Tag Archives: Capitalism and Greed

THE BEADY ASKS : WHERE IS THE WORLD GOING ?

07 Sunday Aug 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change.

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To answer that, we have to think about how we got here.

With the power of the gun, greed, colonization, religion, exploitation, wars, to name just a few.

There have been over 250 major wars in the world since World War II, in which 23 million people have been killed. Three times more people have been killed in wars in the last 90 years than in all the previous 500.  More than 500 million small arms and light weapons are in circulation around the world.

There are approximately 30,000 nuclear warheads in the world today.

Current global military spending is more than the total annual income of the poorest 45% of the global population.

Between 54 and 80 million people have been killed in genocides in the the last century. Between 170 and 360 million people have been killed, in total, by governments (democide) in the 20th century, apart from war.

About 246 million, or 1 out of 6, children ages 5 to 17 worldwide are involved in child labour.

Half of the forests that originally covered 46% of the Earth’s land surface are gone.

 Based on current trends, an estimated 34,000 plant and 5,200 animal species – including one in eight of the world’s bird species – face extinction.  Almost a quarter of the world’s mammal species will face extinction within 30 years. Up to 47% of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction.

There are over 45 million refugees and internally displaced people in the world.

And all of this is just scratching the top of the iceberg.  

At the present time we have the added darkness of  – climate change – pandemics – social media tearing what left of dotmocracy asunder, out of date world organisations, politicians now middle men to the internet, and governments trying to buy there way to economic success.

How people who are already struggling will deal with it is unclear never mind  where is it leading us?

On top of this we have technology and political trends aligning against mega power like Russia- China – the USA.

 

10 Things Going On In The World Right Now That You Need To Know About

It is however clear that globalization is on its last legs and it replacement probably wont go well.

We all want to know the future, and unfortunately the future is coming like it or not.

Accordance with Moore’s Law, we’ll see an acceleration in the rate of change as we move closer to a world of true abundance or true disaster. There will be will 100 billion connected devices, each with a dozen or more sensors collecting data.

This will lead to a trillion-sensor economy driving a data revolution beyond our imagination .

With a trillion sensors gathering data everywhere (autonomous cars, satellite systems, drones, wearables, cameras), you’ll be able to know anything you want, anytime, anywhere, and query that data for answers and insights.

Biometric sensing (wearables) and AI will make each of us the CEOs of our own health.

The screen as we know it — on your phone, your computer and your TV — will disappear and be replaced by eyewear.

The result will be a massive disruption to the fundamental ways we operate as humans.

In a decade, it will be normal for you to give your AI access to listen to all of your conversations, read your emails and scan your biometric data because the upside and convenience will be so immense.

As well as processing lots of data on us, they must gradually grind down our distinctiveness, our individuality, our eccentricities so that we become a series of archetypes. Then, our emotions – our fears, insecurities, desires, cravings – can be more easily gauged, exploited and plundered by advertisers.

With it, our ability to empathise and compromise is eroded.

We live in different information universes, chosen for us by algorithms whose only criterion is how to maximise our attention for advertisers’ products to generate greater profits for the internet giants.

WITH DATA COLLECTION our rulers are better positioned than ever to manipulate our thinking and control what we do. They can dictate the political discourse more quickly, more comprehensively, more cheaply than ever before.

If so, what are we to do about it?

It is hard to piece together all this information in a way that gives a comprehensive picture of what the end times will look like.

Social media and the AI behind it are one of the multiple crises we can no longer ignore as capitalism reaches the end of a trajectory it has long been on.

We are fast reaching a kind of human “event horizon”, with our societies standing on the brink of collapse.

Why?

Because we are unable to enact long term thinking against short-term thinking based on religion of profit at all costs.

As if somehow, magically, each corporation acting in its selfish interest is going to produce the best result. … What’s frightening – and what hopefully is the last straw and will make us wake up as a civilisation as to how flawed this theory is in the first place – is to see that now we are the tree, we are the whale.

We are more profitable to a corporation if we’re spending time staring at a screen, staring at an ad, than if we’re spending our time living our life in a rich way.

Our attention is being mined by worthless platforms, as our world is falling apart the biggest wipe-out of wealth in history is coming.

Humanity is greater than the rules of a state, or Wall street.

There is now digital transfers of value and assets.

Earth can sometimes feel like the last place you’d want to be.

It’s important to realize that no combination of renewable energy sources can power the modern industrial world at current levels of consumption.

“Progress has nowhere to go, without a unliveable earth and it is going there in a hurry.”

What Are We Going to Do about It?

Evolution doesn’t run backward.

We face an unliveable future, yet we can’t go back. We are stuck with knowledge, and knowledge is dangerous in the hands of humans. There’s no solution to that problem, and all we can do is be more aware of our weaknesses.

Climate change will eventually force us to do,  “whatever is conducive to sustainable participation in Earth’s ecosystems

When we better understand the world and our place in it perhaps we come to an understanding that we have to live together to survive together .

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS: GOVERNMENTS MUST GO BEYOND GROWTH (GDP) AND FOCUS INSTEAD ON A NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT.

02 Tuesday Aug 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change., Fourth Industrial Revolution., GDP., How to do it., Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Life., Our Common Values., Purchasing Power., Purpose of life., State of the world, Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Twelve minute read) 

This is an easy thing to say but to implement is another kettle of fish because it requires a paradigm shift in the way developed countries approach economic policy.

Changing the world seems like one of these huge, impossible things that no man can possibly achieve.

It requires a rethink how we define and measure economic success.

In order to find new ways to transform the world we live in goals will have to be built into the structures of the economy from the outset, rather than hoped for as a by-product, or added after the event.

Everything that goes around, comes around.

People always wish for change because it’s the constant thing in this world, and they always have this deep, inner desire to improve things even if there’s nothing to improve.

Every people I know wants change, but for what purpose exactly?

Why do we crave change?   And how exactly to change? 

How exactly can you change without making mistakes?

How to actually know you’re making a change if you don’t know your objective?

What if there’s nothing to be changed?

Where do we start?

Change comes in learning from the mistakes of our past.

Realising that it’s a mistake.

When things stay the same and your life is getting worse and worse, then it’s time for a change.

                                   ————————-

Broadly speaking an economy is an interrelated system  of human labour, exchange, and consumption. 

Economic policy should prioritise environmental sustainability, economic resilience, reducing inequality and improving wellbeing economic growth in OECD countries have generated ‘significant harms’ over recent decades – including rising inequality and catastrophic environmental degradation.

Instead of focusing on gross domestic product (GDP), now is the time to  prioritise environmental sustainability, improving wellbeing, reducing inequality and strengthening economic resilience. 

