Back in the middle of October I posted a piece entitled Save the Trees which you were all kind enough to elevate to the Rec List. It concerned the efforts of a local group to fight the powers that be in West Orange, NJ to prevent the destruction of the Governor George Brinton McClellan Estate Old-Growth Forest and Arboretum in order that Seton Hall Prep could build additional sports field and parking lots. This land is the only old-growth forest within the northern New Jersey metropolitan area which is unprotected and endangered.
You can read more of the background at the link above. Tonight, however, I wanted to provide an update on the situation.
The trees have won a temporary reprieve...as well as an endangered species of bat which may or may not be using some of them.
Once upon a time, we saw progress, particularly technological and medical progress, as both miraculous and uniformly desired. The romanticized meta-narrative of the the Twentieth Century was that it was the age of startling innovation and that indeed humanity might find its salvation in the latest invention to improve the human condition. The most common utterance at the time to describe this phenomenon was what will they think of next? The airplane and the automobile revolutionized travel and with it the spread of information and population dispersal. Penicillin was considered a wonder drug upon its introduction and indeed many lives were saved when it began being used on a wholesale fashion to combat infectious disease. The first pesticides were considered miraculous because they greatly increased the yield of crops, with the hopes that their introduction would increase the food supply and in time make widespread hunger a thing of the past. It was believed that our own ingenuity would be our salvation and in time, there was no telling what long-standing problem would have a easy, understandable solution.
Later, however, we began to cast suspicion on any advance lauded in messianic or wildly optimistic terms. To our horror we discovered that the drug which took away morning sickness also created tragic, hideous birth defects in babies born to women who took it. Then we read that the pesticides that, though they meant to increase the food supply, actually created major problems in the ecosystem around them---problems that skewed the natural environmental balance quite unintentionally but quite undeniably. In attempting to eradicate one pest, we often caused a huge increase in population of another organism, creating a brand new problem in the process. The system of pest control as set up by Mother Nature then was seen as more desirable as the one shaped by human hands. And this idea began to take shape in the minds of many to the degree that this belief has many adherents in this age. Take a stroll down the aisles of your local Whole Foods if you need a visual demonstration.
But I will say this. Old ways of doing things are not necessarily better ways of doing things. Though we may have swung the pendulum from one side to another in the course of half a century or so, we shouldn't lose sight of the true balance of things. Anyone who has walked down a street where automobiles are not available and where all traffic directed down a major thoroughfare is pulled by horses knows the filth and the stench that fills the air and collects on either side of the roadway. It is for that reason, among others, that the horseless carriage was developed in the first place. We must not ever assume that the motives of those who came before us were summarily evil or distasteful simply because they did not have the ability to measure what they did by the power of hindsight. Any of us could look like geniuses if we had that in our favor. We often look for an easy enemy when the true hard work is to work to reach the point where we recognize that there are no easy answers and no easy targets. Demystifying the past does not imply that we ought to summarily scrap its lessons. The mythology of past ages needs to be removed, but those who view past behaviors and past events without rosy gloss can find many helpful examples for contemplation, provided, one doesn't heave it into the trash can in one go, assuming the whole bunch is rotten all the way through.
The larger point I am making is that it is tempting these days to assume that the advances of the past are purely evil, based on their unforeseen and unintended consequences wrought by best intentions. We have gotten to the point now that we are reluctant at times to modify the world around us even in the slightest, lest we upset the fragile balance of energy, life, and movement that defines existence as any being currently alive. While we are humans, we are also animals, too. Our will dictates the shape and pace of the world around us, of course, but so also does our very existence. Global Warming is the buzzword phrase of the moment and while I do believe that human decision making has modified the climate and weather patterns for the worst, I do also know that the environment has a way of being adaptive that we often do not grant it, nor fully understand. We see things through such selfish, human terms at times, and even our best intentions do not disguise the fact that everything often relates back to us in the end. We were created selfish. Self-preservation is what consumes us above any other preoccupation. Still, this is an impulse we must fight against if we ever wish to live in peace with each other. We have more in common than we admit, but it's often the very things we don't like to admit even to ourselves. There is a limit to our understanding, and in fifty years from now, perhaps we'll set aside Global Warming for the latest theory that defines our guilt and gives us a rallying point that demands we be unselfish not towards each other, but towards all living creatures.
