Double-Talk and Non-Talk about the Earth
Last night's Colbert Report was quite good. The word, "Priceless," was very sharp - about the fact that the price of an American life has gone from $7.8m to $6.9m. Then, he spoke with a Buddhist Lama and finished with this cracked up "environmentalist," who said that "the key is the private sector" to solving our environmental problems.
The idea that ALL Americans are worth $6.9m is just not true, even if you grant the premise that everyone is a commodity - which is offensive to the point of being surreal. The lives of miners, soldiers in the Middle East without appropriate safety equipment, people who have the misfortune of being detained for being a Muslim/Arab, the men and women on Death Row and needlessly being imprisoned, the lives of the roughly 50 million people in this country who don't have health care and the innumerable amount of people for which their insurance is insufficient, the lives of children of recent immigrants and the lives of Black infants, whose mortality rate is that of a "third world" nation rather than those one might expect from the richest nation in world history. That's just a smattering of how untrue that is. If one extends this idea of pricing human life, how much is a Palestian's life worth, a Kurd, a Sunni or Shia, Afghans, Chinese, Mexicans....? the list goes on. In the case of Iraq, there have been times when it is customary to compensate families for the (usually) male earners' accidental or unjust death. As of a year ago, $32m has been spent in $2,500 denominations “as an expression of sympathy” but “without reference to fault”.
Luckily, Colbert made some great points about the way corporations and governmental regulatory bodies do a cost-benefit analysis when it comes to endangering our lives. This is one reason why all the above-mentioned people have been left behind. Colbert connected this concept with environmental protections in particular and the ridiculousness of the extension of that idea - to the point that not regulating pollution will make American lives less worth living and thus push down the worth of lives, ad infinitum. I think the interview with this Harvard professor of Environmental Law & Policy was pretty good, though I have no doubt that a hefty portion of TCR's audience found his ideas agreeable. First Colbert said that he'd "been saying it for years" that "the free market can solve the climate crisis." He continually suggested all the absurd measures that have been proposed that so clearly will not save human life on this planet. We don't even have to do all that thinking, European countries are already using wind power, etc. But in "the World," meaning the US, I guess we do have some thinking to do.
One thing I've noticed when people praise the so-called free market is the sophisticated way certain words are linked. For one thing, this man made a one -to-one correlation between innovation/creativity and capitalism. What he's saying is that the market some how has "incentives" and pushes people to come up with creative solutions to problems. He said we should bring the entire private sector on board to come up with solutions and that "we need to think about" new energy sources. For one thing, creativity and innovation has existed outside of material benefit and will continue (and even thrive) after capitalism. Most creativity and innovation is prevented, restricted, stopped or otherwise hampered by the fact that only something that will make money will be funded, as in research. In 1979, Dr. James Hansen of NASA came out with a damning report saying that climate change was happening and he was 99% sure it was due to human activity. In 1980, we could have started this "thinking" and "innovating." Why didn't it happen? Why did the government and media collude with corrupt scientists to try to convince the people in the richest countries to think that carbon emissions and the like had nothing to do with the changing climate? It's because of capitalism! The fact that water, air, unimaginable numbers of species, rain forests have all been commodified is sick. A human being is not a commodity. By putting a price tag on everything in existence, the most powerful bourgeois democracies and the most influential corporations and industries have rationalized that which cannot be rationalized and made natural what is the opposite of natural.
Marx wrote "capitalist production only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth-the soil and the worker." In other words, it exploits and drains the earth and the people who do the working. "Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together are not owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations as boni patres familias [good heads of the household].” Although we may say that we as humans do not "own" the earth, a certain group of us certainly acts like we do and thus can rape the earth continually with little criticism. Only a society of "associated producers" who can "govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their collective control instead of being dominated by it as a blind power." The free market cares only about one thing and that is profit. If a decision must be made between preventing death, destruction and agony and profit, profit will always be the "right" answer to that question. Thus, true democracy and environmentalism is impossible within the confines of capitalism, especially the neoliberal sort that has been systematically imposed on practically every economy in the world.