A return to the status quo would be disastrous so governments that are spending unprecedented sums to rebuild their economies after the Covid pandemic, must look beyond growth alone to prioritise the needs of people and planet.

It argues that this will require a new role for the state, with governments becoming more entrepreneurial, seeking to shape markets and steer the process of economic change, not simply correcting market failures.

                                    ———————-

So where are we?

Various layers of inequality have being exposed and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

It has laid bare risks we have ignored for decades: inadequate health systems; gaps in social protection; structural inequalities; the digital divide, environmental degradation. the energy sources we count on are limited, just like water.

In fact, most wars and political conflicts in the world start because of lack and/or need for energy resources. In America alone, the consumption of energy rises every year, and it doubles every 20 years. 

The climate crises is showing that computers and software will not be able to replicate human creativity.

This “new kind of social contract” is required to transform the relationship between the state, business, civil society and citizens.Industryweek 34572 Understanding 5g 5g 623431736

5G as on par with the printing press, electricity and the steam engine –

Self-driving cars, remote robotic surgery, autonomous weapons — all that and much more is set to be delivered via the 5G wireless network, which promises to transform our lives and add trillions of dollars to the global economy every year.

This leap forward in connectivity will be key to the spread of artificial intelligence and machine learning, enabling massive amounts of data to be collected from remote and mobile sensors and analysed in real time.

Drive everything from home appliances that order groceries to autonomous vehicles to smart cities.

Given the power of 5G technology, it is no surprise that it has also become a proxy for the broader power struggles. 

However Technology alone will not change the core problems in the world. 

Why?

  • The Fourth Industrial Revolution can’t be a panacea for the problems caused by our obsession with unchecked economic growth. Over the past couple of decades, the world has become enamoured with the transformative power of technology.
  •  In spite of all the hype, digital technology could not prevent nor control the spread of the coronavirus.
  • Technology won’t solve the climate crisis, prevent the recurring wildfires.

                     ———————————————-

The last thing the world needs is another ‘revolution’ that ignores the external cost to society of our unchecked obsession with economic growth at all cost.

We all think time and money is so important, but are our health, peace and happiness not more important?

We’re in this together and it can only be solve together. 

We can protest, till we are blue in the face, demand change till the cows come home, hold world conferences till we run out of air.  There is however one weapon if we all of us were to use it collectively that would bring change – that is  Buying power.

Doing the right thing for the environment, pro-actively using it to effect change.

In this uphill battle, the good news is that solutions are out there.  

Business would  be held accountable for addressing local and
global societal needs.

Industry players that suffer would not helplessly standing by as their revenues and profits dwindled, they would act intensified competition.

But is this inevitable? Can companies learn to adapt and react to ensure their continued success and prosperity? The answer is yes.

Since buyer power is dynamic, just visualize this scenario.

What would happen if we all refused to pay our energy bills till the Government put in place non repayable grants to install solar panels or insulation. 

There is no right answer here but it would be impossible to either jail or fine everybody.

It is therefore important to understand what choices we have available to us to determine what type of buyer we will be, and therefore where our strengths lie.

That strength would be a campaign conducted on our mobile phones. 

Once a month campaign targeting profit for profit sake, demanding change.

Your choices would impact their bottom line.

Resilience – not technology – is the answer to our biggest

challenges.

It’s either an entirely environmentally-friendly existence. 

Or are we just going to except a burning world with wars and mass migration till there is nothing left to live for. 

 

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS. WITH THE OUTBRAKE OF WAR IN THE UKRAIN THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR THE REST OF US IN THE WORLD TO CLOSE OUR EYES AND GO ASLEEP.

09 Wednesday Mar 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Profiteering., Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, The Ukraine.

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( Seven-minute read) 

The war will have many far-reaching consequences, most of which we can’t predict yet. It is not mature enough to cause a major market crash which is an unfortunate possibility.

Apart from weapon manufacturing companies like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin — who are openly telling their investors that tensions between the countries are good for business, there will be what I call Scap other companies making profiteering where the sun does not shine. 

So we need a list of these companies TO EXPOSE them and BOYCOTT them.

For now, the sanctions imposed on Russia are not targeting energy. But that can change if the conflict evolves further. ( IT HAS JUST BEEN ANNOUNCED AS I WRITE THIS POST THAT THE USA/EUROPEAN UNION/AND BRITAIN ARE TO STOP PURCHASING RUSSIAN OIL AND GAS.) 

RUSSIAN CRUDE IS HEAVY OIL. AS SUCH IT CAN NOT TO REPLACED WITH OIL FROM OTHER SOURCES AS MOST REFINERIES IN EUROPE ARE SET UP TO HANDLE HEAVY OIL TO PRODUCE PETROL. 

Of about five million barrels of crude oil Russia exports each day, more than half of that goes to Europe.  Russian gas accounts for about 40% of the EU’s natural gas imports.

In the meantime the other wars – Afghanistan – Ethiopia – Yemen – Syria – South Sudan –  Israel/Palestine  – Equality vs Equity – Covid – all but ignored. 

There are 10 official wars and 8 active military conflicts recognized by the United States.  Everyone requires the same level of sanctions which are now to be applied to Russia.  Is Putin pulling the strings?

                                            —————————–

We already have an ever-growing list of companies taking action against Russia with “Collateral Damage” to all of us so the opportunity to hike prices by blaming the war is yet to be seen.

Large corporations will no doubt capitalize on anti-war sentiments, the same is doubly true for oil companies, banks, and energy.

Doesn’t it make you feel good knowing that these multi-billion dollar corporations will be able to cash in on the death of thousands of innocent Ukrainians?  

The fact that advertisers have to use the values of our movement to sell us products reflects just how strong our anti-war struggle has become.

This gobbledegook is the kind of thing that corporations pay tens of thousands of pounds for.

Sizewell

So let’s start with THE EDF. 

French nuclear stations are the backbone of the European power system, and the outages have contributed to higher power prices across the continent along with the wider gas supply crisis.

Here is an 85% state-owned company that has had a monopoly for years on energy squandering billions in the public funds now increasing the price of electricity by 54% coming in April amid a cost of living crisis as inflation and food costs rise.

EDF Energy was compelled to help out as a swathe of energy suppliers collapsed in the U.K., getting paid 168 million pounds to take on more than 200,000 domestic customers from failed providers. In total, the company added more than 650,000 residential accounts last year.

It was fined £6m by Ofgem for sending “misleading signals” to the National Grid about how much electricity its power plants could generate. The energy regulator found that for more than two years, EDF frequently inflated the minimum amount of power that it said its West Burton B generator plant could supply.

While EDF normally generates the bulk of its electricity from its network of 56 nuclear reactors across France, many are near the end of their 40-year lifespans and around a dozen have been shut or will be soon to carry out safety inspections over corrosion risk.

