Below are a few excerpts from a long and penetrating article about the selfish and shortsighted policy of 'green growth'...
___________________________
Mainstream climate activism points toward a grandly hopeful end within the confines of acceptable capitalist discourse: decarbonization of the global economy, with technologies driven by profit-seeking corporations subsidized by governments.
Taking up this banner of optimistic can-do-ism, the environmental movement has convinced itself, and sought to convince the public, that with a worldwide build-out of renewable energy systems, humanity can power its dynamic industrial civilization with jobs-producing green machines while also — somehow — rescuing countless species from the brink.
The crux of the problem is that mainstream environmentalists have siloed climate change as a phenomenon apart from the broad human ecological footprint, separate from deforestation, overgrazing of livestock, megafauna kill-off, collapsing fisheries, desertification, depleted freshwater, soil degradation, oceanic garbage gyres, toxification of rainfall with microplastics, and on and on — the myriad biospheric effects of breakneck growth.
Climate change is “but one symptom of an environmentally dysfunctional system of constant growth of economies and populations,” ecologist William Rees, professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, told me. “The meta-problem that we need to keep our eyes on,” Rees said, is ecological overshoot. Modern techno-industrial culture, he writes, “is systematically — even enthusiastically — consuming the biophysical basis of its own existence.” Rees describes this as a malignant process, humanity as cancer.
There is at present no plan, in any country, anywhere, on a global or national scale, to address extinctions, biodiversity crash, and habitat loss. The dismal reality is that with a green build-out, we will be saving not the complex web of life on Earth but the particular way of life of one privileged domineering species that depends for its success on a nature-ravaging network of technological marvels. Only once this truth is understood can honest decisions be made about what kind of world humanity wishes to inhabit in the age of ecological disorder.
___________________________
Wow, what a strong statement: "The dismal reality is that with a green build-out, we will be saving not the complex web of life on Earth but the particular way of life of one privileged domineering species that depends for its success on a nature-ravaging network of technological marvels."
That's an ugly and disappointing truth, but it's one we must accept if we are to understand exactly where we are today, and what sort of future we should be preparing for.
FULL ARTICLE -- https://theintercept.com/2022/12/03/climate-biodiversity-green-energy/
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Biodiversity
Bread and Circuses /
npub1ej…qh8ya
2023-12-19 20:30:36
Author Public Key
npub1ejy6zuevge09258k79qc2exy9l3gafu02thsfj7pfgf3c67q6peqvqh8yaPublished at
2023-12-19 20:30:36Event JSON
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"content": "Below are a few excerpts from a long and penetrating article about the selfish and shortsighted policy of 'green growth'...\n___________________________\n\nMainstream climate activism points toward a grandly hopeful end within the confines of acceptable capitalist discourse: decarbonization of the global economy, with technologies driven by profit-seeking corporations subsidized by governments. \n\nTaking up this banner of optimistic can-do-ism, the environmental movement has convinced itself, and sought to convince the public, that with a worldwide build-out of renewable energy systems, humanity can power its dynamic industrial civilization with jobs-producing green machines while also — somehow — rescuing countless species from the brink.\n\nThe crux of the problem is that mainstream environmentalists have siloed climate change as a phenomenon apart from the broad human ecological footprint, separate from deforestation, overgrazing of livestock, megafauna kill-off, collapsing fisheries, desertification, depleted freshwater, soil degradation, oceanic garbage gyres, toxification of rainfall with microplastics, and on and on — the myriad biospheric effects of breakneck growth. \n\nClimate change is “but one symptom of an environmentally dysfunctional system of constant growth of economies and populations,” ecologist William Rees, professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, told me. “The meta-problem that we need to keep our eyes on,” Rees said, is ecological overshoot. Modern techno-industrial culture, he writes, “is systematically — even enthusiastically — consuming the biophysical basis of its own existence.” Rees describes this as a malignant process, humanity as cancer.\n\nThere is at present no plan, in any country, anywhere, on a global or national scale, to address extinctions, biodiversity crash, and habitat loss. The dismal reality is that with a green build-out, we will be saving not the complex web of life on Earth but the particular way of life of one privileged domineering species that depends for its success on a nature-ravaging network of technological marvels. Only once this truth is understood can honest decisions be made about what kind of world humanity wishes to inhabit in the age of ecological disorder.\n___________________________\n\nWow, what a strong statement: \"The dismal reality is that with a green build-out, we will be saving not the complex web of life on Earth but the particular way of life of one privileged domineering species that depends for its success on a nature-ravaging network of technological marvels.\"\n\nThat's an ugly and disappointing truth, but it's one we must accept if we are to understand exactly where we are today, and what sort of future we should be preparing for.\n\nFULL ARTICLE -- https://theintercept.com/2022/12/03/climate-biodiversity-green-energy/\n\n#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Biodiversity",
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