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A Turning-Point We Miss at Our Peril
We have the choice of burning all the oil left and hacking down all the remaining rainforests - or saving humanity
Sometimes, there are hinge-points in human history – moments when we have to choose between an exuberant descent into lunacy, and a still, sober voice offering us a sane way out. Usually, we can only see them when we look back from a distance. In 1793, the great democrat Thomas Paine said the French Revolution shouldn't betray its principles by killing the King, because it would trigger an orgy of blood-letting that would eventually drown them all. They threw him in jail. In 1919, the great economist John Maynard Keynes said the European powers shouldn't humiliate Germany, because it would catalyse extreme nationalism and produce another world war. They ignored him. In 1953, a handful of US President Dwight Eisenhower's advisers urged him not to destroy Iranian democracy and kidnap its Prime Minister, because it would have a reactionary ripple effect that lasted decades. He refused to listen.
Another of those seemingly small moments with a long echo is happening now. A marginalised voice is offering us a warning, and an inspiring way to save ourselves – yet this alternative seems to be passing unheard in the night. It is coming from the people of Ecuador, led by their President, Rafael Correa, and it would begin to deal with two converging crises.
In the four billion years since life on Earth began, there have been five times when there was a sudden mass extinction of life-forms. The last time was 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs were killed, probably by a meteor. But now the world's scientists agree that the sixth mass extinction is at hand. Humans have accelerated the rate of species extinction by a factor of at least 100, and the great Harvard biologist EO Wilson warns that it could reach a factor of 10,000 within the next 20 years. We are doing this largely by stripping species of their habitats. We are destroying the planet's biodiversity, and so we are making the natural chains that keep us alive much more vulnerable to collapse. This time, we are the meteor.
At the same time, we are dramatically warming the atmosphere. I know it has become terribly passé to listen to virtually all the world's scientists, but I remember the collapsing glaciers I saw in the Arctic, the drying-out I saw in Darfur, and the rising salt water I saw in Bangladesh. 2010 was the joint-hottest year ever recorded, according to Nasa. The best scientific prediction is that we are now on course for a 3ft rise in global sea levels this century. That means goodbye London, Cairo, Bangkok, Venice and Shanghai. Doubt it if you want, but the US National Academy of Sciences – the most distinguished scientific body in the world – just found that 97 per cent of scientific experts agree with the evidence.
So where does Ecuador come in? At the tip of this South American country there lies 4,000 lush square miles of rainforest where the Amazon basin, the Andes mountains and the equator come together. It is the most biodiverse place on Earth. When scientists studied a single hectare of it, they found it had more different species of tree than the whole of North America put together. It holds the world records for different species of amphibians, reptiles and bats. And – more important still – this rainforest is a crucial part of the planet's lungs, inhaling huge amounts of heat-trapping gases and keeping them out of the atmosphere.
Yet almost all the pressure from the outside world today is to saw it down. Why? Because underneath that rainforest there are almost a billion barrels of untapped oil, containing 400 million tones of planet-cooking gases. We crave it. We howl for it. Unlike biodiversity and a safe climate, it's tradable for cash.
Here is a textbook example of what is driving both the sixth great extinction and global warming. We have been putting short-term profits for a few ahead of the long-term needs of our species. Every rainforest on Earth is being reduced to the money that can be stripped from it: yesterday, Brazil's Chamber of Deputies voted to slash the amount of the Amazon that must be preserved by landowners. Except this time, for the first time, the people of Ecuador have offered us an alternative – a way to break this pattern. Alberto Acosta, the former energy minister who drew up the plan, calls it a punto de ruptura – a turning point, one that "questions the logic of extractive development" that drilled us into this species-swallowing hole.
Here's the offer. The oil beneath the rainforest is worth about $7bn. Everybody knows that a stable climate, biodiversity and functioning lungs are worth far more than that. But until now, nobody has been willing to pay. Ecuador's democratic government says that, if the rest of the world offers just half of what the oil is worth – $3.5bn – they will keep the rainforest standing and alive and working for us all. In a country where 38 per cent live in poverty and 13 per cent are on the brink of starvation, it's an incredibly generous offer, and one that is popular in the rainforest itself. As one of its residents, Julia Cerda, 45, told New Internationalist magazine: "With oil, the government just sells it to richer countries and we're left with nothing, no birds or animals or trees."
No country with oil has ever considered leaving it in the ground because the consequences of digging it up are too disastrous. This is a startling attempt to reverse one of the greatest dysfunctions in the global economic system. The market considers things like species diversity, the climate, and the rainforests to be "externalities" – factors not affected by the price and profit mechanisms, so irrelevant, and dispensable. It's a system that, as Oscar Wilde put it, "knows the price of everything and the value of nothing". The people of Ecuador are trying to find a way to get us to see the value of some of the most important things on Earth.
