Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism speaking with Democracy Now, of climate change Klein says, “my fear is that climate change is the crisis, the biggest crisis of all, and that if we aren’t careful, if we don’t come up with a positive vision of how climate change can make our economies and our world more just, more livable, cleaner, fairer, then this crisis will be exploited to militarize our societies, to create fortress continents”

Klein is really talking about creating a sustainable economy rather than one based upon endless growth in a finite world. We are talking about forsaking meteoric short term gains and instant gratification in favor of a long term strategy not dependent upon growth. MGx broke the news of an enhanced catalytic coating developed twenty five years ago by a Hungarian chemist named Dr Ivan Porubszky, that could conceivably reduce greenhouse gas emissions by half but it has a major market flaw, it uses less raw material and is therefore cheaper to make than what’s on the market today.

Klein describes how partisan politics has affected people’s belief in man made climate change.

There’s overwhelming evidence that climate change is real now. It’s not just about reading the science…yet, we’ve seen this remarkable drop, where, in 2007, 71—this is a Harris poll—71 percent of Americans believed climate change was real, and two years later, 51 percent of Americans believed it….
…Democrats overwhelmingly believe in climate change. That hasn’t—their position hasn’t changed. Republicans now don’t—overwhelmingly do not believe in climate change. So that drop has been split along partisan lines… And the environmental movement has just been shocked by how it would be possible to lose so much ground so quickly when there is so much more scientific evidence, so that, you know, there’s all kinds of attempts to respond to this, to get climate scientists out there explaining things better, to popularize the science, and none of it seems to be working. And the reason is that climate change is now seen as an identity issue on the right. It’s—people are defining themselves, like they’re against abortion, they don’t believe in climate change. It’s part of who they are.

It’s part of who they are, only because acceptance of climate change and taking the necessary steps to correct it will interfere with Wall Street machine that is so dependent upon quarterly growth reports. Those who stand to gain the most in the short term have successfully framed the argument and marketed the concept that man made global warming is a myth.

Why is climate change seen as such a threat? I don’t believe it’s an unreasonable fear. I think it is—it’s unreasonable to believe that scientists are making up the science. They’re not. It’s not a hoax. But actually, climate change really is a profound threat to a great many things that right-wing ideologues believe in. So, in fact, if you really wrestle with the implications of the science and what real climate action would mean, here’s just a few examples what it would mean.

Well, it would mean upending the whole free trade agenda, because it would mean that we would have to localize our economies, because we have the most energy-inefficient trade system that you could imagine. And this is the legacy of the free trade era. So, this has been a signature policy of the right, pushing globalization and free trade. That would have to be reversed.

You would have to deal with inequality. You would have to redistribute wealth, because this is a crisis that was created in the North, and the effects are being felt in the South. So, on the most basic, basic, “you broke it, you bought it,” polluter pays, you would have to redistribute wealth, which is also against their ideology.

You would have to regulate corporations. You simply would have to. I mean, any serious climate action has to intervene in the economy. You would have to subsidize renewable energy, which also breaks their worldview.

Congressional hearings are underway right now to strip the endangerment finding from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Repealing the endangerment finding would block California and other states from setting their own higher standards. The enhanced catalytic coating developed by Porubszky exceeds California’s Ultra-low Emission Standard and would likely set the new EPA standards for the US and Europe if not beyond.

Unfortunately, those groups with the capital to invest in this technology have a vested interest in putting it on a shelf. Even though automobile manufacturers would benefit from a savings in the cost of catalytic converters they could pass on to consumers, the big four component suppliers to the auto industry, Degussa, Johnson Matthey, Engelhard and Allied Signal Environmental Catalysts stand to benefit from selling more precious metal, not less. How does an 82 year old Hungarian chemist compete with companies capable of lobbying Congress to limit states individual rights to set high emission standards?

Much more to come on this topic.