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The obvious answer to the "Growth can't be Green" conundrum is that human society has to shrink while raising the standard of living of the billions at the bottom. How much sturm und drang is going to accompany this is unknowable, but will certainly be enormous. Whether humanity can come out of the tunnel at all is unknowable, but a few things are certain: we need a global state with a global planned economy, and that requires socialist revolution in most of the most powerful countries. Anthony On Tue, Apr 9, 2019 at 11:00 AM <marxism-requ...@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > Send Marxism mailing list submissions to > marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/listinfo/marxism > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > marxism-requ...@lists.csbs.utah.edu > > You can reach the person managing the list at > marxism-ow...@lists.csbs.utah.edu > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Marxism digest..." > > > ******************** 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. > ***************************************************************** > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. A Netflix Nature Series Says to Viewers: Don?t Like What You > See? Do Something About It (Louis Proyect) > 2. Re: Why Growth Can?t Be Green ? Foreign Policy (Barry Brooks) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2019 10:55:36 -0400 > From: Louis Proyect <l...@panix.com> > To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition > <marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> > Subject: [Marxism] A Netflix Nature Series Says to Viewers: Don?t Like > What You See? Do Something About It > Message-ID: <9f06c30b-4673-9ef5-b96b-3734e84ea...@panix.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed > > NY Times, April 9, 2019 > A Netflix Nature Series Says to Viewers: Don?t Like What You See? Do > Something About It > By Jennifer Vineyard > > It?s a striking image, watching a walrus climb a rock cliff. During one > episode of the new Netflix nature docu-series ?Our Planet,? we witness > something that shouldn?t be happening ? and is only happening now, the > producers say, because of climate change. Desperate marine animals > driven away from their natural habitats are trying to adapt to shelter > elsewhere, and falling to their deaths as a result. > > This is not the typical scenario featured in feel-good nature > documentaries, but ?Our Planet? has a different aim. Its creators > partnered with the World Wildlife Fund (and a team of scientists) to > depict how various ecosystems around the world ? from the frozen Arctic > to rain forest jungles to coastal seas ? are imperiled by human > activity, and what can be done to protect or restore them. ?We were > trying to get to the heart of the issue with each of the great global > habitats,? said Keith Scholey, an executive producer of the series, ?and > to be very clear about the elements of destruction and the solutions.? > > [A look at recent Netflix originals worth your time.] > > In phone interviews with Scholey and Adam Chapman, who produced and > directed two episodes of the series, and, separately, with Sophie > Lanfear, who produced and directed one episode, they shared their > experiences making ?Our Planet.? These are edited excerpts from that > conversation. > > How did your advocacy interest shape the filming and the production? > > SOPHIE LANFEAR The only reason I was interested in working on ?Our > Planet? is that it had conservation very much at the heart of the > series. Often it?s a last-minute thing ? two lines of commentary at the > end of the show. To me, it?s about designing the whole structure of the > film with a conservation message, and having the visual kinds of > sequences that show you, not tell you, what is going on with the world. > > ADAM CHAPMAN We set up some stringent parameters when we were selecting > what to do. The obvious one is that they had to be the most dynamic and > new animal behaviors that we could find. And more important, each > sequence had to represent a much greater truth about that habitat. > > LANFEAR For example, when I was designing [the second episode] ?Frozen > Worlds,? I watched every single relevant documentary I could find, and > what I found was that none of them told the story of sea ice. Sea ice > isn?t just this vast nothing. It?s a living habitat. The algae feed on > the ice, and the krill feed on the algae, and the krill feeds the whales > and the penguins. And when you lose the sea ice, this white reflective > surface at the top of our planet, we lose our protective shield from > solar energy. So it?s not only bad for the animals that live there, it?s > bad for us. > > KEITH SCHOLEY I think the bit that shocked me was the coral bleaching in > a 500-mile stretch of the Great Barrier Reef. It goes ghostly white when > the temperature changes. It expels the algae that live in the coral. It > looks rather beautiful, but then it dies. > > CHAPMAN The sequence for me that had the most emotional resonance was > the glacial calving in Greenland, which is the final sequence in Episode > 1. We waited for the glacier to calve for quite some weeks, without any > luck. And we were nearly packing up. > > LANFEAR I kind of looked at the nose of it, and I was like, ?Hmmm, that > one looks like a different shape.? And we could see, ever so slightly, > that it was moving, so it was all-systems-go in the last evening in the > last hour of light. About a third of the glacier broke away in that > event. It sounded like a war zone. Like cannon fire. > > CHAPMAN We then managed to film on the ground and from a helicopter that > we had on standby. The 20 minutes we spent in the helicopter were > probably some of the most exciting time I?ve had filming in my career. > But after the elation of achieving this goal, looking down at this bay > with this massive iceberg