They first made this offer in 2006. So how has the world responded? Chile has offered $100,000. Spain has offered $1.4m. Germany initially offered $50m, then pulled out. Now President Correa is warning that they can't wait forever in a country where 13 per cent are close to starving. If they don't have $100m in the pot by the end of this year, he says, they will have no choice but to pursue Plan B – the digging and destruction of the rainforest.
If one rainforest seems a small matter to you, remember that the head of one deposed French king, the punishment of one broken country and the deposing of one Iranian prime minister seemed fairly minor once.
This, too, could be a moment where history branches into two directions. On the path to the right, we turn down the chance to restrain ourselves, and decide with a shrug to burn all the oil left in the world's soils, and hack down all the remaining rainforests. Professor James Hansen, the Nasa climatologist, explains where this ends: "We would set the planet on a course to the ice-free state, with a sea level 75 metres higher. Coastal disasters would occur continually. The only uncertainty is the time it would take for complete ice sheet disintegration."
But there is another path, where we choose to protect humanity's habitat – and are prepared to pay for it. If our governments won't accept this offer, at this late moment in these ecological crises, what are they saying about themselves – and about us?
73 Comments so far
Show AllWho knows may be the earth will breath easy when the human parasite is gone!
5000ft under the Pacific and Atlantic oceans there are life forms that don't need Sun or Oxygen for their life cycle! They live at between 200 and 800deg if we cook the planet, they wil simply replace us! There is more in mass of life in these geothermal vents, than currently exists on the surface.. So go ahead Surface Dewellers smoke it! the new tennents like it hot and dark!
>^^<
The thing is, humans are changing every life support system of the earth so fast, it's hard to imagine life keeping up. From the atmosphere to radiation levels; from tectonic plates to contamination to oceann currents/temperature and pH. There's no guarantee this extinction will leave any systems with life. Past evolutions do not predict future abundance or survival of life.
Why $3.5 Billion is about 1 week of Obama's Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Pakistan and now Libya! In the first week of Obama's illegal war in Libya
over $500 Million was spent for missiles some of which killed innocent
civilians.
Sounds like it should be a snap to come up with the money....
ORBIT: It's also what a hedge fund manager makes in a year or so...
Can a fund be started where citizens worldwide contribute... if such an item were set up, perhaps on-line, many of us could contribute $100 and presuming the full sum not be needed in its entirety in one year, the growing donations, hopefully gaining interest could match that sum in time.
Ideas?
This is something TRULY worthy of vast participation! It's OUR lives, and those of our children/grandchildren (and all other sentient beings) that's on the line here.
The best idea I've heard. I don't know how to start a fund but I've just looked up the address of the Ecuador Embassy in Washington. It's 2535 15th St N.W,, Washington D.C., 20009-4102. I'm going to enclose a note saying I'm an American citizen who doesn't agree with my country's energy and climate policies and this is toward the saving of the Ecuador environment.
Maybe someone who knows how facebook and twitter work could start contacting others. If we flood Ecuardor's embassies around the world it might work.
Our government is of no help for the climate or biodiversity. But mailing a check to an embassy is something anyone can do and it doesn't even have to be we lucky few who can afford a hundred dollars. I was a missionary in Haiti for years. You know how the place was primarily funded? People sending in ten to twenty dollars from all over America.
Australia spent $1.2 billion in 2009-10 on the Afghanistan war.
US was spending about $67 billion a month in Afghanistan over the same period.
A wasted investment, to promote hegemony for burning fossil fuels.
None of all of that cumulative money investment will be left when this planet goes from green house to hot house.
None of that investment was left even at the end of year, excepting the CEOs and owners of well paid military weapons and logistics corporations. The results will be the same next year.
However the real world in which our economy lives continues to depreciate rapidly. All the self renewing parts, the ecosystems and their species, continue to die off.
I cannot see Ecuador starving itself for our own greedy good.
If you want life to thrive on earth, work for peace.
A revolution is needed to get the military to stop -- protecting its oil reserves -- which power its machines -- to protect its oil reserves -- to power itself and on and on like a puppy chasing its tail.
Militarism is the putrifying problem.
While this may sound like a pessimistic view, it really isn't. It's just a sign of the times we're living in.
Say all the countries around the world send all the money they're asking for and they don't cut down the forest. That would be great. Then the mercenary armies, i.e., Xe (Blackwater), hired by big oil, go in and assassinate the country's leaders, force the citizens to cut down the forest, then big oil moves in and takes the oil.
Yes, sooner or later someone will extract this oil. Hopefully when it does happen, some care will be taken. There is no need to destroy vast areas of the ecosystem to get most of the oil.
When you look at the destruction in Iraq and elsewhere in the quest for oil, it's VERY doubtful any care at all will be taken there. If the oil is beneath the forest, and with the money the oil people have, seems like they could go in for the oil outside the forest and suck it all out from under there. Another thought - what if it's the oil it sits on that helps make this ecosystem what it is?
