hi mel, > > > Thanks for the link to the 6 part lecture by David Suzuki.
no worries. > > Even though I've been aware of and generally involved > in > environmental concerns, mostly from the cleanup, > emission reduction, and modeling end of things, I'd > never > heard of David. are u in the US? he is from canada and is very well known over here in australia. i would have thought that americans would be better acquainted with him....but maybe you guys have something against canada. they did burn your original whitehouse down after all (yay canada!!!!) >He is a compelling speaker and very > entertaining. (Would love to have dinner with him > sometime.) > > However, he did one thing that made me wince in his > speech. FIrst he confessed a lack of understanding of > economics, took a 101 level course, and then using > apallingly faulty logic, blamed economics for the way > in which people behave contra-to-sustainability, although > he didn't actually use that word. He does his own > argument and his cause damage by doing such a thing. i disagree. i think the idea that the environment is an economic externality is a perfect way to reveal the absurdity, the dangerous absurdity, of current economic theory in practice. > This was analogous to blaming medicine for the existence > of cancer. now you're getting it!!! cancer and the medical industry are great buds. cancer is the internal expression of external ills - chemicals, stress, pollution. we have known what cancer is, and how it can be avoided, for decades (the work of ernst krebs is good on this...from memory) and industrial medicine is more of a cancer cause than cure. > Although he COULD make the case that medicine > bears a large responsibility for overpopulation. :-) i would blame poverty and lack of education > I wonder what his response might be to someone who > pointed out that with a population of 6 billion we cannot > afford to treat the earth as heavily per acre per person > as the third world subsistence low tech agriculture > practitioner does. Per acre yield of food is low and the > soil depletion is high. Often when such farmers are done > in an area, they've so exhausted it that even the > native > plants have difficulty recolonizing the area. i am a permaculture gardener and teacher. the third world had sustainable subsistence agriculture for thousands of years. industrial cash cropping agriculture, imposed on the poor of the world through economic bullying by the first world, is a major reason behind soil depletion. permaculture projects around the world are reskilling the poor of the world in traditional and new sustainable agricultural techniques. an excellent video is 'greening the desert', which is on you tube. this video shows how permaculture techniques can revivify seemingly dead landscapes in very short periods of time. > Places on the planet that applied a more systematic, and > sustainable technology, a deliberate economic step, have > no such problem. China has large areas in their > traditional > agricultral zones where the top soil has continually grown > in > thickness and richness. France has similar areas. These > were not accidental occurences, but deliberat decisions > by farmers to support the land that supported them, not > as anything but the realization of ther survival, the > origin > of economic practice. china and france are relatively strong nations, who generally set their own agricultural agendas. the french, in particular, are admirable defenders of food quality. the chinese now do not produce enough food to feed themselves....for the first time they are having to import staple food items. > Through the eighties, American farm operations in the > arid portions of the country pushed land to produce that > would normally not support agriculture. They poured > chemical nitrogen onto what was often all but bare sand, > silt, and mineral soil--nearly lacking the loam-creating > organic breakdown material that defines good soil. > This threatened to ultimately leave soils effectively > sterile. > Today, one can often see the shift away from strictly > high-soluble chemical fertilizer and the inclusion of more > organic debris. Manure and composted material is > 'chunked out of trucks and turned into the active > later. active what? organic sustainable farming is obviously a global necessity > Again, a deliberate economic decision, in lieu of the > abandonment and prarie busting that used to be done. > Economics taught to freshmen at university is not something > he should confuse with the actual economic behavior of > people in the world outside the Ivory tower. very simple: the economy relies on the health of the environment: biodiversity, wilderness. we are losing biodiversity and wilderness at record rates and this is a result of the rapacious global system of trade, theoretically underpinned by the economic theories of the chicago school of neo-liberalism: the bastard offspring of adam smith. > The depth and complexity of economic behavior is something > he might have better understood in the term he used early > in his lecture of 'emergent.' It is also would be > more clear to > him if the comparison was made of economys with ecosystems. no in depth analysis required. as long as the environment is not factored into the equation then economics will remain a pseudo-intellectual excuse for raping the planet. > He stated that the economy, as if it were a single thing > and not > just an aggregate of aggregate behaviors, could not keep > growing. > In one sense he may be right, the load of potential > resources is > limited, but that is not an accurate consideration of how > economy > works. Just as niches in an ecosystem multiply with > species > radiation, deepening and enriching it, so to do niches > within > economy multiply with more and greater complexity making > greater use of the same resource flows. the economy is assessed in terms of growth. growth (like greed) is good, in neo-liberal economics. unfettered growth *in the real world* is cancer and it kills the host if not checked. very very simple. i uphold the rights of those at the political and corporate helm to kill themselves, sometimes i feel like encouraging it; but they do not have the right to take the bulk of the world - human and non-human - with them. > In effect, rather than dividing economics from biology and > environmental concern it might be more to the benefit of > progress to utilize economics in a more complemental > relationship. an economics that takes the environment as the real bottom line would be a step in the right direction. cheers gav > thanks--mel > > . > > > > > > > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ Send instant messages to your online friends http://au.messenger.yahoo.com Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
