Hi Robert
>________________________________ > > That is part of my point in the blog post. Denial of this kind was >firmly planted in a bed of economic entitlement and exceptionalism. I >hear talk about "rights" and "freedom," but none of "checking appetites" >and "responsibilities." It seems that many people want the liberty >without paying the price; unless, of course, that price involves sending >other people's sons and daughters off to fight endless resource wars so >that we can all drive huge hunks of air conditioned steel in heavy >traffic . . . >> >I believe the desire to accept responsibility is more widespread than one >might think. My own view is that freedom and responsibility are not so much >corrollaries as intrinsic aspects of the same quality of act; the notion of >act-ownership from which Fr. MacNabb derived his concept of just property. I >think this would emerge as intuitive to a great many people were they to think >it through. Indeed the unarticulated objection of many "intuitive >libertarians" to many things consists precisely in that they are denied the >opportunity to take responsibility for themselves. However, the simple per-capita distribution of responsibility inherent in a strict application of the ecological footprint metaphor is not quite just. Am I really responsible for the State-corporate collusion that built the urban-economic systems in which I have to try to derive some kind of living? I find it rich having to take responsibility for HOW I travel 40km a day if it is not my fault THAT I HAVE TO travel 40km a day. Not that I do: being willing to take more than my fair share of the responsibility freedom from the need to drive is a major consideration in my choice of where to live. But my power, and hence my choice of options within the system, is limited. (By the way, they are not really resource wars. They are capital-and-product scrapping wars. They are market-unsaturating wars. Quite as bad if not worse!) > The irrationality arises, however, from a failure to recognize that the > climate change issue comprises two questions: first, is human-sourced climate > change real? and second, will the proposed remedies work? Most common > climate-change deniers do not see the second question, and proceed from the > assumption that the proposed remedies would indeed be efficacious and > necessary if human-sourced climate change is real. But this is not to be > taken for granted. The second question is every bit as important as the > first, and climate-change deniers need to be told this. >> >> I quite understand these people's suspicion that climate change is being >> used as a pretext for tyranny. In fact I believe that it is true. > > Only to the extent that we refuse to accept responsibility for our >actions. That is a form of tyranny in itself, as we who are wealthy >impose the costs of our excesses on a large population who can >ill-afford to pay the bill. That was the point of my "Industrialized >Socialism" argument. If we accepted full responsibility for our >economic system and controlled our greed as individuals, we would have a >very different society and there would be no need to legislate behavior. > > Robert Winthrop stated this succinctly in 1849: > > "All societies of men must be governed in some way or other. >The less they may have of stringent State Government, the more they must >have of individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or >physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. >Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within >them, or by a power without them; either by the Word of God, or by the >strong arm of man; either by the Bible, or by the bayonet." > > He was speaking to the Massachusetts Bible Society at the time, so >his remarks are naturally colored by the belief that the Bible outlines >guiding principles for governance. While many successful human >societies have a different set of rules that are not based on the Bible, >I know of no successful human society that has no rules at all. > > Therefore, governance is a long-established construct that has >served to increase the efficiency of resource distribution, labor >allocation, the development of infrastructure and delivering aid in a >crisis. It can be an agent of good or an agent of evil. But fearing >governance in itself is not rational. >> But this does not logically require the denial of human-sourced climate >>change, but merely the denial that the proposals on the table will solve the >>problem. I for one believe that many may make the problem worse. In so far >>as proposed solutions consist in intensifying established strategies, they >>have been making the problem worse for some time now. The expression which >>springs to mind is, "putting out the fire with gasoline". > > As far as using a consumerist imperative to "buy our way" out of >the crisis, relying on "market-based solutions" or depending on >technology to solve the climate change issue is concerned, I believe you >have a point. The current economic paradigm is utterly unsustainable >and should have already collapsed on itself, were it not for our >governments' collective kicking the proverbial can further down the road. > The discrete-responsibility model has its limits, because it might turn out that the greater part of the responsibility is structural rather than personal. Therefore the proper remedy is structural rather than personal. Indeed we cannot buy our way out, no matter how puritannical and abstentious our choices, because it does not depend on how we choose. The role Government has in this is not restricting individual behaviour (barring the behaviour of unusually powerful individuals) but dismantling the structure of contingent need by which the corporations exercise their economic power. Restrictions on the behaviour of common people are indeed part of this structure - which is what I meant by "putting out the fire with gasoline". <snip> Regards Dawie Coetzee -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20120205/44e1e656/attachment.html _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
