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The UC: America's Most Ecocidal "Green" University, Part II
[Continued from Part I, published on Sunday, April 5.]
Why is industrial capitalism inherently destructive of the earth? Many volumes have been written on the subject. In this space, we intend only to sketch the briefest outline of such an argument.
As with all imperialist systems, capitalist economies are based on material growth. This growth takes place with increasing rapidity over time. Thus, the capitalist system inevitably and inexorably depletes the earth’s so-called “natural resources.” Furthermore, through the scientific and technological revolution’s contributions to capitalist economic imperatives, depleted “natural resources” are often abandoned for newly identified “resources” as new productive processes and emergent technologies allow for the exploitation of what before was seen as raw, useless objects of nature. Thus, capitalism reaps without replacing in an unsustainable drive, and then dynamically moves on to harvest new, previously “useless” elements of the earth. In fact, in the very act of defining the world as a field of “resources” to be exploited, capitalism allows those in power, in their quest for ever-increasing levels of energy production, to cut down entire forests for fuel (early European deforestation), strip mine and deplete coal deposits (early industrial fuel), to tap and soon exhaust petroleum deposits (our current primary form of energy), and so on. In the process, they create ever-greater wastelands. This is the cause, more or less, of the current ecological crisis of planetary proportions we now collectively must face.
Since 1970, the year often cited as the birth of the modern environmental movement, more than 40 percent of the world’s remaining forests have been cut, at an average annual rate of depletion larger than England and Wales combined. Between 1970 and 2003, populations of “terrestrial species” declined by 31 percent. According to the moderate World Wildlife Fund, human societies are now consuming as many “natural resources” every three months as the earth generates in a full year. There are now more than 70,000 industrial chemicals in use, with around 1,500 new ones appearing annually and 30,000 never having been comprehensively tested for their possible health risks. Virtually every river and waterway on earth has been polluted with a toxic stew of chemical contaminants. All of this is in spite of the many important victories achieved by environmental activists since the late-‘60s. The social ecologist Murray Bookchin noted:
"To speak of 'limits to growth' under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be 'persuaded' to limit growth than a human being can be 'persuaded' to stop breathing."
Moreover, capitalist production passes on environmental costs to all of society, and is unable to consider its impact upon ecosystems and the biosphere at large. Economist James O’Connor explains that the ecological crisis is one of the two major contradictions of reproduction created by capitalism. The first is a crisis of labor: by so exploiting workers capitalism undermines its ideological and political legitimacy, leading to periodic repudiations of capitalism as a system. Workers revolt, organize, and push toward more socialistic systems. Thus far, the capitalist political-economy has been able to recuperate a semblance of balance and a workable regime of domination. Workers in the global north have largely been placated and co-opted while those in the global south have been brutally repressed. But capitalism also produces a second contradiction: It succeeds so well in transforming the earth into “resources” and exploiting them that it undermines the very ecological system that makes human society possible. Capitalism irrevocably (at least in terms of human historical timeframes) destroys nature.
Murray Bookchin concurs, and further explains that capitalism’s systematic thrust is toward a rationalization and simplification of the ecology. Simplification entails a rapid and irreversible destruction of the biodiversity and ecological multiplicity that complex life is based upon. The rapid species extinction that has proceeded concurrent with capitalism’s mass reorganization and expansion of industrial monocrop agriculture and rapacious resource extraction, the extreme climactic shifts taking place because of human-induced global warming, the vast deforestation and habitat destruction brought on by urban expansion and sprawl -- this and more is killing off the vast and incredibly interdependent webs of diverse life upon which we as human beings are reliant. The plutonium bomb is only the distilled version of this process writ large. The industrial mammoth it takes to mine uranium, mill it, refine it into plutonium and other elements, the parallel industrial chemicals and materials necessary for building a nuclear warhead, the industrial infrastructure for missile production, the military plant necessary to deploy the weapons, the barren “sacrifice zones” where tests have occurred -- all of this amounts to an immeasurable ecological scar and has contributed to multiple and interlocking ecological crises our society faces. The UC bears a large measure of responsibility for all of them.
Capitalism’s apologists often treat its expansion as essentially an inexorable force of nature. Because it is inherently a superior system, they say, any free people, when presented with an unconstrained choice between it and a more traditional communal lifestyle will embrace free market economics and its attendant industrial processes. In reality, capitalist expansion has always been, and will invariably continue to be, secured via military conquest; that is, by the means of violence and repression for which research universities are increasingly responsible for developing at the inception and research stages. In recent years, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has helpfully offered this analogy: “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonalds cannot flourish without [military-industrial firm] McDonnell-Douglass.” More fundamentally, because industrial capitalism is expansionary by definition, it must uproot and destroy the human communities that stand in the way of the “resources” its seeks to extract, pervert, consume, and dispose of. As this system has grown to encompass virtually the entire globe, its instruments of violent enforcement and coercion likewise have become more total: hence, nuclear weapons.
