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The Barbaric Heart: Capitalism and the crisis of nature
Curtis White, Orion magazine
THERE IS A FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION that environmentalists are not very good at asking, let alone answering: “Why is this, the destruction of the natural world, happening?” We ordinarily think of environmentalists as people who care about something called nature or (if they’re feeling a little technocratic, and they usually are) the “environment.” They are concerned, as well they should be, that the lifestyle and economic practices of the industrialized West are not sustainable, and that nature itself may experience a “system collapse.” But as scientifically sophisticated as environmentalism’s thinking about natural systems can be (especially its ability to measure change and make predictions about the future based on those measurements), its conclusions about human involvement in environmental degradation tend to be very reductive and causal. Environmentalism’s analyses tend to be about “sources.” Industrial sources. Nonpoint sources. Urban sources. Smokestack sources. Tailpipe sources. Even natural sources (like the soon-to-be-released methane from thawing Arctic tundra). But environmentalism is not very good at asking, “Okay, but why do we have all of these polluting sources? ”
Because we have not allowed ourselves to ask this question and instead limited ourselves to haplessly trying to turn off sources, our experience has been like Mickey Mouse’s in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”: for every berserk broomstick that he hacked in half, two more took its place, implacably carrying buckets of water that, one by one, created a universal deluge. Similarly, for every polluting source that we turn off (or “mitigate,” since we can’t seem to really turn off anything), another two pop up in its place. For example, at the very moment that we seem to have become serious about reducing our use of petroleum, here comes coal from the ravaged mountaintops of West Virginia and tar sands from Canada, the dirtiest and most destructive energy sources of them all. These rounds of mitigation and evasion are what pass for problem-solving.
Environmentalism is also reluctant to think that its problem may not be of modern origin but something as old as humanity itself. It is committed to a sort of “presentism” in which the culprits are all of recent vintage: Monsanto, Big Oil, developers of suburban sprawl, the modern corporation, you know, the usual suspects. But bad as these things can be (and that’s very bad), they are not the unique creators of our problems. And they are not evil, or, as we descendants of the Puritans like to say, “greedy.” Simply blaming these entities for traditional moral failings is not adequate to the true situation. At most, by doing so we create an environmentalist melodrama of evildoers opposed by forces of good. (Big Oil versus the Sierra Club.)
… In the end, the one important task of thoughtfulness is to invent a spiritual principle, a logos of its own, that can contest the energies (and tyrannies) of the Barbaric Heart. But thoughtfulness’s primary attribute is not its ability to provide a superior Truth or an irrefutable logic. Thoughtfulness’s primary attribute is aesthetic. That is, what thoughtfulness proposes as an alternative to the self-serving violence of the Barbaric is beauty. “Don’t think profit,” it argues, “think beauty. The beauty of the polis, the beauty of culture, the beauty of human beings freed from the slavery of regimented work, and the beauty of an untrammeled natural world.”
(May/June 2009 issue)
Recommended by EB contributor Amanda Kovattana.
Collapse conundrum: confrontation or descent by degrees
Carolyn Baker, Speaking Truth to Power
Recently, Transition Town founder, Rob Hopkins, and Peak Oil researcher and writer, Richard Heinberg, debated the pros and cons of planning for emergencies in transition communities as individuals organize to powerdown and localize to the fullest extent possible. The conversation was rich and thought-provoking, and both Hopkins and Heinberg offered incredibly important, diverse perspectives that widened my vision of the topic and reiterated for me the complexity of the issues involved. As with any conversation that is intended to be evocative and not combative, the Hopkins-Heinberg debate opened up a universe of stimulating and fascinating questions for collapse navigators to ponder and act upon.
Similarly, with the publication and review of my recent book Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse, some very juicy and intriguing debate has emerged regarding whether it is better to approach the unprecedented transitions we are facing by “staring down collapse”, a term used in the book and elsewhere, motivated by the dire nature of our predicament, or conversely, to engage in “the great turning” out of inspiration and elation motivated by a vision of the possible. This quandary reminds me of what Joanna Macy refers to as the “boring old question” of whether or not people should just work on the inner world of their own psyches or the outer world in which they live and breathe. Of course, she insists, we must do both.
… Like any author I could have written the book differently, but I chose the style used for myriad reasons, not the least of which is personal experience with other human beings, including myself. Everyone comes to terms with collapse or vigorously avoids the topic for countless reasons and in a plethora of ways. Authors write books or produce documentaries on the topic in their own inimitable styles based on who they are and the experiences they bring to the table.
My experience with myself as a child of empire and most of my siblings in that milieu is that we love to feel good, make nice, look on the bright side, accentuate the positive, and consciously or unconsciously tout our American ingenuity and exceptionalism. Because empire has taught us that people won’t like us or pay attention to us if we say unpleasant things, we often feel that we must express our truth in the most palatable manner and in a style that will lend itself to mass consumption.
