Climate Crisis: Our Last Chance
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<p dir=”ltr”>Bolsonaro doing what Hoffer the Marxist suggested: “Wipe out the jungles.”</p>
Are you referring to Eric Hoffer ? If that is the case, I can tell you that in the USA anybody is considered a Marxist, a leftist, or a socialist including Donald Trump and the corporate CEO, even more, they had created the concept known as Corporate Socialism which is absurd, and it does show a great deal of political and economic ignorance, a prominent figure like Ralph Nader uses that concept all the time.
Bolsonaro came to power in Brasil thru a legal coup which was first perpetrated against an ex-Tupamaros president, and then against Lula because he was going to be the elected president, and they created a legal case against him, and he was more popular than Bolsonaro, if that so called Hoffer was a Marxist he should have supported Lula because most of the Latin American left is still supporting him
“What Hoffer? What Marxist?”
I thought he’d been declared dead in absentia some 35 years ago… 😆
Yes, I thought of Jimmy Hoffa too but it can’t have been him as I don’t think he was a Marxist was he, though I’m sure he’d arrange for a jungle to be burned down if you paid him enough.
Bolsonaro: I’ll save Amazon rainforest by giving it to corporations
This is the real jungle burner
Eric Hoffer.
Thanks, but what makes you (or the person you are quoting) describe Hoffer as a “”Marxist”? In fact what is the source and date of the quote?
According to the leftwing US magazine Jacobin he was “The Right’s Working-Class Philosopher”, an admirer of Nixon and Reagan:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/the-rights-working-class-philosopher/
First, none of his works he does not mention Marx, and he has not knowledge about Marxism either, and he has bourgeiose idealist conceptions. His conception about peoples movement is totally reactionary, he is just a thinker of the right wing movement
You’ve met your match there, Alan, in that Hunziker bloke:
“What happens if 4°C hits by 2055?
The short answer has gotta be: Pandemonium reigns supreme!
According to the scientific forum 4 Degrees Hotter: “Less than a billion people will survive.” Expect, on average, more than a million human global warming deaths every week. As such, mass graveyards stacked with bodies would become a new normal.
Prominent climate scientists were quoted in the 4 Degrees Hotter article:
According to Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, one of Europe’s most eminent climate scientists, director of the Potsdam Institute: “At 4C Earth’s … carrying capacity estimates are below 1 billion people.”
Echoing that opinion, professor Kevin Anderson of the prestigious Tyndall Centre for Climate Change stated:
Only about 10% of the planet’s population would survive at 4C.”
The good news is that this is only a scenario, a thought experiment, and that it’s not going to happen. In fact, I would say, in view of the time lag between the emission of greenhouse gases and the consequent rise in average global temperature, that it would be physically impossible to get average global temperature to rise to 4 degrees above pre-industrial levels (a further 2.5% compared with today as it’s now already 1.5 degrees above) by 2055, even if this was adopted as a deliberate policy by capitalist states, It might happen eventually but not by 2055, not that it’s not going to be adopted as a deliberate policy aim anyway.
I don’t suppose either of us will be around in 2055 but some here might be. I’m prepared to bet whatever you like that in 2055 average global temperature will not be 4 degrees above pre-industrial levels. I’d ask those here still around then to make a note in their diary to look up what was said on this forum on 27 August 2019 and call in your bet from the beneficiaries of your will and donate it to the socialist movement.
Why do people write such scare stories? To sell books, I suppose.
Is it such a scare story, ALB.
Did the scenarios expect such politicians as Brasil’s Bolsonaro to play by the rules of some global pact? Are scare-mongers exaggerating the effect of the fires and his policies?
Did scientific opinion forecast a US president just yesterday declaring
“I feel that the United States has tremendous wealth. The wealth is under its feet. I’ve made that wealth come alive…We are now the No. 1 energy producer in the world, and soon it will be by far,” Trump told reporters when asked about his views on climate change. “I’m not going to lose that wealth, I’m not going to lose it on dreams, on windmills, which frankly aren’t working too well,” he added. (albeit he is echoing Bush rejection of Kyoto)
Australia as you said is a climate change denying nation. Just how many others are? Who knows about other countries adherence to any commitments.
It also reminds us as we have said many times before that the scientific consensus errs on the conservative side.
I believe most serious informed commentators believe we are heading to exceed 2C. and now only a minority think the Paris Agreement will be honoured. Just by how much. Recall also the projections are for global climate change. Many regions will be subjected to a higher average.
I agree that there is a realistic prospect of the UN target of limiting the rise in average global temperature to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century not being achieved. But that’s not at all the same as saying a rise to 4 degrees by 2055 is realistic or even possible.
Just heard this mentioned on the radio. It might mean I’ve a better chance to being alive in 2055 than you (not that I really set much store by such superficial research).
I’ve already posted about that it on off-topic thread…You have to be fast off your mark when your time zone is several hours behind mine, ALB 😛
Yes, you are correct. The quote is from Jim Mason, where Hoffer appears with reference to Marxism and is called a trade unionist.
I stand corrected, but you must admit that similar progressivism was typical of early Marxists, with talk of a world solely for Man. Bolshevism is still so.
Concern for the fate of Earth’s nonhumans is a new thing for Marxian Socialists.
I think you should put Jim Mason right on this. Even in referring to Hoffer as a “trade unionist” Mason was casting aspersions on the working class movement. According to that article in Jacobin, Hoffer was only a trade unionist in the sense that he was a member of a trade union; which must apply to thousands of other writers without defining or being relevant to the views they express.
I agree that early Marxists were not vegetarians and saw socialism as a society geared to serving human needs and interests but that did not mean that they were in favour of the destruction of the environment or of cruelty to animals, as the 1909 article by Pannekoek in this month’s Socialist Standard mentioned earlier in this thread shows; as does this other article in the same issue.
I accept that Engels’s taking part in fox-hunting when he was in Manchester is difficult to defend but doesn’t have to be defended, even if opponents use it as a stick to attack Marxian socialism.
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