My thought exactly! Let the regime change begin! If there's oil there to steal, the oil companies and greedy politicians will make sure that it is extracted, even if that means making up some human rights violations so that an invasion to "liberate" the people will become necessary.
Spot on aliensoup! We need to get in there and liberate those people from all that dirty oil! Give them a puppet dictator and DEMOCRACY!
Not to worry a billion bls is hardly worth the effort, the Russians have much more already in production, Maybe after Saudi runs dry, but theres no rush.
>^^<
"More than at any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."
Have we reached our Woody Allen moment? Looks more like that "exuberant descent into lunacy", without the exuberance. The established precedents do not bode well.
thanks, madman! love Woody...
perhaps we can stall Death in the end, per Woody's method:
challenge Death to a game of Gin Rummy, with another day of life as the prize, then kick Death's ass at cards all night while he hems and haws, and has to give in...
Yep, that was my thought. Sanity or madness? Madness all the way for us humans! How could anyone think we'd do something sane?
why not tackle the reason cash is needed, in the first place?
why is the oil worth $7bn?
because of violence-driven private property...
what if we decided that, on a given day, say, September 22, 2012, cutting down a rainforest tree would result in being apprehended, rather than paid? this would, of course, require a complete change in the way land is viewed, and would require industrial devastatioin to be a criminal act...it would be the first step on the path to ending all employment, and all title and obligation...
our whole economic system of paying another for life's necessities, including land, food and water, would switch to one of local management, and sharing, of just such things...this local management, of course, would also mean diligent monitoring of general compliance with such policies, and handling of exception...
our ecology and our economy are currently one and the same, which is impossible, hence our doom...
we must surgically remove the economy from our ecology, not attempt to use our economy to save our ecology, as this simply cannot be done...the $7bn required must be extracted from the very same planet elsewhere...truly robbing Pete to pay Paul...
eventually, all monies are violently yanked out of the living world, via the living flesh of the oppressed, as they struggle to pay their oppressors for the right to exist, rather than battle them directly, to the detriment of all...
dubet wrote:
what if we decided that, on a given day, say, September 22, 2012, cutting down a rainforest tree would result in being apprehended, rather than paid? this would, of course, require a complete change in the way land is viewed, and would require industrial devastatioin to be a criminal act...it would be the first step ....
* * * * *
My Reply:
dubet,
This must be the third or fourth time I have responded to one of these September 22, 2012 posts of yours. I admit that the first part of my response is an expression of my annoyance with you. But I am going to answer your "rhetorical" question anyway, and I would like to make a constructive suggestion.
Presumbly, you actually read the article called "A Turning-Point We Miss At Our Peril" and regularly pay attention to the real world dynamics of how power is used in society.
Therefore, no one here really needs to answer your question, because you already have a good sense of what the answer is yourself, anyway.
But, this begs the question why you keep posting versions of this comment on Common Dreams without offering any practical suggestions about how to address the problems of power in society.
So, since the question why has been begged, I would like to answer your original question and make a suggestion.
Answer:
In answer to your original question, even if we here on Common Dreams "decided that, on a given day, say, September 22, 2012, cutting down a rainforest tree would result in being apprehended, rather than paid? [and that] this would, of course, require a complete change in the way land is viewed, and would require industrial devastatioin [sic] to be a criminal act", even if we did decide that much while ignoring your other intensely utopian comments about "ending all employment, and all title and obligation...", etc., etc., our decision would not make any difference whatsoever beyond that of any other statement of principles, because we do not have the power to enforce this new legislation by the people of Common Dreams declaring such acts to be criminal acts.
Suggestion:
So, as you say "why not tackle the reason cash is needed, in the first place?"
Why don't you check out the Care2 petition site, which describes itself as the number 1 petition site in the world, and create a petition where people including people who read Common Dreams article and Comments can endorse you statement of principles.
Care2 PetitionSite URL: www.thepetitionsite.com/create.html
But I would like to make some suggestions.
For instance, keep it relatively simple. Consider wording your petition something like this:
"We the signers of this petition resolve that cutting down trees in any rainforest on the planet should result in the arrest and arraignment on charges of the crime of contributing to the ecological devastation of the planet, which is a crime against nature and therefore is also a crime against all of humanity, an criminal act of ecocide for which there are few reasonable and acceptable defenses. We also resolve that our own nations should contribute money to cover the costs of administering the enforcement of this law and to compensate nations that are protecting the rainforests form destruction. We the signers pledge to one another a day of protest on September 22, 2012 to express our solidarity and resolve to stop the devastation of the rainsforest and our planet."
Sorry, I think money is necessary.
Also, remember there are defenses against the homocide. For instance self-defense and defending another person or persons who are themselves in imminent danger of serious harm or death from another person generally are defenses against the charge of homicide.
