On Fri, Nov 28, 2014 at 2:59 PM, Joseph Green <[email protected]> wrote:
> Raghu, replying to me, wrote: > > I call bullshit. Who exactly from the "liberal/social democratic" > > establishment is supporting corn ethanol, fracking, or clean coal? Not > even > > Al Gore as far as I know, and most certainly not the likes of Naomi > Klein. > > -raghu. > > My point was that there are bourgeois environmentalists who support > fracking. > I didn't say Naomi Klein supported fracking, but instead promoted her > exposure of the activities of Big Green. According to her, one of those > activities was that some of Big Green supports natural gas and fracking, > thus > harming the anti-fracking movements in various communities. She herself > opposes fracking, and does it seriously, so she also exposes the groups who > support it. That's what a serious opponent of fracking should do. > [...] > As I say in my review of Klein's book, in my discussion of the IPCC report, > and elsewhere, various bourgeois environmentalists, such as Gore and the > IPCC, have fought outright climate denialism. But they also promote bad > things which would lead us to ruin. How are we to deal with this? Well, > first > we have to recognize that there is a problem here. Hi Joseph, No one would seriously dispute the idea that there are environmental groups that often support very harmful activities. But surely you see the trouble with a term like "mainstream environmental groups" or "bourgeois environmentalists"? These categories are hardly homogenous. There is a whole spectrum of very diverse groups and individuals in there, from Michael Bloomberg on the one extreme to someone like Naomi Klein on the other. You can neither dismiss "liberal" (or "social democratic" or "mainstream" or "bourgeois" or whatever else you want to call them) environmentalists entirely nor can you support everything that anyone in the whole category may do. I think we have to engage with Gore and IPCC and everyone else where it makes sense basically on a case-by-case basis. But I really don't see this as a bad thing. The main danger is that some naive fool like Ralph Nader may come along and start organizing a coalition of progressives and reactionary Tea party groups based on some imagined common interests, but surely we can guard against that without becoming paranoid? -raghu.
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