Today, when asked whether he would see Gore's new movie, Bush said, "doubt it." I doubt it too. Who needs truth when you've got truthiness?
But Bush also said something more insidious:
... in my judgment, we need to set aside whether or not greenhouse gases have been caused by mankind or because of natural effects, and focus on the technologies that will enable us to live better lives and, at the same time, protect the environment.
Should we "set aside" the question of whether human activity is driving climate change? I think not.
A while back, I wrote a post on this subject. I never put it up -- I was thinking of making it into an op-ed or something, but I never got around to it. Anyway, it's relevant to this question. So I've put it below the fold.
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I'm half-convinced that the latest from Nordhaus and Shellenberger is an April Fools joke. But OK, I'll take it seriously.
Consider the three following positions, propounded primarily by right-wingers in recent years:
- The atmosphere is not warming.
- The atmosphere is warming, but it's part of a natural cycle, not attributable to human activity.
- The atmosphere is warming, and it's attributable to human activity, but the "cure" (substantial CO2 emissions cuts) would be worse than the disease. It would be easier, and cost less, simply to adapt to a warmer world.
You wouldn't know it from the amount of time environmentalists spend bashing #1, but very few people hold that position any more. Old-school, unreconstructed climate contrarianism is a dwindling fringe position at this point.
More common are #2 and #3, and you frequently see 'wingers dancing back and forth between them, sometimes in the course of a single argument. Apparently Bush himself is a #2 (I also recommend Matthew Nisbet's amusing account of George Will's dimwittery).
It's easy enough to knock down #2 with science -- matter of fact, the folks at RealClimate just did so.
But as I've mentioned before, #3 is considerably trickier. It's extremely difficult, verging on impossible, to pin down the global cost of substantially cutting back emissions. The number of factors and forces in play is effectively infinite. It is to the great benefit of entrenched industries and their ideological footsoldiers to exaggerate it as much as possible (Will, for example, tosses around the figure of $1 trillion; Steve Hayward casually mentioned $37 trillion). My general sense is that when all the costs and benefits are factored in, the effect will be a net positive. But that's as much faith as argument. I doubt we'll know until we're well underway.
So given the uncertainty around costs, what's wrong with #3? The answer is fairly simple: Climate warming is not a linear, predictable process. It's better described as climate volatility. Once we "adapt" to the new climate we have in 2040, the changes will keep coming. We'll have to adapt all over again to the climate of 2060, and the climate of 2080, etc. Human society, no matter how clever, no matter how wealthy, simply isn't equipped to live in a constantly, dramatically changing climatic situation. Economic development depends on stability and predictability.
The changes we're seeing now were put into motion 30-40 years ago. The CO2 we're pumping into the atmosphere now will manifest in changes 30-40 years from now. Already we've insured climatic instability for at least that long, probably much longer, and we can only hope those changes won't be sudden and catastrophic (so-called "tipping-point" changes).
It is, therefore, vitally important that #3 get publicly and definitively batted down. It's incredibly dangerous. If we don't want to cast humanity into a situation of permanent, chaotic instability, we need to stop accelerating climatic changes. If we don't, we won't simply "adapt." We'll be constantly adapting, at immense, crippling cost. We may survive, but we sure as hell won't flourish.
So while there is an element of good sense in Nordhaus and Shellenberger's op-ed -- we really do need to assess whether we're prepared for climate changes that are already inevitable (though the idea of a single federal act mandating such assessment is more smugly clever than realistic) -- the notion that we should simply give up arguing about the causes of global warming and the relative costs of adaptation vs. mitigation is perilous nonsense.
The public needs to digest the reality of climate change, the specter of permanent macro- and micro-instability, fully. We need to commit unreservedly to halting our acceleration of that instability. We all need to be pulling in the same direction, and that won't happen until arguments like #3 die a richly deserved death.
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da silva Posted 8:56 am
22 May 2006
At the same time, your argument that adaptation will be a moving target is an important one, as the climate would not be likely to stabilize in any reasonable (human) time scale. Which begs the question: Adapt to what exactly?
The trick is to devise some carefully planned retreat from the status quo even as we struggle to "adapt" -- again, we'll have to adapt, like it or not.
But how do we allocate our resources in a way that makes sense given what we're up against? How do we curb emissions sharply enough? Nuclear energy is often pointed to as the answer, and it does seem to me like we may have to bite that bullet, at least until we can ramp up other alternatives sufficiently. The big thing now is to overcome inertia and the resistance to doing anything.
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sunflower Posted 9:31 am
22 May 2006
The metric we can control with science and technology is anthropogenic CO2.
A trillion dollars of seed capital should retain the professional attention that this problem deserves.
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headsetoptions Posted 2:36 pm
22 May 2006
Such technologies are in place and working for most parts in developed nations. For example, in America, coal fired plants are required to regulate SOx, NOx and CO2 emissions to extents limited only by technology (LOT).
In a purely capitalistic market, cost of environmentally sound technologies are most times higher than damages resultant of lack of such technologies, a good example are the hybrid cars, which are more expensive as compared to regular cars, hence less of us would drive it, all though we know it might help reduce resource depletion (read gasoline).
New and improved technology usually translates into expensive commodities and no cooperation (or government) likes it. However, changes at the consumer end can propel corporations into actively investing in sustainable development, for example, if we stop consuming coal generated power, they will stop producing it, after all, they (corporations) would not want to lose the opportunity to take away your hard earned money.
D.C.Watch @ http://blog.getm.org
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bookerly Posted 3:26 pm
22 May 2006
Of course we should not stop discussing the causes of global warming. The only chance we have of slowing it down is by addressing the causes.
This mitigation argument is serious? Oh, just buy an insurance policy, and plan to move 300 million people around the planet in a short period of time. Just like FEMA planned for Katrina, it can all be taken care of.
What happens when the insurance companies run out of money (won't take long) and the 300 million show up on your front step angry, armed and hungry? (We will get what our indifference has earned us, what goes around comes around.)
I hope someone gave them a whole buncha money for this nonsense.
Even if global warming occurs (a certainty), our survival and prosperity depends on making it a mild event, not an insured event.
patrick
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ronniehoresh Posted 12:01 am
23 May 2006
That was Tolstoy writing about conflict in War and peace. I think he's right. Looking for the causes of climate change is of value only if it helps us stabilise the climate. Doing so now is an excuse for blame-shifting and political rhetoric. Meanwhile, the climate grows more volatile. My suggestion is that governments collectively should issue Climate Stability Bonds which would reward people for stabilising the climate however they do so.
Policy as if outcomes mattered
http://SocialGoals.com
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kmp Posted 1:51 am
23 May 2006
You see this in medicine all the time. What if we did not know that excessive exposure to the sun causes melanoma? If there had not been a lot of money spent on research to determine the causality factors for melanoma, then more money spent on an education campaign (wear sunblock, avoid the high sun hours, coverup) then we would see a lot higher incidence of melanoma. Almost no one dies of melanoma these days, and it is certainly not because of a revolutionary treatment (generally, they just cut out a tumor when it appears). It is because people are educated and aware of what the sun can do and that when they see a suspicious mole/spot/lump they should go to their doctor. Similar scenarios exist for cardiovascular disease, other cancers, smoking related diseases, HIV and AIDS.