Forget the rest of the utopian stuff for now, at least with respect to the wording of your petition statement.
Consider getting your petition statement translated into other languages and create a separate petition for each language. Maybe you can link them together somehow so people can choose there language.
If the Care2 PetitionSite permits allow people to indicate where on the planet they come from and to make their own comments if they like. Stuff like that. I have never used the Care2 PetitionSite. So, I don't know what you can do with it in terms of creating a petition. Maybe you can provide a link to a more extensive articulation of your utopian worldview.
If the Care2 PetitionSite doesn't work for you, look for another one. I am pretty sure there are at least a few others.
And next time you post about this on Common Dreams give us the link to the English version of your petition, and let us know how it worked for you. Maybe I should do something similar for Yes No 'Maybe So' Voting and Category Scale Power Voting.
Next apply this same process to whatever other issue of concern you have link to September 22, 2012, because if I remember correctly rainforest destruction hasn't been a common theme throughout your September 22, 2012 posts.
But most of all, have fun!
Why not?
We are in for a hell of a ride anyway!
RE: ...we must surgically remove the economy from our ecology, not attempt to use our economy to save our ecology, as this simply cannot be done...
Well done. This statement places you on the cutting edge of sustainable environmental thinking. If this thinking is "utopian" or radical, then we live at a time when revolutionary thinking is a PRACTICAL NECESSITY for survival.
Tom Larsen (quoting dubet) wrote
RE: ...we must surgically remove the economy from our ecology, not attempt to use our economy to save our ecology, as this simply cannot be done...
Well done. This statement places you on the cutting edge of sustainable environmental thinking. If this thinking is "utopian" or radical, then we live at a time when revolutionary thinking is a PRACTICAL NECESSITY for survival.
* * * * *
My Reply:
Tom Larsen,
dubet's thinking which you have quoted is neither utopian nor radical nor cutting edge it is simply absurd.
We must protect the ecological systems within which we live from our economy. It is impossible to completely remove our economy, surgically or otherwise, from these ecological systems, since the material means by which we survive just as for any other living species must in some way be obtained from the ecological systems within which we live.
We need to transformed our economy and use government to protect the ecological systems within which we live as much as possible from the human species. Some cutting edge thinking is looking at the low energy self-assembly systems the biological evolution has created in nature as helpful examples.
I do agree with you, however, that we live in a time when "utopian", radical and revolutionary thinking is a practical necessity for survival.
RE: "We must protect the ecological systems within which we live from our economy."
This sounds like reformism to me.The example set by the Obama administration should disabuse you of that fantasy.
I thought it was obvious, but the "economy" is not economics in an abstract sense, dubet and I refer to the economic system that is driving the the exploitation of the environment (as well as the exploitation of humanity) right now.
At Copenhagen, at Cancun, what is it that the biggest economies - that is, the biggest polluters - say by their non-actions? Economic growth is more important than cataclysmic climate change.
This global economic system demands growth at all costs (on a finite planet). It is the logic of maximizing profits which must consider social and environmental costs as externalities. It is an economic system that generates massive inequality (in both wealth and power) between a tiny few and the vast majority. It is called capitalism, it has enslaved us and now it is killing us. Capitalism is a cancer.
Capitalism cannot be reformed. It must be overthrown ("surgically" or otherwise).
Tom Larsen (quoting PuffinThrush) wrote:
RE: "We must protect the ecological systems within which we live from our economy."
This sounds like reformism to me.The example set by the Obama administration should disabuse you of that fantasy.
- - - - -
PuffinThrush also wrote (but Tom Larsen abstained from quoting):
We must protect the ecological systems within which we live from our economy. It is impossible to completely remove our economy, surgically or otherwise, from these ecological systems, since the material means by which we survive just as for any other living species must in some way be obtained from the ecological systems within which we live.
We need to transformed [sic] our economy and use government to protect the ecological systems within which we live as much as possible from the human species. Some cutting edge thinking is looking at the low energy self-assembly systems the [sic] biological evolution has created in nature as helpful examples.
- - - - - -
My Reply:
Well, since I was explicitly talking about transformation of the economy, I would have thought that you, Tom Larsen, would have recognized that what I was suggesting we must do has nothing to do either with the policies of the Obama administration or with capitalism. Although I do understand why you or anyone else might have a fixation on the Obama administration and on capitalism, both are after all big problems. The Obama administration’s primary agenda seems to be to protect capitalism and to service the needs of capitalists. Capitalism must go, but much more needs to be done than simply abolish capitalism.
* * * * *
Tom Larsen wrote:
I thought it was obvious, but the "economy" is not economics in an abstract sense, dubet and I refer to the economic system that is driving the the exploitation of the environment (as well as the exploitation of humanity) right now.
