Hello Doug
Very eloquent, nice. Mostly I agree, in some ways very much so, but I
think you miss a couple of crucial points, and thus end up with the
wrong conclusion.
One is overpopulation, and the idea that real progress and
constructive change necessarily involve population control. It's a
myth. In fact there's plenty of room for everyone and the rest of the
community of life too... except the greedy. Living in one of the
greedy nations of the OECD it might be difficult to see this, but
it's the case.
Rather than spell it out all over again, please see this previous
message, addressed to just the same argument about overpopulation:
http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg32911.html
Re: [biofuel] The Oil we eat (Harper's)
Please also read the previous message in that thread:
http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg32878.html
Re: [biofuel] The Oil we eat (Harper's)
Second is that you omit any mention in your argument of the true
culprits. Actually, the relationship between humans and living nature
that you refer to is generally not a bad relationship. All our
societies have worked this out in the past, those that didn't are no
longer with us. Where we've strayed from our traditions we can and
will adapt. That is not the problem. THIS is the problem:
> Humans are just fine, nearly all of them. Their institutions are
> another matter. The story of history, the one vs the other.
Their institutions are NOT human, and will NOT learn the lessons you
want humans to learn (which humans mostly know already, and where
they've forgotten they can easily be reminded). As we were recently
discussing here:
http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg51268.html
[Biofuel] RE: General Motors Layoffs(.....and everything else)
There's a lot of very good material on corporations and
corporateering in the archives. But I think this is essential reading
- how to kill a mammoth, from Roberto Verzola, secretary-general of
the Philippine Greens:
http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg30628.html
[biofuel] Mammoth corporations
So is this:
http://journeytoforever.org/fyi_previous5.html#creed
Feel No Remorse -- The Corporate Creed
What's also in the archives is quite a lot of criticism of big
environment groups, which have essentially become corporatised
themselves.
http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg19222.html
[biofuel] Corporate enviros
Indeed I just posted another one today:
http://sustainablelists.org/pipermail/biofuel_sustainablelists.org/200
5-June/000655.html
As both these articles imply, the real grass-roots organisations are
another matter - just as individual humans are another matter.
Corporations now have more human rights than you do, and just about
every other right too. If you really want to control population
growth for the good of the world, be satisfied just to control this
small sector of it and you'll find the whole task accomplished.
Ignore this sector of it and you'll probably achieve nothing very
much.
One more thing:
The key lesson of human ecology is that all things are connected to the
Earth.
It's a bit more direct than that. The only real law of ecology is
that everything is connected to everything else.
Best wishes
Keith
It seems to me that this "environmentalism is dead" movement is
setting up a straw man and then knocking it down.
It defines environmentalism as a set of isolated responses to isolated
symptoms, and then says that because the symptoms are not being cured,
the response to them is futile. The solution is said to be action in a
larger context, which is said to be the nature of human society and its
economy; the relations among humans. Environmental problems are regarded
as a subset of human problems.
I think this is a subtle and destructive perversion of the real situation.
To me the problem is fundamentally the relation between humans and the
Earth, and especially though not entirely, the community of life on Earth.
We need to recognize that humans are an inseparable part of the community
of life on Earth, and that when, as now, we are capable of damaging that
community, we have to limit the size of our population and our impact
on the whole community to preserve the whole community of life and our
means of subsistence.
We also need to adapt the human economy over several generations to a
consumption of mineral resources which can be sustained indefinitely and
which will amount on a planetary scale over a long period to a recycling
economy similar to that of the community of life in which plant roots
and phytoplankton take minerals from the more or less evenly distributed
supply in the soil and the sea and make them available to the rest of
the community of life.
We need to stay focused on the relationship between humans and living
nature. It's not an "I-it" relationship nor even one of "I-thou", it's
a relationship among the parts of one body.
Struggles to preserve parts of the body of Gaia are not just "tools to
organize the public." The body of Gaia is changeable, but no part is
expendable.
Focusing on "core American values" and even "core human values" is not
a solution. The solution is incorporating in core human values - our
"operationally defined" human values, displayed in our behaviour - the
realization that humans are a part, and even an ephemeral and
replaceable part, of something more fundamental and more important, the
community of life on earth. That realization includes the awareness that
human welfare not only requires integration with the rest of the community
of life, but that integration requires *limits* to human numbers and the
scale and character of the human impact on the rest of the commuity of
life.
Mr. Werbach talks about environmentalism as a "liberal social movement."
I think he's wrong. Liberalism doesn't seem to have included any limits
to human power and the exercise of that power, or human freedom from
contingencies related to the earth or other people. It does seem to have
included an assumption that humans were capable of godlike perfect
understanding suited to the wielding of any amount of power over the
earth, its creatures and each other, something analogous in Christian
terms to Lucifer's sin of pride.
The key lesson of human ecology is that all things are connected to the
Earth.
Now it's true that the source of our problems in our relationship with
the Earth lies in our relationships with each other. However the problem
comes from the fact that our relationship with the Earth has been
subordinated to our relationships with other humans. More of this disease
is no cure. The cure will come from measuring relationships among humans
by the standard of our relationship with the Earth, that is, by the
standard of survival.
It is still possible for the success of individuals within human society
to occur at the expense of the community of life. When it is not
possible, we will be on the way to solving the "environmental" problem
and likely a lot of strictly human problems as well.
It has been suggested that much of the success of geniuses like Isaac
Newton lay in their power of continuously bearing in mind what they
needed to know, including the imperfections of their current
understanding. This involves a certain tolerance of mental strain, not
to say pain.
As a society and as a species we need to continuously bear in mind what
our relationship with the Earth needs to become, and the current
imperfections of that relationship.
At present nothing can be "progressive" that does not have a
constructive or neutral effect on the relationship betwen humans and
the Earth, and we can't spare much attention for things that don't have
a positive effect.
The most constructive change needed is an end to the growth of the
human population and its impact on the earth, and then a shrinkage to a
level that can be sustained in health. That is what's "progressive,"
and it's attractive to individual humans because it leads to an
improvement in the quality of life for individual humans.
As David Suzuki said, "It's a matter of survival."
Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario
---------- Forwarded message ----------
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2171/
In These Times
June 21, 2005
Environmentalism is dead. What's next?
By Adam Werbach
Sidebar
The Pig People Don't Talk to the Chicken People
<snip>
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