Much of the £20bn construction cost of the new EDF nuclear plant Hinkley Point C nuclear plant in southwest England in 2026, will be funded by the addition of £1 a month to consumer bills applied through a mechanism currently making its way through parliament.

This is what is to come.  EDF the energy price cap on certain deals is rising by 54% a year.  The price cap is not an absolute limit on your bills.

The sheer scale of these energy bill increases will cause real concern and fear for families and households. 

                                        —————————

“Successive governments have welcomed the oligarchs and their money with open arms, providing them with a means of recycling illicit finance through the London ‘laundromat’, and connections at the highest levels with access to UK companies and political figures.

For example 

Lubov Chernukhin is a Russian banker and married to Putin’s former finance minister. She has spent a fortune buying time with politicians, including £160,000 to play tennis with David Cameron and Boris Johnson. She paid £135,000 for “a night out with Theresa May”. The most recent donations—last quarter—to the Tory party include £80,000 from Chernukhin.

                                    ————————-

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is casting a pall over neighboring countries, with war jitters spurring panic-buying of gasoline, cash shortages, energy price hicks, etc. 

After reading about the greed and hypocrisy of all these corporations I bet I know what you are thinking. You are going to reject all this consumerism and get yourself a Stop the War Coalition T-shirt. Am I right?

If so, is it a case of subliminal advertising? Or is it the power of one of the largest political movements this country has ever seen? You decide.

Today, Russia provides 10% of the world’s oil. Do you want to make that oil worthless?

Show Putin, you don’t need it. That’s what accelerating the transition to a clean energy future will do.  

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS. 2022 WILL BE THE YEAR OF DIASTER CAPITALISM.

31 Friday Dec 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change., Digital age., Disaster Capitalism., Disasters., Environment, Extermination., Fourth Industrial Revolution., How to do it., Human Collective Stupidity., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Imagination., Inequality., Life., Money in Politics., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., POST COVID-19., Privatization, Purpose of life., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Transition period or Implication period., Unanswered Questions., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., Wealth., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Aid., World Economy., World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics

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( Fifteen-minute read) 

When I first started looking at disaster capitalism, it was in the context of warfare and counter-terrorism, now it’s privatized exploitation of  Pandemics and Climate Change. 

During a major crisis, regular people are understandably focused on the everyday challenges of surviving. They rarely can also worry about private industries pushing local policy proposals that might negatively impact their lives never mind cashing in on Pandemics and Climate change.

Pandemics might be avoidable in the future but what is unavoidable is a Future Climate that stands to send more unprecedented emergencies, inconsistency, and destruction our way.

(Though it’s still feasible to prevent the planet from becoming completely uninhabitable, saying its crunch time is a massive understatement.)

They both provide the very conditions that give rise to disaster capitalism, which is developing more frequently with more companies and wealthy ‘Philanthropists’ seeing both as a growth sector, not to mention Sovernity Wealth Funds which are investing in everything from drinking water to you name it.

Why? 

Because they stand to make substantial financial returns for their beneficiaries and if managed properly could be contributing to sustainable development in a meaningful way. However, a deeper understanding of the drivers and influences of investor organizations is required to mobilize their capital effectively. 

Globally, sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) are a major source of capital that has the potential to invest for the long term in sectors that desperately need it. While Philanthropists donations usually only represent 0.05% of the billion accumulated.

(A fraction of the spoils of neoliberal tech capitalism, in the name of generosity, do not try to address the problems of wealth inequality which is created by a social and an economic system that allowed those spoils to accrue in the first place. They are small contributions to a large problem that were created by the success of the industry he or she is involved in.)

List of Top 8 World's biggest Philanthropists in 2021                                ————————-

Let’s put a magnifying Glass Philanthrocapitalism.

Philanthropy serves to legitimize capitalism, as well as to extend it further and further into all domains of social, cultural, and political activity.

Now don’t get me wrong.

Their donations are welcome, however, they are not the simple act of generosity they pretend to be. In this greedy world, it is good to see wealthy individuals repaying to help fix problems that their companies have often caused in the first place.

The risk of philanthrocapitalism is a takeover of charity by business interests, such that generosity to others is appropriated into the overarching dominance of the CEO model of society and its corporate institutions.

Today, large organizations can amass significant economic and political power, on a global scale, and essentially, what we are witnessing is the transfer of responsibility for public goods and services from democratic institutions to the wealthy, to be administered by an executive class.

When this happens what we witness is, on one hand, is exploitative of labor practices or corporate malpractice being swept under the carpet while the donator is accruing significant commercial, tax, free publicity, and political benefits.

Democracy is sacrificed on that altar of executive-style empowerment. 

The nature of this apparent charity should be openly questioned from the outset.

Because this reformulation of generosity – in which it is no longer considered incompatible with control and self-interest – is a hallmark of the “CEO society”: A society where the values associated with corporate leadership are applied to all dimensions of human endeavor.

What it does suggest, however, is that when it comes to giving, the CEO approach is one in which there is no apparent incompatibility between being generous, seeking to retain control over what is given, and the expectation of reaping benefits in return.

  What can be done?

As historian Mikkel Thorup explains, philanthrocapitalism rests on the claim that “capitalist mechanisms are superior to all others (especially the state) when it comes to not only creating economic but also human progress, and that the market and market actors are or should be made the prime creators of the good society”.

Now take Climate change which is going to take trillions to combat.

As global warming augments cycles of fire, flood, hurricanes, and viral mutations, we learn to live in anticipation, from emergency to emergency, sometimes even before the deaths have occurred.

Disaster capitalism and philanthrocapitalism will not work to revert the outcomes of Climate Change nor will technology, the unloving God. 

Why? 

Because Capitalism has turns everything including us into a product to be traded, resulting in most of the wealth in the world now owned by 1% of its population. 

Before ( not too long ago ) there were Markets now we have Market Societies thanks to the buying of shares and trading them, complements of the British Indian Company.  So a society that is organized around the principle that companies should not be prevented from making things that kill people must also accept as ‘normal’ that many people will die in large numbers from these things.

 But what makes something a disaster?

Certainly what makes a disaster is when the victim is humanly itself.

From epidemiological forecasters to genetic epidemiologists and computational and zoonosis biologists — are the new oracles upon whose prophecies financial markets rise and fall but the awaiting climate disaster will expose a world characterized by gross inequality that is getting worse and worse, year by year.

From the perspective of disaster capitalism, we might say that what makes COVID-19 a disaster is its arrival in woefully underinsured countries, unhealthy populations.

If we had a healthier population, would COVID-19 be considered a disaster? Possibly or perhaps not. To be sure, the virus is deadly, but like other disasters, the actual arrival of COVID-19 magnifies pre-existing vulnerability in ways that also figure in the calculus of disaster capitalism.