One might ask, what can this dead German possibly have to contribute to the climate crisis? First of all, I would say a detailed, dynamic understanding of how capitalism works. When capitalism is taken for granted, made to feel like a given, it is the last place people look for explanations of these vast problems the people of the world are facing like hunger, tyranny, greediness, inequality, racism, war and the climate crisis, among other things. If we take, even for a moment, the idea that "we" "live in" a "perpetual present," the argument that creative solutions will come in time if we trust it to the "free market." With a capitalist economy, democracy is limited. For instance, there is no economic democracy, people don't choose what they will produce. This is a socialist idea because it is not included in the Western model of bourgeois democracy. Freedom is curtailed and circumscribed by the free market. The fact that anyone can even consider that laws against abortion, gay marriage, gay adoption and any other number of restrictions can be considered freedom has a very limited idea of what "free" means.
If there were true democracy in this country, the occupation of Iraq would have ended at least a year ago - when most people were opposed to it. When I think of the word democracy, I think majority rule. If we can't pick lawyers, judges, justices, cabinet members and other appointees (things that would be democratic), why can't at least the biggest, most immediate and expensive decisions be put up to a referendum. Many would say that people don't want to do all this and that it would be a waste of time, they say people don't know enough to make those decisions and professional decision makers are there for a reason. The reason we don't understand the issues that most affect our daily lives is because of our "free" press. Freedom of the press is only guaranteed to those who own one and that number is exponentially dwindling. This self-feeding cycle makes a justification simple, but ultimately unconvincing, for why citizens of the "greatest democracy in the world" have such little power over their own lives and what their government does.
The free market cannot, and simply will not, solve the food crisis, the energy crisis or the climate crisis. Most people in this country want to stop global warming (+ want to end the war, want the US to extricate itself from the Middle East, would pay more taxes to have better schools and universal health care). Regular folks (not in the way that that one cable newscaster says instead of "white working class people) WANT to help, but they can't do that by buying only from Whole Foods or getting hybrid cars or not using as much air conditioning. Some 80+% of greenhouse gases are emitted by industry and agriculture (which is largely agribusiness, so also industry). Personal usage is incredibly low and largely predicated on the lack of alternatives offered by the market and the lack of urban planning (such as public transportation and food production). All this "green" nonsense offered by the market will only distract and delay taking action - which the EPA, US, UN and G8 will not take just for the heck of it.
The idea that ALL Americans are worth $6.9m is just not true, even if you grant the premise that everyone is a commodity - which is offensive to the point of being surreal. The lives of miners, soldiers in the Middle East without appropriate safety equipment, people who have the misfortune of being detained for being a Muslim/Arab, the men and women on Death Row and needlessly being imprisoned, the lives of the roughly 50 million people in this country who don't have health care and the innumerable amount of people for which their insurance is insufficient, the lives of children of recent immigrants and the lives of Black infants, whose mortality rate is that of a "third world" nation rather than those one might expect from the richest nation in world history. That's just a smattering of how untrue that is. If one extends this idea of pricing human life, how much is a Palestian's life worth, a Kurd, a Sunni or Shia, Afghans, Chinese, Mexicans....? the list goes on. In the case of Iraq, there have been times when it is customary to compensate families for the (usually) male earners' accidental or unjust death. As of a year ago, $32m has been spent in $2,500 denominations “as an expression of sympathy” but “without reference to fault”.
Luckily, Colbert made some great points about the way corporations and governmental regulatory bodies do a cost-benefit analysis when it comes to endangering our lives. This is one reason why all the above-mentioned people have been left behind. Colbert connected this concept with environmental protections in particular and the ridiculousness of the extension of that idea - to the point that not regulating pollution will make American lives less worth living and thus push down the worth of lives, ad infinitum. I think the interview with this Harvard professor of Environmental Law & Policy was pretty good, though I have no doubt that a hefty portion of TCR's audience found his ideas agreeable. First Colbert said that he'd "been saying it for years" that "the free market can solve the climate crisis." He continually suggested all the absurd measures that have been proposed that so clearly will not save human life on this planet. We don't even have to do all that thinking, European countries are already using wind power, etc. But in "the World," meaning the US, I guess we do have some thinking to do.
