Sterling to Exxon: no pity for you losers
Since his first Viridian speech eight years ago introducing the Viridian movement to an unsuspecting yet grateful planet, sci-fi author Bruce Sterling has led the charge to create “irresistible demand for a global atmosphere upgrade.”
Now, says Sterling, mission accomplished.
It’s great to start a Monday morning with this sort of top-spin.
Here’s excerpts from his recent rant. Read it and weep for joy.
We Viridians have beaten that clock. There is no need to wait for distant 2012 to declare victory in our war to make green trendy.
Green will never get any trendier than it is this year. The atmosphere upgrade is on the way. That process won’t be pretty, but it’s going to happen.
The 2012 deadline for Kyoto is already a dead letter, because Kyoto was far too weak and too slow.
We are going to see a series of monstrous efforts by large enterprises: private, local, state and national, to save whatever can be saved of the previous natural order.
The primary motivator of this effort will be fear.
The climate is changing much more quickly and more severely than anyone suspected it would.
A rapid, ruthless, headlong clean-tech techno- revolution – in fact, a series of them – is the only global option with a ghost of a chance to save our smoldering planetary bacon.
That’s coming; it is under way.
To illustrate his point, Sterling cites the news last week about 10 major US corporations calling for mandatory limits on emissions. Says Sterling:
These companies are demanding carbon regulation in order to punish their competitors. They have a jump in going clean, and their competitors, who were stubborn and fatally tardy, will be destroyed.
Not in a week, no: but in five years they’ll be deader than Enron.
They have fatally misjudged the flow of events, they threw a war-for-carbon and lost it, they have no friends left and a million commercial enemies sharpening knives… they are doomed.
If you are Exxon, what is your response when you see this? Your PR reaction is contempt. Your private response is anguish. Fear, and a desperate attempt to muddle and temporize.
It’s not just that Viridians are winning. Denialists are losing. Horribly. We win. They’re toast.
Too late, Exxon. Now, at last, you struggle to move: but you made your bed of Procrustes and you will be torn to pieces. First, denial: you tried that for years. Then anger. You’ll try that, that will be brief. Then resignation… and at last you’ll beg for pity, but, although you’re the world’s largest and most profitable corporation, you have brought such fantastic suffering onto such vast hosts of other people that there will not be a drop of pity left for you.
Wot he said…
Published by Ken on January 29th, 2007 tagged Climate Change, Systems Thinking
2 Responses to “Sterling to Exxon: no pity for you losers”
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January 30th, 2007 at 7:00 am
why in the name of all that is holy have you made this article so difficult to read?
20% grey on a white background is NOT trendy! – it gave me such eye strain that I gave up reading! – and I am a web developer by profession.
Think what everyone else has to suffer and make your text plain black on white!
January 30th, 2007 at 7:53 am
Sheesh, James! I never noticed.
I borrowed the “Fresh” template and stylesheet (more or less) wholesale from ilemoned at: http://www.ilemoned.com/wordpress/wptheme-fresh/.
I’ve darkened the text now. Thanks for the headsup.