A few gems -

My recent ouster from a self-proclaimed “Left” website provides a succinct example of how what might be termed “contradiction“ is in fact the result of someone else’s ideological exclusiveness. Based on what I can glean from various apres-ouster comments jeering my contributions to the site, maliciously misrepresenting my views and applauding my virtual execution, it was the self-righteous and smugly irrevocable verdict of the site’s authorities that -- merely because I am an uncompromising defender of the right to keep and bear arms -- I am not only definitively excluded from the “progressive” camp (and thereby eternally denied use of the “progressive” label), I am also forever to be damned as the Enemy. Thus was I ideologically “cleansed” from that particular electronic universe.


Speaking of contradictions, I can think of nothing more contradictory -- absurdly contradictory at that -- than the mistaken, hypocritical and patently self-serving notion that economic security can somehow be achieved without altering the present-day reality of tyrannosauric capitalism. However the maintenance of capitalism may be rationalized -- and in the past 18 months I have been truly astonished by the number of self-proclaimed “leftists” and “progressives” who believe that capitalism represents humanity’s ultimate economic achievement -- the core purpose of this belief is clearly to ensure its proponents the uninterrupted supply of all the trinkets and gadgets essential to their yuppoid lifestyle. Never mind that capitalism is destroying the planetary ecosystem and thus bringing down on us an apocalyptic disaster without any human precedent; never mind that that since the Industrial Revolution, capitalism has been the sole source of war and by far the primary source of all less organized violence as well. The party goes on, even as the party-goers try to ease their guilt by adorning their trophy BMWs with bumper-stickers that command us all to “visualize peace” -- as if we could somehow sloganize ourselves to liberation.


But blaming the poor for poverty is a definitively fascist viewpoint; America’s headlong rush toward fascism is clearly demonstrated by the fact this notion -- now also the cornerstone of our national welfare policy -- is as commonplace amongst those who anoint themselves New Age “progressives“ as it is among the traditionally Hitler-harsh plutocracy of the capitalist ruling class. Because I will not abjure -- because I will not make the my-poverty-is-entirely-my-fault public act of contrition the United States demands of all us poor -- I am considered “uppity”: white trash who does not know his place and is never sufficiently grateful even for the begrudgingly doled-out crumbs of Social Security and Medicare Part D, the latter the DemoPublican Prescription Drug Lord benefit that more than tripled my annual prescription drug costs merely to increase the already obscene profits of the prescription drug magnates.


Finally there is that fact that we poor in the U.S. are utterly despised even if we cravenly comply with the most degrading demands of humility and shamefacedness: after all, our poverty is living proof of capitalism's tyrannosauric nature, and in the Britney Spears superficiality of Moron Nation, the great reflexive unspoken mass-mentality terror is that the mere sight of our misfortune is somehow contagious -- that our fate will magically spread to others merely by our proximity. Which is, of course, the hateful truth behind U.S. socioeconomic policy, whether Democratic or Republican, whether in post-Katrina New Orleans or in Iraq: we poor -- especially those of us who are also disabled -- are very literally not considered worthy of any “help” save extermination.


Survival is therefore resistance. And it is precisely by resistance I fulfill my duty as a pack animal. Never mind Marx; my totem is Wolf, and the closest companions of my life were dogs, and though I am now inescapably caged by poverty -- indeed as if I have been isolated from so much I love in what my very isolation suggests is surely to be my terminal kennel -- I am nevertheless doing my best to follow the breathtakingly pure examples set by my canine spirit guides: despite my tainted humanness, working as diligently as possible for the good of the whole. Thus -- and also because it is literally the only pleasure I have left -- do I write.

http://wolfgangvonskeptik.mu.nu/

A couple links from newswolf

http://www.learntoquestion.com/seevak/g ... mepage.htm (http://www.learntoquestion.com/seevak/groups/2002/sites/kozol/Seevak02/ineedtogoHOMEPAGE/homepage.htm)

I personally thought this was just rehashing the imperialist mentality and stuff we already know, but newswolf seemd to think it was a flash of insight so maybe I am not reading everything right

Also this one:

http://mondediplo.com/2006/09/13venezuela

This one is a little more pertinent in terms of discussion, but I suppose there are two directions you could go with this. One using it as an inspiration for this type of change actually happening, or to talk about the its structural underpinnings.

EDIT: another interesting study in the same vein is Cuba so here's a link from the same site to that

http://mondediplo.com/2006/09/01cuba

The second one seems so hypothetical and down-the-road I'm not sure what can come of it, but it probably also elicits the more interesting responses :)

As Mairead observed, the Gaia Hypothesis is anything but New Age: Gaia describes a universe in which individuals are twigs on an exquisitely branchy tree, implicitly therefore with a consciousness (though the Gaia Hypothesis does not address this question) that is but the pinpoint of the greater tree-consciousness -- or as our pagan ancestors believed, the extended consciousness of our mother the goddess focused to an infinity of individual pinpoints whether inanimate or animate: Ed Sander's "tiny sparks of the universe." Hence Taliesin's "there is nothing in which I have not been"; hence too the formidable logic behind the central chant of the Ghost Dance: "we shall live again." And -- if I may return once more to the analogy of the branchy tree -- beyond this there is the greater community of treeness, what Gary Snyder aptly calls "Earth Household," the implicitly socialist, implicitly communalist realm of being that was instinctively recognized by most of humanity throughout most of its history -- that is, until the advent of patriarchy spawned the absolutism of Abrahamic separatism which in turn produced capitalism and is now predictably metastasizing into fascism: its ultimate form -- of which New Age is a vital support-element.

Indeed New Age is the diametrical opposite of Gaian community and solidarity. New Age is the quintessence of existential isolationism, the ultimate (and ultimately selfish) exclamation of the fascist concept of ubermenschen und untermenschen, man and superman -- and thus absolute self-centeredness rationalized as maximum virtue -- in exactly the same way capitalism is absolute greed rationalized as maximum virtue.

To enlarge slightly on something I recently wrote (in a New-Age-infested venue from which I was ousted for daring to express these very observations): never mind that the core of New Age doctrine is a fuck-you-I-am-god belief that can only further defiance of the environmental mandates of Earth Household; the fascism implicit in the New Age credo lies in the fact that -- even more than the doctrines of Abrahamic religion (which divide all the word into the ubermenschen of the "saved" and the untermenschen of the "damned") -- the mind-over-matter dogma of the New Age cleaves humanity into the “evolved souls” of the "fully conscious" or "enlightened" elite (those “spiritually progressed beings” -- hence "progressives" -- allegedly able to control their own fates merely by the power of their own thoughts), and the dunce-cap proletariat of the "un-evolved" masses, (all the rest of us who for whatever reason refuse to accept the New Age gospel). And just as the Christians elevate wealth to proof of divine favor, denounce the poor as “sinners” and rail that our poverty is proof of our “sin,” so do the New Agers exalt riches as proof of enlightenment, dismiss poverty as nothing more than a “self-destructive lifestyle choice” and sneer at us poor as “hopelessly un-evolved.” In either case, what is deftly ignored is the fact that capitalism is a slave ideology -- a giant pyramid scam fueled by the ever-worsening survival struggles of an ever-expanding underclass increasingly condemned to inescapable wretchedness.

