe loves DeKalb and still makes the trek from Chicago to play clarinet in the DeKalb Municipal Band, in existence since 1854. We were all disappointed a few weeks back when a concert was cancelled due to local air quality. The cause was Canadian wildfires caused by global warming. Who would have thought such a thing?
One outfit that did was Exxon, one of the oldest, most powerful corporations on the planet. Scientists were concerned about the effects of burning fossil fuels, so in the 1970s, Exxon had its own crack team of scientists study the situation and concluded it was a problem, on the scale of “end of the world” kind of problem.
Rather than being a prophet warning us of impending catastrophe, Exxon decided it would simply stick to making profits. It did use the expensive scientific data it had collected. Exxon waged a forty-year propaganda campaign of climate change denial. It wasn’t personal. Folks at Exxon weren’t evil. They’re just part of the system, capitalism, with the focus on maximization of profit. Individualize profits, socialize costs, maximize profits. It’s the way the system is supposed to work. Even if it results in the end of the world.
We can imagine that end: an uncontrollable pandemic, a nuclear holocaust, global warming, even an asteroid smashing into earth. But we can’t imagine the end of capitalism? We better, because one way or the other, it’s the end of the world as we know it.
I’m Dave Rathke and that’s my Perspective.
