Ecological environmentalism is a big topic of discussion all
over the Globe. More so in some places than others to be sure, but always and in
every place what is under discussion is the Whole. The Earth understood as a
living Whole. The Earth primordially, naturally perfect and growing in its self.
That natural life of the Earth taken as a living Whole, is the fundamental
thought at the ground of all Ecophilosophy. There the similarities in some
schools ends, in that some theorists hold a person centered, Anthropocentric
ecology, i.e. that the whole Earth and all its beings have been put here somehow
to be at the disposal of man. Others, Deep Ecologists for instance question
Anthropocentric ecology and point out that if the fundamental proposition of all
Ecophilosophy is true then man is simply and surely a species amongst all other
species and the sooner man works out where he really fits in the ecosystem and
occupies it the better.
Now there’s absolutely no shortage of symbolic environmental
and ecological consciousness. I think it’s fair to say that there is absolutely
no corporation or government in the World today prepared to say that there is no
ecological and environmental crisis and that they are not in favor of taking
appropriate action to address the issue. In stark contrast to the situation of
only two decades ago, we see transnational corporations over the last decade
redesign their image so that they look green. We see recycling projects going on
in many cities throughout the World. And then we discover that, in fact, most of
these cities have no facilities whatever to recycle the reusable or recyclable
waste that they pick up from the civilian population and that we just simply
have different kinds of landfills, different kinds of dumps where these recyclable
commodities are stored for some time in the future. There are vast mountains of
newsprint, cardboard, glass, plastic and aluminum cans, etc., accumulating in
every developed country in the World because we have still not managed to
develop an economic basis for authentic recycling. Some aluminum cans are in
demand, and that’s about it.
In the so called underdeveloped world the problem is even
worse in the sense that there is virtually no waste management or safe drinkable
water in many parts of the Third World. There is no political or economic
organization, for instance, capable of stopping the destruction of the Amazonian
rainforest, or of doing anything about the fact that Africa is rapidly turning
into a huge desert, or the fact that certain countries, like Japan, for
instance, continue to hunt whales, quite illegally. Most nations continue to use
dragnet factory fishing methods that have succeeded in bringing several valuable
species of fish and marine mammals to the point of near or actual extinction.
So, we have this peculiar, twilight
zone, situation in human consciousness, where for the first time, there is a
worldwide crisis, far worse than the world wars in that here everyone looses
exactly the same most essential treasure. We have worldwide awareness of the
environmental and the ecological crisis. Yet Globally, and locally we seem
unable to respond quickly enough or effectively enough to this problem to even
save our own lives and the lives of our descendents.
The only comparable crisis to the global Ecological crisis is
found in the large numbers of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons all over
the World. We have the ability to wipe out all life on Earth, we have laid claim
to this power, the power of sudden Global Suicide. Is this why we relegate the
Ecological Crisis to near irrelevance? Is it because we are all convinced that a
Nuclear Holocaust is going to make the Ecological Crisis irrelevant?
Even at this late date, in the “post-Cold War era”, the best
that the nuclear powers can do is fiddle with the computer software and point
their nuclear, intercontinental, ballistic missiles away from each other. But it
does not matter where the nuclear missiles are being pointed, they are still
being pointed at the Earth. Most of the weapons remain; they have not been
dismantled, which is peculiar in itself. It was apparently too expensive to
dismantle the worlds nuclear arsenals. And more recently with the aggressive
nuclear tests, (symbolic nuclear war) by India and Pakistan the World has
entered a new era of nuclear armament. And now in the middle of all the
mendacious rhetoric coming out of Washington and London about the "threat of
weapons of mass destruction in the middle east" North Korea announces that it is
a Nuclear Power.
To the extent that some nuclear bombs have been dismantled,
producing useable bomb grade plutonium, which is sold to nuclear power stations,
there is now the problem of increasing dispersal and even untraceability of bomb
grade plutonium. It also happens that after its use as fuel Plutonium becomes
highly unstable and thus extremely dangerous. It is obvious on all levels that
the nuclear issue is an ecological
environmental issue.
Every activity of ecological environmental
degradation originates in technology. The technological view of the Earth is
that every aspect of it must be brought under control, defined as information
and given its place within the narrow construct of technology, which prioritizes
life in terms of value and usability. Every wilderness and polar region must be invaded, made
“public” and constantly surveyed, because no base for an alternative human
reality with a culture and economy must he allowed to remain. There is to be no
escape for anyone into the wilderness, or into an alternative form of economy.
No underground economy is to be tolerated and this in the same countries where free enterprise” is touted as the highest value.
No common or free land can be allowed to exist outside the
control of the state. Even national parks and wilderness areas are no real
refuge from consumerism. Ecotourism seeks to exploit every wilderness, it is
apparently unthinkable that we simply leave large wilderness areas of the Earth
alone and not exploit them in any way. Every part of life is being comodified
the forest is there to become the site for deal making; paper pulp mills, or
ecotourism? where is the highest corporate profit margin?
If there are to be free anti-consumerist economic alternatives
then they will have to develop as mass movements of economic civil disobedience.
A disobedience that will be virtually impossible in the coming cashless society. “Reform”, as it is called, is merely a cloak for
socioeconomic dominance by transnational corporate capitalist consumerism. This
so called “reform” may happen quickly or slowly in Russia, China or anywhere, in
the third world and come to the same thing. We are subjected everyday more
compellingly to the utopian propaganda that global capitalist consumerism is
both the right and inevitable way of the future.
For all the global media chat about human rights issues, and
the lip service of Prime Ministers and Presidents, it is obvious that all we are
talking about is global corporate capitalist rights. So long as the
dictatorships and tyrants of the world go along with the global economic agenda
and don’t make trouble for the “ free world” then they are perfectly acceptable
as business partners.
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