Friday 29th of March 2024

in any democratic ideals, our decisions have to include nature...

cicada

The climate conference next year will determine cause for any serious, immediate optimism, Attenborough says.

 

More generally, he returns to his memories of that trip to Chernobyl. In many ways, he says, it was a desperate and frightening place. “But it wasn’t depressing, as far as I was concerned. And the lasting impression I took away was actually the resilience and fecundity of nature. I was expecting something like a volcanic plain, something desolate. Instead, inside the ruins of the city, there was this burgeoning of plant life.” Lush green plants. Towering trees. “The overwhelming feeling I had was that you can treat nature badly – and in this huge devastation that humanity created in Chernobyl, nature was treated very badly indeed. But nature came back.”

He closes his eyes and lowers his head. He uses his Saved From The Jaws Of Death Voice. “Quite extraordinary.”

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/dec/12/david-attenborough-the-earth-and-its-oceans-are-finite-we-need-to-show-mutual-restraint

the integrity and the integrality of our desires...

Boris Johnson has said that tackling climate change will create millions of new jobs around the world.

Speaking at a virtual summit on the fifth anniversary of the Paris climate agreement, he said a green recovery from Covid would generate opportunities for high-skilled workers.

Despite high hopes, China made measured carbon-cutting pledges, which some campaigners branded as underwhelming.

The UN's chief called on all countries to declare a climate emergency.

UK Prime Minister Mr Johnson said: "We know that scientific advances will allow us, collectively as humanity, to save our planet and create millions of high-skilled jobs as we recover from Covid."

He said the year was coming to an end with "a certain amount of scientific optimism" because "barely 12 months after the start of the pandemic, we're seeing the vaccine going into the arms of the elderly".

He added: "Together we can use scientific advances to protect our entire planet - our biosphere - against a challenge far worse, far more destructive even than the coronavirus. And by the promethean power of our invention, we can begin to defend the Earth against the disaster of global warming."

 

 

Read more:

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55276769

 

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Is this the same Boris Johnson?... Do our needs demand our modification of nature? Is Boris a weasel disguised as a cat? Let's hope he can now see the integrity and the integrality of our desires...

 

 

Picture of cicada at top by Gus Leonisky. Floury Baker (Aleeta curvicosta)


The Floury Baker can be found along the coast of Queenland & NSW. Adults are most common in late December and January.

 

See: https://www.cicadamania.com/cicadas/australian-cicada-names/

unlike marx, johnson falls prey to the “promethean” vision...

 

A Red and Green Perspective

 

Paul Burkett

 

In reconstructing Marx’s approach to nature under capitalism and communism, this book responds to three common criticisms of Marx:

  1. Marx fell prey to a “productivist” or “Promethean” vision under which (a) capitalist development of the productive forces allows human production to completely overcome natural constraints; (b) communism is projected as extending and rationalizing capitalism’s drive toward complete human domination over nature; and (c) both capitalism and communism demonstrate an inevitable antagonism between humanity and nature.

  2. Marx’s analysis of capitalism excludes or downgrades the contribution of nature to production; this applies especially to Marx’s labor theory of value.

  3. Marx’s critique of the contradictions of capitalism has nothing to do with nature or with the natural conditions of production.

The primary motivation of this book is to address these three claims and their most common corollaries in systematic, textually informed and politically useful fashion. I will argue that Marx’s approach to nature possesses an inner logic, coherence, and analytical power that have not yet been recognized even by ecological Marxists.

Over the past several years, when asked about the subject of this work, my answer has normally been: “Green and Red.” In a way, this response sums up my intellectual debts. I first became interested in environmental issues during my undergraduate days at Kalamazoo College, where in 1977 I wrote a senior thesis entitled “An Environmental Economist’s Case for Organic Revolution.” I want to thank Bob Brownlee and the late Louis Junker for their inspiration and encouragement at that time, which planted the seeds of the Green in the present work.

 

Read more:

http://pinguet.free.fr/burkett1999.pdf

 

 

See also: 

 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/38259