Thus we see the true function of New Age dogma: to replace the dying dogmas of Abrahamic religion and thereby reinforce the genuinely Nazi ethos at the core of capitalism. Just as Christian capitalists relentlessly savage their workers but find reassurance of their righteousness in church on Sunday, so now New Age executives do likewise in the privacy of their own posh dwellings: they chant some self-affirming mantra and assure themselves of their superiority merely by believing they can "visualize peace." Thus too the so-called New Age is merely the latest attempt to rationalize capitalism -- the most ecocidally parasitic, genocidally selfish ethos in human experience -- a fact proven beyond a scintilla of doubt by the huge corporate beneficence that finances the propagation of New Age beliefs. By contrast, the Gaia Hypothesis is positively subversive: it is the missing link that harmonizes ecology with socialism and -- by implication -- bonds spirituality and science in a mutually supportive manner unknown since the rise of patriarchy. It does all this because it brings us back, via science, to the ecological interdependence of all being -- the ancient knowledge that if one part of Earth Household becomes so predatory it jeopardizes the whole, the entirety of the household is programmed to rise against it and kill it: precisely the self-inflicted apocalypse we now euphemistically describe as global warming. To which adherents of the New Age -- defiantly self-centered to the pollution-bitter end -- will no doubt respond with yet another bumper-sticker: "visualize global cooling."

Loren's latest entries in the comments are vitally important, and I'm extremely glad I opened this particular can of worms :)

I am only going to repost my quick reply, I'm hoping everybody is reading the rest straight from the source anyway




Sorry, I wasn't really using clear terminology. I just meant that it is easy for doctrinaire types to dismiss these things as psychobabble and/or argue that it doesn't belong as part of the sober, deliberative discourse PopI is shooting for.

Which I'm cool with, even while disagreeing

I have wanted to talk about the common roots of the deep ecology movement and Nazism for a while now. Needless to say that nearly got me lynched at PI.

Following Newswolf's posts and the articles he links to, by the way KBH, just don't have time yet to comment here or there.

I have wanted to talk about the common roots of the deep ecology movement and Nazism for a while now. Needless to say that nearly got me lynched at PI.

Following Newswolf's posts and the articles he links to, by the way KBH, just don't have time yet to comment here or there.

Yeah, after checking out his recommended readings, I half-way think Newswolf is an eco-terrorist :D

Ask anax about that, if nothing more you'll get a laugh :)

I have wanted to talk about the common roots of the deep ecology movement and Nazism for a while now. Needless to say that nearly got me lynched at PI.

Following Newswolf's posts and the articles he links to, by the way KBH, just don't have time yet to comment here or there.

Lynching? I remember it as a pummelling on this end :)

You know, I wrote a long response to this post twice today only to lose them getting timed out.(I'm so slow) Was gonna give it one more shot when I reread Raph's post 'another' quoting Newswolf. That 1st paragraph nicely sums up a lot of the basic Deep Ecology pov. Impossible for me to say it better. He was quoting Gary Snyder fer chrissake, one of the founders. That entire exerpt speaks for me concerning the Earth, New Agers, hell everything. So I'll wait to see what you have to say, after having copped out by using a far more articulate person's words to speak for me.

I have wanted to talk about the common roots of the deep ecology movement and Nazism for a while now. Needless to say that nearly got me lynched at PI.

Following Newswolf's posts and the articles he links to, by the way KBH, just don't have time yet to comment here or there.

Lynching? I remember it as a pummelling on this end :)

You know, I wrote a long response to this post twice today only to lose them getting timed out.(I'm so slow) Was gonna give it one more shot when I reread Raph's post 'another' quoting Newswolf. That 1st paragraph nicely sums up a lot of the basic Deep Ecology pov. Impossible for me to say it better. He was quoting Gary Snyder fer chrissake, one of the founders. That entire exerpt speaks for me concerning the Earth, New Agers, hell everything. So I'll wait to see what you have to say, after having copped out by using a far more articulate person's words to speak for me.

I'm not up on this stuff but is Mike's Nazism reference wrapped up in the thinly veiled eugenics argument?

Lynching? I remember it as a pummelling on this end :)
Yes? That is interesting bp.

That is how war happens, you know? Each side thinks they are mionding their own business, but the other side is the one out to get them.

I'm not up on this stuff but is Mike's Nazism reference wrapped up in the thinly veiled eugenics argument?
I had references all lined up and had thought it through a little more back a couple of months ago.I am just winging it now, but I can dig up references if we get a discussion going on it.

The roots of Nazism including a concept of the natural man, corrupted by civilization, and a need to get back to the earth and be natural again. It was anti-intellectual, paganistic and materialistic. Corrupted man despoiling the natural order was seen as the problem.

I do not mean to say that the ecology movement is Nazism.

Here are excerpts from a discussion about the subject:

"What we today call 'environmentalism' is ... based on a fear of change. It's based upon a fear of the outcome of human action. And therefore it's not surprising that when you look at the more xenophobic right-wing movements in Europe in the 19th century, including German fascism, it quite often had a very strong environmentalist dynamic to it. The most notorious environmentalists in history were the German Nazis. The Nazis ordered soldiers to plant more trees. They were the first Europeans to establish nature reserves and order the protection of hedgerows and other wildlife habitats. And they were horrified at the idea of hydroelectric dams on the Rhine. Adolf Hitler and other leading Nazis were vegetarian and they passed numerous laws on animal rights."

<snip>

The core of Nazi rural socialism was the idea that land-use must be planned. Gottfried Feder was a leading Nazi charged with the duty of formulating such policy. He made a speech in Berlin in 1934 in which he stated that the right to build homes or factories or to use land according to the personal interests of owners was to be abolished. The government instead would dictate how land was to be used and what would be constructed on it. Feder next began to build up elaborate administrative machinery to carry out his plans.

<snip>

Consider also Walter Schoenichen, an aide to Herman Goering who in his capacity as Minister of the German Forests supervised the "Germanization" of forests in conquered territories. In 1941, the Nazis took control of the Bialowieza forest in Lithuania and they resolved to turn it into a hunting reserve for top officers. Open season was declared on the Jews, who made up 12 percent of the population in this region and who violated the ethnic purity of the proposed game farm. Five hundred and fifty Jews were rounded up and shot in the courtyard of a hunting palace operated by Battalion 332 of Von Bock's army division. Goring decided that the purified forest should be altered into an extension of the East Prussian forests. An SS team led by Konrad Mayer, who had been Minister of Agriculture at Berlin University, planned a colonization program that would "Germanize" the forest. Poles, and any remaining Jews, were reduced to the status of barnyard animals to be penned up or slaughtered.

