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General News    H1'ed 9/29/14

Transcript 2: Conversation w Paul Craig Roberts, Noam Chomsky & Rob Kall: Climate Change and Suicidal Russia Policy

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The second and final part of the transcript of my conversation with Paul Craig Roberts and Noam Chomsky Here's a link to the audio podcast.

Paul Craig Roberts and Noam Chomsky
Paul Craig Roberts and Noam Chomsky
(Image by Paul Roberts image from Paul Roberts, Chomsky image by Rob Kall)
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Rob: Now, my next question, well, is going to be about climate change. What role will climate change play in the future of economics and world power balances? Why don't you keep going Noam.

NC: Well, if current tendencies persist, we are reaching a point where there'll be a substantial rise in sea level, inundating coastal planes -- that could mean millions of people dying in Bangladesh, inundating cities -- most major cities are coastal cities -- in Boston, New York, San Francisco, others...

PCR: Miami...

NC: Yeah, Miami -- much worse in the global south typically. We're already at a level of species extinction that is comparable to what happened 65 million years ago when a huge asteroid hit the earth and ended the age of the dinosaurs and opened the possibility for small mammals to survive...ultimately us. That level of species extinction is now being matched and it's going to increase. All of these are really catastrophic consequences, unpredictable in fact. You can't even talk about the global economy -- it's going to have far more harmful consequences than that. And it's not that far off. We're marching toward the precipice.

Rob: I have to wonder, will...there are some people and companies that seem to want this to happen. What will happen to the economy, to the world, and the power balance in the world?

NC: Well, I think this goes back to a point that Paul made. Take say, Exxon Mobil...you know, biggest energy corporation. I mean, it's not that they want these catastrophes to happen. It's that the logic of the institutional framework in which they function is almost compelling them, unless there are external pressures, to march toward that precipice. They have recently announced, Exxon Mobil, that they are going to intensify their focus on fossil fuel extraction instead of alternatives because it is simply so much more profitable.

Chevron, another major energy corporation, had a small sustainable energy program that was doing ok -- it was profitable, but they just shut it down because the profits are so much greater on extraction of fossil fuels. Within the given institutional logic, you can't really blame the managers and directors for choosing these options -- they simply have no choice within that framework, or very little choice. There was a day when Henry Ford could manage the considerations that Paul was talking about -- he could see I've got to pay the workers $5.00 per hour or else there won't be anybody to buy my cars. But there aren't...the contemporary institutions don't allow that.

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Rob Kall Social Media Pages: Facebook Page       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect, connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune 500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful people on his Bottom Up Radio Show, and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)
 

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