Re: [Marxism] Ian Angus skewers Jacobin magazine issue on the environment
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 2017/09/26 04:12 AM, DW via Marxism wrote: ... The more interesting thing, IMO, is not Parenti but Angus' non-take on ecomodernism. There is little substance in his charges against them (there is, actually, but Angus fails to document this). I have of course a lot in common with some aspects of ecomodernism, which in someways is a helluva lot closer to the actual Marxist outlook on what is *needed* to solve the environmental crisis than, say, the Greens or Greenpeace, Joseph Romm or others Angus defends or quotes. Yes, although Greenpeace has begun to move to an environmental justice perspective, the difficulty in getting useful discourses between the camps remains. There's an argument - which I try to move into the realm of contemporary climate politics here: http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/files/Bond_Frankfurt_talk_June_2016_version_of_19_April.pdf - drawing upon advice offered more than 20 years ago by David Harvey in his book Justice, Nature and the Politics of Difference. In suggesting that "the environmental justice movement has to radicalize the ecological modernization discourse," the key passage (3 'grafs) is this: At this conjuncture, therefore, all of those militant particularist movements around the world that loosely come together under the umbrella of environmental justice and the environmentalism of the poor are faced with a critical choice. They can either ignore the contradictions, remain with the confines of their own particularist militancies - fighting an incinerator here, a toxic waste dump there, a World Bank dam project somewhere else, and commercial logging in yet another place - or they can treat the contradictions as a fecund nexus to create a more transcendent and universal politics. If they take the latter path, they have to find a discourse of universality and generality that unites the emancipatory quest for social justice with a strong recognition that social justice is impossible without environmental justice (and vice versa). But any such discourse has to transcend the narrow solidarities and particular affinities shaped in particular places - the preferred milieu of most grass roots environmental activism - and adopt a politics of abstraction capable of reaching out across space, across the multiple environmental and social conditions that constitute the geography of difference in a contemporary world that capitalism has intensely shaped to its own purposes. And it has to do this without abandoning its militant particularist base. The abstractions cannot rest solely upon a moral politics dedicated to protecting the sanctity of Mother Earth. It has to deal in the material and institutional issues of how to organize production and distribution in general, how to confront the realities of global power politics and how to displace the hegemonic powers of capitalism not simply with dispersed, autonomous, localized, and essentially communitarian solutions (apologists for which can be found on both right and left ends of the political spectrum), but with a rather more complex politics that recognizes how environmental and social justice must be sought by a rational ordering of activities at different scales. The reinsertion of the idea of "rational ordering" indicates that such a movement will have no option, as it broadens out from its militant particularist base, but to reclaim for itself a noncoopted and nonperverted version of the theses of ecological modernization. On the one hand that means subsuming the highly geographically differentiated desire for cultural autonomy and dispersion, for the proliferation of tradition and difference within a more global politics, but on the other hand making the quest for environmental and social justice central rather than peripheral concerns. For that to happen, the environmental justice movement has to radicalize the ecological modernization discourse. And that requires confronting the fundamental underlying processes (and their associated power structures, social relations, institutional configurations, discourses, and belief systems) that generate environmental and social injustices. Here, I revert to a key moment in the argument advanced in Social Justice and the City (Harvey, 1973: 136-7): it is vital, when encountering a serious problem, not merely to try to solve the problem in itself but to confront and transform the processes that gave rise to the problem in the first place. Then, as now, the fundamental problem is that of unrelenting capital accumulation and the extraordinary asymmetrics of money and political power that are embedded in that process.