As with all imperialist systems, capitalist economies are based on material growth. This growth takes place with increasing rapidity over time. Thus, the capitalist system inevitably and inexorably depletes the earth’s so-called “natural resources.” Furthermore, through the scientific and technological revolution’s contributions to capitalist economic imperatives, depleted “natural resources” are often abandoned for newly identified “resources” as new productive processes and emergent technologies allow for the exploitation of what before was seen as raw, useless objects of nature. Thus, capitalism reaps without replacing in an unsustainable drive, and then dynamically moves on to harvest new, previously “useless” elements of the earth. In fact, in the very act of defining the world as a field of “resources” to be exploited, capitalism allows those in power, in their quest for ever-increasing levels of energy production, to cut down entire forests for fuel (early European deforestation), strip mine and deplete coal deposits (early industrial fuel), to tap and soon exhaust petroleum deposits (our current primary form of energy), and so on. In the process, they create ever-greater wastelands. This is the cause, more or less, of the current ecological crisis of planetary proportions we now collectively must face.
Since 1970, the year often cited as the birth of the modern environmental movement, more than 40 percent of the world’s remaining forests have been cut, at an average annual rate of depletion larger than England and Wales combined. Between 1970 and 2003, populations of “terrestrial species” declined by 31 percent. According to the moderate World Wildlife Fund, human societies are now consuming as many “natural resources” every three months as the earth generates in a full year. There are now more than 70,000 industrial chemicals in use, with around 1,500 new ones appearing annually and 30,000 never having been comprehensively tested for their possible health risks. Virtually every river and waterway on earth has been polluted with a toxic stew of chemical contaminants. All of this is in spite of the many important victories achieved by environmental activists since the late-‘60s. The social ecologist Murray Bookchin noted:
"To speak of 'limits to growth' under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be 'persuaded' to limit growth than a human being can be 'persuaded' to stop breathing."
Moreover, capitalist production passes on environmental costs to all of society, and is unable to consider its impact upon ecosystems and the biosphere at large. Economist James O’Connor explains that the ecological crisis is one of the two major contradictions of reproduction created by capitalism. The first is a crisis of labor: by so exploiting workers capitalism undermines its ideological and political legitimacy, leading to periodic repudiations of capitalism as a system. Workers revolt, organize, and push toward more socialistic systems. Thus far, the capitalist political-economy has been able to recuperate a semblance of balance and a workable regime of domination. Workers in the global north have largely been placated and co-opted while those in the global south have been brutally repressed. But capitalism also produces a second contradiction: It succeeds so well in transforming the earth into “resources” and exploiting them that it undermines the very ecological system that makes human society possible. Capitalism irrevocably (at least in terms of human historical timeframes) destroys nature.
Murray Bookchin concurs, and further explains that capitalism’s systematic thrust is toward a rationalization and simplification of the ecology. Simplification entails a rapid and irreversible destruction of the biodiversity and ecological multiplicity that complex life is based upon. The rapid species extinction that has proceeded concurrent with capitalism’s mass reorganization and expansion of industrial monocrop agriculture and rapacious resource extraction, the extreme climactic shifts taking place because of human-induced global warming, the vast deforestation and habitat destruction brought on by urban expansion and sprawl -- this and more is killing off the vast and incredibly interdependent webs of diverse life upon which we as human beings are reliant. The plutonium bomb is only the distilled version of this process writ large. The industrial mammoth it takes to mine uranium, mill it, refine it into plutonium and other elements, the parallel industrial chemicals and materials necessary for building a nuclear warhead, the industrial infrastructure for missile production, the military plant necessary to deploy the weapons, the barren “sacrifice zones” where tests have occurred -- all of this amounts to an immeasurable ecological scar and has contributed to multiple and interlocking ecological crises our society faces. The UC bears a large measure of responsibility for all of them.
Capitalism’s apologists often treat its expansion as essentially an inexorable force of nature. Because it is inherently a superior system, they say, any free people, when presented with an unconstrained choice between it and a more traditional communal lifestyle will embrace free market economics and its attendant industrial processes. In reality, capitalist expansion has always been, and will invariably continue to be, secured via military conquest; that is, by the means of violence and repression for which research universities are increasingly responsible for developing at the inception and research stages. In recent years, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has helpfully offered this analogy: “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonalds cannot flourish without [military-industrial firm] McDonnell-Douglass.” More fundamentally, because industrial capitalism is expansionary by definition, it must uproot and destroy the human communities that stand in the way of the “resources” its seeks to extract, pervert, consume, and dispose of. As this system has grown to encompass virtually the entire globe, its instruments of violent enforcement and coercion likewise have become more total: hence, nuclear weapons.
