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America’s Teacher (interview)
Naomi Klein, The Nation
Naomi Klein: So, the film is wonderful. Congratulations. It is, as many people have already heard, an unapologetic call for a revolt against capitalist madness. But the week it premiered, a very different kind of revolt was in the news: the so-called tea parties, seemingly a passionate defense of capitalism and against social programs.
Meanwhile, we are not seeing too many signs of the hordes storming Wall Street. Personally, I’m hoping that your film is going to be the wake-up call and the catalyst for all of that changing. But I’m just wondering how you’re coping with this odd turn of events, these revolts for capitalism led by Glenn Beck.
Michael Moore: I don’t know if they’re so much revolts in favor of capitalism as they are being fueled by a couple of different agendas, one being the fact that a number of Americans still haven’t come to grips with the fact that there’s an African-American who is their leader. And I don’t think they like that.
NK: Do you see that as the main driving force for the tea parties?
MM: I think it’s one of the forces–but I think there’s a number of agendas at work here. The other agenda is the corporate agenda. The healthcare companies and other corporate concerns are helping to pull together what seems like a spontaneous outpouring of citizen anger…
(23 Sept 2009)
From the Nation:
On September 17, in the midst of the publicity blitz for his cinematic takedown of the capitalist order, Moore talked with Nation columnist Naomi Klein by phone about the film, the roots of our economic crisis and the promise and peril of the present political moment. To listen to a podcast of the full conversation, click here. Following is an edited transcript of their conversation.- -The Editors
The Year of the Flood
Lloyd Alter, treehugger
Waaay up there on the podium of Saint James Cathedral in Toronto, pretty in pink, is Margaret Atwood, who filled the house for what is called a book launch, but is really a performance piece. The book is turned into drama, with Atwood as the narrator; a choir sings. The place is packed with acolytes.
At every stop of the Year of the Flood tour, admission and fundraising goes to local green charities; tonight is to Nature Canada. In the States, it will go to Farm Forward, the American Bird Conservancy, Oceana and WildEarth Guardians.
Of course, this is the woman who complained about the carbon footprint of book tours, and famously invented the Long Pen so she wouldn’t have to do this any more. But this is so much more than a book launch, and she works hard to make it as green as possible (besides supporting so many good charities)…
(28 Sept 2009)
More about the book here: The Year of the flood
The End of Oil?
Michael Hirsh, The New York Times
Oil is the curse of the modern world; it is “the devil’s excrement,” in the words of the former Venezuelan oil minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo, who is considered to be the father of OPEC and should know. Our insatiable need for oil has brought us global warming, Islamic fundamentalism and environmental depredation. It has turned the United States and China, the world’s biggest consumers of petroleum, into greedy, irresponsible addicts that can’t see beyond their next fix. With a few exceptions, like Norway and the United Arab Emirates, oil doesn’t even benefit the nations from which it is extracted. On the contrary: Most oil-rich states have been doomed to a seemingly permanent condition of kleptocracy by a few, poverty for the rest, chronic backwardness and, worst of all, the loss of a national soul.
We can’t be rid of the stuff soon enough.
Such is the message of Peter Maass’s slender but powerfully written new book, “Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil.” Unquestionably, by fueling better and faster transportation and powering cities and factories, oil has been critical to modern economies. But oil has also made possible the most destructive wars in history, and it has left human society in a historical cul-de-sac. Despite much hue and cry today, Maass argues, we seem unable to move beyond an oil-based global economy, and we are going to hit a wall soon…
(25 Sept 2009)
related: Book Review – Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil
The Constant Economy by Zac Goldsmith
Caroline Lucas, The Guardian
The challenge of raising the profile of green issues is hardly a new one. Back in 1974, Teddy Goldsmith fought a general election on behalf of “People”, which later became the Green party. Searching for an eye-catching way of highlighting the issue of soil erosion in East Anglia, Teddy led a camel on a lead bearing the slogan: “No deserts in Suffolk. Vote Goldsmith.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, he lost his deposit.
Thirty five years later, his nephew, Zac Goldsmith, parliamentary candidate for the Conservative party in Richmond Park, is unlikely to lose his deposit, and he has chosen a more orthodox method of promoting his ideas. His new book, The Constant Economy, sets out 10 steps which the government must take to “restore balance to our relationship with the world around us”.
For Goldsmith, a “constant economy” is one in which resources are valued, food is grown sustainably and goods are built to last. It is a system which recognises nature’s limits, where energy security is based on renewable resources and strong communities are valued as the most effective protection against social, economic and environmental instability.
Each chapter elaborates on one of the 10 steps, and offers inspiring examples of where solutions are already being practised (frustratingly without footnotes or references). Yet for a book nominally about the economy, Goldsmith has surprisingly little to say about economics. In spite of its title, the book doesn’t draw on the ground-breaking work of Herman Daly and his development of “steady state economics”, nor does it go as far as the Sustainable Development Commission’s equally ground-breaking recent report, Prosperity Without Growth…
(26 Sept 2009)