in the middle of it, you realize the portent > of that event. > > LANFEAR We could see through some of the sea ice. It was like glass. And > that?s when it just hits you. The scientist Alun Hubbard has studied the > ice cores in that section of the glacier, and that?s thousands and > thousands-of-years-old ice. Something that is thousands of years old, > destroyed in the blink of an eye. It?s very sobering. And when you think > about the sea ice disappearing, then you realize the walruses are like > refugees. They are Arctic refugees. > > The walrus scenes are astonishing. These walruses don?t have enough ice, > so they?re hauling themselves over rocky areas and up cliffs. But they > can?t get themselves off the cliffs, and they?re falling to their deaths. > > LANFEAR The walrus scenes were the hardest things I?ve ever had to > witness or film in my career. When I was planning the story, I knew > about the mega haul-outs happening in the region, and we chose the > Russian site because it was the largest aggregation in the world, bigger > than the ones happening in Alaska and Canada. But there was a bit lost > in translation with Anatoly Kochnev, the Russian scientist studying > these sites. There?s an old piece of news footage that I had in mind, > and it was kind of like sausage rolls falling down. I was expecting that > perhaps the walruses would tumble down, but at the end, they?d be O.K. I > really wasn?t prepared for the scale of death. > > What we think is going on is that the ones at the top can probably hear > the ones in the water, and they can sense that there is water below. > They teeter on the edge, and they just can?t work out how to get down > there. A small group of maybe six or seven would make it down safely, > and we?d all celebrate. But the vast majority do not. They basically > walk themselves off the cliff. The walruses are used to a soft landing. > Their depth perception hasn?t evolved to deal with a cliff situation, > nor have they evolved to work out how to get back the way they came. So > it?s just tragic. It?s absolutely heartbreaking. > > You could also make the argument that it?s not plastics, as usually > portrayed in nature docu-series, but overfishing that is the issue for > the oceans. > > SCHOLEY We tried to boil down for each habitat what is the really big > issue. Plastic is really bad, don?t get me wrong on that, but it won?t > destroy the ocean. The two things that will are the warming of the ocean > and overfishing. We are hammering the ocean so, so hard. And what > happens with overfishing, which we try to explain in the program, is > that the fish all stir up the nutrients. They all keep the system going. > So when you lose the fish, you lose the whole productivity of the ocean, > and the whole thing collapses. > > The series presents a lot of no-brainer solutions to show how > populations can bounce back, like developing marine reserves to solve > overfishing and restoring jungles where orangutans that have evolved to > use tools like sticks (for finding and eating their food) are now at risk. > > SCHOLEY The crucial thing in the orangutan sequence was to point out > that the baby has to learn so much from the mother. The real tragedy of > orangutans being wiped out is that if the wild population is ever lost, > they will lose the learning that the species has evolved [to have]. A > captive animal could never learn that complex behavior without a wild > mother. > > The way I think of it, humans are just like any other animals. We try to > do our best for our immediate families. That?s completely natural. > What?s strange about humans now is that we have to work out how not to > be like other animals. [Laughs] We need to manage ourselves when it > comes to nature. We manage our societies really well. We manage our > economies really well. But the natural world, we?ve just taken it for > granted. The wilderness was something that needed to be overcome, and we > need to build it up again. And a lot of that can be done by just leaving > it alone. Just leave it alone, and it will sort itself out. You don?t > have to put a lot of effort into it. You just have to go away. > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2019 10:46:04 -0500 > From: Barry Brooks <dura...@earthlink.net> > To: Louis Proyect <l...@panix.com>, Activists and scholars in Marxist > tradition <marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> > Subject: Re: [Marxism] Why Growth Can?t Be Green ? Foreign Policy > Message-ID: <20190409104604.51f0d...@earthlink.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII > > > As we know from many sources it's time to face extinction. > > Now, we are left with regrets about what we might have done to prevent it. > > The most important change would have been to see that the wealth in > service doesn't depend only on GNP, but also on the life-span of the items > we produce. Items that are consumed, used up, minutes after being produced > add little to the wealth we have, but any kind of waste and bad planning > add to the GNP, and helps to create jobs to compensate for the cutting of > labor costs to increase profits. > > Capitalism allows unearned income, which could have replaced the wages > lost to automation, but growth allowed wage-dependence to continue long > after PAID full employment in was really needed. Growth allowed the > "dignity" of work to persist long after we should have see we are earth > parasites. Go sell that. Regret not even trying. > > Barry > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Subject: Digest Footer > > _________________________________________________________ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > To change your settings: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu//listinfo/marxism > > ------------------------------ > > End of Marxism Digest, Vol 186, Issue 15 > **************************************** > _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