- - - - -
My Reply to Tom Larsen:
Actually, dubet’s utopian vision as described in dubet’s post strongly suggests a utopia that involves far more than just the abolition of capitalism. Various kinds of employment existed long before capitalism emerged, for instance. The transformation I referred to in the text which you chose to ignore involves changes in who holds the most power in society (e.g. who controls government [use government], but also is not limited to who controls government, this last part was not explicitly mentioned), reduction in consumption (which was not explicitly mentioned), and the kind of technology we use to materially provide for human life (which was explicitly mentioned). In this sense my description of the economy was more comprehensively concrete than your reduction of the economy simply to capitalism.
My reference to the use of government and to transforming the economy was primarily intended to support other comments dismissing dubet's "surgical removal of the economy from the ecology" statement as absurd rather than cutting edge as you had described it. See again my previous post including that excerpt above which you abstained from quoting.
There are nearly 7 billion people living on this planet at this time.
Presumably, you share the goal of somehow managing a "rapid" transition from our current economy, which includes not just its capitalist organization but also the kind of technology currently in use to provide for the material needs of at least a large part of the human population on this planet, to a new transformed economy which will hopefully allow the “gradual” reduction in human population that probably also needs to occur, with as little conflict, misery, and injustice as possible.
You may feel that there is no great chance of massive dislocations of people and large scale conflict in multiple places around the globe if only capitalism can be abolished, but perhaps then you too are depending upon the spontaneous appearance of a utopian world once capitalism is gone.
If this is your hope then you would still be considerably more realistic than dubet appears to be in dubet's call for us to simply decide on September 22, 2012 that we will no longer take part in our oppression and that killing trees in rainsforests is a crime, along with the additional suggestion that this somehow implies other radical changes (which you correctly understand must include the abolition of capitalism, although dubet doesn't explicitly mention capitalism) which will somehow result in some kind of utopia.
I doubt that Karl Marx would at this point in history subscribe to such a belief. Despite all that stuff about the withering away of the state Marx clearly knew and you clearly do too that something more powerful will have to happen before capitalism will cease to exist.
* * * * *
PuffinThrush (in previous response to Tom Larsen) had written:
I do agree with you, however, that we live in a time when "utopian", radical and revolutionary thinking is a practical necessity for survival.
- - - - -
Tom Larsen wrote:
Capitalism cannot be reformed. It must be overthrown ("surgically" or otherwise).
- - - - -
My Reply:
Ok. We have no disagreement here.
But we may well still have a disagreement about what exactly overthrowing capitalism involves. I will simply quote your previous post below by way of referring to what passes for a useable definition for capitalism, and state again that I agree capitalism must be abolished somehow, overthrown somehow.
- - - - -
Tom Larsen wrote (PuffinThrush quotes as a useable definition of capitalism):
This global economic system demands growth at all costs (on a finite planet). It is the logic of maximizing profits which must consider social and environmental costs as externalities. It is an economic system that generates massive inequality (in both wealth and power) between a tiny few and the vast majority. It is called capitalism, it has enslaved us and now it is killing us. Capitalism is a cancer.
Beautiful. A life cult instead of a death cult.
Beautiful, a life cult instead of a death cult.
We are destroying ALL of the the rain forests... The vital for all life ocean's coral reefs are rapidly dying... The green plant life in our oceans, the "phytoplankton", which supply us with at least 60% of our oxygen are in rapid decline.
Nuclear scientists working with Greenpeace say the radioactive poisons now polluting the ocean's waters all around the world are deadly for all life in the seas. Trillions of tons of methane gas will have escaped into the atmosphere within three to five more years or less as the Arctic ice and permafrost melt off.
How much time do humans have left here on the only Water World known to exist in the entire universe which is perfectly distanced from a life giving star? ___ Not very much.
This is a great article, very informative, but I do have one question... How old was Thomas Paine when he was tossed into jail?
Human intelligence, for all its impressive ingenuity, isn't very good at long range thinking. It won't deal with ecological problems until the symptoms become widespread, and then it will probably be too late.
We have all the information.
We do long range thinking great. We know very well what's down the road.
We just needs a revolution to get the beneficiaries of the current system out.
bloodmeridian (in response to tiddas) wrote:
Obviously, I disagree with everything you [tiddas] posted.
* * * * *
My Reply:
bloodmeridian,
Seems to me it is sort of pointless to disagree with eveything tiddas posted.
Since so long as you are using you plural in your comments as you indicated you were, you and tiddas are both right.
If, however, you are using you singular and you intend that that you singular to mean tiddas you may well be wrong.
tiddas wrote:
We have all the information.
We do long range thinking great. We know very well what's down the road.
We just needs a revolution to get the beneficiaries of the current system out.
- - - - -
bloodmeridian (in response to tiddas) wrote:
1. You (plural) have no information--denial is not a synonym for information.
2. You choose not to think ahead as that is not congruent with your mayfly deidication to destruction.
3. A revolution does not come from without. You are the revolution or you are just whistling dixie.
Obviously, I disagree with everything you [tiddas] posted.