Without knowing the causality behind global warming we will simply be treating the symptoms. I'm sure a lot of early AIDS patients got treated with aspirin or penicillin. Didn't do them much good, did it?
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da silva Posted 3:07 am
23 May 2006
... in my judgment, we need to set aside whether or not greenhouse gases have been caused by mankind or because of natural effects, and focus on the technologies that will enable us to live better lives and, at the same time, protect the environment.
Note: he says the uncertainty is whether or not mankind is responsible for the [overabundance of] greenhouse gases -- something there is zero uncertainty about. Interesting that I had to insert the brackets. Perhaps Bush has been coached to adopt the CEI canard that carbon dioxide isn't pollution, it's life. ...
It should be noted that there are other reasons why we need to stop burning fossil fuels that have nothing to do with climate change. There's the peaking production of oil, for one. Acid rain, smog and particulate pollution, for another. And one really big one that hasn't gotten enough attention: the acidification of the oceans, which threatens to undermine the basic marine food chain.
So, even if we take steps to mitigate the impacts of climate change, we'll have to cut back on emmisssions from burning coal, oil and gas anyway.
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caniscandida Posted 3:07 am
23 May 2006
The causes of the climate crisis are no doubt manifold and complex. But some patterns are clearly there. We need not be as agnostic or as recessive as Tolstoy suggests. And anyway, the point of searching for causes is not to blame, it is to cure.
Kaela, this time your analogy is quite perfect! : )
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LegumeSam Posted 4:29 am
23 May 2006
Ah, but we are pulling in the same direction, otherwise why would we be consuming 85 million barrels of oil every day, all together?
The fact of the matter is that we have all been integrated into a global capitalist economy that is committed to that level of fossil-fuel consumption. We choose to get our necessities, our food, clothing, shelter, from corporations which are committed to fossil-fuel use. We haven't even begun to plumb the depths to which we are dependent upon fossil fuels.
The economy of fossil-fuel consumption is integrated into capitalism through the balance sheet -- in each capitalist entity, be it corporation or state, assets are measured against liabilities, and one way to increase assets is by "using cheap" -- in energy, this means finding the energy sources that offer the highest ratio of energy return on energy investment (EROEI). Oil and coal are the cheapest. Players of the capitalist game are chained to the need to "use cheap" through the balance sheet, and they are chained to the balance sheet by their general state of indebtedness.
If you want to talk seriously about how "we need to stop accelerating climatic changes," then you need to talk about the economic system that accelerates those changes. Discussing the climatological facts of global warming will not substitute for economic knowledge.
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
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sunflower Posted 5:07 am
23 May 2006
Yes. Oil and coal return less energy than than their content. Oil and coal (and gas) are burned at less than 95% efficiency (often much less). Fossil fuels also require energy for collection. Active solar energy collectors (not pv) return more than 10 times their energy content.
Energy efficiency also contains very good EROEI. This is the reason efficiency and solar have such good ROI (return on investment).
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Kif Scheuer Posted 5:29 am
23 May 2006
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atreyger Posted 8:33 am
23 May 2006
Humans have, in the last 300 years made some appreciable strides in reducing the fiscal cost of transportation, thereby allowing us to 'conquer' the world, quite literally. I do not see a way for us to remove transportation from the equation, even if we revert from the global to the local economy. This is something that was done by the 'Byzantine' empire, when the land units were converted into themes, where soldiers essentially owned and operated the farms, reducing the costs of transportation, taxation on the peasants, and giving the soldiers extra incentive to fight for their land. This was a sustainable equation, however our current needs and situation are different.
Continued expansion of the cities (both in size and in populations) in recent years has been subsidized by the declining costs of fuel. The single most important reason for 'US' foreign oil independence, and creation of alternative fuel vehicles, is unlikely to be global warming, which seems to be a terrible singular event (in geological and even ecological terms). However, our continuation as a civilization without reversion to continuous wars both inter- and intra-nationally and decline of our society, lies with continued cheap transportation, which is not going to happen using non-renewable sources. Nor will our continuation lie with cities subsidized by use of cheap fuel.
The ultimate solution to our problem likely lies with an increase in rural population producing food, and a development of relatively cheap renewable fuel to conduct business on a local scale in order to maintain a likely reduced, but still significantly better standard of living then one enjoyed by a peasant or slave during the past 2-4,000 years.
On to the global warming: I now have less clear understanding of the causes and effects, then I did last year. It is nice to be a believer, I guess that is why religious people tend to have positive health impacts due to religious practices. Prior to reading actual accumulation of knowledge on both sides of the climate change discussion (at least insofar as causes), I just assumed that the GHGs contributed ALL of global warming trend. Now, it is not so clear to me. The solar impact may have some weight in this, so that not ALL of it is caused by GHGs. How much? Only time and more research will tell. I still assume that GHGs are the single most important driver behind the climate change, however it seems dubious to me that several (although a clear minority) climate, atmospheric, meteorological and astrophysical researchers are opposed to a clear-cut definition of the phenomenon as being purely ascribed to humans. I doubt that they are 'on the take' and I am starting to doubt that global climate change is purely GHG-caused. In the meantime, I doubt that the effects will be positive overall, but I believe that our civilization may endure this event without too much 'collateral damage', I was never too fond of coastal cities anyway (New York, New York... JK, it will suck). But I am still not sure if it will destroy our society in the short term... Long term, the costs of rebuilding will become staggering, and the infrastructure will most likely be allowed to crumble leading us to a new Dark Age.
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sunflower Posted 10:26 am
23 May 2006
Most GHG are not anthropogenic. The anthropogenic gases are heating the planet and that causes the other GHG to increase, multiplying the human contribution.
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LegumeSam Posted 11:45 am
23 May 2006
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
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caniscandida Posted 1:31 pm
23 May 2006
On the decline and fall of the Roman Empire: the excessive expense of transportation, as a cause, is an interesting theory. The Romans were very efficient about manning and settling their distant borders, from the beginning (consider, Mainz, Koblenz, Cologne in the Rhineland are all Roman foundations), and connecting them to the Mediterranean with a system of reliable roads, and Romanizing locals and localizing Romans. That was already centuries before the East Romans and their themes.
I am not quite sure how this relates to the thread, though. Is it that the ambitions of leaders drive them to over-extend the resources of their societies? And then, when they fail, they find all sorts of other unhappy circumstances to blame for their failure?
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LegumeSam Posted 3:51 pm
23 May 2006
This theory might work except for the fact that it doesn't account for the Roman Empire's survival in the East. The Roman Empire only collapsed in the West in the 5th century, and lasted for two more centuries in the East before constant warfare in the 7th century shrunk its domain to the area now occupied by Greece and Turkey.
The taxation problem was indeed one of the causes of the Empire's fall in the West. Here's what happened. The Germanic invasions of the period between 235-284 CE (after Christ) wiped out the smaller farmers in most of the West. So then after 284 the Empire in the West had this enormous class division between the rich folk who were able to rebuild after that first wave of invasions, and everyone else, who basically became poor. Class divisions in the East were not so bad.
