A very interesting critique of climate activism sometimes focusing only on Co2 emissions reduction: Please, my argument here is NOT “Various greenhouse-gas curtailment schemes have failed, so we shouldn’t even try.” I am, rather, proposing that these failures have something in common – they emphasise the global over the local, the distant over the immediate, the measurable over the qualitative – and that this very oversight is part of the same mentality that is at the root of the crisis to begin with. It is the mentality that sacrifices what is precious, sacred, and immediate for a distant end; it is the mentality of instrumentalism that values other beings and the Earth itself in terms of their utility for us; it is the hubris of believing we can predict and control the consequences of our actions; it is the trust in mathematical modelling that allows us to make decisions according to the numbers; it is the belief that we can identify a ‘cause’ – a cause that is something and not everything – and that we can understand reality by dissecting it and isolating variables. Usually, of course, making decisions ‘by the numbers’ means making them according to financial considerations. Is it really a very deep change to take the same methods and mentality and apply it instead to some other number? ... What would happen if we revalued the local, the immediate, the qualitative, the living, and the beautiful? We would still oppose most of what climate change activists oppose, but for different reasons: tar sands oil extraction because it kills the forests and mars the landscape; mountaintop removal because it obliterates sacred mountains; fracking because it insults and degrades the water; offshore oil drilling because oil spills poison wildlife; road building because it carves up the land, creates roadkill, contributes to suburbanisation and habitat destruction, and accelerates the loss of community. On the other hand, many of the technologies I find beautiful might also...
Posted on: Tue, 03 Jun 2014 07:15:48 +0000
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