The BeZine

Volume 10 Spring 2023 Issue 1

sustainABILITY

climate crisis and eco-economics

Introduction

Oil-igarchs

Our economic system, especially its increasingly unsustainable reliance on fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution, caused the climate crisis that threatens us today (not tomorrow). The fossil fuel-military-industrial complex binds itself so inextricably through Western cultural societies (and other, see Russia for no-longer quite- and China for non- Western examples), tightening its grip to strangle serious attempts at addressing the existential crisis that greed fuels (literally). Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrates this, as we see it used as an excuse to increase production of fossil fuels; to raise prices, leading to record high-profits for global oil companies; and to paradoxically reduce investment in alternative energies, often while shifting those resources into more fossil fuel production instead.

We know this. We can read about it in mainstream media, if we cut through the “rising prices due to the war” rhetoric used to explain the record high-profits of the oil giants as though it were an inevitable natural law and see through it to what really caused the record profits: war-time profiteering to increase the wealth of the oil-igarchs. If price rises had increases of costs, profits would have not been higher than before. They could have been the same as last year or the year before, or on the same growth path possibly, but not record-high profits. As in the highest profits ever.

The company’s prices rose more than the costs rose and this and this alone gave companies higher profits. Period. That was done out of greed. The money didn’t go to workers. That would have been an “expense” before profits. Even those super-high salaries for the lords and ladies at the top of the companies are expenses before profits. Profits went to stockholders. Major stockholders made major gains. (Yes, those include the lords and ladies heading the companies.) The rich get richer while inflation, largely driven by higher petroleum-related costs, strangles the poor.

And so it continues. We use more fossil fuels not because we need to, but because the companies want us to spend our money for their profit. The companies lobby against alternative energy, deny climate change publicly while worrying about it privately, and continue to feed economic inequity.

We have to detangle oil, industry, and militarization from our economies, because those rich people with the money and power to affect government policies don’t want to end the climate crisis. They want to profit from it.

—Michael Dickel, editor

ReCollection

As always, The BeZine presents in our issues work related to our social themes, this spring sustainABILITY: climate crisis and eco-economics. We also have a broad range of other work related to peace (and sustainability, for some), social justice (and economics or sustainability or both, for some of this group, too), and life of the spirit (in several dimensions). It is a large issue with a diversity of perspectives. We hope that it will energize you and encourage your own creativity and activism in these areas and all areas of your lives.

In addition to our usual sections—BeATTITUDES, Poetry, Prose, Music & Video—we are introducing a new section as of this issue, ReCollection. Volume 1 Number 1 of The BeZine came out on October 31, 2014. This issue, Volume 10 Number 1, begins our tenth year. In preparation for celebrating our tenth anniversary in 2024, we will look back through the archives to find work from the past and re-collect them into this new section.

This Spring, we have focused mainly on material from the first issue. As you read through our first ReCollection, you will find work on the themes we continue to bring forward in rotation for our quarterly issues: sustainABILITY, Waging Peace, Social Justice, and Life of the Spirit (and activism). You will see that some of our editorial team and contributors wrote for the first issue, and continue with The BeZine: John Anstie, Joe Hesch, and Corina Ravenscraft. Our founding editor, Jamie Dedes of Blessed Memory, bookends this first ReCollection, opening with her last BeZine Blog post, which looked back to the zine’s beginnings and forward to what could be in the future, and closing with a poem of hers from the first issue.

We invite you to nominate any favorite past work from The BeZine that you recollect fondly, for us to include in future ReCollection sections. Search for it on our site or browse our archives. Please include the title and, if possible, the link. Email to: Editor@TheBeZine.com.