Whether we are kings and queens of the beasts is a matter for debate, but we do have the benefit of higher brain function, and this is what makes us so much more influential than the average mammal. We seem to confuse at times the fact that we are both animals and also beings beholden to reason, somehow simultaneously separate from the fray. We exist in our own orbit and while it is wise to understand that the earth does not strictly belong to us, we do modify it by our very presence. When a butterfly can create a ripple effect just by flapping its wings, imagine what the average person creates by stepping outside on his or her way to work on the morning. I'm not saying that we ought not be aware of our carbon footprint and we ought not recognize that being less wasteful and more protective of nature is worthwhile, but that one can micromanage one's degree of social consciousness to an extent that ending up miserable is the inevitable byproduct.
In a broader context to that, I notice how we lament the slow progress of reform and regulation. Our split loyalties are often to blame for this as well. If we were able to reach a happy medium between the supreme authority of old ways and the supreme authority of new ways, then we might actually get something done in a timely fashion. So much of Liberalism and Progressivism these days is conducted from a defensive posture, with the belief in the back of the mind that no matter what is set in play, it will inevitably blow up in the end and create more problems. Well, with all due respect, this is merely part of being alive. Any decision made will create future problems that no one could ever predict at the outset, but this shouldn't paralyze our needed efforts, either.
Again, reform is a constant process of refining, re-honing, and revision. It's foolish to expect that one bill, one policy statement, or one innovative strategy will come out perfect and never need to be updated to reflect changing times. Rather than seeing this established fact as frustrating or limiting, we need to modify our expectations. As President Obama said last week in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, "...[W]e do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place." We are imperfect. Our ideas, no matter how immaculately crafted at the time, are imperfect, and the passage of time will render them more imperfect.
But there is a difference between expecting individual or communal perfection on a case-by-case basis and not striving to improve the lives of those around us. A century from now, if there is a blogosphere, I'm sure many people will laugh at the nonsensical barbarism of a previous age where every citizen of the Earth did not have health care coverage from cradle to grave. But in this hypothetical example, it would be easy for them to make this judgment if they made it based on a naive, cavalier understanding of our times. If they viewed them purely through the lens of their times without understanding the events, beliefs, and myriad of factors which led us to undertake the great struggle before us, then their own perspectives could not be taken seriously. Again, we might be wise to understand why we always seem to crave an enemy. Voltaire mentioned that if God didn't exist, it would be necessary for humanity to invent Him. Likewise, if enemies didn't exist, it would be necessary for us to invent them. That the very same people who speak of unity and can't understand why we don't have it are among the first to construct an antagonistic force and project all of their frustrations upon it is the deepest irony of all. Our most powerful enemy is us.
It is with broken heart that I report the death of one of this nation's most important and innovative environmental attorneys.
Luke Cole graduated with honors from Stanford, and cum laude from Harvard Law School. He could have done anything. He could have gone to work for any law firm in the country, and made a fortune. Instead, he moved to San Francisco and co-founded the non-profit Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. As described on their website:
The Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment is an environmental justice litigation organization dedicated to helping grassroots groups across the United States attack head on the disproportionate burden of pollution borne by poor people and people of color. We provide organizing, technical and legal assistance to help community groups stop immediate environmental threats. In the 16 years that CRPE has been helping the poor and people of color resist toxic intrusions and protect their environmental health, among our many victories we have beaten toxic waste incinerators, forced oil refineries to use cleaner technology, beaten a 55,000-cow mega-dairy, stopped numerous tire burning proposals, helped bring safe drinking water to various rural communities, stopped a garbage dump on the Los Coyotes reservation in southern California, and empowered hundreds of local residents along the way.
