-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Jones [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 27 September 2000 18:58
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [Climateconcern] forests, climate crisis, end energy
crisis-- --and the article by fred singer for the herald tribune
Paul Williamson wrote:
>
>
> I agree, "There is nothing wrong with economically-based energy
> conservation;
Unfortunately capitalism does not work like this. It is a grow-or-die
system and the elites who personify it (character-masks of capital)
are not only not interested in making the kind of radical changes that
are needed, they are not even capable of seeing the need for such
changes. Even when they are deeply interested in the problems posed by
global warming, even when they have spent a lifetime in the apparently
disinterested pursuit of scientific knowledge about human imapcts on
the ecosphere, even when they are people of sincere religious
conviction, they are not capable of doing more than utter helpless
prayers to the Almighty when faced with incontrovertible evdience of
looming disaster. It is utopian and pointless to expect that appeals
to reason will achieve anything. The 'know' much better than the
average ingorant layperson, just how serious is the impasse capitalism
has enetered; they 'know', they are perfectly clear, that industrial
capitalism has created a mass extinction of species for which there
are few parallels even in geological time. But they are not capable of
registering this information or of mobilising around it. They are too
embedded in the creature-comforts which their own elite lifestyles
endow them with. All talk of reforms are, in context, playing quoits
on the deck of the Titanic. It is wishful thinking to suppose that you
can persuade those with power over you to do anything which runs
against their immediate self-interest or which imperils their social
position. They will not do it.
As Karl Marx said, he whom you seek to persuade, you acknowledge
master of the situation. It is *worse* than wishful thinking to try to
ingratiate them by proposing schemes for making 'the markets' work to
correct the catastrophe which the markets themselves have created.
Human society dominates the natural world; its material throughputs
exceed nature's. Human society is trapped between demographic inertial
momentum, climate destabilisation, energy famines, and mass species
extinction. Do not hope for justice, equity or reform. It will not
happen. 3 billion people live on less than three dollars a day. They
will be joined by at least 2 billion more in the next 30 years. To
give them 'Western' living standards would mean creating 10 more US
economies. It obviously cannot happen. Therefore at least 5 billion
humans are doomed to lives without security, proper housing,
education, health and welfare, without modern transport systems and
urban infrastructure. And *this* is assuming things continue as they
are; but they will not. They will get worse. We face water and energy
famines. Oil production in the USA has declined continuously for 16
years (for 30 years in the Lower 48). Even Texas is now an net energy
*importer*. World oil and gas production has peaked and the future
will get worse, before it gets worse again. Population overburden and
ecocide go hand in hand with capital shortages, energy famines and the
collapse of agriculture. These things are already inevitable, even in
the best case and whatever reforms people of good will try to
implement if they come to political power (they won't).
All the rainforest that can be hewn down, will be. All the fossil that
can be burnt, will be. All the aquifers that can be pumped dry, will
be. All the biomes that can be plundered, will be. No efforts will be
made to reverse greenhouse emissions, on the contrary, they will
accelerate. Billions of innocent people are walking around today, not
knowing that their death certificates have already been made out.
Start from this.
Mark
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