The uneven way the climate crisis will continue to impact certain countries. If private interests are already prepped to engage in disaster capitalism, those devoted to building a better world should be prepared with alternatives.

There is no such thing as a ‘natural disaster.’ There is also no such thing as a natural or certain response. But there is preparedness.

THE PROBLEM IS THAT WITH CAPITALISM IT IS UNABLE TO TACKLE SITUATIONS THAT ARE NOT TRADABLE.

As money materialized from fresh air the essentials for life will be traded – freshwater- energy- food- healthcare – education – data – etc. 

We must arm ourselves with knowledge, and laws that ensure transparency. 

What we have at the moment is the transfer of power to technology which we know sweet fuck all about with no regulations. 

Unrivaled power.

One only has to look at Jeff Bezos, the Bransons, the Mark Zuckerberg’s, Apple, Google, etc.

We all work for one or the other for free while they entertain themselves blasting off to space with friends and worthless actors in giant phallic symbols of power. 

However, the real story will unpack differently long before anyone lives on another planet. It will be how our mental well-being – is impacting every facet of our lives.

The total mortality from COVID-19 on a global scale is as yet unknown, but we have been thinking of it as a disaster for weeks now.

What exactly is the disaster, then?

Pandemics have become a dominant framework through which government and financial resources are mobilized in Global Health.

There’s been a lot of dithering about whether or not COVID-19 is a disaster, meanwhile, inequality is growing, and both corporations and the wealthy find ways to avoid the taxes that the rest of us pay.

There is the virus, and then there is the societal reaction of bringing our entire fiscal and economic infrastructure to a near-complete standstill.

Morbid diseases that persist as chronic forms for years but eventually kill more people to seem less like disasters.

It’s not a moment to sort of sit on the sidelines and hope for the best.

We all appreciate with the current pandemic that some are making hay while the sun shines, at our expense. Unfortunately, there is little point in getting the Jabs, to extend your time on earth if the earth itself is dying and what remains is been turned into trading products.

You’ve got to fight for your vision of for-profit corporate solutions that may succeed in creating company profits but ultimately fail in terms of democracy, fairness, and justice.

Conclusion:  

To address the problems with greed and power create, we must create equality and this can not be done in a Profit-seeking Capitalist way of trading our way out of the pending disasters.  Wall Street will never close.  

So here is an idea that might help.

Non-Trading Capitalism.  

Green non-tradable bonds to be issued online at a global scale, with guaranteed percentage returns, with a yearly prize draw.

Or

Place a 0.05% World Aid Commission on all tradable financial instruments. (see previous posts) 

Either of the above could be implemented with the click of a switch ensuring a perpetual source of disaster non-profitable funding. 

Both would create trillions and allow fairness and involvement of us all.

It is perhaps worth remembering that capitalism, like its alternatives, is an adaptation to circumstances. It is not a virtue, not a standard for judgment, not a measure of right or nobility. It’s just another ‘ism’

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS. ITS IS NOT CLIMATE CHANGE OR COVID THAT IS THE PROBLEM. IT IS AS SHOWN BY COP26/G20 THE UNFFETTED PERSUIT OF ECONOMIC GROWTH AND PROFIT .

16 Tuesday Nov 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., A Constitution for the Earth., Capitalism

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(Two-minute read) 


COP26/G20 ARE NOW BOTH PERFECT MODELS OF OUR COLLECTIVE FAILURE TO BUILD INSTITUTIONS CAPABLE OF COPING WITH, DEEP LONG-TERM. EXISTENTIAL PROBLEMS CAN NOT BE SOLVED BY EITHER GOING TO WAR OR RELYING ON FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES.

Now we find that the entire globe is trapped in the gruesome logic of Capitalism.

It’s perfectly OK for rich countries to continue doing something that is destroying the planet as long as the profit reaped will allow them to insulate themselves from the consequences.

We, that is all of us homo sapiens rose above the lesser animals thanks to our ability to wield logic and reason, yet we have managed to get ourselves to a place where the knowledge of what is driving all of the wildfires, floods, droughts, and disasters is not enough to enable us to do anything meaningful to stop it.

Of course, we need a price on carbon. Of course, we need extremely strict emissions regulations, massive green energy investments, and a maniacal focus on sustainability fierce enough to radically change a society that is built to promote unlimited consumption.

Capitalism is a machine made to squeeze every last cent out of this planet until there is nothing left.

We can either fool ourselves about that until it kills us, or we can change it.

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. HAVE WE BECOME DESENSITIZED ?

27 Wednesday Oct 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Afghanistan, Civilization., Cry for help., Dehumanization., Desensitization., Disasters., Emotions., Foreign Aid., Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Post-Covid-19, Purpose of life., Reality., Refugees., Survival., Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The Obvious., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( Seven-minute read) 

Just the other day I watched a news report on Afghanistan with shocking images of starving children.

It’s not as if this is the first time starving children grace our television screens.   

It was predicted that if the country does not get aid there will be a human disaster with the loss of millions of lives. 

We all could be forgiven for not remembering the Irish Potato famine that killed around a million, but not the Famine in Ethiopia 1983-85 that killed around the same number of people. 

Since then the world is now confronted with the realities of climate change – streams of migration while the covid pandemic has killed 4,984,325 people so far from the outbreak to October 27, 2021, which is a contributor to our desensitization of suffering a very complex topic.

However I believe the world rich countries, paints it as something almost good, necessary, and a part of life.

The more we are exposed to these things, or let children be taught it’s normal through movies, books, and so forth, the initial shock becomes less and the stark colors in which they were viewed, become duller.

This may raise in some readers’ minds the question of what we ourselves actually believe.

Take our belief in God.

He or she or it is becoming nothing less than the process of opening our lines of contact with the unknown potential of the universe. God represents the direction of our wonder – not the destination. 

Which leads to no easy answers, just more questions.

However, if we humans could come together in harmony with the real universe, our troubled species would have its best chance to enjoy this jewel of a planet, unique probably in all of the cosmos. 

The hope of this happing in a throwaway world is negotiable, leaving people feeling defeated and powerless.

Every daylight hour we are bombarded by pleas for help to save something, now including the planet. Suffering seems to abound and we see it so often on the news or in movies that we’ve become desensitized.

“I think if people see this footage they’ll say, ‘Oh my God that’s horrible,’ and then go on eating their dinners.”

It’s no secret that the world is falling apart as we know it,  people are becoming desensitized to the events that are shaping our society.  

Desensitizing is a tool, and the world uses it to change and shape our thinking, alter our perspective and mold us into the way they want, too emotionally exhausted to feel anything. 

Just because it’s “normal” in today’s age, should we be in less shock, disgust, or lessen the intensity of emotion towards it?