<snip>

Schoenichen jumped at the opportunity to administer this program. This "total landscape plan" would first empty villages and then the unpopulated forest would be stocked with purely "Teutonic" species, including eagles, elk, and wolves. Since there was a painting of a bison on Goring's wall, it was crucial to include this beast in the menagerie.

http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/ec ... cology.htm (http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/ecology/nazi_ecology.htm)

and another...

Nazi and Fascist views on ecology

A form of admiration for nature was a theme of the German Nazi party and the Wagnerian German romanticism which predated it, and is also a key issue for some modern fascist movements, nazi.org being an especially apt example.

Two writers from the early to mid 20th century who supported Nazi and Fascist political movements are strongly associated with ecofascism and remain among the primary sources for the incorporation of ecological views within neo-Nazi and neo-fascist groups today: Savitri Devi was a writer from India who openly admired Hitler while promoting animal rights and vegetarianism, which she linked to a denunciation of Jewish dietary practices. Julius Evola was an Italian writer and supporter of the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini who wrote books romanticizing a primitive state of nature and denouncing "modernism."

When seeking to understand the environmentalism, vegetarianism, and animal rights policies of Nazi and neo-Nazi groups, one must be aware that these ideas are in no way divorced from these groups' emphasis on biology, eugenics and social darwinism. Racial hygiene is seen as cleansing the human genetic stock, much as ecology cleans the environment. All of these concepts have a common thread, emphasising the importance of nature, and man's duty to behave as steward.

http://www.answers.com/topic/ecofascism

I'm not up on this stuff but is Mike's Nazism reference wrapped up in the thinly veiled eugenics argument?
I had references all lined up and had thought it through a little more back a couple of months ago.I am just winging it now, but I can dig up references if we get a discussion going on it.

The roots of Nazism including a concept of the natural man, corrupted by civilization, and a need to get back to the earth and be natural again. It was anti-intellectual, paganistic and materialistic. Corrupted man despoiling the natural order was seen as the problem.

I do not mean to say that the ecology movement is Nazism.

Here are excerpts from a discussion about the subject:

"What we today call 'environmentalism' is ... based on a fear of change. It's based upon a fear of the outcome of human action. And therefore it's not surprising that when you look at the more xenophobic right-wing movements in Europe in the 19th century, including German fascism, it quite often had a very strong environmentalist dynamic to it. The most notorious environmentalists in history were the German Nazis. The Nazis ordered soldiers to plant more trees. They were the first Europeans to establish nature reserves and order the protection of hedgerows and other wildlife habitats. And they were horrified at the idea of hydroelectric dams on the Rhine. Adolf Hitler and other leading Nazis were vegetarian and they passed numerous laws on animal rights."




Your excerpts leave much to be desired in conveying precisely what the programmer from Columbia University is actually conveying - notably leaving off the capitalist apologist Furedi's ownership of the first paragraph and then not including pearls like these:

Any reasonable person would understand that the gangsters terrorizing Jews and Poles in order to set up a "Teutonic" zoo have nothing in common with today's greens, even those who embrace some of the more reactionary aspects of deep ecology. Nazi "ecology" is a contradiction in terms. The Nazis did not want to protect nature, but to transform large swaths of it into something resembling Wagnerian opera backdrops. Furthermore, the murderous assault on peasants who had the misfortune to live in these vicinities is just the opposite of what groups such as Greenpeace or Survival International fight for today. They seek the right of indigenous peoples to live in peace in their natural surroundings. While some conservative, well-financed environmentalist groups have unfortunately neglected the rights of indigenous peoples in campaigns to protect endangered species, the more radical groups have a relatively spotless record.

Pretty damned sloppy, Mike.
Mea culpa.

I am not promoting a point of view there or trying to persuade you to anything. I excerpted some opinion connecting the Nazi party origins with the modern ecology movement. I wasn't trying to hide the contrary view expressed by the programmer, or even diagree with him.

Pretty damned sloppy, Mike.
Mea culpa.

I am not promoting a point of view there or trying to persuade you to anything. I excerpted some opinion connecting the Nazi party origins with the modern ecology movement. I wasn't trying to hide the contrary view expressed by the programmer, or even diagree with him.

Are you positing correlation or causation?

There is an anti-human thread in the ecology movement. People call humans a "plague" and a "cancer" and a "virus."

There is also an irrational belief in a mystical natural order, that humans are intruding on or violating.

Those two threads have some things in common with Nazism, and in fact the two movements co-existed quite nicely in Germany and influenced each other.

Of course that is not the entire picture, and I am not claiming a cause and effect relationship, nor am I saying that the Nazis were ecologists or that ecologists are Nazis.

what I am saying is that deep ecology is a weak and poor substitute for astute political analysis, and that astute political analysis is required to save mankind.

Saving the earth is of no value. Unlike many deep ecologists, I say that the earth doesn't care if it gets saved or not. People care. They care because it is their home and because they care about each other. That is incompatible with seeing themselves and each other as a cancer or a virus.

Are you positing correlation or causation?

I got this from wikipedia


Proponents of deep ecology believe that the world does not exist as a resource to be freely exploited by humans. The ethics of deep ecology holds that a whole system is superior to any of its parts. They offer an eight-tier platform to elucidate their claims

1. The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves. These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes.
2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.
3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital human needs.
4. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.
5. Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
6. Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the present.
7. The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between big and great.
8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes.

I guess how crazy that sounds depends on how you choose to read it.

Are you positing correlation or causation?
Possible and limited correlation only, and something to be alert to. Not only in deep ecology, but in all of our politics.

4. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.
5. Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.

I guess how crazy that sounds depends on how you choose to read it.

May not one ask just whom should be substantially decreased? Is it completely unwarranted to cite other examples from recent history where an self-declared enlightened group sought Lebensraum at the expense of the "excess" people? Or where people sought a mystical relationship with the soil and nature?

I find talk of substantial decreases in humans, in an era featuring unprecedented mass murder and genocide, followed up by calls for government action to force a solution to the "problem" and vague descriptions about changing people's consciousness or state of mind to be very disturbing.

Those hordes of Jugend frolicking through the Wald and praising and communing with Nature, and casting off the old consciousness and discovering the simpler more primitive inner self, were within ten years rampaging through the streets of Warsaw. I am not saying that there is a definite cause and effect relationship between the two, but there is a startling lack of discontinuity between them.