Meanwhile, the Empire was reorganized by the Emperor Diocletian after 284, bureaucracy was multiplied fortyfold, and taxation became much heavier as the Empire became more authoritarian. This in itself wouldn't have been so catastrophic except, as I said, because of the class division. The rich were able to avoid paying taxes through bribery, and so the tax burden fell increasingly upon those unable to pay. Civil and religious wars complicated the picture. Eventually, both rich and poor in the West decided they'd had enough of the arrangement, and the Empire collapsed in the West.
Moral of the story: If we are looking on the horizon for a civilizational collapse, we might look first at increasing class divisions, the collapse of the middle class, and an increase in heavy-handed authoritarian government.
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
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sunflower Posted 4:04 pm
23 May 2006
Also, solar thermal displacement of electricity has excellent EROEI (3X) with an ROI of 20% to 80% depending on climate and local electrical rates (Seattle to San Diego).
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atreyger Posted 2:01 am
24 May 2006
That was not my point, however. I was trying to suggest that the reason for why the Western Roman empire actually proceeded to complicate their government was a direct result of a centralized governing and producing structure. Cost of transportation by land was not even comparable to what it is today: about 30 times more expensive, due to the speed, having to feed the horses, etc. By having an immobile army on the outskirts and a mobile army at the center of Rome as well as a centralized bureacratic force, neither of which produced food, the costs of food transportation bore a heavy toll on the empire. That (I believe) increased the needs for an unnecessarily complex bureacratic machine, which only further made things worse for them.
The 'Byzantine' created a different solution: themes, which both had the effect of reducing class divisions and my previous comments about localization of food production. Since there was no need to pay for food transportation, except during times of crisis, there was no need for a complex bureacratic machine. This allowed the Eastern Roman Empire to hang on until nearly mid-11th century.
None of these effects exist in a vacuum, but my entire point about alternative fuel is that we need it to have a relatively cheap mode of transportation. We also need to decentralize our society and localize food production. It may also be that our 'cheap' fuel for the past century may carry very strong indirect costs on our society in terms of having to rebuild infrastructure like the Abbasid Caliphate, which ultimately suffered as a result of constant rebuilding.
As far as NYC and other coastal cities go... I did not mean 'Good Riddance', I meant it's tough that they will be at the forefront of cataclysmic events and rising sea levels, but it will not destroy our civilization outright. I grew up a part of my life in NYC and have a lot of friends there, so trust me, I do not mock.
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atreyger Posted 2:03 am
24 May 2006
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atreyger Posted 2:06 am
24 May 2006
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LegumeSam Posted 2:29 am
24 May 2006
Why not focus upon the social reasons for why world-society has to burn 85 million barrels of oil every day? It should be clear, just looking at the statistic for the significant percentage of humanity still living on $2/ day or less, that it doesn't have to be this way.
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
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LegumeSam Posted 2:45 am
24 May 2006
Ah, but there were settled armies of border guards along the Rhine and the Danube. The Empire could have fortified them. The history sources (Gregory of Tours, I believe) record, however, that the opposite in fact happened, and that the Empire withdrew its own defenses. The magister militium Stilicho, working for the idiot Emperor Honorius (who has been compared to George W.), stripped the border guards sometime in the early 400s, so that they could be used to fight a usurper to the throne in the West. As a result there was nobody to guard the border. Thereafter, on the last day of the year 406, a huge contingent of Sueves/ Goths/ Vandals/ Franks/ Alamans/ Burgundians crossed into the Empire, meeting no armed opposition. That was the beginning of the end in the West.
Historians like Joseph Tainter like to ascribe "thermodynamic" causes to the collapse of empires. Their analyses have become fashionable with peak-oil writers such as Richard Heinberg. I think it's better to turn this logic upside-down, and ascribe social causes to our society's "thermodynamic" plight.
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
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atreyger Posted 6:13 am
24 May 2006
As such I may be hard to convince that only one aspect of a 'population' (e.g. social structure of Roman empire) can be responsible for a change within it. The structure of a 'community' or society is generally based on an amount of resources it needs and how much is available, and the resultant ability of a 'population' within that 'community' to appropriate and incorporate the resources or find a 'niche'. Tainter's analysis of 'thermodynamic' (if I understand the term correctly) causes may be correct after all, but with the caveat of the need to include social structure into the equation, which is an absolute necessity in a human system.
I am not saying it is an either/or situation. Decisions of the few can easily disrupt an equilibrium, especially if it is a fragile one at that. However, if a 'community' is not resistant or resilient, there are pre-existing reasons for this, such as a persistant lack of a resource.
By the way any 'community' fits into a categorical matrix of: resistant, but not resilient (I'm thinking Persian soils, which when overirrigated for a prolonged period salinized and have not come back), resistant and resilient (temperate forests), resilient but not resistant (Gaul during the Roman empire), and non-resistant and non-resilient (Dodos and island ecological communities).
I still think that transportation may have been a major downfall...
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hmw27 Posted 6:32 am
24 May 2006
The span of the human history contains numerous 'climatic episodes' of varying degrees. Climate changes; sometimes dramatically. In western North America, archaeologists have worked to understand a span of climate instability known as the Altithermal. It was characterized by warmer/dryer conditions that had a profound impact on plant and animal populations. Obviously the impact on the human hunter/gatherer populations resulted in cultural adaptation. And the shift in the archaeological record is fairly dramatic.
Point is, the current discussions by the powers that be over who's causing what and how do we mitigate it? pale in comparison to the concept that we may not have the means to adapt to the change.
"Economic development depends on stability and predictability."
10,000 years of human history suggests climate is neither stable nor (greatly) predictable. The greatest challenge may be the relative lack of cultural adaptability in capitalist societies. I don't think capitalism can meet the challenges of dramatic climate change because of it's profit-making rules.
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caniscandida Posted 5:42 pm
24 May 2006
I would be very interested in hearing any ideas on why the prehistoric occupants of the countless places associated with the so-called Anasazi, e.g. Chaco Canyon, NM, and Mesa Verde, CO, were abandoned; and why the settlements of those people's descendants, the historic and modern Pueblo Indians, have for the most part hung on.
Legume Sam, Stilicho's title may very well have been as you spelled it. It is understandable that an "i" might have migrated into "militium" [sic]. But regularly, the third-declension noun "miles, militis," "soldier," is not an i-stem, and so the genitive plural is spelled "militum." Compare the common classical term for one of the six senior officers in a legion, "tribunus militum."
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LegumeSam Posted 2:14 am
25 May 2006
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
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LegumeSam Posted 3:12 am
25 May 2006
Richard Heinberg's The Party's Over is typically cited by left neoMalthusians as the ultimate source of information about a coming energy crisis. At any rate, Heinberg's book indeed offers an encyclopedic review of the pessimism of oil-geologists as presented on websites such as those connected to http://www.hubbertpeak.com/. It is difficult to argue with his assertion that, if all things remain constant, there will be an energy crisis, of steadily increasing severity, in our middle-term future. Part of the difficulty in questioning such an energy-crunch thesis lies in the data Heinberg uses to compose it -- data on things such as oil reserves is difficult to possess and to know exactly. But, beyond that, such a thesis depends upon the assertion that all things about our society will remain constant, and history has shown time and time again that societies do not remain constant, nor do societies necessarily provide much warning of the times and places at which they will experience social change. This is especially so under capitalism, which is capable of unpredictable shifts in its structure due to the fast-paced nature of its transactional infrastructure.