- - - - -
My Reply to bloodmeridian:
Thank you for confirming that you are not in the habit of posting something that you do not mean.
That brings us around full circle.
Given that you meant what you said about disagreeing with tiddas and since you meant what you said when you indicated you were using you plural, seems to me it was sort of pointless and unreasonable to disagree with eveything tiddas posted. since both you and tiddas are both right.
Is it your habit to be both disagreeable and unreasonable for disagreeability's sake?
I suppose some people find that entertaining.
By that way I did not indicate that you were using a form that you expressly indicated you were NOT using. On closer inspection you will be able to confirm that I explicitly used the word "if" indicating the conditional.
Since you are not in the habit of posting something that you do not mean, I will simply assume that you were either mistaken or perhaps once again pointlessly attempting to be disagreeable at the cost of being unreasonable.
Judging from some of your other posts it seems like it might be a chronic condition.
As you may recall I thought both you and tiddas were right. I still do.
The topic of our exchange at least from my perspective has been why engage in pointless disagreement when you both were right given tiddas use of the word "we" and your use of you plural.
In this case both the target of your disagreement ( tiddas) and you yourself were right. So why the disagreement?
The fact that both tiddas (using "we") and you (using "you plural") were talking about groups of people is what makes your seemingly contradictory positions compatible.
Given that disagreeablity may simply be part of your temperment, judging from other posts I have seen, my own rather mild disagreement with you turns out to have been rather pointless.
Perhaps I could have made my original point more tactfully, thereby avoiding this pointless exchange.
More likely I should have simply made my original point more clearly and ignored your pointless and disagreeable reply.
We are not stewards of the earth; we are not hear to manage the organic garden of our environment. Except for the few remaining indigenous populations, we consider our species separate and superior to the web of life. Our pie in the sky religous beliefs reinforce this separation. Our urban theme parks further remove us from daily contact and thus involvment in natural cycles of life. Cultures with spiritual connections with nature are considered pagan and backward. The future looks grim.
Let the oil go free. The energy within the oil and atmosphere only want to join with the solar energy streaming out from the sun into an aparently ever expanding universe, accelerated expansion even.
We life forms are singularly self centered in our perception of what is important. The late Alan Watts mused back in his time that the development of nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear war was nature's way of turning the planet Earth into a star. He had no objection to that senario.
Why not do what feels good, if only temporarily. Let's go on a binge and enjoy the high while it lasts. And then oblivion.
The Earth and life may recover after a few million years if we do not totally poison it before we die. And even if we do there are other planetary systems just now coming on-line that can replace us, the only known beings around with our level of sentience.
Also there are estimated to be 200 billion galaxies in the visible part the universe; plenty enough to continue a large diverse number of life forms. And even then, probably an indefinitely large number of universes in other realms.
So stop your fretting, sit back and enjoy the show! You only live once or if you do come back, it will only be a finite number of times on this planet? But just think of the unlimited number of other places you can visit, or call home!
ONE MORE: Or maybe we're here to learn to identify with Creative, rather than destructive forces? Maybe we reside on this blue-green sphere to learn lessons, the first of which comes down to acquiring basic skills like how to get along with other living beings?
Your post reads like a congratulations card for morally depraved behavior.
I think there's something to the myth of Lucifer. And in my view, what is Luciferic, are boys trying to play God by owning and making use of the dark, vast toys and tools of destruction.
To ruin a planet, as benign, miraculous and wondrous as this one... only to go off and repeat the process is a disgusting prospect. It would come from a mind that had no sense of Universal Law or concept of a Divine Plan. Like cowboys on a rampage intent upon killing every living creature within their dominion, before even cleaning their boots or weapons, off they arrogantly march to seek out the next living stream to lay to waste.
Imagine if all the BILLIONS upon BILLIONS had not been wasted on war, weapons, and savage campaigns of carnage... and instead were invested in technologies that would have made oil, coal, and nuclear power effete? A very different world has been possible; yet the warriors used their brute force, in alliance with those prepared to preserve their stashes of capital, to make of this near-late great planet earth, a living hell.
I find your post (and its callous suggestion) disturbing...
What the hell are you smoking? I don't give a damn if you send yourself to 'oblivion', but to encourage others to take everyone else with them when they go???
Or we could could just kill ourselves and save the earth
Yes-yes, prove your love for mother earth! feed her!
>^^<
No offense to either, but I didn't react to this as Sioux Rose or Saturnalia did when I read it. I didn't think you really meant any of it seriously, and found it interesting to read, and took it as irony. It's doubtful there's anyone here who'd be so easily brainwashed by what you say that they'd be compelled to give up. I believe our (CD community) strength is that we can't be brainwashed.
Onemorethought --
I think you may have missed Watts' playful sense of irony.