May not one ask just whom should be substantially decreased? Is it completely unwarranted to cite other examples from recent history where an self-declared enlightened group sought Lebensraum at the expense of the "excess" people? Or where people sought a mystical relationship with the soil and nature?

I find talk of substantial decreases in humans, in an era featuring unprecedented mass murder and genocide, followed up by calls for government action to force a solution to the "problem" and vague descriptions about changing people's consciousness or state of mind to be very disturbing.

Those hordes of Jugend frolicking through the Wald and praising and communing with Nature, and casting off the old consciousness and discovering the simpler more primitive inner self, were within ten years rampaging through the streets of Warsaw. I am not saying that there is a definite cause and effect relationship between the two, but there is a startling lack of discontinuity between them.
Okay, fair enough that you suspect there might be a partisan agenda, Mike. You're not being unreasonable, given history.

But I'm one of those "substantially decrease the human pop or else" people. And for me and others I know of it's very simple: EVERYone EVERYwhere decreases. Maximum of half a kid per person starting now, then mandatory sterilisation, with abandonment of nationalism and the replacement of big-family support for aged and disabled people with international public support. Our human pop will still coast upward for a long time--too long, given the climate and extinctions issues--but then it'll start to come down precipitously and if we've made it that far we might stand a chance.

May not one ask just whom should be substantially decreased? Is it completely unwarranted to cite other examples from recent history where an self-declared enlightened group sought Lebensraum at the expense of the "excess" people? Or where people sought a mystical relationship with the soil and nature?

I find talk of substantial decreases in humans, in an era featuring unprecedented mass murder and genocide, followed up by calls for government action to force a solution to the "problem" and vague descriptions about changing people's consciousness or state of mind to be very disturbing.

Those hordes of Jugend frolicking through the Wald and praising and communing with Nature, and casting off the old consciousness and discovering the simpler more primitive inner self, were within ten years rampaging through the streets of Warsaw. I am not saying that there is a definite cause and effect relationship between the two, but there is a startling lack of discontinuity between them.
Okay, fair enough that you suspect there might be a partisan agenda, Mike. You're not being unreasonable, given history.

But I'm one of those "substantially decrease the human pop or else" people. And for me and others I know of it's very simple: EVERYone EVERYwhere decreases. Maximum of half a kid per person starting now, then mandatory sterilisation, with abandonment of nationalism and the replacement of big-family support for aged and disabled people with international public support. Our human pop will still coast upward for a long time--too long, given the climate and extinctions issues--but then it'll start to come down precipitously and if we've made it that far we might stand a chance.

I have some links somewhere detailing very explicitly that population growth is NOT exponential at all, and in fact has a lost to do with environmental factors. The rate of growth is decreasing already and the rise or fall is precipitous and dramatic when you shy away from equilibrium (I think its like 2.1/family) even a little bit.

I have some links somewhere detailing very explicitly that population growth is NOT exponential at all, and in fact has a lost to do with environmental factors. The rate of growth is decreasing already and the rise or fall is precipitous and dramatic when you shy away from equilibrium (I think its like 2.1/family) even a little bit.
The "rate of growth" thing is extremely vexing for some reason--I remember having conversations about this 30 years go. People would say "we're okay, the rate of growth is decreasing", and they'd have a remarkably hard time getting in touch with the fact that, unless the rate of growth is negative, the population is still increasing. It must be the particular words themselves, somehow.

There is an anti-human thread in the ecology movement. People call humans a "plague" and a "cancer" and a "virus."

There is also an irrational belief in a mystical natural order, that humans are intruding on or violating.

Those two threads have some things in common with Nazism, and in fact the two movements co-existed quite nicely in Germany and influenced each other.

Of course that is not the entire picture, and I am not claiming a cause and effect relationship, nor am I saying that the Nazis were ecologists or that ecologists are Nazis.

what I am saying is that deep ecology is a weak and poor substitute for astute political analysis, and that astute political analysis is required to save mankind.

Saving the earth is of no value. Unlike many deep ecologists, I say that the earth doesn't care if it gets saved or not. People care. They care because it is their home and because they care about each other. That is incompatible with seeing themselves and each other as a cancer or a virus.

By the cancer and virus stuff I suppose you are referring at least in part to that dust up concerning Eric Pianka last year. I contacted Dr Pianka at that time and he sent me an attachment explaining his position. Don't know how to get it over here, I'd be happy to email it to you if you like.

To be sure, deep ecology makes for weak politics, that's why I'm here. Reminds me of the Hunter Thompson quote, "politics is the art of controlling one's environment."

I tend to agree, the earth doesn't care. It is a mechanism, not a personality. While some may indulge in the mystic stuff that's not my bag. For myself and I'm sure many others such statements are more akin to the familiar anthropromorphising such as, "my car, she don't run right".

[/quote]Schoenichen jumped at the opportunity to administer this program. This "total landscape plan" would first empty villages and then the unpopulated forest would be stocked with purely "Teutonic" species, including eagles, elk, and wolves. Since there was a painting of a bison on Goring's wall, it was crucial to include this beast in the menagerie.



What does the romanticism of the ideology have to do with an ecology that is about responsibility to the environment that sustains us?

If the deep ecology code is related to our culture's irresponsible abuse of the environment (my mother agrees that people shouldn't even be allowed in some national parks-preserves), it makes sense, but it would be an inaccurate statement relating to native Americans. I can remember reading an account in a Life magazine issue about ecology in the early 70's, where a man sat by a crystal clear stream and was alarmed when his arm slipped into the stream because he felt that he had intruded into the pristine scene- until he realized he was part of it.

Though, the classic example of an animal rights advocate who steps over a homeless person to pour blood on a society lady's fur coat sometimes says it all.

http://geography.about.com/od/populatio ... a/zero.htm (http://geography.about.com/od/populationgeography/a/zero.htm)

http://geography.about.com/od/populationgeography/a/zero.htm

It's be more honest if the writer had made clear that, in the former soviet sphere countries at least, the negative growth is due to emigration and the dreadful knock-on effects of the soviet years, not to choices made freely for the good of all. The situation around the Caspian Sea is especially terrifying. It should be used as an example of what's in store for us all unless we get our act together soonest.

I have some links somewhere detailing very explicitly that population growth is NOT exponential at all, and in fact has a lost to do with environmental factors. The rate of growth is decreasing already and the rise or fall is precipitous and dramatic when you shy away from equilibrium (I think its like 2.1/family) even a little bit.
The "rate of growth" thing is extremely vexing for some reason--I remember having conversations about this 30 years go. People would say "we're okay, the rate of growth is decreasing", and they'd have a remarkably hard time getting in touch with the fact that, unless the rate of growth is negative, the population is still increasing. It must be the particular words themselves, somehow.