Heinberg's discussion of social change seems to be limited to the documentation of two untested assertions: 1) social change in a society depends upon the availability of natural resources in that society, and 2) the two main forms of social change are a) growth and b) collapse. Little attention appears to have been paid to the social factors in social change that do not depend upon the availability or management of natural resources. Heinberg's theory of social collapse is derived from Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies, which is itself derived from an analysis of agricultural civilizations, most prominently that of the Roman Empire.
Understanding Tainter's analysis of Rome will, then, connect us to a monochromatic dimension in Heinberg's analysis of the present. Heinberg quotes Tainter as saying: The establishment of the Roman Empire produced an extraordinary return on investment, as the accumulated surpluses of the Mediterranean and adjacent lands were appropriated by the conquerers. Yet as the booty of new conquests ceased, Rome had to undertake administrative and garrisoning costs that lasted centuries. As the marginal return on investment in empire declined, major stress surges appeared that could scarcely be contained with yearly Imperial budgets. The Roman Empire made itself attractive to barbarian incursions merely by the fact of its existence. Dealing with stress surges required taxation and economic malfeasance so heavy that the productive capacity of the support population deteriorated. Weakening of the support base gave rise to further barbarian successes, so that very high investment in complexity yielded few benefits superior to collapse. In the later Empire the marginal return on investment in complexity was so low that barbarian kingdoms began to seem preferable. (Tainter, qtd. in Heinberg 35)
This monochromatic version of history doesn't recognize the social tensions within a society that would lead to its collapse. Rome at the time of the collapse of the Empire in the West (the East lasted a millenium longer, a phenomenon which Tainter doesn't consider) was a society in constant civil war between competitors for the post of Emperor. And the various forms of class and cultural warfare that characterized its lower strata grew more severe as the Roman Empire collapsed in the West. Conflicts between the Greek East and the Roman West, between polytheists ("pagans") and Christians, between Christians of different sects, between old wealth, the Army, the Church, between big and small landholders, and between slaveowners and slaves divided third and fourth century ancient Rome quite severely, and these conflicts came to a head at the time of the barbarian invasions.
So it can be shown that Roman society itself facilitated the barbarian invasions as an outcome to the conflicts which pitted Roman against Roman. It wasn't "marginal return on investment in complexity" that felled Rome so much as an explosion of internecine conflicts between "investors," "investments," (i.e. slaves, coloni, and other workers) and other participants. In the end, the Empire survived where these conflicts were least explosive, i.e. in the East. (See, for instance, Michael Grant's History of Rome for such a version.)
So what, to Tainter, appears as a "weakening of the support base," appears to the polychromatic historian as a free-for-all struggle for control of the support base, involving the class struggle of labor versus ownership, as well as the struggle of various potential owners/ rulers against each other. Roman slaves and Army deserters, for instance, would escape into the armies of the barbarians, swelling their ranks and making them more formidable than they otherwise would be. (This was apparently a contributing factor in the Roman defeat in the Battle of Adrianople, 378 AD, causing the first successful barbarian invasion, as well as of the first sack of Rome in 410.) The barbarian armies were themselves considered a "natural resource" by the Roman Emperors, for it became easier to recruit barbarians in the army at that time than to recruit enculturated Romans, and such armies were constantly needed to fight usurpers for the post of Emperor. Barbarians could also be Romanized, and in many cases they made useful taxpayers for the Empire as a whole. At any rate, what Western Europe saw in the 5th century was a parting of the ways. Wealthy Roman polytheists had no need of an Empire that banned their religious practices, the Church didn't need an Empire when its main concern was saving souls, the prosperous East didn't need a troubled West, new money didn't need old money, slaves didn't need masters, etc.
And it can even be shown that Roman civilization persisted in the West past the fall of Rome, that the barbarian invasions were themselves not the whole of the collapse of Roman civilization. Students are often asked to memorize the year 476 AD as the year in which the Roman Empire collapsed in the West, for it was then that the last Roman Emperor (Romulus Augustulus) abdicated his power over Italy, Pannonia, and southern Gaul to a Scythian named Odovacar. Yet nothing of civilization-shaking importance occurred in Italy in 476. Roman civilization continued on, producing literary figures such as Boethius and Cassiodorus into the sixth century AD -- it was only the later warfare between the East and the West, between Belisarius and Witigis (followed by the further invasion of the Lombards) that ruined Italy. And then in Gaul under the Franks (we call it "France"), as one can tell from a reading of Gregory of Tours' 5th century History of the Franks, the intense fighting between the Franks themselves finished off a society that had merely been brought into decline by their invasion.
The point in dredging up all of this ancient history is to show that there are plenty of ways to show that the "process of collapse" of a civilization is not (as Heinberg says) "analogous to the phenomenon of population overshoot and die-off within a colonized ecosystem" (35). Civilizations do not follow overshoot and die-off models, because, among other reasons, they are not like the "populations" that supposedly exist independent of culture. Roman civilization persisted for quite a term beyond the massive die-offs (due to plague) that struck the Empire in the 170s and the 250s, though it's easier to blame Classical civilization's ignorance of sanitation than any "population overshoot" for these dieoffs.
Perhaps Heinberg's assumption is borrowed from the model of the civilization of Easter Island typically used in most descriptions of "overshoot" and "dieoff". The Easter Island civilization was, one might recall, a civilization which was confronted with a very limited set of resources using a very primitive mode of production, much more so than the Roman Empire. At any rate, when one looks at complex civilizations in the world, even as applied to thousand-year-old societies, the model of overshoot and dieoff begins to lose most of its explanatory force, because it trivializes the forces of internal conflict within societies.
So, to apply a polychromatic understanding of history, we must look to the conflicts within a society, and how these conflicts coalesce around social forms, for clues as to the direction social change will take. This wisdom applies to the analysis of any civilization one cares to name, including (most importantly), ours. But Heinberg seems more interested in the "oil" part of the equation, given our society's voracious habits of oil extraction and consumption, than in any actual understanding of capitalism's potential for social change. In fact, the lopsidedness of his presentation of evidence causes him to make fabulous claims, as follows:
If there is any solution to industrial societies' approaching energy crises, renewables plus conservation will provide it. Yet in order to achieve a transition from nonrenewables to renewables, decades will be required. (164-165)
My immediate reaction to reading this was to ask: why decades? Is revolutionary change supposed to be like waiting in a dentist's office? Should we wait "decades" for social change for some perfunctory reason? The Soviet Union/ Eastern bloc didn't really take all that long to collapse, depending upon when one charts the beginning of the collapse itself. The antiglobalization movement of today appears in the history books as if it sprung up "out of nothing," with the anti-WTO protest in Seattle in 1999. Today's civilization can move information with lightning speed, thus the rapidity both of the Establishment's mendacious news broadcasts and the antiEstablishment's announcements of global protest. So it's not the speed of information that will require any revolution in social organization to take "decades."
In fact, it can be shown that our society has plenty of social movements that are primarily concerned with the preservation of human life and with the environment, over and above the impetus of capital expansion that ordinarily dominates our society's social priorities. And it is this form of conflict, profits versus people, that most characterizes the First World's hidden agendas. If organizational commonalities can be used to change their ideological forms so as to make them into a common interest in radical change, and mobilize them into a force for social change, that this would create a revolutionary impetus to bring immediate progress in the directions Heinberg suggests in his book.
