To crashlist subscribers:
The London _Financial Times_ of 24 February/25 February 2001
carries on page 7 an article by Vanessa Houlder entitled, "The World
Becomes Less Wonderful." The article describes a study by Lonnie
Thompson, professor of geological sciences, as well as the latest findings
of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The article says, "A
small group of sceptics" doubt the existence of human induced global
warming, but "the scientific evidence is increasingly clear-cut."
Global warming has given the governments of China and India a
"giant club": those two countries by themselves could frustrate efforts
to combat global warming as their economic growth increases their
emissions of greenhouse gasses. The only way for the industrialized North
to convince the Global South to cooperate fully on climate change will
involve a renunciation of Northern power and privilege in the service of
global equity.
Yet people in the United States hate the suggestion that they are
rich. The consumer society does not seem to have produced greater
happiness in the U.S. since the 1950s. Capitalism provides a high
standard of living for most people in the North, but what if affluence
needs to be abandoned? Might a reduction in their living standards make
people feel even worse?
Perhaps the solution would be for the North to move toward a
society with more personal autonomy, that is, less impositions from
governments, bosses, and customers. In _The Question Concerning
Technology_ (1977), philosopher Martin Heidegger says that the essence of
modern technology shows itself in the tendency to perceive things as
"standing reserve," a mere resource to be used. He says that humans can
be reduced to standing reserve.
I think that "standing reserve" in Heidegger means a thing that
has accumulated energy so that it is ready to be used by someone owns the
thing, or has the means to make use of it. I think that the top
executives of large corporations consider workers to be standing reserve,
merely things to be used and discarded in the service of profit
maximization.
If the North were to transform its society so that people lived in
small communities enjoying economic and political decentralization, there
might be more democracy--people might have more control over their own
lives. The social bonds of the small pre-modern community might be
re-created. Living in rural areas and working in agriculture and forestry
would renew people's contact with non-human Nature. In short, a solution
to global warming requires moving beyond the alienation of modernity.
--Milton Takei
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