OK, I'm not arguing the words, and mathematically I can see how it could be imprecise, I was trying to reproduce the argument that I read as faithfully as possible. But the concept is simple: anything below 2.1/family (or thereabouts) is below replacement level.

OK, I'm not arguing the words, and mathematically I can see how it could be imprecise, I was trying to reproduce the argument that I read as faithfully as possible. But the concept is simple: anything below 2.1/family (or thereabouts) is below replacement level.
Fairy Nuff. Is that in any particular country or what? Intuitively, I'd have expected it to be much higher if it's a worldwide number.

Fairy Nuff. Is that in any particular country or what? Intuitively, I'd have expected it to be much higher if it's a worldwide number.

I'm looking for the link still, but it involves the fact that urbanization is what seems to drive the growth rate negative, so worldwide it might remain positive, but it is is closer to a holding pattern long-term.

Meantime

This is an interesting difference of opinion on the matter. I've highlighted a couple pts you should make sure and read before anybody takes this the wrong way and has an anuerysm (I so wanted to post this on PI to see how many people shit their pants)


newswire article commentary united states 17.Apr.2005 20:14
energy & nuclear
Sleepwalking into the Apocalypse: A conversation on Peak Oil
author: gb

(1) there is only scientific evidence that oil is abiotically created, period--there is no evidence physically for oil being of a fossil-fuel origin--see first links; that has always been a total scam to justify the high prices of oil, it came from theories of 250 years ago--that never ever gathered any evidence for their justification. The total scam of the "fossil fuel theory" were just carried over from the 1700s ideas because they alone among ideas about oil were the only convenient ways to frame (abiotic) oil falsely as a "scarce and unreplenishable resource."

(2) the "tragedy" they keep softening people up for is entirely their own design. The dislocations are not going to be an accidental oversight or are going to be the effect of some physical reality of the issue of "supply and demand" etc.--all information about oil of course is entirely private anyway, why trust anything they say as for their motivations particularly when the whole framing is designed to make something social like production seem entirely neutral? moreover, they want you to believe that your life dislocation will be "damned bad, though not our fault!". However, the dislocation will be their fault. This is because they are (2a) intentionally and socially shutting down oil production currently--even from profitable California refineries to make it look like "oil is peaking naturally." Even other oil companies that want to buy these refineries are being denied them! And the corrupt U.S.A. is looking the other way. Links above. (2b) the other part of the intentionality is that they are keeping other technological frameworks of energy offline to faciliate the dislocation they want POLITICALLY. (2c) What backs up (2b) is that oil companies in the past 10 years have been buying up the "alternative energy" market patents. However, you don't hear about them seriously using these patents. What you do hear about is the repressive attempt to confiscate all of this alternative technology, like that Ford electric car/truck that was in the news recently. There are markets for these alternative technologies out there. However, they are intentionally not being filled for a political purpose of dislocation. (2d) This dislocation will suit them politically to usher in and justify a police state crackdown after they created the "oil shock" context for themselves. (2e) The 21st century "oil shock" will be just like their practice run "oil shock" in the 1970s. (2f) There were Congressional investigations of their artificial 1970s "oil shock" mass social manipulation tests then (in the 1970s). There are none now. Oil men are in the White House. And they are the same regrouping from the late 1970s. Thus, what these people were working on in the 1970s--all those plans--are being dusted off.

(3) Environmentalism is one large movement. However, there is a corporate-fascist wing within environmentalism. (3a) This is the totally unpunished Rockefeller-oilcorp-media-eugenics wing--the same connections since the early 20th century! Their discredited and very openly discussed 20th century eugenic and depopulationist goals are still there: they have only been now "green-coated". These people (not all people) are using the cloak of environmentalism to justify fascist consolidation and eugenics in the Third World--and soon the First World. Military bioloical warfare techniques will be utilized as well on civilian populations. See above discussion and links to that book. There are of coruse other books on this topic. It hardly takes a genius to note that if you are a fascist and you have the strangehold on the world's oil based energy, and you are in the biological warfare research as well, you would utilzie your corporate and military institutional advantage to promote your political eugenic goals--even against your own economic interest--if what you really were after was political power. (3b) The depopulationist Club of Rome for instance was filled with the same people (and oil company people) who were helping the Nazis in WWII.

(4) It is important to understand the physical reality of what is going on (abiotic oil) COMBINED with the political issues of these die-hard fascist-eugenecists in the oil companies. Not one or the other. Both. Without thinking about both, you are unable to seriously make plans for what to do or know what is really going on. Instead, remember to always ask the question: "Is what I am being coached to want, really someone else's interest?"

(5) My advice is get yourself set with non-oil based technologies of energy, perhaps a group-friend investment in something good. Oil is being POLITICALLY NOT ECONOMICALLY shut down, because it is on their political schedule. Your mass disloation reactions are going to be managed, similar to the 1970s. Don't let that happen and you will be less manipulated and held hostage to them. (5a) My additional advice is to protect yourself the best you know how (healthy foods, vitamins, don't trust mass "innoculation" campains) from their coming (it's already here) military biowarfare on the world's population.

(6) If getting more information out about these high level criminal behaviors helps to slow or stop it--or even get the real actors in jail--you can bet I or others are going to do our best.

(7) I never even suggested that abiotic oil would be GOOD. I have always thought that abiotic oil that puts up tons of atmospheric carbon is a foolish energy choice. I'm not supporting abiotic oil's continuity.

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/04/315745.shtml

Oh and a further tacked on note of sanity:

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/0 ... tml#188633 (http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/05/317075.shtml#188633)

from the Rigorous Intuition blog is all over this but I'll try to capture the gist of the argument:


Most significantly, the advent of agriculture, which was provoked by climate change (the ice ages) brought about a necessary power shift from the individual to the group in the interest of memes' survival, to the point the individual became largely enslaved to the culture, and the survival of the civilization culture now outweighs in importance the survival of any of its members or communities.

A consequence of that has been the advent of the codependent cultural constructs of market and state, and, as agriculture has enabled exponential growth in population and created new scarcities, egalitarian societies of abundance have given way to hierarchical societies of managed scarcity.

This hierarchy has been further entrenched with the cultural evolution of technologies that enable even greater self-perpetuation of the memes that gave rise to it, and have led to the 'efficient' subjugation of the human individual to technology -- that's the power-relationship that most supports the survival and stasis of the culture, and under it even those at the top of the hierarchy become slave-hosts to the memes and culture.

These memes and culture can now self-perpetuate and thrive more effectively with technology and the artificial constructs of market and globalizations than they could with inefficient and unreliable human hosts, so technology growth is now even outstripping human growth, to the point that humans are becoming commodities and could even become redundant.

