Eco-Socialism

I think you have missed an aspect of Monbiot' views . I think in some sense he hopes that our current political system will make wise ecological decisions, I think everyone hopes that. However, I agree with you in that his optimism is somewhat unfounded. He explicitly stated in his interview with Paul Jay that the change must occur from citizens, that there must be a reduction in environmental destruction per capita. (this is my interpretation of Monbiot and it may be incorrect, please call me on it if it is.)

I think it is clear by now that we can no longer depend on our government to make the necessary changes to respond to our environmental issues. I don't believe that a new political party or a restructuring of the current parties will do anything, because I have no confidence in our current political system. Thus, my optimism lies within the general public.

I don't think this is a question of political parties. In a democracy, political parties adapt to the desires of the public (ideally, anyway), and any political party in any democracy today can become a "green" party if the will and the public support for it is there. Problem is, the support for it is NOT there, in most countries, especially in the US and other English-speaking countries like Australia and Canada. People are willing to pay lip service to environmental problems, but we live in a consumerist society where one's personal conditions outrank ALL other considerations, including the real and present threat to the continued existence of our planet. The fact that a few centuries from now the Earth may not be capable of sustaining life is of no interest to people who are too selfish to look past their own lifespan. In order to get people to be serious about the environment, one of two things has to happen:

1. A new sense of morality -- some sort of spiritual and moral awakening, that convinces people to look beyond their own self-interest. This means a severe reduction in consumerism. If the SUV you drive makes you feel guilty about what you are doing, you'll get rid of it. But if it makes you feel cool and better than other people (as is the case with most people now), people won't stop doing it, even if they know it's killing the planet.

Or:

2. The destruction of the planet, to near-armageddon levels. Perhaps there is no way to convince people not to be selfish anymore. Perhaps the only way for human civilization to wake up to reality is to simply experience the consequences of our actions. When our planet is boiling up, our resource base is exhausted and our standard of living is a joke, maybe then people will come to understand the importance of responsible, sustainable economic activity.

I, for one, hope it will be option 1, not 2, but I'm not holding my breath.

I'm very much aligned with your viewpoint and must thank Thom as well for his insight. I don't feel our political system will rationally make wise ecological decisions on the simple fact that we're currently in a race for growth economically. The only rational solution is a system that is based on stabilizing the economy and our impact on the environment. It's a simplistic notion but would require dramatic change on part of people – we need a means of getting the message across to everyone that dramatic changes are required and these changes must come soon, in the next five years. We need an inquiry into our current societal foundation (the capitalist economic system) in order to expose the very despotic states we live in. We knowingly accept these states as they cater to our needs but their position is impossible to maintain when the existing means of sustenance are capable of being displaced in such a way to make living intolerable. The difficulty in doing this, as is pointed out by Monbiot in his interview, is that the wealthy nations are not interested because they will not be impacted as harshly as the poor. So it comes down to asking the capitalist core to pay heed to the peripheral nations, to change the way we’ve been viewing international relations and war. To inform citizens of the truly dismal way these countries are being run and offer an alternative system in its place wherein both social and environmental needs must be met. With movements like REAL NEWS such things are coming into reality, at least in regards to exposing an alternative viewpoint apart from the corporate media giants.
In speaking with some of my friends I have also thought about your number 1, Daniel. With things like fundamentalism on the rise and countless other means of distraction and illusion in modern society how would one spark a new found morality?

Could it be found in noting the nature of many indigenous movements worldwide? One of my colleagues studies the construction and cognitive praxis of indigenous movements. People are displaced by capital: the military intervenes and subjugates the people by expelling them from their land or laces their bodies with bullets. In the interests of economic gain the people’s interest are again displaced and the environment is impacted as a result. These movements are intertwined in such a fantastic way because they both represent an environmental and social concern. I find it motivating speaking with individuals such as you about these complicated issues because through this we can truly work out a solution.

With enough conversation and urgency a revolution is possible. What are your thoughts?