What's more, the potential for change is there, in reactions (including global protest, but expanding outward from there) to the increasing impoverishment forced upon humankind by the capitalist system. Rapidly increasing numbers of people are left "out of the loop" as regards having that which capitalism once promised to all: a secure job at a living wage, health insurance, retirement money, vacation time. With time, as capitalism fails to grow "up to speed" while the global public's debtload spirals upward, the world's publics will be increasingly focused on the non-viability of a system that does not seem to be for anything besides the short-term profit aspirations of its financial backers. What I think we can expect at some point, then, is a powerful push to change the terms of the class conflict.
With the triumph of the Washington Consensus, the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, and "free trade," it may appear that the wealthy owners of the corporate world have "won" the class struggle -- but at the cost of a world economy which stands today on the verge of collapse. (A recommended text dealing with the hard facts of the present economic juggernaut can be found in Robert Brenner's The Boom and the Bubble.) We may, therefore, envision a conflict within today's society which could explode prior to the resource shortage predicted by Heinberg's cited experts. The will to effect social change doesn't have to conform to his timetable, therefore.
Perhaps Heinberg assumes that creating the will to change will take decades. That may be so, but it also might not be so, depending on what one counts as a potential for social change. As I've said already, nowhere in Heinberg's text does he analyze the dynamics of social change under capitalism. At no point does he look at the conflict between consumers and producers within our global society, wherein the consumers reap the benefit of cheap goods at Wal-Mart etc. whilst the producers (i.e. cheap labor) must keep the will to produce alive at the cost of the bodily desires to sleep and eat, Nor is he more than trivially concerned with the great disparities of wealth that mark global society. Instead, when it comes time to discussing solutions to the social problem of resource overconsumption, Heinberg focuses upon a thin recipe for social change that looks much like a guide to individual financial investment for the American middle classes. He gives this recipe in his last chapter, titled "Managing The Collapse." Indeed, a collapse is to be managed, the collapse of the order represented by "industrial growth" (190), although Heinberg panics on a later page and calls it "global societal collapse" (201). Something new must be created to replace that which has collapsed, though Heinberg will only mention a "new energy regime" that will have to be in place. My look at Heinberg's recommendations will try to fill in the blank spaces where I feel his new energy regime is not specific enough.
Heinberg starts giving advice under a heading (208) titled "You, Your Home, and Your Family." Heinberg's recommendations are green, yet survivalist: cut your energy usage, use alternative energies to power your home, redesign your home using ecological principles, adopt do-it-yourself strategies, adopt "voluntary simplicity," try to grow food locally. Though when he recommends for people to "reduce your debt," one must wonder if he's got a fund set up for helping his readers do just that. At any rate, all of this is doubtless beneficial, yet I do not think it goes far enough.
In his survivalist laundry-list of personal options, Heinberg does not discuss the most important aspect of personal life; one's job. It's all very well to plant a few plants in the back yard and improve the energy-efficiency of one's home, but working (and related functions -- preparation for work, driving to work, etc.) occupies the lion's share of one's waking life under the conditions of declining empire. What's more, under the current system, most jobs have to pander to the forces of capital (and its local manifestation, "effective demand," calculated by multiplying customers by amounts of money). In general, Heinberg is recommending an energy-saving regime focused upon maintaining "an unlimited potential for non-material cultural, social, and individual growth" (Bossel, qtd. in Heinberg 207). That is to say, instead of pandering after money, people should all work directly to improve themselves, their societies, and the natural world.
First of all, changing society in such a direction means cutting down on all of the jobs engaged in unnecessary production. Say goodbye to all unnecessary luxuries. Fast cars, caviar, airplanes, tobacco? Consumers will still be free to consume them, but nobody will be obligated to produce them (given the end of the profit motive), so they will dwindle.
But what's more, it means that (lacking a profit motive) everyone will want to be occupied doing something that directly benefits the world, and not just manipulating money so that each of us will assure ourselves some of it. Many jobs could be eliminated -- banker, cashier, insurance representative, lawyer, advertiser, ticket-taker, casino operator etc., and for each job eliminated there will be something worth doing for the unemployed: environmental cleanup, garden organizing, alternative energy development, etc. I'm sure that such a change would drastically improve the living conditions of all. But for many people, changing this reality would have to occur at the social level -- discussions of "voluntary simplicity" aside, living in a particular place often means paying rent to participate in a situation where one has little individual control over energy-saving and food-producing systems, and paying rent means taking up a job that pays, which means following money (and not people, or nature) wherever it happens to be under the current, collapsing, order. The opportunities for individual change, for survivalism especially, are severely limited for many who live under the current system.
What's needed, then, is large-scale social change, directed toward allowing the small-scale to live in peace in places where it can't do so today. This is another area in which I feel that Heinberg falls short. Heinberg seems to seems to equate social change with the sort of piecemeal reform that occurs in the halls of Congress, or the community organizing efforts that local communities have adopted to resist corporate takeover when the local Wal-Mart moves into town.
And in discussing these things, he often writes disparagingly about the ability of the system to "resist fundamental change at all levels" (232). None of his suggestions seem to have anything to do with the real program of class struggle (by the rich, against the rest of us) that forms the backdrop to our present-day economic lives. Heinberg seems to float away from the matter of resettling the class struggle by assuming, arbitrarily, that neither the Left nor the Right will solve the problems of resource-depletion that he thinks are so paramount. (188) Once again, Heinberg assumes that nothing beyond the current horizon for social activism is likely to occur tomorrow or the next day.
His idea of social change appears to be predicated upon the notion that resource management determines all, pitting the naturally human desire to consume against environmental limitations. His disparaging depiction of a Left solution is as follows: A few rightists acknowledge resource limits but argue that, since existence is a Darwinian struggle anyway, it is the fit (the wealthy) who should survive throgh economic competition while the unfit (the poor) are culled by starvation. A few leftists acknowledge limits but believe that, if humanity is made aware of them and empowered to deal with distribution issues democratically, people will decide to undertake a process of voluntary collective self-restriction that will enable everyone to thrive within those limits. Typically, when either leftist or rightist regimes actually encounter resource limits, some aspect of ideology (democracy on the one hand, the free market on the other) is sacrificed, at least to some extent. (187)
In real life, of course, the right-wing concept of "limits" enforcing poverty on the many is a daily reality observable in most of the world, and one the the Right apparently enjoys for all of its love of (class) warfare.
Anyone reading the 1999 UN Human Development Report can tell you of the enormous disparities in global income that has been the result of the Right's imposition of the "Darwinian struggle" (not a natural phenomenon) upon the world. (And it doesn't save a whole lot of energy, either.) On the other hand, the Left, in Heinberg's parodic conception of it, will have to undemocratically demand "voluntary collective self-restriction" of everyone in order to save energy. First of all, Heinberg places everyone in the role of consumer, forgetting the (fungible) economic pressure placed on energy producers to do the hard work that makes consumption possible for energy consumers. And then he assumes implicitly that consuming energy is what we naturlly like to do. As if we in the First World needed to voluntarily "restrict" ourselves from consuming the services of lawyers, advertisers, military corporations, landlords, insurance representatives, etc. (rather than freeing ourselves from the systemic obligation to use their services at great energy cost). As if energy conservation required "self-restriction" rather than being something we'd do if we had the option.