So: if we are now becoming slaves to the machine-powered perpetuation of memes that are outgrowing their need for us (to the point that although catastrophic global warming and human extinction now seem inevitable, this is not something our meme-culture 'cares' about) can we, the human slaves, thanks to the genetic and memetic evolution of self-awareness, 'liberate' ourselves and defeat the meme-culture before it destroys us? In other words, can we consciously, collectively take control for the first time over power-relationships, and establish new power-relationships that put the genetic survival of the human race (and, hopefully, the survival of all other life on Earth on which that genetic survival depends) ahead of the reckless survival of the Frankenstein 'civilization' culture we have created?

you can find the whole thing along with a link to the work behind it here

http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2006/12/04.html#a1716

Right here, in my own backyard, I see overt efforts to gentrify old established neighborhoods by taxing and hounding the untouchable underclasses out. It isn't hidden at all. The battle is vicious between older residents holding their ground and the nouveau riche with connections to Toll Bros developers who left a blighted eyesore of pretentious McMansion divisions of what was a formerly farm land and rolling countryside. Never have I witnessed such brutality and cruelty. These fucking yuppies don't even put any effort into masking their contempt for the working class. And you know, there is a self-loathing there, that you don't pick up in established wealth. It is a very scary social dynamic.

I think I have some charts/graphs/etc saved on my computer but they may be on another machine or lost.

I don't necessarily buy all this stuff, but at the same time people who say "Enforced population reduction NOW!" are always extremely strident and rarely versed in any questions that might suggest they are misguided in their efforts or focus. If they want to be taken seriously, dismissing any disagreement out of hand is not going to work

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_ar ... ch=biztech (http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=14406&ch=biztech)


Take population growth. For 50 years, the demographers in charge of human population projections for the United Nations released hard numbers that substantiated environmentalists' greatest fears about indefinite exponential population increase. For a while, those projections proved fairly accurate. However, in the 1990s, the U.N. started taking a closer look at fertility patterns, and in 2002, it adopted a new theory that shocked many demographers: human population is leveling off rapidly, even precipitously, in developed countries, with the rest of the world soon to follow. Most environmentalists still haven't got the word. Worldwide, birthrates are in free fall. Around one-third of countries now have birthrates below replacement level (2.1 children per woman) and sinking. Nowhere does the downward trend show signs of leveling off. Nations already in a birth dearth crisis include Japan, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Russia -- whose population is now in absolute decline and is expected to be 30 percent lower by 2050. On every part of every continent and in every culture (even Mormon), birthrates are headed down. They reach replacement level and keep on dropping. It turns out that population decrease accelerates downward just as fiercely as population increase accelerated upward, for the same reason. Any variation from the 2.1 rate compounds over time.

That's great news for environmentalists (or it will be when finally noticed), but they need to recognize what caused the turnaround. The world population growth rate actually peaked at 2 percent way back in 1968, the very year my old teacher Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb. The world's women didn't suddenly have fewer kids because of his book, though. They had fewer kids because they moved to town.

Cities are population sinks-always have been. Although more children are an asset in the countryside, they're a liability in the city. A global tipping point in urbanization is what stopped the population explosion. As of this year, 50 percent of the world's population lives in cities, with 61 percent expected by 2030. In 1800 it was 3 percent; in 1900 it was 14 percent.

I don't know Kid. I have waded through hundreds of treatises along these lines. No matter how much supporting research, no matter how persuasive the argument, I can't get by the initial premises.

Do I have to slog through yet another one? :)

Human history:

Things were great > agriculture happened > everything went to hell (well it took 12,00 years but look! Have not things gone to hell?

The leap from the development of agriculture to modern global capitalism, as though there were a distinct and unambiguous cause and effect relationship between them and as though nothing much of consequence happened in between, is what cannot be supported. This author, as so many do, wants us to accept that premise as a given. Agriculture started 12,000 years ago. Are we to assume that the precise conditions we have today are the only possible outcome from that, and that all of intervening history is irrelevant, and that politics are also irrelevant to the discussion?

1. "Most significantly, the advent of agriculture... brought about a necessary power shift from the individual to the group..."

2. "...the individual became largely enslaved to the culture, and the survival of the civilization culture now outweighs in importance the survival of any of its members or communities."

3. "... egalitarian societies of abundance have given way to hierarchical societies of managed scarcity."

4. Which leads to "...the 'efficient' subjugation of the human individual to technology.."

5. We all "...become slave-hosts to the memes and culture..."

I have a difficult time taking anything the author says after that very seriously.

Notice, too, that the discussion gets moved out of a political context by this nonsense, and we are now talking about what is wrong with humans, or what is wrong with 12,000 years of human history.

I don't know Kid. I have waded through hundreds of treatises along these lines. No matter how much supporting research, no matter how persuasive the argument, I can't get by the initial premises.

Do I have to slog through yet another one? :)

Human history:

Things were great > agriculture happened > everything went to hell (well it took 12,00 years but look! Have not things gone to hell?

The leap from the development of agriculture to modern global capitalism, as though there were a distinct and unambiguous cause and effect relationship between them and as though nothing much of consequence happened in between, is what cannot be supported. This author, as so many do, wants us to accept that premise as a given. Agriculture started 12,000 years ago. Are we to assume that the precise conditions we have today are the only possible outcome from that, and that all of intervening history is irrelevant, and that politics are also irrelevant to the discussion?

1. "Most significantly, the advent of agriculture... brought about a necessary power shift from the individual to the group..."

2. "...the individual became largely enslaved to the culture, and the survival of the civilization culture now outweighs in importance the survival of any of its members or communities."

3. "... egalitarian societies of abundance have given way to hierarchical societies of managed scarcity."

4. Which leads to "...the 'efficient' subjugation of the human individual to technology.."

5. We all "...become slave-hosts to the memes and culture..."

I have a difficult time taking anything the author says after that very seriously.

Notice, too, that the discussion gets moved out of a political context by this nonsense, and we are now talking about what is wrong with humans, or what is wrong with 12,000 years of human history.

What does any of that have to do with human nature, or even good and bad. I realize we need to be sensitive to arguments that appeal to that (see like all of the great thinkers of the 16th century) but when does it become undesirably hyper-sensitive?

All he did as far as I can tell is lay out a set of conditions and events that have produced a certain path of human history. It doesn't even imply that it was inevitable, although I'm not sure that matters really.

If the analysis is off-base, or too cock-sure who cares? We don't have any stake in this one article or particular dude being 'right'. To say there's nothing there that lends any insight on the situation seems short-sighted to me.

Human's respond to drastic environmental changes around them by necessity..that would be human nature, right?

All he did as far as I can tell is lay out a set of conditions and events that have produced a certain path of human history.
But it is always the same path we are asked to believe in - as a prerequisite to the discussion. Chlamor used to send me to authors using this argument once a week.

It matters, because this particular analysis claims to be the historical underpinning for what follows, yet skips over and ignores almost all of human history. The reason for that is because it is agriculture - not capitalism, not industrialism, not technology - that people wish to destroy.