Or perhaps you are drawing more enlightenment from the savant Alfred E. Neuman -- "What, me worry?" -- than Alan Watts.
'Watts describes our modern world as being ``in an extremely dangerous situation,'' (5) cautioning that ``we may blow up the planet with nuclear bombs, strangle ourselves with overpopulation, destroy our natural resources through poor conservation, or ruin the soil and its products with improperly understood chemicals and pesticides.'' (6) Given these conditions, it appears that we must be living under the influence of a myth that, because of its consequences, is a falsehood. Under such conditions we certainly are not in harmony with ourselves or other parts of the universe. The problem is making it clear just what attitudes are the unhealthy ones before we destroy ourselves and the world. Then we must figure out a healthier mode for our ideas _ not an easy task after centuries of errors in our way of understanding reality.'
http://www.oneontatoday.com/commentary.php
I would accept Ecuador's deal if we let Planned Parenthood handle the money.
Leave the oil in the ground and leave the forests alone? Ok, but you have to compensate me for the money I didn't make, then I'll leave it in the ground.
Pay me $3.5 billion not to destroy my own environment. That's essentially what Rafael Correa is saying. Capitalism doesn't care how it generates profit, whether it's via drilling for oil or extortion.
Rafael Correa is following the same logic of capitalism as every other capitalist. He's no hero.
I picked up on that as well. Kind of like Wall Street holding up a "gun" to the US Treasury.
You are right, Tom, to insinuate that it is the ideology that is the problem. I can imagine a world where, following another more equitable paradigm, there wouldn't be a country on the planet with a 38 percent poverty rate to begin with.
Tom Larsen's point occurred to me also.
I do appreciate that the "offer" may work as a political bargaining chip, or a sort of "thought experiment" to induce policy-makers and the public to break out of a toxic mind-set.
But it doesn't withstand close logical and ethical scrutiny. What seems like an innovative "win-win" alternative is founded on coercive contradiction.
I thought of that, How naive are these guys? The banksters had a firm grip and couldn't be dissapeared. These guy's might wake up to a missle thru their house, ahla Gadiffi. Or just having a Heart Attack, I doubt their as well protected as Castro.
>^^<
The Ecuadorian offer could be interpreted as blackmail: "Pony up the 3.5 billion or we will off the rainforest." Then, after the money is received: "We need 3.5 billion more. Or we will place a refinery where most of the endangered species are." How could a deal like this be negotiated? "If you develop the oil fields, we will refuse to buy bananas from your country." Not an effective way to gain compliance. Deals that pay someone for not doing something often become extortion. Ecuadorians should decide how to preserve their rainforest without asking other countries for money. They might decide that developing the oil fields in ecologically unsound ways is not going to benefit them at all in the long run.
My thoughts exactly! Correa and his crew of bloody extortionists are holding the rainforest hostage. How anyone can see this "offer" as enlightened or altruistic is beyond me. If they really wanted to save the rainforest, they would designate it as a park, make it off limits to development, and gain revenue through ecotourism.
Tom Larsen wrote:
Leave the oil in the ground and leave the forests alone? Ok, but you have to compensate me for the money I didn't make, then I'll leave it in the ground.
Pay me $3.5 billion not to destroy my own environment. That's essentially what Rafael Correa is saying. Capitalism doesn't care how it generates profit, whether it's via drilling for oil or extortion.
Rafael Correa is following the same logic of capitalism as every other capitalist. He's no hero.
- - - - -
onemorethought wrote:
Why not do what feels good, if only temporarily. Let's go on a binge and enjoy the high while it lasts. And then oblivion.
The Earth and life may recover after a few million years if we do not totally poison it before we die. And even if we do there are other planetary systems just now coming on-line that can replace us, the only known beings around with our level of sentience.
- - - - -
Excerpt from “A Turning-Point We Miss At Our Peril” by Johann Hari
Another of those seemingly small moments with a long echo is happening now. A marginalised voice is offering us a warning, and an inspiring way to save ourselves – yet this alternative seems to be passing unheard in the night. It is coming from the people of Ecuador, led by their President, Rafael Correa, and it would begin to deal with two converging crises.
- - - - -
Excerpt from “A Turning-Point We Miss At Our Peril” by Johann Hari
Ecuador's democratic government says that, if the rest of the world offers just half of what the oil is worth – $3.5bn – they will keep the rainforest standing and alive and working for us all. In a country where 38 per cent live in poverty and 13 per cent are on the brink of starvation, it's an incredibly generous offer, and one that is popular in the rainforest itself. As one of its residents, Julia Cerda, 45, told New Internationalist magazine: "With oil, the government just sells it to richer countries and we're left with nothing, no birds or animals or trees."
* * * * *
Tom Larsen,
Unfortunately, we still live in a world where people abuse power. Rafael Correa is holding the rainforest and possibly starving people hostage in order to exercise power.
