With his usual uncompromising vision, Tim Bennett’s latest essay cuts to the heart of the climate debate. If you haven’t seen What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire, I consider it the definitive examination of the current global condition. An excerpt from his essay:

So, if the question is why can’t we seem to get our shit together when it comes to climate change? then most of the answers I hear seem to fall into one of three categories.  It’s because we (or our leaders) are:

•    stuck in distraction and/or denial,
•    greedy, unprincipled and maybe even psychotic or evil or
•    just too stupid to go on living.

To me these are all reasonable explanations.  Distraction and denial are surely in force, as are those other human possibilities:  greed, psychosis, evil, and stupidity.  If you view our movies, as I do, as the stories of Imperialism, which reveal how we view both the world and ourselves, then you’ll find overwhelming evidence to support these assessments.  But I think I see something more at work here.  Something more fundamental, perhaps, or more invisible.  And invisible, maybe, because it just breaks too many rules, to speak about it.

Here’s what I see:  our collective death wish at work.

…

If that’s the map, then the territory is our own world, our own culture, our own lives.  If Thelma & Louise shows us the Geist, it’s the Geist of our own Zeit.   And if we allow that as our starting point, then the connections come easily enough.  Did not the culture of civilization, at some point, take off on a weekend fling of unexpected exhilaration that spiraled out of control, bringing the entire planet face to face with our present predicament?  And have not many people’s lives, at least those lived here in the heart of Empire, become so loveless, abused and unsatisfying that we’re poised now to do almost anything to get out of them?  Have we not truly managed to do something no other living creature has managed to do, which is to make ourselves, individually and collectively, miserable?

Aye, now I’ve done it.  I’ve violated a deep taboo, spoken the unspeakable.  Because, well, we’re so happy, we Americans.  Aren’t we?

Please read the entire essay.