His recent work included a groundbreaking case that is succinctly explained by his law school classmate, Ann Carlson:
Cole was well-known for his work on numerous leading environmental justice cases, including as counsel for the Native Village of Kivalina in its pathbreaking case seeking damages from large greenhouse gas emitters from the melting away of their Alaskan village.
This is a review of Noel Sturgeon's (2009) Environmentalism in Popular Culture, an interesting book of feminist cultural criticism. Environmentalism in Popular Culture offers the most readily-accessible critique of an American mythology of the environment that I've read yet. Though it makes some rather quick connections between its identity politics categories and environmental analysis, it maintains the reader's interest throughout.
Saving the Earth is not an ego trip. Saving the Earth is not something you do so that you can say you planted more trees or created more hybrids or wrote more academic papers or bombed more SUVs or fed more hungry people or arranged more peace deals or wrote more grants or have a purer method or better ethics than the next guy. Saving the Earth is not something you do so that you can stand in judgment of the human race and ask it, "so what have YOU done?"
No, saving the Earth is actually saving the Earth, and understanding it requires a degree of humility that seems at some point to be beyond the current reach of mainstream environmentalism, which wishes to simplify the act of saving the Earth to that which is politically and economically expedient. Saving the Earth, however, must be something that actually saves the Earth, not something which makes us feel like we're doing it when we're not.
In the hectic run-up to an important election, we need to keep minds focused on the larger picture, and on the potential for epochal change in light of environmental and economic crises.
Critical theory was begun in the 20th century as an alternative to capitalist "social science" and also as an alternative to Leninist forms of "dialectical materialism." It sought to look at the world in terms of history, philosophy, and science, criticizing "mainstream" social science as infected by ideological attitudes while recognizing the persistent longevity of the capitalist system and wondering what to do about its injustices.
This diary will explore the possibility of critical theory, a 20th century "bigger picture" way of thinking about the world, as an intellectual and social discipline for the mind and for understanding the 21st century world.
What are the benefits? Kotchen and Burger estimated that the oil had a value of $374 billion (writing in July 2007, they assumed a long-term price of $53/barrel), but that it would cost $123 billion to extract and market. The net return of $254 billion is divided consists of industry rents of $90 billion, Alaska tax revenues of $37 billion, and Federal tax revenues of $124 billion.
Under the authors' understanding of incidence, consumers wouldn't benefit much at all because oil prices would not fall noticeably. Still, drilling makes economic sense if the loss of environmental amenities is valued at less than $1,141 a person (per American, not per Alaskan) and that was with a price of oil roughly half of today's price.
At today's price of oil, a rough estimate of the benefit -- not counting environmental costs -- is over $600 billion. So the whole issue seems much more important than I had thought just one hour ago. Some approximation of taxes and transfers and auctions are available, so these gains can be redistributed to some extent if you wish.
The point that Cowen brings up is a profound one. The common argument against expanding oil drilling both off-shore and in ANWR has been twofold: the amount of oil is not significant enough to alter the world price (which will always be true), and the value of the oil does not significantly outpace the amount of environmental damage that would be caused.
But when the price of oil changes, the value of the oil does as well. Indeed, if the price of oil continues to rise in the long term, the value of the oil will be significantly more than the value of the environmental damage (to the extent that any value can be placed on that - but, it is easily imaginable that at future oil price X, the profits will be significant enough that huge sums from it could be used to finance environmental cleanup in many places).
Therefore, I predict that at some point, the value of the oil in ANWR will be large enough that it is politically irrational not to exploit it. The oil in ANWR will become a sort of national trust fund, where at a certain expected value, the government is certain to exploit it. I see no way of avoiding this, or by which this is not the rational course of action.
This is a review of James Gustave Speth's Bridge at the Edge of the World, intended as a supplement to the short review given of this book in the Monthly Review. Speth is a prominent environmentalist who has worked with the Democratic Presidential administrations of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. His words, then, deserve our attention for their connections to political effectiveness.
YANGON (AFP) - Myanmar said Friday it was not ready to let in foreign aid workers, rejecting international pressure to allow experts into the isolated nation where disease and starvation are stalking cyclone survivors.