It also matters because this analysis precludes a political solution, or even a political discussion.

We are 200 years or so into an all-out war of destruction aimed at two targets - humans, and farming. That is the proper context. That is why we should be alarmed by talk of "reducing" people and reject theories that say our problems all started with farming. The author is attempting to establish a foundation for all of his subsequent remarks and analyses that I find to be unsupported (and unsupportable) and dangerous.

All he did as far as I can tell is lay out a set of conditions and events that have produced a certain path of human history. It doesn't even imply that it was inevitable, although I'm not sure that matters really.
To me it looks a lot like handwaving, Kid. I'd argue that there's at least as much evidence for herder father-god mythology being at the bottom of our problems. Note that the matriarchic, agriculturist Hodenosaunee managed to avoid problems for a long time. Things didn't go badly for them until the disruptions caused by the European invaders proved too sudden and overwhelming for them to cope with. Any time we get behavior from a significant subset, such as the Hodenosaunee, that differs from the supposed "natural" behavior of the whole population, we either have to demonstrate micro-speciation or discard the idea that the larger group's behavior is inbuilt.

Newswolf's observations were differentiating between shallow, self-centered new-ageism and mysticism. Or so it seemed to me--and those who tie human mysticism up with all pop-culture trendiness are missing the aesthetic validity and expression of something our brains are actually wired for. What I find excceptional in Newswolf's piece is the poetry, the style and expression of something deeper and quieter.

All he did as far as I can tell is lay out a set of conditions and events that have produced a certain path of human history.
But it is always the same path we are asked to believe in - as a prerequisite to the discussion. Chlamor used to send me to authors using this argument once a week.

It matters, because this particular analysis claims to be the historical underpinning for what follows, yet skips over and ignores almost all of human history. The reason for that is because it is agriculture - not capitalism, not industrialism, not technology - that people wish to destroy.

It also matters because this analysis precludes a political solution, or even a political discussion.

We are 200 years or so into an all-out war of destruction aimed at two targets - humans, and farming. That is the proper context. That is why we should be alarmed by talk of "reducing" people and reject theories that say our problems all started with farming. The author is attempting to establish a foundation for all of his subsequent remarks and analyses that I find to be unsupported (and unsupportable) and dangerous.

What may be of interest to you as relates to Deep Ecology and fascism is to actually study the words/theories of Nazi horticulturists with the "Native Plant" fundie deep ecologist folks. I mean the very same terms. I have some of this in my basement from days past but it's in print and to dig it out would require excavation.

Purity.

Thankfully a friend trained me to see these parallels when I was an apprentice. Thank you Michael Gregory wherever you are.

The targets are way more than two and in fact coincidental to the objective.

All he did as far as I can tell is lay out a set of conditions and events that have produced a certain path of human history.
But it is always the same path we are asked to believe in - as a prerequisite to the discussion. Chlamor used to send me to authors using this argument once a week.

It matters, because this particular analysis claims to be the historical underpinning for what follows, yet skips over and ignores almost all of human history. The reason for that is because it is agriculture - not capitalism, not industrialism, not technology - that people wish to destroy.

It also matters because this analysis precludes a political solution, or even a political discussion.

We are 200 years or so into an all-out war of destruction aimed at two targets - humans, and farming. That is the proper context. That is why we should be alarmed by talk of "reducing" people and reject theories that say our problems all started with farming. The author is attempting to establish a foundation for all of his subsequent remarks and analyses that I find to be unsupported (and unsupportable) and dangerous.

What may be of interest to you as relates to Deep Ecology and fascism is to actually study the words/theories of Nazi horticulturists with the "Native Plant" fundie deep ecologist folks. I mean the very same terms. I have some of this in my basement from days past but it's in print and to dig it out would require excavation.

Purity.

Thankfully a friend trained me to see these parallels when I was an apprentice. Thank you Michael Gregory wherever you are.

The targets are way more than two and in fact coincidental to the objective.

Could you expand on this a little bit chlamor? I am not sure I see what you're saying at all really.

What is objective? What are the incidental targets?

I am not groking at all

You went to the very thread. I was thinking "we need chlamor in this discussion."

The point at which so-called "deep ecology" morphs into Nazism is the point at which (because it arose from the U.S. bourgeoisie), it predictably joins hands with capitalism in regarding poor, disabled and "primitive" or "ignorant" peoples as unfit for survival and thus subject to precisely the same sort of opportunistic genocide we have already seen in post-Katrina New Orleans and the genocide-by-neglect we witness daily in U.S. policies on social services, public education and mass transport. Contrast this with eco-socialism, which even as it recognizes the need for reduction of the global population (by birth control, which as the Chinese have proven is directly linked to socioeconomic security), also recognizes the mandate to provide the best care possible for all the living.

Not surprisingly, deep ecology spawns most of the real eco-terroristism. Indeed, the eco-terrorists' huge contempt for working families -- expressed for example by the deadly tactic of tree-spiking -- is not a whit different from the more generalized contempt of working folk expressed by both the bourgeoisie and the ruling class. Because loggers and other working-class folk understand this fact instinctively, eco-terriorism is thus self-defeating: it merely generates more hatred for the ecology movement and the environment itself. But the eco-terrorists don't care; their self-righteousness gives them an elitist rationale for expressing their hatred of the working class, and they act accordingly. Thus too, when analyzed in the context of class struggle, deep ecology (and the associated eco-terrorism) becomes nothing more than another bourgeois attack on the working class.

To see this clearly, compare the sort of two-class society (ruling class/enslaved class) implicit in the deep ecology movement versus the sort of communialist, cooperative society envisioned by eco-socialists, of which here is a supreme example:

http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/articles/657

Bottom line, when viewed in the context of class struggle, we see that deep ecology (like the New Age movement with which it is so often associated) is easily converted into an ethos for supporting capitalism and therefore patriarchy -- a criticism first voiced at least a decade ago by eco-feminism. (While I have not investigated the financing of the deep ecology faction, I would predict it is like the New Age itself -- heavily financed by our corporate overlords, precisely because it is ultimately no threat to the social-order that sustains the Global Slave Economy.) By contrast, eco-socialism -- as much as anything else a spin-off of eco-feminism -- demands total restructuring of the planet's socioeconomic relationships, not only among humans but amongst human and non-human species as well.

The point at which so-called "deep ecology" morphs into Nazism is the point at which (because it arose from the U.S. bourgeoisie), it predictably joins hands with capitalism in regarding poor, disabled and "primitive" or "ignorant" peoples as unfit for survival and thus subject to precisely the same sort of opportunistic genocide we have already seen in post-Katrina New Orleans and the genocide-by-neglect we witness daily in U.S. policies on social services, public education and mass transport. Contrast this with eco-socialism, which even as it recognizes the need for reduction of the global population (by birth control, which as the Chinese have proven is directly linked to socioeconomic security), also recognizes the mandate to provide the best care possible for all the living.