Does Heinberg look out each day upon the traffic jams of urban America, car after car filled with only one driver, engines all idling with irreplaceable fossil fuel, and imagine that each and every one of them wants to be there, and wouldn't rather be doing something else, somewhere else? Heinberg needs to imagine that it would not take too much goading for many energy consumers to learn to enjoy less-pressured, less-consumptive lives, saving lots of energy in the process.
His conclusions, then, seem to reflect his difficulty in imagining a solution occurring under present-day conditions, or that a solution would be prompted by anything other than ecologically-determined resource shortages. He tries to put teeth into his pronouncements of civilizational doom by asking himself, "is it too late?" His answer: If by, "is it too late?" we mean "Is it too late to make the transition painlessly?" then the answer may well be yes. By now, we almost certainly face a "discontinuity," as renewable-energy expert Ron Swenson euphemistically put it in a recent phone conversation with me.(238)
In reading the above paragraph, please be sensitive to the weasel-wordings ("may well," "almost certainly") that qualify Heinberg's predictions. Being unable to predict the future with any certainty (and sharing this quality with the smartest of his readers), Heinberg retreats from his crystal ball to stage-manage his sense of impending doom:
Am I being fatalistic? Or simply realistic? Our cultural obsession with good news, promises, and hope is humanly understandable, but there comes a time when the best thing to do is to accept that a bad situation has developed and to find intelligent ways to manage it.(238)
So instead of getting a clear picture in the crystal ball, we are being counseled as to what to feel about all this data, with its high reliance on variant probabilities. The peak of global oil production will come soon -- we don't know when, but we should be worried anyway.
I feel obligated to remark at this point that a message that emphasizes "doom and gloom," the hopelessness of humanity before its inevitable plight, is likely to encourage people to build the sort of future described in Octavia Butler's novels Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. That would be a future where the rich live armed to the teeth in gated communities surrounded by great seas of poverty. To his credit, Heinberg doesn't recommend the sort of survivalism practiced by isolationists who shut the world out. It must be considered, however, that living on a thin recipe for social change is likely to drive one to despair of changing society, and thus to forsake society altogether in just the manner that Butler described in her novels.
Heinberg's purpose, though, is to stage-manage the perceived threat to humankind seen in potential resource shortages, so as not to encourage the middle class reader to retreat into a castle. In reflecting upon his thin recipe for social change, Heinberg asks: Are these recommendations for national and global change unrealistic? Past experience would suggest that national leaders will be unlikely to act on the basis of warnings like those contained in the book. (238-239)
Having scared himself away by comparing "national and global change" with pleading before the Emperor, Heinberg then retreats to the "decades" refrain:
A successful transformation of even one of these three aspects of any single industrial society -- its energy infrastructure, its political system, or its economic system -- represents a daunting task probably requiring decades of work by many thousands of people. (239)
Which of course makes one wonder -- if billions are involved in social change, and not just "many thousands," does that shorten the time span required? At any rate, the problem implied in Heinberg's discussion is one of how a thick discussion of the social dilemma facing us, as we compete each day for dollars and resources on the freeway of capitalist life, would help us solve the ecological problem which Heinberg brings once again to our attentions.
One solution to the political dilemma, faced by activists pleading with nation-states in an undemocratic world, has already been put on the table by the journalist/ activist George Monbiot. In an article titled "How to Stop America" (http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0612-05.htm ), Monbiot argues that the people of the world should aim to create a network of democratically-elected representatives, to replace the current undemocratic framework of nation-states and the UN. Monbiot's genius in this regard is to think past the status quo, to imagine a structure without the defects of the current system and a way of making it happen. As Monbiot said, our alternative framework for global government will not have the power that the nation-states or the UN have, but it will have something they lack; legitimacy.
Once this framework does acquire power, though (which will have to occur alongside a revolution in social affairs), it will set to work establishing "radical social, ecological and economic democracy," basically, by withdrawing police power from the corporate and class structures as they currently stand, and by granting power over the earth directly to the people. This is not precisely what Monbiot had in mind, but I am adopting his idea to a purpose which would be more fitting than any notion of "fair trade" (which Monbiot may recommend), because nothing less than such a grant will account fully for capitalism's devastation and its necessary remedy. Such a mass grant will have to be accompanied by the across-the-board elimination of unproductive and unnecessarily-productive jobs and their replacement by fulfilling tasks that care for society and the earth. We will, in short, be creating a global intentional sustainable community, a co-operative of co-operatives, a co-operative commonwealth, or, in short, socialism.
Oh, sure, not even a revolution will avoid the "discontinuity" that the neoMalthusians see in their crystal balls. But at some point it will be easy to confuse that "discontinuity" with the discontinuity which will be created by the revolution's disruption of internal social structures, as the old is torn down whilst the new comes into being. Possibly, one "discontinuity" may accompany the other in such a way that we won't be able to tell which is which. Before the world is remade, at any rate, we can certainly expect humanity's internecine struggles to intensify quite drastically. We can see this already beginning in the Bush Administration's coddling of the rich and attack on services for the poor. Revolutions have never been candy-coated, flower-scented, hand-holding things -- or easy acts to pull off, for that matter. But none of the neoMalthusians can see any way in which our resource-consuming civilization can be forced to drastically reduce its energy expenditures short of revolution or dieoff. So I'll leave it to the ecosocialists to point the way.
What's more, since folks like Heinberg see resource management as civilzation's motor, they can't seem to imagine that conflict within a society could be the driving force of a social change that would also change that society's modes of resource management. So we're not going to get any calculations from them as to what energy savings a socialist society could make over the current capitalist system. But it will never be too late for people of good will to experience paradigm-changes. Let's try to do the math, shall we?
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
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atreyger Posted 5:13 am
25 May 2006
Second of all, wow...
Third of all, did you write this for a class???
Fourth of all, pretty thoughtful...
I believe that one flaw in your 'review' of Heinberg's book is that you are assuming a homogeneous population of the 'poor' globally or even nationally. There are drastically different sets of populations, values, morals, etc., which will not allow themselves to be homogenized. Nation-states exist for a reason: relatively homogenous populations, and desire to rule one's own leads to war, if the populations within the nation-states are not homogenous.
How about that for 'social change'? Can you incite 6 or 7 billion people to homogenize, start talking one language, start believing in the same god, etc? It's nearly impossible to it in our 'melting pot', let alone across different cultures with different beliefs and morals. I don't think that you are accepting the reality of our world when you suggest that change of a governing/economic system to socialism will be a relatively smooth, 'non-discontinuous' transition.
If there will be a revolution (where?), results of it will be less than desirable. The people from the 'poor' class that begin to take over will essentially allow the system to move only in the direction, which they perceive to be good, while disagreeing with a portion of the population. They will be faced with the same essential problems that existed before the revolution: lack of monetary supply, hard-to-manage populations, lack of all necessary resources (despite a presence of some).
The network of democratically-elected representatives presents a similar problem: there is an assumption that you can bring democracy to the world... That worked out real well in Somalia, Iraq, and all the other countries that we brought democracy to, hasn't it??? Palestine... that worked out even better, they went democratic, so we cut off their funds. The people in these countries have several major qualms with US-ification (Monbiot's idea) of the world: one, they don't like us; two, the religion allows for murder without too many qualms; three, life is cheap; four, resources are not plentiful and five, we are in charge of the majority of the world's resources.