What’s the harm?

It is not something to just succumb to, we must choose what we allow it to impact because it takes us farther away from the rawness and reality 

It is how we use it and allow it to affect us that any understanding of this relationship can we hope to achieve behavioral change.

Indeed, the world is in a chaotic and cruel place but what happens to us that we lose the deep sense of caring – something that would have been abhorrent to us in the past is not despicable anymore. We accept the fact that this is what the world has become

But it is not about pictures or videos anymore.

We are simply desensitized to tragedies happening around us because they are becoming less like tragedies and more like everyday actions.

It is very easy to point fingers at platforms such as Facebook, & Twitter. But both of them are flexible and adaptable, they are not an omnipotent force governing what the people chose to say or think.

As far as it goes, Social Media platforms are objective viewers of the world.

They are merely tools used by the people.

The question is, what are we allowing ourselves to become desensitized to?

Being sensitive is first and foremost allowing oneself to feel in great depths.

We become lethargic and we cannot hope to change behavior without first implementing a re-sensitization effort.

As our world undergoes anthropogenic changes, it is critical to examine how these changes affect our well-being and our relationship with the natural world.

What do we do when all of the chaos, all of the destruction of the world is shoved in our faces day after day?

We wonder why there isn’t a better way to go about things?

We can’t let our sensitivity be the darkness that sits on our shoulders.

Sensitivity helps us acknowledge our own consciousness.

We need to remember that it is a tool and that we do have a lot of control over it, but without thought, it appears we don’t have much control over it at all.

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: WHEN ARE WE GOING TO RECOGNIZE THE ENORMOUS AND UNDENIABLE POWER THAT NATURE HAS OVER CIVILIZATION AND OVER ITS POLITICS ?

26 Thursday Aug 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Advertising, Advertising industry

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(Twelve-minute read) 

Scientists have not suggested that climate played any direct role in causing the current COVID-19 outbreak, but no matter how one looks at what is happing climate change is making outbreaks of disease more common and more dangerous which promises to amplify the harm and make even unrelated crises more painful.

You would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to recognize nature’s enormous and undeniable power over civilization and even over its politics, and we urgently need a shared vision of basic values to provide an ethical foundation for the emerging world community. 





You don’t have to be a scientist to know that the loss of biodiversity and encroachment by civilization will help new viruses jump to people and that we are still turning a blind eye to the fact that our behavior is driving this.

There are undeniably numerous reasons alone that may make the pandemic prologue for more far-reaching and disruptive changes to come. However, it is also clear that climate policy today is indivisible from efforts to prevent new infectious outbreaks. 

Slow action on climate has made dramatic warming and large-scale environmental changes inevitable. It is now up to the public and leaders to understand that it’s human behavior driving the rise in disease, just as it drives the climate crisis.

The current pandemic and climate change are both demonstrating this in real-time.

Today, hurricanes are larger and more intense than ever. Fires are spreading faster and further amid drought, their total size having doubled in recent years.

So what can be done to speed up the transformation of how we manage our world?

Promoting sustainability requires a total transformation of how we think, buy and use earth resources.

This transformation is now in its infancy.

The seeds of the values-based approaches ‘Ethical’ values such as trust, integrity, justice, and compassion are usually neglected in sustainability assessment.

The authorities tasked with responding to it will already be consumed by other emergencies, their capacity to provide even the most fundamental aid limited, their budgets gutted.


It is time that the Advertising industry step up to the challenge.

While seemingly benign advertising is one of the key drivers behind climate change by promoting excessive consumption.

Advertising is an excellent form of communication, capable of delivering a wealth of information to consumers on varying topics. It has become so powerful and so subtle that consumers accept most advertising content without question.

On the other hand, advertising to sell products is willing to sacrifice the health and welfare of the consumer, turning them into gluttons, and lowering the moral standards of our society. 

By their very nature Advertising, language, logic, and action force separation, discrimination, and choice.

Advertising creates excess “want” in a society that does not know the meaning of “need.”

Marketing in its various forms continues to grow through mobile, content marketing, social platforms, and new digital platforms. Now Worth $1.2 Trillion.  

Digital platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Instagram, Snapchat, and Google AdWords have a glaring responsibility to introduce green-field technology that creates genuinely new opportunities for advertisers and marketers, not to mention consumers.

To assist in this transformation, we must start to legislate against advertisements that promote unsustainable consumption for the sake of short-term profit.

Media outlets should be legally required to remove any advertising that does not meet the values of sustainability.

The ability to motivate an entire group to strive toward a specific goal is a major part of what makes a good Advertisements.

                                               ————–

At the end of the day, the creation of new indexes and methodologies to measure human and economic development are needed, since they will provide us with a wider toolkit to analyze our main subject: economic sustainable growth.

Well-established measures such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) should no be the key determinants of national policies and legislation.

GDP can remain as a complementary indicator to development, but it is not an adequate indicator when considered on its own.

 It represents the value of all goods and services produced over a specific time period within a country’s borders.

We know that in an economy, GDP is the monetary value of all final goods and services produced while it is totally removed from the damage it creates to our core values.

However, it fails to account for the multi-dimensional nature of development or the inherent shortcomings of capitalism, which tends to concentrate income and, thus, power.

If we continue to concentrate on GPD disasters that might have otherwise proved manageable will compound and amplify COVID’s effects until the hurt — measured in lives, livelihoods, and property damage — winds up worse than it might have been from anyone disaster alone.

Throwing money at a problem doesn’t work without core values determined from that starting point. One of the limitations of GDP is that it only addresses average income, failing to reflect how most people actually live or who benefits from economic growth.

                                        ———————–

What’s known as biodiversity is critical because the natural variety of plants and animals lends each species greater resiliency against threat and together offers a delicately balanced safety net for natural systems.

As diversity wanes, the balance is upset, and remaining species are both more vulnerable to human influences and, according to a landmark 2010 study in the journal Nature, more likely to pass along powerful pathogens.

The human spirit has consistently sought to transcend the material, biological, physiological, and technological limitations. but the present world problems won’t be solved by technology because no feasible technology will sufficiently decouple economic activity and environmental impact.

Take profit-seeking algorithms for example.

The urgency of the climate change crisis really can’t be overstated. Unless action is taken across all levels of society over the next decade, we’re looking at a near future of droughts, flooding, and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

So here’s the existential crisis for adland:

The more effective it is at selling products to consumers, the worse the climate crisis gets.

THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY HAS A MORAL DUTY TO STOP EXCESSIVE CONSUMPTION. TO STOP PROMOTING EAT MORE, BUY MORE, GAMBLE MORE. DIE SOONER. 

