----- Original Message ----- From: "Louis Proyect" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2004 9:53 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Mark Jones Was Right
But clearly the Earth cannot sustain an infinite number of people. _____________ DMS: But the issue at hand is not about an indefinite future of an indefinite number of people. It's about the here and now as the assertions about natural limits and carrying capacity make clear. _____________________________ But you are wrong. Global warming is a byproduct of the burning of fossil fuel. There is no "socialist" solution to this problem. _________________________ DMS: No, global warming is not simply a byproduct of burning fossil fuel, since global warming has accompanied, step for step, increases in fossil fuel use. Global warming is the result, in large part, of accumulation of CO2 and other emissions produced at a rate far above the "recycling" rate of the eco-system. This is a social, technological result, with a social, technological solution To say that rate of introduction cannot be reversed or controlled without a dramatic slaughtering of the earth's population (somebody out there know another way to get from 6 billion to 2 billion?) is not socialism. _______________________ You can put all sorts of scrubbers on factory burners, car engines, etc. to prevent sulfur emissions. But greenhouse gases are the inevitable byproduct of energy consumption. _________________________ DMS: It is not the simple emission, it is the rate and mass of such emissions. Current EPA regulations have force locomotive equipment makers to produce engines releasing 2/3-3/4 less such by-products. And equipment makers are easily meeting that requirement. Switching locomotives designed for use in Grand Central Terminal, and capable of tractive efforts equivalent to 1500 horsepower, emit less than 10% of the by-products of earlier models. Next generation models emit less than half that already reduced amount. The "Green Goat" locomotive in use in California emits almost nothing. __________________________________ Of course there is a way out for a society that lives in balance with nature. The idea is to share equally in the resources of the planet without class divisions. ________________________ DMS: But implicit in your argument is the sharing of reduced development-- dividing up equally, perhaps, a shrunken pie. This corresponds more closely to a notion of primitive communism than it does to a communism based on industrial development. __________________________ Furthermore, the main problem facing the world's poor is not being deprived of automobiles or air conditioning. It is being driven off their land into the favelas and slums as Samir Amin pointed out in a recent MR article. The capacity to feed, shelter, clothe, educate and provide health care one's family is a function more of class relations than anything else right now. _________________________ DMS: The last sentence is absolutely correct. Yet, the solution is not in the return of the newly urbanized populations to their pre-existing rural production relations. Those relations may have a modicum of self-sufficiency, but it's an immiserated self-sufficiency. Nobody can look at the history of the Philippines, for example, and think the period prior to the mass exodus to Manila, and other cities particularly on Luzon, was a better period, a pastoral golden age. Same goes for Indonesia. Only by crossing into the urban environment, the core of capitalist production, are the terms sets for its overthrow.