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The following comment is totally bogus - the UN Environment Programme wrote a report after the fall of Saddam's government in 2003 - depleted uranium was NOT the #1 source of environmental degradation. Along with the writers' pretentious rambling Unibomber style of writing, it is apparent that they do not do their homework either.
"The primary source of environmental degradation in Iraq, however, is of course depleted uranium -- a bi-product of the same radioactive processes that have"
UNEP Post Conflict Branch Report on Iraq
DU is mentioned on page 22 and 26 of 80 page report - mentioned in hotspots, but not one of the 5 that they concentrated on
http://postconflict.unep.ch/publications/Iraq.pdf
For more about the hysteria about depleted uranium that the rambling writer wants to brainwash you about, go to http://www.depletedcranium.com or to Message 88 linked to my name - you can also write me at DUStory-owner [at] yahoogroups.com
"The primary source of environmental degradation in Iraq, however, is of course depleted uranium -- a bi-product of the same radioactive processes that have"
UNEP Post Conflict Branch Report on Iraq
DU is mentioned on page 22 and 26 of 80 page report - mentioned in hotspots, but not one of the 5 that they concentrated on
http://postconflict.unep.ch/publications/Iraq.pdf
For more about the hysteria about depleted uranium that the rambling writer wants to brainwash you about, go to http://www.depletedcranium.com or to Message 88 linked to my name - you can also write me at DUStory-owner [at] yahoogroups.com
For more information:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/DUStory...
Mr. Helbig, you sound like a lobbyist for the nuclear industry, or perhaps ATK, a maker of DU munitions? Oh no, you're actually a retired Air Force General! - a professional Internet troll who defends DU: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/roger/helbig
As for the article's main threads, perhaps you just have trouble following a complex thesis? I don't find the writing style rambling at all. It sure does cover a lot of ground though.
As for the depleted uranium issue, you're probably right, in a very narrow sense. DU isn't THE PRIMARY source of environmental destruction in Iraq, but it certainly ranks up there. The primary source is probably best defined as the cumulative effects of decades of oil drilling and 2 decades US military occupation.
DU kills though. It's horrible stuff.
As for the article's main threads, perhaps you just have trouble following a complex thesis? I don't find the writing style rambling at all. It sure does cover a lot of ground though.
As for the depleted uranium issue, you're probably right, in a very narrow sense. DU isn't THE PRIMARY source of environmental destruction in Iraq, but it certainly ranks up there. The primary source is probably best defined as the cumulative effects of decades of oil drilling and 2 decades US military occupation.
DU kills though. It's horrible stuff.
Lieutenant Colonel Roger Helbig, USAF, Rtd (it appears) is one of a small Pentagon-inspired group devoted to denigrating and undermining the efforts of those drawing attention to the dangers of DU, which three UN Sub-Committees have designated a weapon of mass destruction. Rokke is just the latest in a long line of Helbig targets. Journalist Bob Nichols, Project Censored award winner for his DU coverage, writes, 'Individuals on web sites throughout the United States have complained about the abusive and aggressive actions of an Air Force Lieut. Colonel named Roger Helbig’.
David Lindorff, another award winner and the (UK) Observer’s David Rose, have also suffered a barage of abuse for stories exposing the dangers of DU, which poisons the environment, thus entire food chain regionally where used, for four-and-a-half billion years.
Nichols cites Helbig "attacking hundreds of sites and harrassing web moderators." Informative DU sites (such as http://www.Pandoraproject@yahoogroups.com">http://www.Pandoraproject [at] yahoogroups.com and http://www.notinkansas.us – the latter’s meticulously researched alerts included the chilling warning of US military in Iraq regarding bathing in shower water taken from Tigris river: 'GI’s Beware Radioactive Showers’) are also victims. Researcher, John Ervin, posted on http://www.apfn.net: "They’ve already sent Lt. Colonel Roger Helbig after me."
David Lindorff, another award winner and the (UK) Observer’s David Rose, have also suffered a barage of abuse for stories exposing the dangers of DU, which poisons the environment, thus entire food chain regionally where used, for four-and-a-half billion years.