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: IF WE CONTINUE IN THE SAME DIRECTION AS WE ARE NOW, THE CONSEQUENCES WILL BE UNPREDICATABLE/ DISASTOROUS AND CONFLICT RIDDEN.

20 Friday Aug 2021

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( Seven-minute read) 

We all know that we must shift the direction of the way we live life on Earth.

Sadly, this does not seem to be the case and hence, social conflict and civil unrest seem inevitable.

We all know that what is needed is a coordinated global response and bipartisan domestic response not just to the current pandemic but also to tackle climate change.

As Schwab writes: “The new technology age if shaped responsively and responsibly, could catalyze a new cultural renaissance that will enable us to feel part of something much larger than ourselves – a truly global civilization.


Yes, we are in a fourth industrial-technological revolution with regulators guilty of sleeping by allowing AI to develop financial weapons of mass destruction turning the world into a digitalized market for the sake of short-term profit.

Today, 43% of the world’s population is connected to the internet, mostly in developed countries.

Each time you run a Google search, scan your passport, make an online purchase, or tweet, you are leaving a data trail behind that can be analyzed and monetized. Computers are already making decisions based on this information.

In less than 10 years computer processors are expected to reach the processing power of the human brain.  Socialism for the Rich and Capitalism for the Poor.

Think of apps that track how much you eat, sleep, and exercise, and being able to ask a doctor a question by simply tapping it into your smartphone.

In the future, will it ever be possible to be offline anymore?

So are the technologies that surround us tools that we can identify, grasp and consciously use to improve our lives? Or are they more than that: powerful objects and enablers that influence our perception of the world, change our behavior, and affect what it means to be human?

It is therefore worthwhile taking some time to consider exactly what kind of shifts we are experiencing and how we might, collectively and individually, ensure that it creates benefits for the many, rather than the few.

                                 ———————————

At the heart of discussions around emerging technologies, there is a critical and central question: what do we want these technologies to deliver for us?

The fourth Industrial revolution is widely taken to be the shift from our reliance on animals, human effort, and biomass as primary sources of energy to the use of fossil fuels and the mechanical power this enabled.

It however can also be described as the advent of “cyber-physical systems” involving entirely new capabilities for people and machines.

It represents entirely new ways in which technology becomes embedded within societies and even our human bodies -. examples include genome editing, new forms of machine intelligence, breakthrough materials, and approaches to governance that rely on cryptographic methods such as the blockchain. It’s just not very evenly distributed.

More people in the world have access to a mobile phone than basic sanitation.

The complexity of these technologies and their emergent nature makes many aspects of the Fourth Industrial Revolution feel unfamiliar and, to many, threatening.

Indeed, it is certain that the governments know this, but instead of helping the poor they are making it harder for them to survive and it is certain that sooner or later when the bubble burst, there will be few survivors.

Added to this is the humungous amounts of money governments are borrowed to keep the government running in the absence of real economic growth.

Since the financial crash and before interest rates were kept at near-zero levels for most of the decade in the run-up to the crisis with the West governments encouraging speculation and risk-taking.

                             _________________________

Currently, there are three big areas of concern: Inequality, Security, and Identity.

Inequality.

62 individuals controlled more assets than the poorer 3.6 billion people combined, half the world’s population.

Unequal societies tend to be more violent, have higher numbers of people in prison, experience greater levels of mental illness, and have lower life expectancies and lower levels of trust.

An important potential driver of increased inequality is our reliance on digital markets – increase unemployment.

Security.

The combination of the digital world with emerging technologies is creating new “battlespaces”, expanding access to lethal technologies and making it harder to govern and negotiate among states to ensure peace.

The technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution also offer expanded capabilities for waging war which is increasingly accessible to both state and non-state actors, such as drones, autonomous weapons, nanomaterials, biological and biochemical weapons, wearable devices, and distributed energy sources

It’s not a question of if non-state actors will use some form of neuroscientific techniques or technologies, but when, and which ones they’ll use. 

Identity, voice, and community.

Already, digital media is increasingly becoming the primary driver of our individual and collective framing of society and community, connecting people to individuals and groups in new ways, fostering friendships, and creating new interest groups. Furthermore, such connections transcend many traditional boundaries of interaction.

Unfortunately, expanded connectivity does not necessarily lead to expanded or more diverse worldviews.

Emerging technologies, particularly in the biological realm, are also raising new questions about what it means to be human.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is the first where the tools of technology can become literally embedded within us and even purposefully change who we are at the level of our genetic makeup.

The very reason why people are residents in taking the covid jab.

Martin Nowak, a professor of mathematics and biology at Harvard University, stated that cooperation is “the only thing that will redeem mankind”.

If we have the courage to take collective responsibility for the changes underway and the ability to work together to raise awareness and shape new narratives, we can embark on restructuring our economic, social, and political systems to take full advantage of emerging technologies.

This can only be achieved through the ideology of.  Live and let live. 


In 1969 a man stood on the moon. 

The U.S. Has Only Been At Peace For 21 Years Total Since Its Birth.

This means that for 222 out of 239 years – or 93% of the time – America has been at war. The only time the U.S. went five years without war (1935-40) was during the isolationist period of the Great Depression.

It’s no wonder that the world is Fucked up. 

One only has to look at the current withdrawal from Afghanistan to see the benefits of War.  

This has important implications for how policymakers ought to treat future wars that are inevitable as the world struggles to feed its present direction of economic growth at whatever cost. 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. CAN WE ADAPT TO LIVING WITH CLIMATE CHANGE?

12 Thursday Aug 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Climate Change Summit Scotland 2021, Climate Change., Cop26., Earth, Enegery, Human Collective Stupidity., Humanity., Inequality, Modern day life., Our Common Values., Post-Covid-19, Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Ten -minute read) 

It’s time to cut out the bullshit and get a grip when it comes to climate change.

The effects of human activities on Earth’s climate to date are now irreversible on the timescale of human lifetimes.

So the key question is, what will our emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants be in the years to come?

The simple reason for this is that it is impossible to predict with any degree of accuracy just how much greenhouse gases are going to be released in the next few centuries, and just how much this is going to affect the climate.

Electrical Cars, Solar Panels, Wind turbines, and technology might all help reductions in carbon emissions but they are all products.  They all use the earth’s finite resources to produce profit for companies that created the world of Profit for Profit’s sake that has to lead us down the slippery path to climate change.  

In my opinion, any new normal ( which is going to be far from normal ) has to hold fossil burning industries accountable or nationalizing them till we reach a point where sustainable energy generates higher financial returns than coal and oil. 

 The harsh reality of climate change is now playing out in real-time before our very eyes, with some of the negative changes already locked into the climate system, while global efforts to reduce carbon emissions are not moving fast enough to avoid irreversible damage to the planet.

