Noam Chomsky on Global warming
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“The Coronavirus is serious enough but it's worth recalling that there is a much greater horror approaching, we are racing to the edge of disaster, far worse than anything that's ever happened in human history. ... In fact there are two immense threats that we are facing. One is the growing threat of nuclear war, which has exacerbated it by the tearing what's left of the arms control regime and the other of course is the growing threat of global warming. Both threats can be dealt with but there isn't a lot of time... the corona virus is a horrible... can have terrifying consequences but there will be recovery, while the others won't be recovered, it's finished. If we don't deal with them we're done.”
- Noam Chomsky, C)
“We may add that focus on maximizing profits is also "not always consistent" with the hope for "the survival of humanity," to borrow the phrase of a leaked memo from JPMorgan Chase, [the U.S.’s] largest bank, warning that "the survival of humanity" is at risk on our current course, including the bank's own investments in fossil fuels. Thus, Chevron canceled a profitable sustainable energy project because there’s more profit to be made in destroying life on Earth. ExxonMobil refrained from doing so, because [it] had never opened such a project in the first place, having made more rational calculations of profitability. And rightly so, according to neoliberal doctrine. As Milton Friedman and other neoliberal luminaries have instructed us, the task of corporate managers is to maximize profits. Any deviation from this moral obligation would shatter the foundations of "civilized life." [...] There will be no recovery from the melting of the polar ice sheets and the other devastating consequences of global warming. Here, too, the catastrophe results from a market failure — in this case, of truly earth-shaking proportions.”
- Noam Chomsky, C)