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Ralph, thanks for your clarification and apologies for mis-interpreting your passage where you counterposed the possible versus the impossible. A reduction in the consumption of stuff and a return to a simpler life closer to nature can be promoted on several different levels. For this, some anecdotal evidence: When I was teaching Marx's Capital to undergraduate students, it seemed to me that they felt as bad about being too much in love with consumer goods as about being exploited. I tried to explain that Marx's concept of commodity fetishism is not the same as modern consumerism. They simply didn't believe me and said, yes commodity fetishism (as they understood it, i.e., consumerism) is bad, and they are guilty of too much consumerism. I inherited some money and am using it to subsidize local young people, many from working class families, whose passion is urban farming. I live an easy bike ride away from downtown in a working class area of Salt Lake City where the lots happen to be big and real estate prices low. I purchased old houses with big lots near my home when they became available and am renting some of this real estate at low rates to young farmers, who happily grow vegetables and chickens and meat rabbits on their half acre lots while enjoying the easy commuting distance to downtown and the University. In two cases now I gave bridge loans so that young families could purchase a run-down house with a big lot, then fix up the house and then re-finance. (Banks will not give mortgages on run-down houses.) Some of them work for a CSA, or grow vegetables for high-end restaurants, others work for the bicycle collective which promotes sustainable transportation and makes, among others, refurbished old bicycles available for the homeless. I discovered to my surprise that almost everybody lived for some time in the Anarchist Boing! collective in SLC, that is how they knew each other and how they congregated on this particular area of the city. Some of them go on intercontinental airplane trips in winter, which of course effaces all their carbon savings. Things are self-contradictory, but for most of of them the environmental catastrophe is an issue. The popularity of Niko Paech among students in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, and the entire de-growth movement in Europe, originally coming from France, are also signs that the lifestyle which you call self-immolation has appeal to today's youth. If you look at the Videos of the De-Growth conference in Leipzig in 2014, it was organized and attended by people who look like students (over 3000 people attended). Religion is also important here, the pope's encyclical is amazingly radical. Also the Unitarians and other religions say that a lifestyle which damages the planet is immoral. If you really think that all humans are equal then you must live with a carbon footprint of 2.3 tons of CO2 per year or similar. Also the entire transition town movement. Even in my own community, a cohousing community, retired people or empty nesters are passionate about gardening. They love working the soil and seeing things grow. These are all examples of movements promoting frugal lifestyles. This cannot be the whole solution, we also have to make political changes. But living on a leaner carbon footprint is something almost everybody can do and activists must be able to give guidance how to do it. It is radical because it requires a break with the culture and the ideas of a good life and even the self-identity of many people, based on the expectation that we can continue to live with dozens so-called energy slaves. Instead of dreaming to be astronauts, people have to dream about sustainable year-round urban farming systems with aquaponics :) It is already happening in subcultures, the question is how to generalize it quickly enough. There are also efforts to make coalitions between the labor movement and the environmental movement. This is a different important area of work. Hans G Ehrbar _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