This seems like a really useful debate. Here are a few thoughts about particular aspects of it:
-environmental problems, like a lot of problems, seem to require multilateral, disinterested organization. When the political atmosphere is permeated with military and economic dominance people become rightly afraid of ceding too much power to any one entity.
America has fears of being answerable on any fronts to an international body. Meanwhile, I assume Canadians would be appalled by letting their economic or ecological policy being subject to any authority that could be coerced by the U.S. political machine. Most Americans, I think, wouldn't want to give their government more power over the continent, even if we could. So the enormous problem might be in creating an effective global coordinating body that could check and balance nationalized interests.
Maybe a model for transparent governments, like the national initiative for democracy could be used to develop popular initiatives for legislation, establishing an independent international consensus that could then petition governments.
Indigenous movements, maybe, to respond to Travis Bragg's idea, can provide a lot of ideas into how imperialism can be resisted, because indigenous people have had the most at stake, and the most taken away. In the U.S., though, there are also a lot of good models for popular initiatives and resistance in the civil rights movement.
I've never heard of Monbiot but he sounds like he's worth reading.

Thanks Dell, and it is Tavis by the way (pronounced Tayvis - like Mavis, or Davis but with a T)!

Monbiot is definately worth reading and the real news has a great series called global warning which highlights the notions he has put forward in his latest book Heat to some extent.

I do believe the nature of these problems are in fact multi-lateral and have the problematic nature of disinterest but granted enough exposition of the real issues behind climate change (IE: The nature of the current capitalistic system, and the expolitation of citizens both within the western world and beyond) I feel we will be able to promote a movement that will force legislators into action. Over the next couple months we will be designing a means to do so and I'll be sure to keep everyone interested in getting involved in the process.

Transparency is key. I have just now read about the national initiative for democracy and enjoy the notion but it is only one of the many aspects needing to be addressed. There is so much to be addressed it seems overwhelming at time but granted some time and organizational framework I think a united front of citizens from Canada, the United States, the UK and abroad can really make an impact.

Avaaz.org was just a first step!

This discussion is very intriguing, and I would like to offer my thoughts on the issue, for whatever they're worth.

Since becoming aware of the looming environmental crisis we face, I have interacted with many environmentalists of different ages, and everyone agrees that global warming is a huge problem. Some of the environmentalists (not all) are even aware of the problems we are going to face as a result of peak oil. With the price of a barrel of oil having just reached $100, I feel this topic will come up a bit more now.

However, the trend I see is that a lot of people care about our planet, and about the future of the younger generations, but not a lot of people are willing to act. Whether it is driving a car to the corner store, not trying to buy local produce, leaving lights on all the time, flushing toilets after every use, etc. people do not seem to be getting the picture. We are in big trouble - and we need to act now.

I think that politicians have the ability to make the changes we all know need to be made, but I do not believe they will.

Monbiot argues in "Heat" that the steps which need to be taken are those that will have the smallest impact on the average citizen's way of life, since people are not willing, for the most part, to change their standard of living. If this model holds true, and politicians continue to act in a way that will enable them to get the most votes (i.e. piss off the lowest amount of people possible), then enough change will not come about quick enough.

Therefore, I think it is up to citizens to make the changes, and to be drastic in their attempts to do so. I do not know the answer - nor do I know exactly what needs to be done by citizens, or even what we have the ability to do. What I do know is that we are continuing on a path of consumerism as was mentioned above, and that at our current speed of growth and economic activity, we are going to crash right into a brick wall.

The question remains - what do citizens have the power, time, resources and knowledge to do?

I am grateful you replied Bre,

It is true Monbiot does argue that but I'm not entirely sure I can buy it. I know we may believe that people will only change if it doesn't effect their everyday lives but some changes must be provoked regardless of our desire for them or not. I have over the past few months been curtailing my behaviour as my work in this field has lead me to focus on this problem with 75% of my time. I find it a topic that can't be distracted from once we become aware of it especially with our new awareness we begin to see the dizzying insanity that abounds all around us. Our perceptions must change and I believe it is on part of the people and a political faction to do this. The only problem I see is a complete movement towards reforming the old system in those parities that exist currently; they offer little hope of doing what is necessary as long as they are bedfellows with the corporations who sell us our civilization’s demise. Those of us in Canada can relate to the current happenings in Bali and the Harper’s desire for the economic growth of his tar sands. It is the very nature of the current social organization and our current world view (ideology) that is at question here, not only the environment. It is the alienation that takes place between people and, by extension, between people and the planet that leads us to despair and powerlessness.

The solution to your question is organization, grassroots organization that can communicate at first within a nation state, and then, internationally. It will take time and effort on part of all those who have become knowledgeable about climate change and the failures of the current system. We live in a time where new ideas must be forged and real alternatives must take root.

Are we governed correctly? Is the current arrangement in the best interests of humanity? I think not. There is a change coming and it must be soon and before we reach a 2 degree increase lest we live in a world with runaway warming.