Re: [Marxism] Ian Angus skewers Jacobin magazine issue on the environment
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Tsk, tsk. I expected a bit more from Ian on this rebuttal to Parenti. I have this issue of Jacobin and though I always enjoy many of it's articles (and dislike as many) I have not read the Parenti piece. Largely because I don't find him, generally, particularly insightful on anything. Parenti, like Trotsky, and like Louis or most of us are not really *qualified* to comment knowingly in this regard. We are all quite outside the expertise needed. So we rely on others. Trotsky may of been wrong on atomic energy, but he certainly didn't have his head up his ass on this. It was, and *remains* an informed position and that he did in fact view future advent of atomic energy that would replace, or might replace coal or oil, is factually accurate. France did *exactly* that in getting off of oil and coal as did the United States with oil. The US continued to use coal however, France did not. The two carbon footprints are noticeable for each country in the difference in their footprint sizes. It is particularly large for the U.S. and small by European standards for France. One can, again, argue the merits of this or that form of energy, on can't argue that Trotsky's prognostication was very accurate. Thusly, head, not in ass. On some of the actual specific issues involved. I do agree with Ian Angus that "Carbon Capture" is something of a fraud (he doesn't use that term, I do but he implies it). It can be done. There is a large Dept. of Energy Plant that was running in North Dakota (I think) that removed CO2 (and CO) from coal burning. It is the only plant in the world that I believe is running or was successful. But Parenti's thing here is directly from the atmosphere. It has already been demonstrated by the U.S. Navy despite what Angus notes about the same Navy looking for better methods of doing it. The problem is that it use (by the Navy and every proposed system) vast amounts of the electricity produced by the nuclear reactors on the submarine. I'm all for the R by anyone who can efficiently help lower CO2 in *enough* time to make a difference! But honestly it's probably better to use the most efficient form of solar energy for this: photosynthesis in the growing of massive amounts of trees and restoring vast tracts of prairie land where it won't interfere in farming. The bottom line that Angus implies is that it's damn expensive to conceive of doing this mechanically from the atmosphere directly. The more interesting thing, IMO, is not Parenti but Angus' non-take on ecomodernism. There is little substance in his charges against them (there is, actually, but Angus fails to document this). I have of course a lot in common with some aspects of ecomodernism, which in someways is a helluva lot closer to the actual Marxist outlook on what is *needed* to solve the environmental crisis than, say, the Greens or Greenpeace, Joseph Romm or others Angus defends or quotes. All of whom are *reactionary* de-development types to varying degrees. The ecomodernists problem, generally, is that they look to purely technological solutions and eschew social ones. I've debated, interestingly both ecomodernists and Greens over their adherence (in some case for the former, not all or even a majority by any means) to natural gas. Both green-wash this dangerous fossil fuel and ignore the long term consequences. More another time, perhaps. David _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Ian Angus skewers Jacobin magazine issue on the environment
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 9/25/17 12:54 PM, Michael Yates via Marxism wrote: Ian Angus, author of the fine book, Facing the Anthropocene, rakes Jacobin's environment issue over the coals. Here he focuses on the truly preposterous essay by Christian Parenti. Jacobin has disgraced itself with this issue. It claims to be a magazine of the left. Nothing could be further from the truth. http://climateandcapitalism.com/2017/09/25/memo-to-jacobin-ecomodernism-is-not-ecosocialism/ You can get an idea of how bollixed up this Jacobin issue is with the Leon Trotsky quote that prefaces it: Faith merely promises to move mountains; but technology, which takes nothing “on faith,” is actually able to cut down mountains and move them. Up to now this was done for industrial purposes (mines) or for railways (tunnels); in the future this will be done on an immeasurably larger scale, according to a general industrial and artistic plan. Man will occupy himself with re-registering mountains and rivers, and will earnestly and repeatedly make improvements in nature. In the end, he will have rebuilt the earth, if not in his own image, at least according to his own taste. We have not the slightest fear that this taste will be bad. — Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution To put it bluntly, Trotsky had his head up his ass on such questions. Like this: The phenomena of radio-activity are leading us to the problem of releasing intra-atomic energy. The atom contains within itself a mighty hidden energy, and the greatest task of physics consists in pumping out this energy, pulling out the cork so that this hidden energy may burst forth in a fountain. Then the possibility will be opened up of replacing coal and oil by atomic energy, which will also become the basic motive power. https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1926/03/science.htm _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Ian Angus skewers Jacobin magazine issue on the environment
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Ian Angus, author of the fine book, Facing the Anthropocene, rakes Jacobin's environment issue over the coals. Here he focuses on the truly preposterous essay by Christian Parenti. Jacobin has disgraced itself with this issue. It claims to be a magazine of the left. Nothing could be further from the truth. http://climateandcapitalism.com/2017/09/25/memo-to-jacobin-ecomodernism-is-not-ecosocialism/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
