Entry two: Paul Mason on Postcapitalism - 'The Rational Case for Panic'

In this blog entry I will discuss Paul Mason's book 'Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future', focussing on the Chapter: 'The Rational Case for Panic'.

I have been passionate about the environment since my early teenage years when I first started to develop a greater understanding of the planet and how the world's population uses and abuses the Earth as they please. I found Paul Mason's chapter 'The Rational Case for Panic' very compelling and it has certainly made me panic in a positive way. I have never known too much on economics but obviously I am aware that the world is driven by profit and is controlled by wealthy corporations. However I did not know just quite how outrageous the situation was in regards to control and power over the strength of the carbon fuel industry.

For example, Mason highlights that in 2011 $674 billion was invested into exploration and development of fossil fuels. (Then Saudi Arabia decided to collapse the price of oil, with the aim of destroying America's new hydrocarbon industries, bankrupting Putin's Russia in the process.)

Also, between 2003 and 2010, climate-denial lobby groups received $558 million from donors in the USA.

Although this seems so evidently ludicrous and unjustifiable, those who have power in these industries fail to understand the catastrophic damage we have already done to our planet and the inevitable and pending chaos we face imminently. In my eyes, these kind of actions deserve jail time for those who are involved.

The wealthy companies who control the big markets (such as the US markets) have pulled the wool over their eyes and will not let the knowledge of extreme destabilisation of a 4.5 billion-year-old planet get in their way. 

Germany however have managed to fight against the carbon fuel industries and completely destroy them by heavily investing in renewable energy and giving priority to renewable generators over carbon fuel producers to supply energy. These kind of decisions need to be implemented on a worldwide level in order to make desperate drastic changes. Overruling decisions need to be enforced by powers of governments worldwide, as in Germany's case, power stations were forced to pay the German electricity grid to take unwanted electricity off their hands on days where renewables have been able to produce more energy than normal and have taken priority. 

Overruling powers need to be put into place in order to have any attempt at slowing down the destruction of our own planet and to safeguard future populations.