[p2p-research] Fwd: 20 Theses against green capitalism

[Ryan Lanham]

Well said, Smári.  Bravo.

I cannot agree more and stand with you word for word.

Ryan Lanham
2009/8/6 Smári McCarthy <smari at anarchism.is>

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> Michel Bauwens wrote:
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: *Dante-Gabryell Monson* <dante.monson at gmail.com
> > 20. The chance that governments will come up with a 'good deal' in
> > Copenhagen is slim to none. Our aim must therefore be to demand
> > agreement on real solutions. Failing that: to forget Kyoto, and shut
> > down Copenhagen! (whatever the tactic)
> >
> >
> > shutting down copenhagen would certainly be legitimate, given the
> > paucity of results that are to be expected ...
>
> The British shut down Copenhagen in 1801 and then again in 1807. Others
> have also shut down Copenhagen, but to what end?
>
> While these theses start off on the right track and are very insightful,
> about half way through they start to sound like some rare form of
> enlightened primitivism, hopping back into old fashioned idiotic
> primitivism at end.
>
> The situation is simple. We need to change our ways of living very very
> substantially, globally, right now.
>
> I pose a challenge to each of you: Decrease your daily environmental
> footprint by 1/3.
>
> I've been trying to do this for a while. Since I moved in to my new
> apartment (where I'm living with four other people) we've decreased the
> apartment's daily electricity consumption from 23.87 kWh/day on average
> to 13.62 kWh/day on average. We have six trashcans for different types
> of waste, and try to grow some of our own stuff.
>
> How much am I really decreasing my environmental footprint? Probably not
> a lot. The fact is that it's really really hard to do without decreasing
> one's quality of life. I could clearly cut down significantly by
> refusing to fly, but that would strand me on this little island. Even by
> refusing to fly, there's still a large part of my footprint generated by
> travel by boat and car (about 50/50, oddly enough), not to mention the
> fact that I occasionally indulge in meat (albeit to a decreasing degree)...
>
> So at what point do we say, fine, I'm going to change my way of life so
> dramatically that I'm going to really feel it? And at which point have
> enough people done that so that we don't all end up dead?
>
> The primitivist way out is just as futile as the capitalist's way out
> for a number of reasons. Not least in that in developing countries where
> the environmental footprint is far lower than here, there's still
> alarming levels of toxic waste, littering, deforestation, poor graywater
> management, water shortages, and so on and so forth...
>
> So what do we do?
>
> Well. Copenhagen is a fairly modest attempt. It's never going to be
> enough. The only thing that's anywhere close to being enough is
> returning to a preindustrial era in a lot of things while remaining in a
> postindustrial level in some others. The implications are impossible to
> map out and in general it's a big clusterfuck. Or, what we could do is
> realize that it's our collective asses on the line and that what we need
> the most right now is less commercialization and more cooperation. We
> need something akin to a new Manhattan project, aimed at figuring out
> all the complicated shit we're going to need to understand in order to
> fix things.
>
> At the end of the day it's not primitivism that's going to save us. It's
> not necessarily technology either, although that will certainly help.
> It's a clear understanding that we are capable of doing whatever it is
> to the world we want, we have demonstrated our unending capacity for
> change, and now we just have to decide what it is we want our planet to
> be like.
>
> So second challenge right here: Describe the world as you would like it
> to be.
>
> Forgive the rant.
>
>  - Smári
>
>
>
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