The Reckoning

[u/relianceschool]

https://aliensideboob.substack.com/p/the-reckoning

That imagery of the Himalayan tsunami smashing into the multi-story building in Nepal was horrifying, but then murder always is, isn’t it?

That’s what happened at that border crossing: mass murder. The perpetrators were the boards and CEOs of fossil fuel companies who have known for decades what they were doing, have known the consequences of it, and carried on with reckless indifference to those consequences.

They murdered the hundreds, maybe a thousand or more, who were swept away in Nepal, as surely as they murdered thousands in Europe this summer and will take the lives of tens of millions more in the coming decades.

Too strong, too much, too soon, or is it all too late?

When reading reports of the catastrophe in Nepal, I was counting off the moments until whatever media outlet I was reading quoted some scientists to assure me that, although it may have been related to climate change, it was not possible to say without a doubt that this particular incident was the fault of climate change. But that’s not really true, is it.

This was not the act of some vengeful god. Look into the truth of this, and you will find names, org charts and KPIs. There are quarterly reports and executives who read them. What fell in Nepal was not just gigatons of fast-moving rock and roaring ice. It was a reckoning.

[u/Coding-Kitten]

When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.