Social structure, as I said before is a necessary consideration in all of this, but there are easy to see limitations that are not being considered by social change activists. That does not mean that they are not doing an important thing, it just starts to reek of Nazi Germany, Bolshevik and Stalin's Russia and USSR, and Well's 1984 where some of the population does not agree with the predominant system. That just raises the problem of what to do with them...
Face it, Americans would never change on their own volition. That statement about being stuck in traffic? Sure, those people love being there, otherwise why not carpool, take public transit, or work closer to home? Americans are rich as a nation, despite a large percentage of us being in poverty. We all have the "American dream" of becoming rich, while living in a relatively safe environment. It can't compare to the life that poor lead in Colombia, where 35,000 people die every year in the "civil war", more like gang violence, while the corrupt government looks on and occasionally comes down and kills some people only to retreat to American 'anti-drug' money.
I am all for the socialist system, but let's see where it works: Sweden, Norway, Finland. Nations of homogeneous populations, which despise foreigners. Is that a coincidence? I think not.
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caniscandida Posted 6:05 am
25 May 2006
My favorite part was the bit about erecting a fund, designated for the solution of our debts. Two thumbs enthusiastically upward!
Two Roman-Empire matters: First, establishing colonies along borders was not necessarily wasteful economically. That policy was carried out, consistently over a long time, in part to relieve population pressures in Italy.
Secondly, do not minimize the fractious nature of eastern Mediterranean societies in Late Antiquity. Men in Constantinople dared not discuss the Trinity with their razor-wielding barbers, lest they disagree on, say, how many natures the Son has. If you venerated in your home a picture of a saint, you might be putting your life at risk. Alexandria was a bloody battlefield of ethnic and sectarian strife. Not for nothing did the majority of people in Syria, Palestine and Egypt choose to wash their hands of Orthodox Christianity and throw their lot in with the ascendant Muslims.
A semi-quibble: The trans-Rhine and trans-Danube Germans (and Slavs?) did indeed envy the culture and wealth of Roman Mediterranean civilization, as you suggest. So in fact, when the Vandals took over Africa, the Visigoths Spain, the Franks northern Gaul, they did what they could to preserve the old Roman ways. Inasmuch as they could not -- this is best documented in Spain -- , they alienated the Roman residents. N.B. that in Italy, Germanic rulership never took root, really; ancient Mediterranean city-states remained the prevailing pattern, basically, in spite of all the feudaloid trappings, till the age of Garibaldi. And maybe even till today, Italy being the mess that Italy is. So it is always exaggerated to speak of a simple break between Roman imperial governance and that of the Germanic invaders. In fact, Late Antiquity and the Early Medieval period seem to be when vulgar Latin was most diffused, and the Romance languages took root in Hispania and Gallia.
Otherwise, thanks very much, this is beautifully written, even if I cannot appreciate the content, not knowin' nuttin' 'bout no economiks.
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LegumeSam Posted 6:47 am
25 May 2006
I am suggesting a world where the defense of the surplus is no longer (at least so much of) an issue. Dismantling those privileged classes which claim an inordinate share of the surplus, as well as impoverished "nations" which exist as bantustans of capital (i.e. for the sake of excluding impoverished populations from partaking of the surplus), would go a long way toward that goal.
Neither nations nor war are natural phenomena, nor are they the natural outcome of heterogeneity among human populations. The argument given by a consensus within systems theory is that the world itself has already been colonized by a capitalist "consensus." Within this world, the nation-states themselves have become conduits for the rule of a "transnational capitalist class," insofar as they have been integrated into this capitalist "consensus." And this integration has become all the more rapid after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Warfare between nations, within this framework, is an extension of heightened economic tensions provoked by the neo-colonial economics of life in this era. Ethnic differences serve as a pretext for these small-scale conflicts. Both the conflicts of the former Yugoslavia and of the genocide in Rwanda were exacerbated by the relationships of both countries to the IMF and the World Bank. The invasion of Iraq, of course, is part of a larger project to recolonize the Middle East in light of capitalism's having sprouted a terrorist free enterprise division. (Nobody's "spreading democracy" anywhere these days -- if it's catching on, that's because the grassroots has learned about it from the culture-stream and adopted it for itself.)
I'm not saying that war between nations will not be a problem in the future. I am saying that it becomes a solvable problem once the effort to colonize the world for the sake of the "transnational capitalist class" is abandoned. There certainly is no reason to assume any "natural" animosity between the Serbs and the Croats, or for that matter Hindus and Muslims or Muslims and Jews, any more than between the Germans and the French, or white and black people in the United States.
As far as revolution is concerned, what I am suggesting is that the current consensus behind "capitalist development" (soon to be renamed "sustainable development" as capitalist discipline dismantles more ecosystems) be replaced by a consensus about "ecological production." Such a consensus will be seen as an outgrowth of the depletion of ecosystemic supports which is the natural "blowback" of the capitalist discipline currently being forced down the world's throats.
If there will be a revolution (where?), results of it will be less than desirable. The people from the 'poor' class that begin to take over will essentially allow the system to move only in the direction, which they perceive to be good, while disagreeing with a portion of the population. They will be faced with the same essential problems that existed before the revolution: lack of monetary supply, hard-to-manage populations, lack of all necessary resources (despite a presence of some). The current global economy is being forced down the throats of the vast majority of the population, for the sake of the resource-extraction and capital-accumulation purposes of a "rich" minority. Compared to the difficulties they currently face (eg your Colombia example), the revolution will be a cakewalk. btw, there will be some sort of accumulating conflict in the future, as capitalism drains the world of its resource base -- I am suggesting that a popularized theory or theories of ecosocialist revolution (as diversified for the sake of "different" cultures) could make the outcome of these conflicts somewhat less painful than they otherwise would be.
"Third of all, did you write this for a class???" Just because my PhD is not in your subject... btw, in the future please try to avoid using Scandinavia as an example of socialism, & pick up some Kovel or something...
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
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atreyger Posted 8:00 am
25 May 2006
There certainly is no reason to assume any "natural" animosity between the Serbs and the Croats, or for that matter Hindus and Muslims or Muslims and Jews, any more than between the Germans and the French, or white and black people in the United States.
What about you social conflict idea then? The strife between the 'rich and poor', where does the above fit in?
Compared to the difficulties they currently face (eg your Colombia example), the revolution will be a cakewalk.
I am assuming a 'global' revolution... How do you suggest that would work out? Revolutions have inherently been contained within boundaries of a specific country, since surrounding countries with a military would not condone a spillover of violence. You forget that the sheer majority of people, myself included, would prefer to avoid violence unless it is literally forced on them.
If you are talking about an 'economic/social revolution', I believe that is a relatively benign process, which usually winds up being more of a movement, (environmental movement for example).
What is your specialty? Are you a scientist or a historian? If you are a social scientist, as soft of a science as that is, you apparently missed one thing about science: it is only a theory until a better one can come along. Thus your previous statement:
In reading the above paragraph, please be sensitive to the weasel-wordings ("may well," "almost certainly") that qualify Heinberg's predictions. Being unable to predict the future with any certainty (and sharing this quality with the smartest of his readers), Heinberg retreats from his crystal ball to stage-manage his sense of impending doom
is absolutely unfair to Heinberg (whose books I have never actually read) and it sounds like a bunch of crock, i.e. "I say something with certainty (and louder), so I am right".
