Tag: abrupt climate change

Sep 04 2009

A look at “Rational Ecology” in the context of climate change

This will be a short review of John Dryzek’s forgotten classic Rational Ecology in the context of the challenge of abrupt climate change.  Dryzek asks us to place ecological concerns first, and to look at these concerns in terms of the systems we use to make decisions.  If we were all to follow Dryzek’s logic, we might develop the will to take decisive action to address the problem, which we currently don’t have.  I will start by asking about climate change, summarize the book, and conclude by suggesting applications to the problem.

(Crossposted at Big Orange)

Jul 10 2009

Book Review: Brown and Garver’s Right Relationship

Recent events have made it somewhat evident that the current system of global governance is inadequate for the problem of abrupt climate change.  A suggestion that is slowly becoming more popular is that of a new system of global governance, and so this is a review of Peter G. Brown and Geoffrey Garver’s (2009) book Right Relationship: Building A Whole Earth Economy. Right Relationship is, to a significant extent, a “Quaker” outline for the reconcilement of economy with ecology; meaningfully, its transformative suggestions do seem quite apropos of the need for post-capitalist environmental design.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

Jun 29 2009

What is power? pt. 2: power and political hope

This is a meditation on power and political hope, on the idea that the struggle for power seems to favor those who focus their lives upon the attainment of power (rather than, say, the enjoyment of life), and of what hope to place (and in what) in a world in which this is true.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

Jun 09 2009

Where is the broad, general movement —

for a better world?

The basic situation is this: as the noose tightens on the old, capitalist ways of life, very few people appear to be all that interested in creating new ones.  Am I missing something here?

(crossposted at Big Orange)

Apr 22 2009

Saving the Earth is Not An Ego Trip

Saving the Earth is not an ego trip.  Saving the Earth is not something you do so that you can say you planted more trees or created more hybrids or wrote more academic papers or bombed more SUVs or fed more hungry people or arranged more peace deals or wrote more grants or have a purer method or better ethics than the next guy.  Saving the Earth is not something you do so that you can stand in judgment of the human race and ask it, “so what have YOU done?”  

No, saving the Earth is actually saving the Earth, and understanding it requires a degree of humility that seems at some point to be beyond the current reach of mainstream environmentalism, which wishes to simplify the act of saving the Earth to that which is politically and economically expedient.  Saving the Earth, however, must be something that actually saves the Earth, not something which makes us feel like we’re doing it when we’re not.

(crossposted at Big Orange)  

Mar 12 2009

Joseph Romm’s piece in Alternet: Are we all Madoffs?

This is another short reaction to Joseph Romm’s piece in Alternet: “Why the Global Economy Is a Ponzi Scheme and We Are All Bernie Madoffs”.  Much as I’d like to agree with Romm (as he is one of the most authoritative voices out there on the topic of abrupt climate change), no, we are not all Bernie Madoffs.  The global capitalist economy marginalizes most of the world’s population while granting the status of “Bernie Madoff” to, well, Bernie Madoff — really, even granting Romm’s metaphor, the few who are privileged to take real advantage of the economy.  And, perhaps, even for them, “playing the Ponzi scheme” means “just getting by.”  Still, Romm’s use of metaphor is creative and interesting.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

Mar 05 2009

Changing the social imaginary

This is a diary about the social imaginary — those aspects of our everyday practice that depend upon our imagining the existence of social institutions.  As our social institutions are increasingly inappropriate to our physical survival on planet Earth, we should be in the business of imagining new institutions which will give us a fighting chance.  I will investigate the case of global warming to discuss why this is so, and end with a series of photographic reflections.

The concept of “social imaginary” was developed as a tool of social critique by Cornelius Castoriadis, a philosopher whose pessimistic assessment of the present-day “social imaginary” will be examined in detail here.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

Dec 31 2008

The Bush administration, Leo Strauss, and noble lies: a retrospective

Since we are nearing the end of a Presidential administration, it behooves us to take stock of what has happened over the past eight years.  One of the most important intellectual developments to have accompanied the Bush administration is the significant expansion of the literature on “noble lies,” as promoted by the cabal of neoconservatives in the Bush cabinet through their intellectual mentor, the political philosopher Leo Strauss.  This will be a diary exploring Strauss, “noble lies,” and the function such lies supposedly perform in our political culture.  I conclude by asking why “noble lies” are really necessary anymore.  Do we need them to protect ourselves from the truth about abrupt climate change?

(crossposted at Big Orange)

Nov 16 2008

The elites’ pathetic props for the current system

This diary is about the G20 summit and the economy, but really it’s about the larger implications of a society which cannot let go of its status quo assumptions in time to save itself.  Here’s the false dilemma: either the current system must be saved, or the current system will fail.  The idea that we could switch over to another system, through a set of radical changes, cannot even insinuate itself into the conversation, outside of (perhaps) a marginal section of the blogosphere.  Yet this is what the world most needs.  In light of this, I recommend that we (bloggers) attempt to overcome resistance to some basic premises of thinking about the current situation.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

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