From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Sun Oct 29 2006 - 12:00:49 EST
Jerry, As far as I know, Marxist-Leninist modernisers have been among the biggest eco-criminals of the world in the 20th century. Environmental concerns were often regarded as a "petty-bourgeois deviation getting in the way of progress" etc. But really I doubt whether the concept of "speciesism" can stand up to careful philosophical scrutiny. Fact is that - for better or worse - human beings cannot understand the world and act in it other than in the way that human beings can, nor, as Marx mentions, can human beings as it were "squat outside society". The chauvinism is really a chauvinism of some human beings as against other human beings, or a conflict of human aspirations/values. We could turn the argument around: precisely to safeguard the future of the human species, good care of the biosphere is required. I'm suggesting good stewardship of the natural and built environment as well as the living organisms in it, as part of managing the Oikos, is not incompatible with the idea that, as Marx argues, "human beings are the supreme beings for human beings". Promoting such stewardship is also part of humanization. And to the extent that we look after the animals properly and don't make them suffer unnecessarily, we also respect the animal in ourselves. But these are only general arguments. Question is, what has priority - animals, or people who are treated worse than animals? Can animals have natural rights other than the rights people accord them? How would we know that? Why should humans see themselves as no better than animals? I can e.g. argue that certain plants and animals have a right to exist irrespective of human concerns, but all I am really saying there is that I want to live in a world where those animals and plants are there, and that those plants and animals have a value for me. The central question is really one of how we go about changing human behavioural norms in such a way that good stewardship of the natural and built environment results. But any idea that you can do that by denying the real interests that people have, is purely utopian. Somehow it has to be done so that people have a real interest in it, that they stand to gain from it. If our environmentalism consists simply of placing restrictions on what people may or may not do, or believe, or of panic mongering, it is unlikely to succeed. I don't really believe that the issue is whether or not global warming is a reality, as Al Gore or George Monbiot suggest. Nobody who is serious really denies that it is a reality. The question is what you do about it, given the real interests that people have. Don't get me wrong, I was interested in environmental questions since I was 11, and in 1989 I organised a course on it. People like Elmar Alvater, Harry Rothman, Barry Commoner, Andre Gorz etc. were heroes of mine. One of the things I did though was that I invited a health inspector to talk about the workplace environment. The Greens never thought of such a thing, "what do you mean, what do workplaces have to do with the environment?". Afterwards one of the participants said to me "I didn't really understand why you included this topic, but now I can see the point." Sometimes I think we should let loose a few trained linguists to sort through the language used about "the environment". Point is, the environment is everywhere, and that is why the arguments often do not get beyond vague rhetoric. The environment is more or less equivalent to "the world", and indeed in German you say "Umwelt" literally meaning "the world enveloping us". How can a linguist have anything to say about environmental issues? Well I think a lot, because by sorting through the grammar and metaphors of it, you can identify the assumptions being made, so that we can communicate more clearly about it in a no-nonsense way. The Blacksmith Institute was in the news here a while ago. It publishes a list of the ten most polluted cities in the world. http://www.blacksmithinstitute.org/ten.php Interestingly it puts in perspective that that the world's filthiest cities are not in the capitalist heartlands. A lot of them are in China. Why bring this terrible subject up, for heavens sake? Well, the pollution problem is also being worked on, and a lot can be done. A lot of pollution is not irreversible. So before sinking into gloom and doom, it's worth remembering that we can also clean up our act, so to speak. http://www.blacksmithinstitute.org/search2.php?program=ALL Obviously it cost money, labour, time and effort, and if people didn't pollute, there would be no problem. But there you straightaway get the question of (1) who pays? Often it's through taxes and levies. If so, then these costs are usually also passed on to producers and consumers. In that sense Friends of the Earth must be correct, everyone ends up paying in some way anyhow, even if we still can dispute how much and who pays what. Just exactly what principles you apply in all this is a huge question. (2) How to create new behavioural norms that minimise environmental despoilation, what works best. And there is a whole array of possibilities here, many of which are already being taken up. It is also often a politically charged question, insofar as it affects people's rights and duties. I admit I have no specialist knowledge on this, only my personal experience and reading, and that is why I rarely write about it, apart from all the metaphorical allusions, but it seems to me that rather than go into a panic about the despoilation of the world it's worth examining what can be done and is done, the real facts, and that people can change the world for the better. This may all sound like rhetoric also, but it is a bit of protest of mine against pessimistic ruminations about a gloomy future for the human race. All sorts of wild extrapolations can be made, but we can also factor in what is being done and can be done. If there's no optimism at all, we might as well be dead. But where there's life there's hope, and that hope is the basis for a will to do something or not do it. If I get really pessimistic and down about things, I don't do anything anymore, and I am just stuck with the pollution and so forth. I personally see no future in smashing up McDonald's stores. The most I can say about it that the burgers make me fart, they don't seem to have figured out a burger yet that digests efficiently, or at least my digestive tract does a protest. Karl Marx wrote in Das Kapital about the pollution of the Thames, but point is that the Thames was also cleaned up. Maybe it is never as clean as it once was, but a very significant effort was made. I studied it a bit. So anyway a lot of these problems are technically not irreversible. The real problem is usually the political economy of it and the ethics of it. Jurriaan
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