Portside

Since Trump and Vance bullied Zelenskyy at the White House, threatening to pull out of supporting Ukraine, calling Ukraine the aggressor who doesn’t want peace, we have watched Europe rush to their treasuries to find staggering sums of money for weapons. This is essential, we are told, because of Trump’s new world order.

The biggest crisis facing human life on earth is not Trump or Putin.

The biggest crisis facing human life on earth is climate breakdown.

Trump decided long ago that climate breakdown is a hoax. Funds for climate research and aid for those affected by angry weather have already been ripped apart by Ketamusk, the world’s richest madman, running on Ketamine, a drug that at his level of usage separates the user from reality. Add in the billions, and billons have a habit of separating the billionaire from reality, and the rest of us are faced with the delusional chaos of a man who believes that rockets to Mars are the future of humanity. A man who bought his way into politics, and is now slashing and burning federal government, its DEI hires, its international aid programme, and its climate efforts.

Ketamusk and Trumpety-Trump and the next Commander of Gilead, JD Vance, certainly have up-ended the world order. In doing so they revealed an obvious, but until now, endlessly denied truth. And yes, it does change everything.

What we have learned this week is worth knowing. Take this knowledge with you.

We have learned that while ‘sensible’ ‘responsible’ governments around the world cannot afford their net-zero targets, and are resetting policy accordingly - let’s drill, let’s build, let’s add airport runways and increase air traffic, let’s stick with fossil fuels and single- use plastic, let’s watch the ice melt and sea levels rise, let’s make hurricanes normal, let’s set fire to the Pacific Palisades, (blame WOKE), let’s not worry about drought and crop failure, let’s party like it’s 1999 - and we have to do these things because the alternative, any alternative, will ruin us.

We can still, immediately, no question,

FIND BILLIONS FOR WAR.

Suddenly all these serious men in sober suits are rushing to attend important meetings, to put aside their differences, scrap their deficit rules, agree that taxes will have to rise, that borrowing will be unprecedented, that nothing is off the table. (Well, except taxing the rich, who will benefit, as always, from the war machine).

We are not talking here about finding money for education, for the arts, for decent affordable housing, for good food at fair prices, for healthcare that will make it possible for humans to live better lives. We are always told there is no money for any of that… we have to be realistic, don’t we? And on it goes, the nonsense talked in serious voices, as though that makes it any less of a nonsense.

We are talking about the planet. Not destroying it - saving it. If just a part of the energy we are suddenly seeing released by our global governments of inertia could be directed towards the consequences of late capitalism’s environmental choices - and they are choices, make no mistake - then we could turn things around for the next generation. Or shall we take everything from the next generation instead? They can’t afford homes, or kids, and they have bleak job prospects, and they are depressed in a way that no young person should be depressed - because there is so little hope of change, so maybe we just kill them anyway. In battle, or otherwise.

Is this how it will end? Are we here so soon?

What I want you to take away from this piece today is this

The way we live is not a law, like gravity, and we’re all subject to it, whether we like it or not. The way we live is propositional. It’s a story we are telling. It changes. We can change it. Nothing is fixed. Nothing is fated.

Now we know, in all of their serious nonsense about not being able to afford to battle climate breakdown, not being able to afford to save the planet, not being able to afford a basic decent life for ordinary humans, - it isn’t expediency at all.

This is ideology disguised as expediency.

If Europe can afford what it is proposing to spend on weapons and the military, Europe can afford to put life first. Not death. Life.

The money is there, after all. Think of that.

So the next time someone starts telling you in a serious voice that we have no choice, call it out for the bullshit it is.

Maybe we have to live with this, but we don’t have to believe it.

Jeanette Winterson: Mind Over Matter: In 1985 I published my first novel Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. it won a few prizes and later I adapted it for BBC TV where we won a BAFTA for best drama. 25years later I revisited some of that material - and told the story of my adoption - in the memoir Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal?  I’ve written a lot over the years; novels, essays, short stories, kids’ books, screenplays. I am published in 23 countries and many languages so if you want to buy my books, it’s easy. I hope you will do so using your great local independent bookstore.

For me, all of life is connected. I’d like to connect some of that life to you here.  I’m telling you stories. Trust me,