I think we are arguing for the same end-point: agrarian (producing) societies, except that you seem to want to change 'global' political system around. While I applaud the removal of many unnecessary jobs and the entire idea of social 'change', you seem to be unaware of resource limitations in a world of 6-7 billion people. No matter how much you try, there is less and less soil to farm (per capita), less and less woods to cut (per capita), etc. Resource limitations in any other species lead to one end result: some sort of territorial violence.
Oh and the sanitary conditions in Rome: due to overpopulation, since disease is a density-dependent factor.
Oh and war is unnatural???
Chimps, our second closest 'relative' goes to war, and kills other tribe's chimps for 'ritual/tribal violence' purposes. Clearly it isn't modern warfare, but it shows you that the main thing that you are leaving out in all of this is our quite natural desire to breed and be able to retain our resources, 'surplus' if you will. If you don't maintain those, the fertile females will leave you, or others will take them away from you.
Our closest 'relative', bonobos seem to have a better solution: Sex for all, but I am unaware of the consequences of chimp-bonobo interactions, which may wind up being negative for bonobos.
There is a reason for why white people have taken over much of the world: they have gotten really good at war (see all of Europe's history). It seriously becomes a natural selection kind of a deal: Europeans are the 'weediest' and best at 'competition', since they have been fighting so much.
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bookerly Posted 8:21 am
25 May 2006
The book review was very thoughtful and well done. I agree with a number of the criticisms of the book.
There are a couple of problems I do have with the general flow of the arguments.
First, the transition to the state that is envisioned is weak as presented. It is fine to suggest that people will get sick of the current system and overthrow it. History suggests that when this happens, what most often results is not a universal democracy (any more than a universal socialist revolution). If all of the governments were replaced today, many would be replaced by dictators.
Others would be replaced by what you seem to be calling "democracies". Are the Western countries democracies?
(Is a system where 35 million people have the same say as 500,00 people a democracy? What about the 12 million people (undocumented) who have no say? (Or the millions of incarcerated/post-incarcerated people who have had their votes stripped from them?)).
Given that the "democracies" in the ceveloped countries often exclude large numbers of people (by defining them as "non" citizens, one defines them as "non" people, and denies them any say in the governance of the place where they live), in what ways is this proposal going to empower those people? How will we persuade people who have some share of power (or who believe they do) that they should allow ALL the people to share power equally?
Many of the features of modern societies exist to allow those who "have" to maintain what they have at the expense of those who "have not". But those who have does not include only the very rich, but also the middle classes.
Right now, there is no credible movement in any of the developed countries to get the middle classes to change their viewpoint about power and sharing. (In fact, looking at the proposals regarding immigration, just the opposite seems to be happening.)
So, who will demand the changes that are foreseen, and how will we go in that direction (as opposed to some other direction)?
Another part of the problem is the assumption of a shared viewpoint regarding nations. The belief that people will give up their "states" to be part of a world wide democracy is lovely, but I see no evidence of this desire.
Whatever led to the creation of nations, they are deeply rooted in the cultures and belief systems people hold. National identites seem to be strengthening in a globalized world as much as withering away.
While the idea of a global democracy surplanting nations may appeal to a few liberal educated people in the West, there is no evidence that I can see for any sort of mass global movement in that direction.
There are changes that are going on in world governance. One is the creation of regional interest groups. This trend looks more likely to be the immediate future than any sort of global commons.
Another change that is happening is the rise of developing countries as powers, and their establishment of mutual relationships exclusive of the developed countries.
We now see Venezuela and China and India establing trade pacts and relationships directly rather than through the institutions controlled by developed countries. These multi-lateral relationships are increasing in importance and are indicative of a "quiet" (ignored by Americans) shift in power that is slowly coming about.
In what ways is Mr. Monbiot's proposal " without the defects of the current system and a way of making it happen."? Without any kind of roadmap, people are unlikely to set forth in this direction in large numbers.
I appreciate the hard work and thought behind these proposals, but these dreams do not seem to be the dreams of the peoples of the world.
It is good to dream, but a dose of reality is useful as well.
patrick
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LegumeSam Posted 11:18 am
25 May 2006
If successful, please also attach an example of a large-scale socialist government that has been able to sustain itself for a period of time.Marxists, of course, would regard such a thing as a failure of socialism, as the state would not have withered away but instead maintained its repressive, class-dependent, shape. As for Scandinavia, that's called social democracy. To quote Wikipedia:The prime example of social democracy is Sweden, which prospered considerably in the 1990s and 2000s [1] against the predictions of those who suggested Sweden's 57% top tax bracket would slow its economy. Instead, Sweden has produced a strong economy from sole proprietorships up through to multinationals (e.g., Saab, Ikea, and Ericsson)...Socialism is about public ownership of the means of production, not an extravagant welfare system. Even so, social democracy is a better thing to support than the "free market" capitalism of the Washington Consensus.
The global conflict between social classes is based on exploitation and an economic system based on money, property, and possessive individualism. Everyone has either agreed or acquiesced to these principles, in one way or another. Power and ideological propaganda, not human nature, conditions this agreement.
Revolutions have inherently been contained within boundaries of a specific country, since surrounding countries with a military would not condone a spillover of violence.The attempted revolution of 1848 was waged in every nation in Europe. The Latin American revolutions all occured in the 1810s and early 1820s. The revolutions of 1989, throughout eastern Europe, were halted neither by the Soviets nor by any other military force. Even without such an event, a revolution could still occur in one nation at a time.
Richard Heinberg, like myself, is a pundit, a reader of the literature. He does no independent scientific work. I'm not too worried about being unfair to him. If he wants to gaze into the crystal ball and say "maybe," then I can gaze into my own crystal ball and say "maybe not."
Chimpanzees have neither nation-states nor military boot camps nor uniforms nor flags. Their conflicts, conditioned as they may be by human encroachment on their habitats, are about as much war as are the fights that break out in soccer stadiums in England now and then.
Our "natural desire to breed" can be overcome by birth control and feminism. Bringing up babies is hard work, especially for the women who are often "left behind" to do it. And they know it, too.
European domination, too, shall pass.
I obviously support the forces of democratic ecosocialism wherever they might be. As for the dreams of the masses, well, everyone today dreams of being a consumer, but when worker control over the workplace is established, producing things so that others can be consumers will become a contested issue (especially when workers are educated as regards ecological costs of production and the effect upon generations to come of those costs).
Many of the features of modern societies exist to allow those who "have" to maintain what they have at the expense of those who "have not". But those who have does not include only the very rich, but also the middle classes. And, indeed, these same features will be "up for grabs" with worker control over the workplaces of the world. Appeal to the (middle-class) consumer will not have to occur beforehand.
National allegiance and regional interest groups are indeed on the rise. But this is so because these cultural entities are seen as alternatives to the nation-state in its role as proxy for the transnational capitalist class. When the transnational capitalist class is defrocked of its leadership status, that too may pass.
Once again, thanks for all the attention. And by all means have fun, especially if you live in the Northern Hemisphere -- it's May!
http://ecosocialism.blogspot.com/
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