I’m told “The nonprofit Project Drawdown, which compiles research from an international coalition of scientists, says that “a plant-based diet may be the most effective way an individual can stop climate change.” Adopting such a diet should be our first act of revolt. The second should be carrying out civil disobedience to disrupt the extraction of fossil fuels, along with massively reducing our consumption of those fuels. The third, through mass mobilization, should be to overthrow the corporate state and nationalize the energy sector, the banking industry, utilities and public transportation in addition to dismantling a war machine that in waging futile and unwinnable wars consumes nearly half of all government expenditures. It is a lot to demand. But if we do not succeed, the human race will disappear.” Chris Hedges

So there, in a nutshell, is the green/left agenda, with Antifa as the shock-troops in the streets “carrying out civil disobedience” and “mass mobilization” with the intent “to overthrow the corporate state”, not noticing that “nationaliz[ing] the energy sector, the banking industry, utilities and public transportation” has, in itself, changed the Venezuelan diet to the Maduro weight loss plan, vegan or otherwise, and buried 100 million innocents in the 20th century alone.

So, clearly, such socialism is no solution. A crippled state cannot react at all. It cannot invest in sustainable energy nor reforestation nor population management nor research recycling nor seed its coastlines with kelp forests. It just flips people into survival mode a little faster and brings the guns onto the streets a little sooner. A “war machine that in waging futile and unwinnable wars” against ourselves still “consumes nearly half of all government expenditures.” Whether is an international assault or a civil repression will make no difference. Already many countries are arming their police in preparation.

Whilst it’s true that “The inability to see what is in front of our eyes replicates the blindness of all past civilizations that celebrated their eternal glory at moments of precipitous decline,” and “The difference is that life across the whole planet will go down this time” and “It is comforting to pretend this is not happening,” not to “foster hopes of human progress” is a faster suicide. Hope is more than “illusions [fated] only tranquilize us,” it is also the essential oxygen of inspiration and effort, for without it we are lost “at a moment when we should be rising” in awareness and response.

A “collective fury against those who are orchestrating our doom” is little more than blame-shifting, a global-scale othering, a negation of responsibility for the consequences of safe pensions, smooth suspension and constant hand-held communication; and antibiotics, safe Cesareans and spectacles. These things are not separable.

Without our desires and insecurities there would be no corporations: they are us, we are they. Their nature is our nature. Denial is futile. They built the roads you went to school on and now march down in protest; they ship the quinoa and goji berries across oceans to sate self-satisfaction; they built your airliner and you holiday hotel – and you will not tear them down because you love them.

Both compassion and competition must be mobilised if we are not to war amongst ourselves and send our scapegoats to the gulags and the gas-chambers; both are intrinsic facets of our nature and would not exist within us if there was no advantage to them, and to exclude one or the other is to attempt to climb a mountain with one hand – when we have two at our disposal.

Life will only “go down” for a while, and only in the forms we know it now; a biological recession on a geological timescale. Such cataclysms have occurred before, and will recur indefinitely. Life finds a way. It is the clinging to what we know and the failure to adapt and adjust that causes the greatest pain.

Annica, annica, annica.