Comment on: Environmentalism without policy-making or consumption?

Bigthink — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:35:45 +0100

I couldn't agree more.

All the "solutions" brought up when discussing global warming are always careful to frame themselves in such a way as to allow people to continue to think consumer-capitalism will just carry on as before.

Like on this site: do I want environmental advice from that piece of shit Richard Branson? No. People like him are part of the real problem.

Its perfectly possible communities could create sustainable economies with little energy expenditure, but its out of the question such communities be allowed to flourish or establish "autonomy" (in any sense, including environmental): corporate power would not be able to exploit a closed community that
1) grew its own food,
2) lived within walking distance of all its members,
3) had no dependence on useless consumer items such as television, fashionable (sweatshop) clothing, plastics, and status accessories, and finally
4) minimal reliance on medicine, communcations and other necessities.

Instead, "globalization" is framed as inevitable as "global warming" itself, but in fact globalization is as fragile as the highly-connected provinces of the Roman Empire must have felt before its fall.

Thinkers on the left (including anarchists) just need to careful as not to allow "global warming" become a politics of fear, much like the right uses terrorism for manipulation.

Bigthink - Idea Comments Feed

Comment on: Environmentalism without policy-making or consumption?