The Real Enemy !?

"In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself."

Quote on page 75 of The First Global Revolution, A Report by the Council of the Club of Rome. September 1991. An online version of the book is here.

The text below indicates what the book is about – and please do remember that it was written almost 20 years ago!! As far as I can see … nobody learned from it and none of the problems it described have been solved.

In the 1970s, the Club of Rome launched the book The Limits to Growth. Essential reading for all those concerned about the future of the planet, the book was translated into 37 languages. Now, President Emeritus Alexander King and Secretary General Bertrand Schneider review global problems 20 years on, offering both a warning and an approach to a possible solution to world problems. Topics covered by this book include the need for the world to convert from a military to a civil economy, the recognition of the disastrous short-term effects of exploitation by First World countries of Third World poverty and need, and the containment of global warming: the need to reduce global emissions of carbon dioxide, to encourage reforestation, to conserve traditional forms of energy and develop alternatives.

Yet the authors of the statement The real enemy then is humanity itself have also fallen into a trap, just like they warned their readers not to do. By designating all of humanity as the enemy (of the planet and life as we know it), they have failed to point out that the real enemy is not every single individual - herding sheep or planting rice - but those among humanity who are motivated by a perverted greed and the obscene belief that the planet, the Earth, is theirs to control and to manipulate. The real enemy - if truth be told - are the multinational corporations and conglomerates who relentlessly follow the Bible in it's assertion that the planet is something we own - rather than be part of. Says the Old Testament in Genesis: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.

Well, the Earth is full and subdued, fish and birds are disappearing due to dominion, an every living thing that moves upon the earth is in dire danger to die of the poisons that fed the greed of the the people who run Bayer, Baxter, Monsanto, Shell ... to name but a few.

And although the Bible continues (Genesis) by saying: God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good - it doesn't look that good once one opens one's eyes to the full extent; they way they were meant to be used.

Photograph: Copyright © CCRCC