Nichols cites Helbig "attacking hundreds of sites and harrassing web moderators." Informative DU sites (such as http://www.Pandoraproject@yahoogroups.com">http://www.Pandoraproject [at] yahoogroups.com and http://www.notinkansas.us – the latter’s meticulously researched alerts included the chilling warning of US military in Iraq regarding bathing in shower water taken from Tigris river: 'GI’s Beware Radioactive Showers’) are also victims. Researcher, John Ervin, posted on http://www.apfn.net: "They’ve already sent Lt. Colonel Roger Helbig after me."
For more information:
http://snardfarker.ning.com/profiles/blogs...
The most important aspects of the article are in the big picture capitalist profit-over-sustainability paradigm, and the need for it to be superceded by non-compromising goals and objectives that WILL bring us a non-toxic sustainable maintenance society on earth. Profit-for-its-own-sake in all its manifestations, whether it be infinite growth, radioctive contamination, wars for resource control, global climate disruption, over-population, depletion of natural resources, or mass poverty ruled by a tiny greed driven elite, is undeniably driving us off a cliff to self-extinction. A clear look at the facts unrationalized by fantasies of magical and unyet-discovered-technologies-that-will-save-us is nothing short of total denial.
The "rationalizations" are represented by such activities as calling UC "green" when it in fact produces vast amounts the above profit-for-its-own-sake manifestations, like those mentioned in the article. The ruling elite maintain control by rationalizing their evils with a 5% solution of good, hoping this will stave off reforms or even genuine self-inflicted disaster. This modality of rationalization in the face of knowingly self-destructive behavior clearly must stop or the current iteration of intelligent life on this planet will terminate itself.
This is the most important follow up for those who want to move forward from the position clearly delineated by this paper, namely: understanding that the nature of human engineered toxicity is a by-product of capitalism and it's continued existence, in light of it's absolute destructiveness, is facilitated by a social-parlor-room politeness and compromise, blocking meaningful policy change.
All the rationalization, the social niceties, the compromising is the way of the elite social order and how they "do business". This needs to end. All the toxicity and the wars and the nukes and the out of control growth and the over-population and the non-egalitarian societies need to be designed out of existence by cooperative, non-compromising commitments to fixed goals that eliminate these elements by 95%. Instead of 5% beneficial we need 95% beneficial. That is clear and undisputable. So...make goals that meet a 95% beneficial outcome and compromise only on a timetable that will ABSOLUTELY meet that goal. For instance if we need to get back to 350 ppm co2 by 2020 and to do so forces industry to reduce carbon outputs by 95% by that date, then that's an ABSOLUTE. Compromise can only be made on iterim date objectives...the end date and the measurements at that time are ABSOLUTE! This is the opposite of the current "system" which compromises for the worthless "5% solution" and we see results like the hypocrisy at UC and organizations like the Sierra Club that call a black hole like UC "green".
Bravo to Will & Darwin's paper and let's move forward with uncompromising, life saving social and environmental objectives.
The "rationalizations" are represented by such activities as calling UC "green" when it in fact produces vast amounts the above profit-for-its-own-sake manifestations, like those mentioned in the article. The ruling elite maintain control by rationalizing their evils with a 5% solution of good, hoping this will stave off reforms or even genuine self-inflicted disaster. This modality of rationalization in the face of knowingly self-destructive behavior clearly must stop or the current iteration of intelligent life on this planet will terminate itself.
This is the most important follow up for those who want to move forward from the position clearly delineated by this paper, namely: understanding that the nature of human engineered toxicity is a by-product of capitalism and it's continued existence, in light of it's absolute destructiveness, is facilitated by a social-parlor-room politeness and compromise, blocking meaningful policy change.
All the rationalization, the social niceties, the compromising is the way of the elite social order and how they "do business". This needs to end. All the toxicity and the wars and the nukes and the out of control growth and the over-population and the non-egalitarian societies need to be designed out of existence by cooperative, non-compromising commitments to fixed goals that eliminate these elements by 95%. Instead of 5% beneficial we need 95% beneficial. That is clear and undisputable. So...make goals that meet a 95% beneficial outcome and compromise only on a timetable that will ABSOLUTELY meet that goal. For instance if we need to get back to 350 ppm co2 by 2020 and to do so forces industry to reduce carbon outputs by 95% by that date, then that's an ABSOLUTE. Compromise can only be made on iterim date objectives...the end date and the measurements at that time are ABSOLUTE! This is the opposite of the current "system" which compromises for the worthless "5% solution" and we see results like the hypocrisy at UC and organizations like the Sierra Club that call a black hole like UC "green".
Bravo to Will & Darwin's paper and let's move forward with uncompromising, life saving social and environmental objectives.
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