Talkin' Global Warming

This is a talking blues in the style of Chris Bouchillon or Woody Guthrie:


You say it's getting hotter and the world is just a stew
And your CO2 is rising and you don't know what to do
Well, all that means is the devil's got a ruse
And you're just suffering the global warming blues.
all a boilin', a drownin', a swelterin', sweat drippin' down

And you say your politicians are so afraid
of anything else but a carbon trade
or maybe a nuke plant or fake clean coal
And meanwhile the ice melts on both your poles.
no polar bears, no penguins, no islands in the wide Pacific

So, you take the situation in your own two hands
And you send the politicians to a peanut stand.
You make the big bosses turn their dampers down
and you sweep their carbon footprints out of town.
no pollutin', change your ways, cool it down now or be replaced.

Finance Capital and Class Society

Karl Marx explained how capital works in Das Kapital. An industrialist takes money (M), makes a commodity (C), and sells it for more than it cost him to make (M'). So, industrial capital grows by M-C-M'. A finance capitalist takes money, loans it, and gets back more money. Thus, finance capital grows by M-M'. Marx predicted that finance capital would eventually take control, and Lenin documented that that was happening a century ago. Today, finance capital has completely consolidated its control over the world economy. Naturally, it's preferable to make money without having to deal with messy commodities or large work forces so finance capitalists essentially outsource commodity production to industrial capitalists whom they control because they control the flow of capital. Unfortunately, finance capitalists are so rapacious that they wreck the economy as occurred in 2008. In the USA, they funded the export of industrial jobs to countries with cheaper labor forces and laid the basis for the decline of the US economy.

In our increasingly global economy, finance capitalists are the ruling class. Like all ruling classes, they will do everything in their power to stay in power, no matter how destructive that is for everone else. They are so destructive that they are capable of bringing down capitalism itself. Unfortunately, they probably won't do that in time to prevent global warming, peak petroleum, and an array of other looming threats that humanity faces.

If there were any doubt which class Barack Obama answers to, consider only 3 names: Summers, Geitner, and Bernanke. These are the leading representatives of finance capital of our time. When they were appointed and confirmed, the message was crystal clear. Finance capital calls the shots, just as it always has. These men played key roles in causing economic catastrophe and in making sure that finance capital did not pay the price. In fact, they rewarded exactly those who caused the current crisis.

So, there is no shift in policy by the Obama administration. There are stylistic differences, small concessions, but no major changes in economic, foreign, or military policies. Finance capital is still firmly in charge, and the US Supreme Court delivered them even more power.

This is certainly a pessimistic view but one based on reality. It seems ironic that our species could perish because we lack the political skills to implement real solutions to the many problems that face us. As Mark Graham's song describes intelligent cockroaches of the distant future reflecting on humanity, "Their Brains Were Small, and They Died."