One thing I've noticed when people praise the so-called free market is the sophisticated way certain words are linked. For one thing, this man made a one -to-one correlation between innovation/creativity and capitalism. What he's saying is that the market some how has "incentives" and pushes people to come up with creative solutions to problems. He said we should bring the entire private sector on board to come up with solutions and that "we need to think about" new energy sources. For one thing, creativity and innovation has existed outside of material benefit and will continue (and even thrive) after capitalism. Most creativity and innovation is prevented, restricted, stopped or otherwise hampered by the fact that only something that will make money will be funded, as in research. In 1979, Dr. James Hansen of NASA came out with a damning report saying that climate change was happening and he was 99% sure it was due to human activity. In 1980, we could have started this "thinking" and "innovating." Why didn't it happen? Why did the government and media collude with corrupt scientists to try to convince the people in the richest countries to think that carbon emissions and the like had nothing to do with the changing climate? It's because of capitalism! The fact that water, air, unimaginable numbers of species, rain forests have all been commodified is sick. A human being is not a commodity. By putting a price tag on everything in existence, the most powerful bourgeois democracies and the most influential corporations and industries have rationalized that which cannot be rationalized and made natural what is the opposite of natural.
Marx wrote "capitalist production only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth-the soil and the worker." In other words, it exploits and drains the earth and the people who do the working. "Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together are not owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations as boni patres familias [good heads of the household].” Although we may say that we as humans do not "own" the earth, a certain group of us certainly acts like we do and thus can rape the earth continually with little criticism. Only a society of "associated producers" who can "govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their collective control instead of being dominated by it as a blind power." The free market cares only about one thing and that is profit. If a decision must be made between preventing death, destruction and agony and profit, profit will always be the "right" answer to that question. Thus, true democracy and environmentalism is impossible within the confines of capitalism, especially the neoliberal sort that has been systematically imposed on practically every economy in the world.
One might ask, what can this dead German possibly have to contribute to the climate crisis? First of all, I would say a detailed, dynamic understanding of how capitalism works. When capitalism is taken for granted, made to feel like a given, it is the last place people look for explanations of these vast problems the people of the world are facing like hunger, tyranny, greediness, inequality, racism, war and the climate crisis, among other things. If we take, even for a moment, the idea that "we" "live in" a "perpetual present," the argument that creative solutions will come in time if we trust it to the "free market." With a capitalist economy, democracy is limited. For instance, there is no economic democracy, people don't choose what they will produce. This is a socialist idea because it is not included in the Western model of bourgeois democracy. Freedom is curtailed and circumscribed by the free market. The fact that anyone can even consider that laws against abortion, gay marriage, gay adoption and any other number of restrictions can be considered freedom has a very limited idea of what "free" means.
If there were true democracy in this country, the occupation of Iraq would have ended at least a year ago - when most people were opposed to it. When I think of the word democracy, I think majority rule. If we can't pick lawyers, judges, justices, cabinet members and other appointees (things that would be democratic), why can't at least the biggest, most immediate and expensive decisions be put up to a referendum. Many would say that people don't want to do all this and that it would be a waste of time, they say people don't know enough to make those decisions and professional decision makers are there for a reason. The reason we don't understand the issues that most affect our daily lives is because of our "free" press. Freedom of the press is only guaranteed to those who own one and that number is exponentially dwindling. This self-feeding cycle makes a justification simple, but ultimately unconvincing, for why citizens of the "greatest democracy in the world" have such little power over their own lives and what their government does.
The free market cannot, and simply will not, solve the food crisis, the energy crisis or the climate crisis. Most people in this country want to stop global warming (+ want to end the war, want the US to extricate itself from the Middle East, would pay more taxes to have better schools and universal health care). Regular folks (not in the way that that one cable newscaster says instead of "white working class people) WANT to help, but they can't do that by buying only from Whole Foods or getting hybrid cars or not using as much air conditioning. Some 80+% of greenhouse gases are emitted by industry and agriculture (which is largely agribusiness, so also industry). Personal usage is incredibly low and largely predicated on the lack of alternatives offered by the market and the lack of urban planning (such as public transportation and food production). All this "green" nonsense offered by the market will only distract and delay taking action - which the EPA, US, UN and G8 will not take just for the heck of it.