blindpig
04-30-2010, 10:57 AM
This is an excerpt from a longer piece
[div class="excerpt"]Empowering People and Not Mining Corporations
As Joni Seager wrote some years ago: "There appears to be little introspection within the environmental movement about the uses of science in society, and about the extent to which science is a prop for conservative political and social values." Little has changed since this comment was made and as Brian Tokar points out, this failure of critical faculty in the mainstream has helped ensure that many high-profile environmentalists...
...have adopted a limited agenda focusing on the efficient management of environmental problems within the limits imposed by present political and economic realities. Thus, they are unable to acknowledge a reality that is becoming more widely accepted by grassroots environmental activists -- that the protection of public health and the conservation of natural ecosystems may ultimately require more comprehensive changes in society. (33)
The industrious and misleading output of well-funded neoliberal conservation operations works to ensure that many rightfully concerned citizens end up working on non-solutions to the world's capitalist environmental catastrophe. This is not ideal; and it has meant that most environmentalists remain blissfully unaware of the exploitative capitalist logic that undergirds many of their primary assumptions about the environment. This is especially the case regarding the false, but widespread belief, that population growth is the primary environmental issue that needs to be tackled. On this score, even otherwise excellent journalist Chris Hedges recently succumbed to such misleading neo-Malthusian logic (see "Rebuttal to Chris Hedges: Stop the Tired Overpopulation Hysteria"). Unfortunately, many leading environmentalists, like the aforementioned Catley-Carlson and Sir David Attenborough, are dedicated neo-Malthusian campaigners, and so it is understandable why, as Katrina Brown writes, "some biologists assume simplistic neo-Malthusian explanations of global loss of biodiversity." She continues:
The neo-Malthusian analysis of the problem, which identifies the cause of biodiversity loss as being associated with increasing human numbers, leads to solutions which separate people and biodiversity; biodiversity needs to be protected from people. As a result the conventional conservationist perspective sees the designation, implementation and effective enforcement of protected areas as the primary means to conserve habitats and their associated species, backed up by legislation and regulation as means to protect rare species.(34)
Brown acknowledges that this neo-Malthusian approach to conservation has not been universally accepted and adopted, but nonetheless she notes that this approach has guided much conservation policy and "continues to underscore the conservation discourse, despite the rising tide of rhetoric to the contrary."
Evidently much needs to be done if the environmental movement is to effectively reclaim critically important environmental issues, like biodiversity, from the neoliberal conservation movement. Thus it is vital that more people develop a holistic understanding of the relationship between capitalism and the environment: a first step towards developing a more sustainable critical outlook might involve recognizing that rapacious mining corporations are not useful "partners" in the search for the necessary solutions to the environmental and human rights abuses that are the bread and butter of capitalist enterprises. There are, of course, numerous alternate solutions that can be implemented to negate the anti-humanist practices of some of the world's most polluting industries, but these are unlikely to eventuate by entering into unequal partnerships with the most powerful, destructive, and manipulative corporations that the earth has ever known. However, for such useful planet life-orientated solutions to eventuate, first and foremost people will need to recognize that it is the unregulated ever-growing capitalist economy that presents the real threat to the environment, not human population growth.
http://www.swans.com/library/art15/barker21.html[/quote]
[div class="excerpt"]Empowering People and Not Mining Corporations
As Joni Seager wrote some years ago: "There appears to be little introspection within the environmental movement about the uses of science in society, and about the extent to which science is a prop for conservative political and social values." Little has changed since this comment was made and as Brian Tokar points out, this failure of critical faculty in the mainstream has helped ensure that many high-profile environmentalists...
...have adopted a limited agenda focusing on the efficient management of environmental problems within the limits imposed by present political and economic realities. Thus, they are unable to acknowledge a reality that is becoming more widely accepted by grassroots environmental activists -- that the protection of public health and the conservation of natural ecosystems may ultimately require more comprehensive changes in society. (33)
The industrious and misleading output of well-funded neoliberal conservation operations works to ensure that many rightfully concerned citizens end up working on non-solutions to the world's capitalist environmental catastrophe. This is not ideal; and it has meant that most environmentalists remain blissfully unaware of the exploitative capitalist logic that undergirds many of their primary assumptions about the environment. This is especially the case regarding the false, but widespread belief, that population growth is the primary environmental issue that needs to be tackled. On this score, even otherwise excellent journalist Chris Hedges recently succumbed to such misleading neo-Malthusian logic (see "Rebuttal to Chris Hedges: Stop the Tired Overpopulation Hysteria"). Unfortunately, many leading environmentalists, like the aforementioned Catley-Carlson and Sir David Attenborough, are dedicated neo-Malthusian campaigners, and so it is understandable why, as Katrina Brown writes, "some biologists assume simplistic neo-Malthusian explanations of global loss of biodiversity." She continues:
The neo-Malthusian analysis of the problem, which identifies the cause of biodiversity loss as being associated with increasing human numbers, leads to solutions which separate people and biodiversity; biodiversity needs to be protected from people. As a result the conventional conservationist perspective sees the designation, implementation and effective enforcement of protected areas as the primary means to conserve habitats and their associated species, backed up by legislation and regulation as means to protect rare species.(34)
Brown acknowledges that this neo-Malthusian approach to conservation has not been universally accepted and adopted, but nonetheless she notes that this approach has guided much conservation policy and "continues to underscore the conservation discourse, despite the rising tide of rhetoric to the contrary."
Evidently much needs to be done if the environmental movement is to effectively reclaim critically important environmental issues, like biodiversity, from the neoliberal conservation movement. Thus it is vital that more people develop a holistic understanding of the relationship between capitalism and the environment: a first step towards developing a more sustainable critical outlook might involve recognizing that rapacious mining corporations are not useful "partners" in the search for the necessary solutions to the environmental and human rights abuses that are the bread and butter of capitalist enterprises. There are, of course, numerous alternate solutions that can be implemented to negate the anti-humanist practices of some of the world's most polluting industries, but these are unlikely to eventuate by entering into unequal partnerships with the most powerful, destructive, and manipulative corporations that the earth has ever known. However, for such useful planet life-orientated solutions to eventuate, first and foremost people will need to recognize that it is the unregulated ever-growing capitalist economy that presents the real threat to the environment, not human population growth.
http://www.swans.com/library/art15/barker21.html[/quote]