RESISTANCE IS OUR ONLY CHANCE

The protests against deep sea drilling in New Zealand waters tell us that the only chance  for the planet is resistance and more  resistance. As writer and activist Naomi Klein has recently wrote calls to overthrow the system are  'no longer a matter of mere ideological preference but rather one of species-wide existential necessity.'

John Key has dismissed the nationwide protests against the corporate  search for oil in  New  Zealand waters as merely the action of 'Rent a Crowd'. His arrogant  and myopic dismissal  of the real  environmental concerns  being raised by protesters is  symbolic of a government that is prepared to sacrifice the environment in the pursuit of corporate profit.

But while John  Key plays divide and rule it is worth noting that he  is also disregarding the concerns of a growing section of the  global scientific community.

In her article  'How Science Is Telling Us All  To Revolt'  Naomi Klein writes that the  calls to overthrow the system are  'no longer a matter of mere ideological preference but rather one of species-wide existential necessity.'

Klein highlights a 2012  lecture by complex systems researcher David Warner who  concludes that only resistance  will save us.  But it  is not the tokenistic 'resistance' of voting for a change of government.

Klein writes that Warner's computer model concludes that we - humanity - are stuffed.

She writes, “Global capitalism has made the depletion of resources so rapid, convenient and barrier-free that earth-human systems are becoming dangerously unstable. When pressed as to whether we’re fucked, Werner said ‘more or less.’”

Our only hope is resistance.We can no longer continue to peddle the  forlorn and  disastrous  hope that somehow 'representative democracy' will save us - it won't. 

Writes Klein: 'Werner also terms  it “resistance” – movements of “people or groups of people” who “adopt a certain set of dynamics that does not fit within the capitalist culture”. According to the abstract for his presentation, this includes “environmental direct action, resistance taken from outside the dominant culture, as in protests, blockades and sabotage by indigenous peoples, workers, anarchists and other activist groups”.

There is growing acceptance that the old way of doing things is not good enough. There is no 'halfway house' where the degrading environmental impact of capitalism can somehow be 'ameliorated'. There  is  no such thing as 'green capitalism'.  What is required is fundamental change.

When John Key and his sidekicks  talk of 'growing the economy' they merely  repeat the mantra of the machine that says profit is our overriding concern.

It it is  not just time  to change the rules by which the machine operates - it is time  to destroy the machine itself.