According to the article a resident of the area Julia Cerda reportedly told New Internationalist magazine: "With oil, the government just sells it to richer countries and we're left with nothing, no birds or animals or trees.
Julia Cerda probably doesn’t expect to get anything if other countries make the deal with Rafael Correa and the government of Ecuador other than the continued presence of birds, animals and trees. But Julia Cerda’s opinion of Rafael Correa was not reported in Johann Hari’s article, possibly because the New Internationalist magazine didn’t report her opinion of Correa either.
But Randy G has a different opinion than you do Tom Larsen of Rafael Correa (see for instance (see May 27 2011 - 11:10am).
Whatever the case may be I don’t see why richer countries that have a considerably higher carbon footprint per capita like the United States than Ecuador does shouldn’t make the deal with Rafael Correa and the Ecuadoran government so long as there is oversight with possible sanctions including but not limited to suspension of payments if the Ecuadoran government doesn’t follow through as expected, as well as a means of getting at least some of the money more directly into the hands of the people.
Will that happen if a deal is struck probably not.
Even Randy G in his defense of Rafael Correa has suggested that the ruling elite are not particularly supportive of Correa implying also (in my opinion) that much of the ruling elite would be less inclined than Correa to provide revenue derived from payments for protection of the rainforest to policies and programs that benefit the people who need help the most.
Maybe I missed something but I don’t think Johann Hari implied anywhere that Rafael Correa was a hero. Johann Hari did essentially say, however, that this is a deal the rest of the world shouldn’t pass up.
But just like everything else the deal will be worth less the more of a scam it turns out to be.
While we're at it, let's state what's obvious to environmentalists but completely lost on the consumption slaves (80% of USans) who have yet to escape their chains: If you were to devalue consumption, and instead value nature, then you will see how important it is to protect nature. It's told so rarely that nobody believes it. Perfect for the "shareholder"! Can we create more ignorance?
Agreed.
Tom Larsen --
Instead of making snide remarks about a political leader who is actually taking great risks to try and protect an important part of the global environment, I recommend you get out of your comfortable little chair and visit Ecuador.
For a leader of a Latin American country dealing with widespread poverty and a history of coups and interference from Washington, Correa has taken a number of risks.
He has been threatened at times by his own police and has had plenty of challenges within Ecuador.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2010/10/01/Corruption-poverty-behind-Ecuador-crisis/UPI-85271285942483/
He had the courage to close the U.S. base in Ecuador -- and the wit to suggest that the U.S. could keep it open if Ecuador could open a military base in Miami.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2007/10/22/ecuador-base-idUKADD25267520071022
As many posters mentioned, if some Generalissimo were to put a bullet in his head, Washington would applaud this as a boon to 'democracy' in Latin America. They dislike Correa intensely and hope to see him replaced very soon with someone more 'reasonable'.
I was in Ecuador last year and they are struggling with crippling poverty after centuries of brutal exploitation by tiny corrupt elites and colonial powers. They have done a fairly good job protecting such World Heritage sites such as the Galapagos Islands despite immense pressures to develop them and allow more immigration to the islands.
Over 90 % of the Galapagos Islands are national park. They are promoting sustainable organic agriculture on the islands.
http://www.galapagos-islands-tourguide.com/galapagos-coffee.html
Contrast this with the environmental record in the U.S. -- which has immense wealth and resources. 3.5 billion is chump change in Washington, good for a couple days of war and occupation half way around the world.
Many U.S. political leaders -- probably the entire Republican Party at this point -- would be happy selling off the National Park system to Exxon and GE if they could get away with it. And of course both parties are excited by oil drilling, coal strip mining, natural gas "fracking" -- anywhere they can get away with it.
But as you point out, Correa is "no hero" because he is trying to find resources to deal with poverty while protecting the environment in Ecuador. Unlike some posters on CD, who are the real heroes, El Presidente Correa just cannot match their remarkable levels of purity.
When the history of our future is written -- if anyone has the inclination to bother writing it -- the U.S. is going to be viewed as the real 'Evil Empire' of planetary destruction.
As the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world, the U.S. has the opportunity & responsibility to put the brakes on planetary biocide. Instead Washington is staffed by lunatics babbling about "free markets" and Ayn Rand, and denying that anthropogenic climate change is even real.
The only leadership the U.S. provides is in rushing the world into an unmitigated environmental collapse.
This will probably not be read but still need to voice my humble thoughts.
I think you and mr Larsen are both correct. We don't have time to be snide within the narrow group of the seeing.
In a world system where few thug international industrial pillagers hold most of the countries in the world at their mercy it can reduce a hostage to less than valiant risky maneuvers to stop the children from dying of starvation. Women have lived as hostages for a long time. They are not often proud of what they are reduced to doing to keep their children fed and getting a doctor. But, damn if I don't respect their guts.
one panicky sweltering frog.