One week after the devastating storm killed tens of thousands, Myanmar's ruling generals -- deeply suspicious of the outside world -- said the country needed outside aid for those still alive, but would deliver it themselves.
The foreign ministry announcement came as a top UN official warned time was running out to move in disaster experts and supplies to prevent diseases that could claim even more victims.
Instead, the ministry said some relief workers who arrived on an aid flight from Qatar on Wednesday had been deported.
Al Jazeera has an exemplary in-depth analysis of this tragedy, including an extended round table featuring UN Humanitarian Chief John Holmes, Bo Hla Tint, spokesperson for the Burmese Government in Exile and Marie Lall of the Asia Programme at Chatham House:
Despite economic sanctions against Myanmar by the United States and the European Union, Total continues to operate the Yadana gas field, and Chevron Corp. has a 28 percent stake through its takeover of Unocal. Existing investments were exempt from the investment ban.
Both Total and Chevron broadly defended their business in the nation.
"Far from solving Myanmar's problems, a forced withdrawal would only lead to our replacement by other operators probably less committed to the ethical principles guiding all our initiatives," Jean-Francois Lassalle, vice president of public affairs for Total Exploration & Production, said this week in a statement.
ABC News Australia is now reporting that the death toll from Cyclone Nargis in Burma could be as high as 80,000 right now, and a perfect storm of lack of sanitation, food and aid workers to - among other things - dispose of dead bodies decomposing in rice fields and local water supplies could lead to an even larger human tragedy. link: http://www.abc.net.au/news/sto...
Earlier this year I decided to take a break from the bullshit. This site and and a few others have been outposts of sanity in a medium literally choking in crap. Is it just me or has the level of all round mendacity reached the point where it all blurs into a numbing howl of white noise?
Anyway, as I understand it all opinions are welcome as long as nobody is intentionally trying to piss anyone off. If you're looking for the same old screams about evil Republicans you won't like this piece.
This is a book review of Joan Martinez-Alier's 2002 classic "The Environmentalism of the Poor." This is a book about the history of environmentalism that tries to fit the struggles of native peoples into that history.
My last review was of a recently-published biography of Sup Marcos, the EZLN (Zapatista) figure; my next review will to a certain extent integrate the insights of Zapatismo into Martinez-Alier's framework. This, to a certain, extent, forms the knowledge background for my interest in people's movements (centered on, but not exclusive to, peasant movements) as a counterweight to the environmental predations of the mainstream of capitalist industry.
This is a review of Alf Hornborg's The Power of the Machine, a book by a professional anthropologist offering a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary critique of our global society.
The review is in four parts: the first part is an introduction to critical theory, the second part will detail Hornborg's main concern, which is that we are trapped in a "fetish" of economic "machines," and that this is why we keep offering "technological" and "capitalist" solutions to problems like abrupt climate change. The third part is a short critique of his central concept, "machine fetishism," and the conclusion will summarize the book chapter by chapter.
William F. Buckley: We are so delighted to have you here, Mr. Gore. I seldom see another conservative like myself with maudlin thoughts dressed up in convoluted prose that the Great Unwashed don't understand. Your obfuscation of the issues is majestic. You even managed to be elected president as a [heh heh] Democrat. Took Scalia to overrule the electorate. But perhaps you will tell us why, as one of us, you despise environmentalism so much. Is it because you are looking forward to owning ocean front property in Tennessee?
This is a literary essay examining the question: "Why do people do what they do?" in an economic context. Its starting point is the three-fold explanation given in Wilk and Cliggett's new text of economic anthropology, Economies and Cultures: people do what they do because 1) of economic self-interest, 2) for the sake of other people, or 3) with moral/ ethical motives in mind. I use that framework as a starting point to examine what sort of economic motives would be best in light of the ecological crises of the present, and of the advanced state of capitalism and of "capitalist discipline" as it has shaped our society.
March on Washington
Back in the middle of October I posted a piece entitled 