Any solutions are going to take years to have any effect so we need to adapt: or, in other words, get used to the realities of this new, heated-up, wet, violent, world.  

We all know that the climate challenges we are facing on the planet transcend national boundaries.

At present we being told that’s, it’s not too late to stop the forthcoming climate changes totally making our planet unlivable if we move to clean energy. 

However clean energy is only one part of the challenge because the inequalities in the world demand a fundamental overhaul of existing social, political, and economic norms.

It is this new perception that needs to be contagious so it is adopted globally.

The shocking truth is that climate change has only just begun.

In other words, whatever the mitigation efforts of future civilizations, climate change is here to stay.  Regardless of future emission trends, the CO2 footprint from our brief passage on Earth is going to remain in the climate system and impact the well-being of all terrestrial life forms for what could almost be considered an eternity.

In the last year, we are seeing with the current Covid pandemic that we live in a world where HARMONIZATION of any actions is impossible.  

We will witness this in the forthcoming Cop-out / Cop26 summit. 

The above perception is highly unlikely to happen.

Why?

Because the climate change problems will probably worsen before — or indeed if — it gets better, no one wants to bear costs of change that will fall on  – the poor.

Long before this ever happens, humanity must prepare itself for an inland retreat and a constant battle against rising seawater that will continue for hundreds and hundreds of years into the future. 

We are incredibly adaptable, but at the psychological level, there’s going to be tremendous disruption among families, societies, nations, etc. when change occurs.

Anything that helps an organism survives in its environment is an adaptation.

Adaptation is an acknowledgment that this.

Some of that change is a given, but not all of it.

For example:

Loss of traditions, habitat, and cultural heritage, and the distress that comes with moving away from the land where your ancestors are buried, where you’ve lived all your life.  Not to mention the extinction of species, animals and plants, and coral reefs, and all kinds of living things, those we depend on and those with which we simply share ecosystems.

None of the solutions so far even begin to address the possibility of an impending mental health crisis due to the upheaval associated with managed retreat and other forms of climate migration.

How do you convince a community that their home will not be habitable?

How do you make room for rural refugees to live in a crowded city?

Climate mitigation is hard, and we are running out of time to do it, but I would argue that adaptation in its absence will actually be a million times harder.

Without substantial cuts to our collective carbon imprint, many more lives will be lost trying to adapt to a changing environment, and countless more will be made meaningfully worse.

Why wouldn’t we do what we can to avoid that?

The long course of human evolution shows that climate disruption, which is what we’re going through right now and in the foreseeable future, is associated with the demise of ways of life.

As difficult as it may be, there is a vast scale of loss associated with climate change that one has to try to comprehend and accept in order to understand the urgency of the situation.

THE NEED FOR HARMONIZATION to anticipate the actual and expected effects of climate change and take appropriate action to prevent or minimize the impacts.

How will we feel when the air inside feels tinny and canned when all of this feels like our future?

The two main responses so far to climate change are Mitigation and Adaptation – they must go hand in hand. 

Adaptation can be planned in advance but it must go beyond just development to include the global food system, which encompasses production, and post-farm process such as processing, and distribution is also a key contributor to emissions. And it’s a problem for which we don’t yet have viable technological solutions.

Food is responsible for approximately 26% of global GHG emissions.  So we will need a menu of solutions: changes to diets; food waste reduction; improvements in agricultural efficiency; and technologies that make low-carbon food alternatives scalable and affordable.

Methane warms the world twenty times faster than carbon.

Junk-food chains, including KFC and Pizza Hut, McDonald’s have spread around the world.

Take McDonald’s. 

  • It has about 28,000 restaurants worldwide, opening around 2,000 new ones each year

The food industry spends billions a year in advertising and promotion to persuade people to eat more food.

In short, then, this is another example of wasted wealth, wasted capital, wasted labor, and wasted resources.Climate Change What Happens after 2100

On top of all this while the earth warms up it has the capability of releasing 1.5 trillion tons of organic carbon twice as much as Earths, atmosphere currently holds.

The planet is the ultimate ‘global commons’. It belongs to neither a particular individual nor a particular nation. Nor does it belong to a single generation such as us, our children, or our grandchildren.

Instead, it belongs to all living creatures both alive now and in the future. Just as all of humanity is connected ‘horizontally’ across the globe, so too are all past and future life forms bound ‘vertically’ in a continual unfolding of the story of life.

So when you buy something, you buy something that lasts; you buy it because you really need it and want to take care of it. It is none other than this consideration for future human beings and other life forms that should form the yardstick by which we set our mitigation targets — not merely what is politically and economically feasible for the industrialized world today.

Yet the political and economic institutions of our civilization are fixated on enjoying the present and unable to account for the consequences of our actions on tomorrow.

Corporations and governments are forever borrowing from the future in order to improve the present.

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS. THE CLIMATE CRISES IS NO LONGER A LOOMING THREAT IT IS ARTFICAL INTELLIGENCE.

29 Saturday May 2021

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(Eight-minute read) 

We live in an age in which intersecting crises are being lifted to a global scale, with unseen levels of inequality, environmental degradation, and climate destabilization, as well as new surges in populism, conflict, economic uncertainty, and mounting public health threats.

All are crises that are slowly tipping the balance, questioning our business-as-usual economic model of the past decades, and requiring us to rethink our next steps.

In the next few months, we will once again witness a gathering of verbal diarrhea in Scotland all promising to go green.

There is no doubting in the last few decades that we humans have achieved advances away beyond what our ancestors would have believed possible. The irony is that to survive we have to become something very different from what we are. 

Many optimists believe that technology can transform society and solve climate change.

To a great extent, this is probably true no more so than in the field of medician. 

Take the discovery by Alexander Fleming in 1928 of Penicillin.

Before its discovery, we were dying thirty years early than we do today. 

His discovery was down to an accidental piece of bacteria landing on one of his Petri dishes which took another ten years to develop into a drug to save lives. 

Today with human intelligence and machine learning we can produce drugs in a matter of months.     

The way forward to reducing CO2 emissions is not a by-pass lane it is by using the technologies that already exist.  

It’s time to cut out the verbal and bull shit and make these technologies affordable to all. 

Yes, the world today is in a dire state and a new kind of social and ecological environment needs to be created with green energy the price of which is toppling daily.

Comparing global problems involves lots of uncertainty and difficult judgment calls, but every problem is solvable if we devote resources to building a just world and not guns.

THE WORLD RUNS ON ELECTRICITY.  

SO IF WE WANT A GREEN FUTURE NON-REPAYABLE GRANTS TO CONVERT FROM FOSSIL FUELS GENERATED ELECTRIC TO ENERGY BY NON-POLLUTING RENEWABLE MATERIALS – WIND – SUN- WATER-  GEOTHERMAL – HYDROGEN. 