However, the collapse of empire dictates for me that I must write and live and think and feel in a manner radically different from all that it has inculcated within me. I am also aware that just as collapse is a process, so is my or anyone else’s attempts to navigate it.
… What makes collapse so difficult to come to terms with is that if we choose to fully absorb its implications, it leaves us with a sense of having a brush with death, the consequences of which are at the very least uncertainty and at the very worst, a sense of being overwhelmed.
Again, the words of Joanna Macy come to mind as she repeatedly counsels readers and audiences not to be afraid of the darkness and to allow ourselves to feel the pain and loss visited upon us by civilization. If we’re afraid of feeling the pain, she notes, we will lack the compassion necessary for responding creatively to collapse. Quoting Thich Nhat Hanh, she emphasizes that what we need most is “to hear within ourselves the sound of the earth crying.”
(15 June 2009)
Only faith can solve the energy crisis
Andrew Brown, Guardian
Rational self-interest isn’t enough to save the world. We will need faith as well.
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Scandinavia is one of the most secularised corners of the world and by reputation one of the most rational. So I was astonished last week to hear the Finnish chairman of Royal Dutch Shell (and of Nokia) Jorma Ollila, say that the world’s energy crisis would not be solved unless everyone turned off the lights when they left an empty room.
Now, he’s not a villain or a fool, and he certainly wasn’t suggesting that there was no role for oil companies, or even mobile phone companies to play in the transition to a greener and more stable kind of economy. Nor did he claim that even the aggregate of millions of acts of infinitesimal self-denial would solve the world’s problems. The linkage was a more subtle one, and goes to the heart of the question of how political will is manufactured.
In Ollila’s view, the difficulties we face in making the world’s economy greener and ultimately sustainable are not just technological. He didn’t sound to me like a huge technological optimist, in any case; he certainly didn’t say that it was inevitable that technological solutions to the problem of global warming will be produced. But even if they are, he thought that half the problem facing us was political.
(15 June 2009)
Bigger Isn’t Better
Peter A. Victor, Ottawa Citizen
A return to booming economic growth would put the world back on the path to disaster — it’s time for a radical rethinking
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There’s nothing like a good crisis to make us rethink old ideas. The depression of the 1930s led to the rejection of the prevailing idea that unemployment would right itself if only people would work for lower wages. Governments could do very little to help. These ideas were overthrown by experience and by the invention of modern macro economics by British economist, John Maynard Keynes. By the end of World War II, most Western governments had adopted Keynesian economic policies designed to ensure that total expenditures were sufficient to maintain full employment.
… It is time to rethink the old idea that the solution to all our problems lies in the incessant expansion of the economy. Rich countries like Canada should explore alternatives, especially if poorer countries are to benefit from economic growth for a while in a world increasingly constrained by biophysical limits. Some deny or simply ignore these limits and argue that economic growth in rich countries is necessary to stimulate growth in poorer ones.
Others say that with ‘green’ growth we can expand economic output as we reduce the demands we place on nature through more efficient production, better designed products, fewer goods and more services, compact urban forms, and organic agriculture. While these measures may well help in a transition they are an unlikely prescription for the long term. What is required is a radical rethinking of our economies and their relation to the natural world.
Although no 21st century Keynes has emerged to prepare the intellectual ground for such a change in thinking, we do have a body of knowledge built up over many decades and now thriving under the name of ‘ecological economics’. Ecological economists understand economies to be subsystems of the earth ecosystem, sustained by a flow of materials and energy from and back to the larger system in which they are embedded. It is understandable that when these flows were small relative to the earth they could be ignored, as they have been in much of mainstream economics.
(15 June 2009)
Can We Survive the ‘Anthropocene’ Period?
Paul J Crutzen, Project Syndicate
For the past three centuries, humans’ effects on the global environment have escalated. Most importantly, our emissions of carbon dioxide may cause global climate patterns to depart significantly from their natural course for many millennia to come.
It seems appropriate to assign the term “Anthropocene” to the current, in many ways human-dominated, geological epoch, supplementing the Holocene – the warm period of the past 10–12 millennia. The Anthropocene Period could be said to have started in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when analyses of air trapped in polar ice showed the beginning of growing global concentrations of CO2 and methane. This date also happens to coincide with James Watt’s design of the steam engine in 1784.
Mankind’s growing influence on the environment was recognized as long ago as 1873, when the Italian geologist Antonio Stoppani referred to the “anthropozoic era,” defined by a “new telluric force, which in power and universality may be compared to the greater forces of earth.”
… Unless there is a global catastrophe – a meteorite impact, a world war, or a pandemic – mankind will remain a major environmental force for many millennia. As a result, scientists and engineers face a daunting task during the Anthropocene era: to guide us towards environmentally sustainable management. This will require appropriate human behavior at all levels, and may well involve internationally accepted, large-scale geo-engineering projects to “optimize” climate. At this stage, however, we are still largely treading on terra incognita .
Paul J. Crutzen received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1995
(15 June 2009)
