Hope? Don't Bother
Why anyone cares about Copenhagen is beyond me.
First: The debate about economics vs. the environment is meaningless. There is no higher priority than the environment. We can easily do without all the world's armies. That should raise some cash to reduce carbon emissions.
Second: The debate revolves around reducing the rate of increase in carbon emissions...which is transparently ridiculous.
Anything short of a radical reduction in total global emissions doesn't stand a chance of making a difference. And it may already be too late anyway.
So really, who cares? And why?
First: The debate about economics vs. the environment is meaningless. There is no higher priority than the environment. We can easily do without all the world's armies. That should raise some cash to reduce carbon emissions.
Second: The debate revolves around reducing the rate of increase in carbon emissions...which is transparently ridiculous.
Anything short of a radical reduction in total global emissions doesn't stand a chance of making a difference. And it may already be too late anyway.
So really, who cares? And why?
posted by Ted Rall at
11:04 AM
10 Comments:
Psssssst, it's a fraud. You've been duped just like you leftists were duped over Global Cooling in 1975.
The debate between environmentalism and economics as a zero sum game is a false dichotomy, what we need is a paradigm of understanding economic security through human ecology, where economic production is not based on extraction-exploitation. That threatens the capitalist regime immensely.
The carbon offset market is a Band Aid on a hurricane, I know, but it normalizes the conversation about human behavior being linked to environmental conditions, whereby opening up the space for a conversation about transforming our economy toward a system of environmental justice.
Who Cares? Anybody who purports to care about anything needs to care about this. At the core of this discussion is environmental ethics, which is the crux of a discussion about ethical human existence. The kicker? Achieving a lasting human existence in the universe hinges upon our collective ability to achieve an existence within ecological flows.
To do this, humanity will need to achieve a substantive level of material equality for all on the planet, because deprivation of some ultimately threatens the stability of all.
Sound environmental policy, therefore, is the ultimate challenge for humanity to transcend its collective barbarity. Ted, you have a choice to be inspired by the enormity of this challenge, or wallow in self gratifying despair.
Why do I care? Because who I am is a person who is inspired by the implications of the environmental challenge facing humanity.
I don't really care anymore.
When the Chinese started expecting (and getting) the same level of consumerism as the USA, I knew that the world's ecosystems were doomed.
Wealthy Chinese men paying to slaughter rhinos, tigers, and bears for their horns and gall bladders to make those rich Chinese men more fertile. Can anything be more insane than that?
The Earth's forests, rivers, and megafauna are doomed. Fuck us all up the ass with a bulldozer.
Band-aid on a hurricane? That is so funny! Band-aid on a hurricane. I'll have to pass that one around. Band-aid on a hurricane. snic-snic
The point remains. If Ted doesn't care about this issue, then it's not really reasonable to believe he cares about anything at all. Even the foregone conclusion of failure is not a justification for not caring, and it's CERTAINLY not an excuse for belittling the dignity of those who do.
Don't be a jackass, Ted.
The point of Ted's blog is that it's too late to care, even if you want to or need to.
Those who argue against climate change invariably have the same western capitalist objections to even the remote consideration of a future differeing from balls to the wall consumerism.
"too late" for what? What exactly is going to happen here? Articulating environmental quality as a win/lose "End of Times" catastrophe perpetuates the continuation of false despair. "well damn, all hope is lost, it's 'too late'" I guess we shouldn't do ANYTHING. *Laugh*...no it's not.
Not only are we FAR from any E.L.E type scenario, there are enormous natural resources still in need of protection and good management, AND the planet has shown enormous resilience in recharge and recovery ability. Ted is playing into a stupid view; that this is somehow just a game and one side has won and the other lost. We CAN protect our environmental quality NOW, it just means DOING IT, instead of wallowing in self pity about projections and predictions of the future. Reducing pollution is a GOOD THING in and of itself, as well as developing and using renewable energy sources, recycling raw materials, and reducing wasteful consumption.
The entire discussion here is framed in a way that doesn't challenge anybody to actually accomplish anything. Ask yourself what interests are served by the way this issue is being framed. What is the result of a zero-sum political argument over whether or not we should do anything?
Aggie, the point Ted is trying to make, in my opinion, is that nothing short of Global Socialist Revolution® will "save the planet."
Hell, even that might not work, but it will give Ted and his comrades a warm, fuzzy feeling in the guts!
Incitatus,
I get it, I really do. But he's wrong. The GSR isn't even a reasonable answer, it's extraordinarily outdated. It's not that we don't need massive structural change, we do, it's that this is clearly not going to come from existing ideological paradigms of which Ted is firmly rooted and comfortable. State vs. Market doesn't make sense, they fundamentally aren't separable. We need new paradigms within which to make decisions. Darwinian logic suggests that it isn't the strongest that survives, but the one most able to adapt. Humanity's strength in survival has been adaptation, and our form of adaptation is through social organization. The current paradigms just don't work. It's beating a dead horse.
GSR is just reorganizing the deck chairs on the Titanic because it fundamentally doesn't alter the relationship of humans to each other and to nature.
You stupid leftists have somehow been duped into letting Billy Jack and his ilk shit all over your website, and making your own fans watch.
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