SUCH A MOVE WOULD CREATE MILLIONS OF JOBS AND COULD BE FUNDED BY PLACING A WORLD AID COMMISSION OF 0.05% ON ALL ACTIVITIES THAT HAVE PROFIT FOR-PROFIT SAKE AT THEIR HEART. ( See previous posts) 

                                  _______________________ 

 

We are now presented with two very different futures. 

The last generation that can stop devastating climate change. We have the knowledge and the tools – we just need politicians to lead the way.

or

We fail to meet climate mitigation goals.

For certain, either outcome will not be easy or cheap and it is happing faster than we wish to acknowledge.  

The problem is the two outcomes are profoundly interlocked with lots of uncertainty.

HOWEVER, UNLIKE THE CURRENT PANDEMIC CLIMATE CHANGE WON’T JUST DISAPPEAR IT WILL REQUIRE A NEW MEANING OF LIFE.

To recognize that we are entering a new world with opportunities and perspectives is an enormous challenge not because of climate change but because of the current inequalities existing on the Planet.

The choice we are now confronted with is one we will have to make over and over again as we transition to a more resilient, zero-carbon, just, and healthier future.

The question is who is going to pay for the transition.  

New transformative technologies may promise a radically better future but also pose catastrophic risks.

THERE IS LITTLE POINT IN REDUCING GLOBAL TEMPERATURES IF BY THE TIME IT HAS STABILIZED HALF OF THE WORLDS POPULATION HAS BEEN DESTABILIZED OR DISPLACED.

A lack of global emphasis on foreign aid, conflict, and political factors have kept poverty as a driving factor of Inequality.

To adjust to the coming new kind of social and ecological environment, how do we frame either of the above outcomes constructively.

We will have to relearn the world to do so. 

We have to become more aware of the future of our planet and our future and the legacy of the human species to start a serious battle to make up for the damages.

At the moment it is difficult to know the changes in the ecosystems that surround us not to mention the social uncertainty to come.

The fundamental economic problem is related to the issue of scarcity.

Society is mostly dominated by people wishing to consume more goods and services that are available.

One in nine people in the world go hungry each day and suffer from nutritional deficiencies as a result.

Currently, 1 in 9 people lack access to clean water across the world.

The problem is not that we aren’t producing enough food, but rather that people lack access to food. Many people do not have enough money to purchase food and cannot grow their own.

To try to work out which global problems are most pressing and make progress on foundational questions about how best to address them is impossible unless we address the fundamental problem.

To recognize that scarcity will drive almost everything. 

To recognize a sense of shared humanity. 

To recognize that approximately 600 million children are not mastering basic mathematics and literacy while at school.

To recognize that is not just climate change that treating the world but artificial intelligence and the way we are using it.

Using only the interaction of its embedded sensors, computer programming, and algorithms in the human environment and ecosystem — is becoming a reality that cannot be ignored anymore.

Because building autonomous weapons systems are one thing but using them in algorithmic warfare with other nations and against other humans is another.

They will in no uncertain terms alter the very fundamentals of security and the future of humanity and peace.

As global temperatures continue to rise, technology improves and the world economy grows, it gets easier to cause destruction on an ever-larger scale with the weaponizing of artificial intelligence both military-wise and as a social tool. 

The Weaponization Of Artificial Intelligence

The development of autonomous weapons system (AWS) is progressing rapidly, and this increase in the weaponization of artificial intelligence seems to have become a highly destabilizing development. It brings complex security challenges for not only each nation’s decision-makers but also for the future of humanity.

There are always unforeseen consequences when new technology is introduced. Those unintended outcomes of artificial intelligence will likely challenge us all.

 AI algorithms must be built to align with the overarching goals of humans.

As more and more data is collected about every single minute of every person’s day, our privacy gets compromised.

Look at what is happing in China with its social credit system, it could devolve into social oppression.

Unless you choose to live remotely and never plan to interact with the modern world, your life will be significantly impacted by artificial intelligence.

The transformative impact of artificial intelligence on our society will have far-reaching economic, legal, political, and regulatory implications that we need to be discussing and preparing for.

Sure, it can transform our lives for the better.

In fact, people have gotten used to depending on AI for almost everything and can’t imagine not having these technological advancements as part of their life. Because many processes and applications are getting automated, people are getting addicted to these kinds of inventions which can be an issue for future generations to come.

Societies will face further challenges in directing and investing in technologies that benefit humanity instead of destroying it or intruding on basic human rights of privacy and freedom of access to information.

  • In the future, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence will play an even more fundamental role in content creation that will affect our wallets, health, safety, and lives.

The mistake we are making is to think that this situation is the only future. 

That it is impossible to regulate AI because of the rate of AI change entails. 

This is not true as it is possible to Audit all AI technology and algorithms to ensure that comply with human values and to make their programs totally transparent. 

Why is the above urgent?

Because combined with climate change we are faced with and a transactional wealth of a new currency of unknowable value called personal data inequality will ravage the planet we all live in and on.    

These are not some science fiction movie scenarios the current Pandemic is revealing a much more tragic and fragile world that requires more than trust. 

The United Nations (UN) currently lists 22 “Global Issues”. 

These correspond with the most important issues of our time and are known as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).

Here is a few of them. 

FOOD SECURITY.

HEALTH ISSUES.

EDUCATION.

GENDER EQUALITY.

AFRICA.

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES/ POLLUTION. 

OCEAN CONSERVATION.

WATER SCARCITY.

GLOBAL ISSUES THAT REQUIRE POLICY SOLUTIONS.

This is not intended to be an exhaustive list. Rather, it serves as an overview of some of the major issues all global citizens should be aware of.

Artificial intelligence is not on the list. 

Because the biggest challenge facing the planet needs every solution possible including technology like artificial intelligence (AI). 

But AI is not a silver bullet it can only unlock new insights, pinpointing those responsible for it.

The current environmental issues pose so many problems to industry and society that not enough action has been taken to stop turning Climate change into a product. 

My goal in this blog is not to convince people climate change is real, or that AI is destroying society it’s to get people who do believe that climate change is real and that Algorithms for profit’s sake are plundering the world to do more to affect change.

What can be done by any of us against the might of Capitalism that will have any effect? 

There is only one weapon available to us all and that is our buying power.  

 If we use our collective buying power you will then see not just governments but global corporations change their tune from profit to sustainability.     

We decide whether we want to look at the world in one way or another, always making tradeoffs.

As Harvey Sacks observed.

” If only we introduced some fantastic new communication machine the world will be transformed” 

” But the best and brightest devices must be accommodated within existing practices and assumptions in a world that has whatever organization it already has”  

All are under threat because all are happening at what scientists estimate to be about 1,000 times the normal pace and are yet to be quantified.

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

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