Does Ecology Really Matter?

[taffboy gwyrdd]

Between the Bush warcrimes and the 2008 banking heist, the fate of our planet home received quite a lot of attention in mainstream discourse.

But it's tended not to be such a big issue since, beyond the places we might expect.

So with climate change showing no sign of abating or being adequatley challenged, and with the 6th Great Extinction possibly upon us, I wondered if urbanites had a clue where we might go from here.

Is it all a bit daunting? Is it (at least supposedly) rather white and middle class to be concerned for the fate of countless millions of poor and non-white people? Have the ecocidal capitalists won, or will even they someday work out that there is no economy without ecology? Or can we just blame India and China for everything?

This may not be the best expressed OP, I guess I'm curious to know why ecology seems to have dropped down the agenda, not least on the left, and if it's a logical consequence of the ultimate material condition not mattering as much as some once thought.

How might this seeming move towards a very un-green future be slowed, halted or reversed?

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...t-extinction-of-animal-species-say-scientists

 

[Fez909]

I imagine it's a bit like the link between poverty and long-term planning and decision making.

When you're comfortable, you think about the future. When you're not, you can only think about the now. We're being whipped up in a perpetual state of worry, constantly, and for those outside of the comfortable classes, that fear is being realised. In living standards, job insecurity and in some cases hunger, homelessness and crushing depression.

How can someone in that state bring themselves to care about the future of not just their own countrymen and women, but those all over the world from now until forever? It's a huge thing to consider at the best of times, but when your own house is falling down, it'll be the last thing on your mind.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

I imagine it's a bit like the link between poverty and long-term planning and decision making.

When you're comfortable, you think about the future. When you're not, you can only think about the now. We're being whipped up in a perpetual state of worry, constantly, and for those outside of the comfortable classes, that fear is being realised. In living standards, job insecurity and in some cases hunger, homelessness and crushing depression.

How can someone in that state bring themselves to care about the future of not just their own countrymen and women, but those all over the world from now until forever? It's a huge thing to consider at the best of times, but when your own house is falling down, it'll be the last thing on your mind.

While there is much to this, it's regrettable the way it's turned around on to those who do care to make it sound as if they shouldn't, that they are essentially being indulgent (in no way am I accusing you of this)

It's a standard reactionary ploy across the board to find any reason to label as hyporcrites those who disagree with them.

It certainly suits capital to be smashing the poor so much that they have less time to confront the crimes of capital and it's systems, crimes which include ecocide.

And yet, I dont doubt plenty of working class people are involved with eocloogical issues on their own doorsteps and beyond, their non-existence being a fantasy of patronising know-all reactionaries.

 

[Pickman's model]

yes.

next.

 

[brogdale]

Between the Bush warcrimes and the 2008 banking heist, the fate of our planet home received quite a lot of attention in mainstream discourse.

But it's tended not to be such a big issue since, beyond the places we might expect.

So with climate change showing no sign of abating or being adequatley challenged, and with the 6th Great Extinction possibly upon us, I wondered if urbanites had a clue where we might go from here.

Is it all a bit daunting? Is it (at least supposedly) rather white and middle class to be concerned for the fate of countless millions of poor and non-white people? Have the ecocidal capitalists won, or will even they someday work out that there is no economy without ecology? Or can we just blame India and China for everything?

This may not be the best expressed OP, I guess I'm curious to know why ecology seems to have dropped down the agenda, not least on the left, and if it's a logical consequence of the ultimate material condition not mattering as much as some once thought.

How might this seeming move towards a very un-green future be slowed, halted or reversed?

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...t-extinction-of-animal-species-say-scientists

That is an slightly odd OP. Do you mean the ideological expression of ecologism and its main tenets, or the study of ecosystems?

 

[snadge]

No.

Next.

 

[chilango]

?..plenty of working class people are involved with eocloogical issues on their own doorsteps and beyond, their non-existence being a fantasy of patronising know-all reactionaries.

There's your answer.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

That is an slightly odd OP. Do you mean the ideological expression of ecologism and its main tenets, or the study of ecosystems?

Sorry. I chiefly mean political expression of concern and the attempt to improve things. I was going to refer to "climate change", but have the Great Extinction in mind and am mindful of a whole range of issues beyond just those 2.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

There's your answer.

Is it enough though?

 

[chilango]

Is it enough though?

Yes. No, but yes.

 

[Artaxerxes]

Yes, because the term population explosion isn't sufficient to describe just how much our population has increased the last hundred years

Thats a fucking nuke and without serious thought as to, how, when and what we can grow we will strip the planet bare then crash and burn or leave our descendants grubbing around in bare cages.

Planet won't mind, it'll keep on trucking, but we won't.

 

[brogdale]

Sorry. I chiefly mean political expression of concern and the attempt to improve things. I was going to refer to "climate change", but have the Great Extinction in mind and am mindful of a whole range of issues beyond just those 2.

So Ecologism, then? Not Ecology.

Both matter.

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

Yes, because the term population explosion isn't sufficient to describe just how much our population has increased the last hundred years

Thats a fucking nuke and without serious thought as to, how, when and what we can grow we will strip the planet bare then crash and burn or leave our descendants grubbing around in bare cages.

Planet won't mind, it'll keep on trucking, but we won't.

Of course, if you plotted that data so that it ended just after the population spike around 4000 BC, you would get more or less the same shape graph and maybe even conclude that the end of the world is nigh.