Not surprisingly, deep ecology spawns most of the real eco-terroristism. Indeed, the eco-terrorists' huge contempt for working families -- expressed for example by the deadly tactic of tree-spiking -- is not a whit different from the more generalized contempt of working folk expressed by both the bourgeoisie and the ruling class. Because loggers and other working-class folk understand this fact instinctively, eco-terriorism is thus self-defeating: it merely generates more hatred for the ecology movement and the environment itself. But the eco-terrorists don't care; their self-righteousness gives them an elitist rationale for expressing their hatred of the working class, and they act accordingly. Thus too, when analyzed in the context of class struggle, deep ecology (and the associated eco-terrorism) becomes nothing more than another bourgeois attack on the working class.

To see this clearly, compare the sort of two-class society (ruling class/enslaved class) implicit in the deep ecology movement versus the sort of communialist, cooperative society envisioned by eco-socialists, of which here is a supreme example:

http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/articles/657

Bottom line, when viewed in the context of class struggle, we see that deep ecology (like the New Age movement with which it is so often associated) is easily converted into an ethos for supporting capitalism and therefore patriarchy -- a criticism first voiced at least a decade ago by eco-feminism. (While I have not investigated the financing of the deep ecology faction, I would predict it is like the New Age itself -- heavily financed by our corporate overlords, precisely because it is ultimately no threat to the social-order that sustains the Global Slave Economy.) By contrast, eco-socialism -- as much as anything else a spin-off of eco-feminism -- demands total restructuring of the planet's socioeconomic relationships, not only among humans but amongst human and non-human species as well.

Herr Wolf, I am a little surprised by your sweeping denunciation of deep ecology as I detect much agreement with it's basic tenents in your writing. Seems I'm missing a lot here, no doubt due to my limited reading and more limited experience. I've never been around any partisans of said philosphy, pretty rare on the ground in these parts, and my readings are largely those of Paul Shepard. So that you know where I'm coming from I'll try to encapsulate my understanding, such as it is:

Humans are naturally egalitarian creatures, hierarchy is abnormal and destructive. Capitalism is the current face of hierarchy.

Besides it's social cost, capitalism, with it's insistance upon continual growth is utterly destructive of the basis of human and all other life.

Other lifeforms should be given space in order to survive and continue the dance of life. This is not only for materialistic, utilitarian purposes but because animals, plants, wildness are part and parcel of what humans are, what we evolved with until merely 10,000 years ago, a drop in the bucket of human history. Animals don't have "rights", that is a human concept, but for humans to function as we are evolved to we need to have and experience such things and thus it is in our interests to give them the space required.

Current human numbers and the continued growth of those numbers preclude allowing for such space. It is necessary to reduce these numbers, but this must be done in an egalitarian manner, as that is the only truly human way and must be humane. Thus only negative population growth, implemented by voluntary birth control is open as a method. A long process but the only one acceptable.

Reductionists arguments like, "a life of a field mouse is the same as that of a human" are absurd and display a lack of understanding of evolution. Humans will always chose humans first, to do otherwise would be counter survival. Doesn't matter where the argument is coming from.

As far as the hatred of the working class by adherants of deep ecology goes, it seems to me that that might be more class baggage that they've brought with them than something intrinsic in the philosophy itself. The protocols of tree spiking, as posted by Chlamor some time ago(I'll dig it up if you like) empahsised risk reduction for loggers, mill workers. Of course, application may vary, some practitioners may be less astute or caring than others.

But first things first, only humans in an egalitarian society can make those decisions. And I suspect that when the debris is cleared away that people will chose their long term wellbeing and survival.

What am I missing here?

edit: excess preposition & other stuff

You went to the very thread. I was thinking "we need chlamor in this discussion."

Here's a bit to consider, from Michael Pollan:

I had always assumed that the apotheosis of the native plant was a new phenomenon, a byproduct of our deepening environmental awareness. But it turns out that there have been outbreaks of native-plant mania before, most notably in Germany early in this century. According to a recent series of journal articles by German garden historians Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn and Gert Groening, pre-World War II Germany saw the rise of a natural-gardening movement "founded on nationalistic and racist ideas" that were often cloaked in scientific jargon. Inspired by the study of "plant sociology," a group of landscape designers set out—as one of their number put it in 1939—"to give the German people its characteristic garden and to help guard it from unwholesome alien influences," including foreign plants and landscape formality, which they condemned as both anthropocentric and apt to weaken the "Nordic races." This "blood-and-soil-rooted" garden, as it was sometimes called, was comprised of native species and designed to look like untended German landscapes.

Wolschke-Bulmahn and Groening have documented how, under National Socialism, the mania for natural gardening and native plants became government policy. A team working under Heinrich Himmler set forth "Rules of the Design of the Landscape," which stipulated a "close-to-nature" style and the exclusive use of native plants. Specific alien species were marked for elimination. In 1942, a team of Saxon botanists working for the Central Office of Vegetative Mapping embarked on "a war of extermination" against Impatiens parviflora, a small woodland flower regarded as an alien.

Am I implying that natural gardening in America is a crypto-Fascist movement? I hope not. I mention the historical precedent partly to suggest that the "new American garden" is neither as new nor as American as its proponents would have us think. (Nor was the German blood-and-soil garden new in its time: It owed a large debt to the "wild garden" promoted by William Robinson, the 19th-century Irish garden designer. Little in gardening is ever truly new.) The German example also suggests we would do well to beware of ideology in the garden masquerading as science. It's hard to believe that there is nothing more than scientific concern about invasive species behind the current fashion for natural gardening and native plants in America—not when our national politics are rife with anxieties about immigration and isolationist sentiment. The garden isn't the only corner of American culture where nativism is in flower just now.

The current attack on alien species usually proceeds by citing a few notorious examples of imported plants that have indeed behaved badly on our shores, kudzu being the all-time favorite, closely followed by Japanese honeysuckle, multiflora rose and purple loosestrife. Branded as "huns," "invaders" or "monsters," these demon species are then used to tar the entire class of alien plants with guilt by association.

But just how representative are kudzu and its noxious cronies? In fact, the great majority of introduced species can't even survive beyond the garden wall, much less thrive. And many of the species that have been successfully naturalized we now regard as unobjectionable, even welcome, figures in the landscape. It's hard to imagine a New England roadside without its tawny day lilies and Queen Anne's lace, yet both these species are aliens marked for elimination by some of the more zealous natural gardeners. Could it be these plants have actually improved the New England landscape, adding to its diversity and beauty? Shouldn't there be a statute of limitations on their alien status?

http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=31