I am sorry, but I must vehemently disagree with the fundamental premises of the argument these 'Club of Rome' folks present. They were well and truly debunked back in the seventies and it amazes me to find their theses still attracting disciples. They are wrong in so many ways, I hardly know where to start.

They contend, in essence, that in a world of finite space and finite resources, we cannot continue to grow infinitely. First off, even if the world was finite with finite resources, learning to do more with less would in fact possibly allow for infinite growth. If increases in productivity were matched by increases in resource efficiency to an equal or greater level (assuming recycling), then growth could in fact be maintained indefinitely. It is not a question of learning to do with less. It is a question of learning to make more with less. However the finite space and resource contention is itself fundamentally flawed.

Certainly the Earth herself has finite surface area. However human beings are not limited to that surface area alone. In fact we are already vastly exceeding the surface area of some parts of the earth with our multi-storied buildings. Archeology's and sky farms could easily hold the whole of the future human population using a mere fraction of the earths surface area that we currently use. Sky farms could produce all the food needed by the worlds cities and do so within those city's current city limits!

Resources are also not finite. They never actually run out. What happens is that over time they become more scarce and harder to extract. As that happens, they get more expensive. As those resources get more expensive, two things happen; alternatives are found for those resources that were previously perhaps not cost effective, and investment is made in finding ways to make the same or greater productivity with less of those expensive resources. Oil for instance will never actually 'run out', it may however over time get so expensive that no one would consider doing something as stupid as burning it up. If it ever got to that point, there would be no question we'd be building geothermal plants or whathaveyou instead of burning oil for power. The alternatives would be cheaper than burning oil.

Population growth actually slows down as a population becomes wealthier. If not for immigration, many industrialized nations would actually have a negative growth rate. The increase in the world's wealth significantly exceeds the increase in the world's population, meaning that it is simply a matter of time before everyone is sufficiently wealthy for the population growth rate to stabilize. It is widely expected that the world's population will stabilize at around ten to thirteen billion sometime in the next twenty to fifty years. The Club of Rome make the same errors as Malthus, assuming that the growth of the next generation is simply a function of the size of the previous.

In a nutshell, they say "If present trends continue unchanged..." However the simple fact is that present trends do not continue unchanged. All trends change. Malthus made the same draconian predictions two hundred years ago, proving the world could not sustain more than a few hundred million people. He did this by multiplying the food production per acre of the then world's most productive farmers by the surface area of the earth. It was hard to argue with his math. However he was very wrong, not taking into account the effect of un-invented farm machinery, new crops, fertilizer and pesticides. These Club of Rome folks are just as wrong as Malthus.

Oh my Gawd !!, The latest "contribution" by Peter Cohen shows how people who live isolated in "cement castles" of the big cities have no idea about a limited ability of Nature to sustain ANY, and especially human excessive use of our biosphere. Some of his statements like "It is a question of learning to make more with less. " are really laughable ! And: "Certainly the Earth herself has finite surface area. However human beings are not limited to that surface area alone. In fact we are already vastly exceeding the surface area of some parts of the earth with our multi-storied buildings. " Ooohhh !? And doesn't Peter realize that the inhabitants of these "cement castles" require a tremendous LAND area to supply them with everything from drinking water to energy, food and clean air ? And finally, this critic of Club of Rome and Malthus, makes the most childish statement, "The increase in the world's wealth significantly exceeds the increase in the world's population, meaning that it is simply a matter of time before everyone is sufficiently wealthy for the population growth rate to stabilize. " Well, Mr. Cohen, I can only forgive you the fact that you made this statement in January of 2008 !
How do you explain the collapse of the "monetary wealth" - globally, which is ruining millions of suckers who have been subscribing to your "wealth creation" idiocy ? How do you explain the starvation of thousands of people in regions like Haiti, Bangladesh, Somalia, Zimbabwe and who knows how many other regions of the Globe. And how do you justify the complete collapse of fish stocks around the Globe, destruction of forests and ruination of many farmland areas due to toxicity of you "fertilization" proposals.
The only conclusion I could make that you must be a pampered child of some of the "investors" in the schemes of getting rich on the backs of everybody else and everything you might get your greedy hands on.
Please realize that the ONLY way to prevent further deterioration of the Earth's biosphere is to , not only STOP, but even reduce our per capita consumption, and encourage people to drastically reduce their birth rate. This might lead to the Steady State Economy - within the carrying capacity of Earth - as suggested by wise economists like Herman Daly, Brian Czech and many others.
Greetings to all who are free to think - Freedan28