Extinction Rebellion
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At last, the SPGB addresses a non-human animal issue!
The Socialist Party>@OfficialSPGBIf anyone does a survey of how trophy hunters acquire their money, the vast majority will almost certainly be found to be money-obsessed business people and profit-chasing entrepreneurs. #VilePeople#VileCapitalism
Don’t you remember the leaflet we issued at the time of the big Countryside Alliance march to protest against the ban on fox hunting, in 2002 I think it was, which we headed “The Right to Hunt Landowners” and which began:
“The good old English sport of sending hungry hounds to chase aristocrats through the woods, catch them and rip them to pieces, has been slow to take off as a popular pastime. Despite claims that these predatory parasites are a foul rural presence, serving only to infect the countryside with their conceited greed and indolence, it has been hard to find dogs with sufficient brutality to enjoy this so-called sport.”
and stated:
“Their protest for the right to hunt and murder animals for fun is no more worthy of support than a campaign to reintroduce slavery or to bring back the deportation of criminals.”
I don’t think it was distributed on the Countryside Alliance march though …
And Fred Engels would have been with the foxhunters – a favourite activity of his!
I applaud his historical materialism, but condemn his hunting.
“Why the carrying capacity of the earth is not fixed”
https://aeon.co/ideas/the-earths-carrying-capacity-for-human-life-is-not-fixed
Yes, those who argue that the Earth has a fixed human carrying capacity and that it has been or will soon be exceeded are making the same mistake as Malthus and his followers of assuming that humans are like other animals and have to accept what the environment throws at them. All that other species can do if they exceed an area’s carrying capacity is for some of them to die off and/or some of them to move to another area. Humans are different. We can control both our fertility and our environment. And did, proving Malthus wrong even in the 19th century. What both Malthus and they leave out is technology.
The article mentions Paul Ehrlich who became notorious for his 1968 book the Population Bomb in which he claimed, in the words of his Wikipedia entry, that
“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate….which categorically stated that the world’s human population would soon increase to the point where mass starvation ensued.”
See also this review of his book Population Resources Environment in the April 1971 Socialist Standard.
I see that, despite being completely discredited at the time, he was still peddling his misanthropic views 30 years later. The wikipedia entry on carrying capacity quotes him as pontificating in 2004 that
“for earth as a whole (including those parts of it we call Australia and the United States), human beings are far above carrying capacity today.”
Despite their concern for the environment these people are not on our side.
DJP, the article is clearly not written by a specialist and is full of logical errors, for example here:
“The composition of affluent economies changes as well. Manufacturing once accounted for 20 per cent or more of economic output and employment in most developed economies. Today, it is as low as 10 per cent in some, with the vast majority of economic output coming from knowledge and service sectors with significantly lower material and energy intensities” – the author is trying to make a point that when all countries become affluent economies, they all will have “significantly lower material and energy intensities”, which is clearly false, as today these s.c. effluent economies heavily depend on the high material and energy intensities of the less affluent ones.
I think this is the article Alan was copying from when he wrote that “we have been engineering our environments to more productively serve human needs for tens of millennia.” which I already pointed out to be factually incorrect đ
The article does cite some interesting scientific articles though, for example this one: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800912000833 – where the conclusion is that we cannot simply use âhuman appropriation of net primary productionâ (HANPP) as a simple measure of carrying capacity because highly developed countries use less land to produce more food, like Netherlands, for example (thanks Alan, I didn’t know!). At the same time the article also notes that those countries’ “efficiency gains require large inputs of fossil fuels and agrochemicals resulting in pressures on ecosystems and emissions”, which ultimately have to be included in the calculations of “carrying capacity”.
While it is commendable that authors like this Ted Nordhaus try to convince us the planet is capable of supporting more human beings, they are not on our side when instead of using rational thinking and solid science they get all emotional about the whole issue and confuse the reader. It is wishful thinking to say that humans are any different from fruit flies in their reproductive patterns in societies that do not provide sufficient education. Where is the scientific basis for such assertions?
I think in the end I failed in my attempts to be understood. “Despite their concern for the environment these people are not on our side.” – this is exactly the hostility I was talking about, Alan. “These people” are only talking about environmental collapse, and it is entirely possible to join them so that they would be on our side. There is nothing fundamentally un-socialist in trying to estimate the footprint of humans on the planet and its resources, it is rather un-socialist to be blindly optimistic and to discourage research. Instead of being hostile to them, we should join them and convince them to fight on our side, because we are proposing a solution to the problems they are so concerned about.
Many thanks for drawing our attention to this concept and I have begun reading through what is available on the web on the subject (damn these websites raise pay-walls). I am presently reading
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/57a08a7ded915d622c000775/LDPI-05-temper.pdf
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/57a08a7ded915d622c000775/LDPI-05-temper.pdf
and later will no doubt find others.
Watch this space
âDespite their concern for the environment these people are not on our side.â â this is exactly the hostility I was talking about, Alan. âThese peopleâ are only talking about environmental collapse, and it is entirely possible to join them so that they would be on our side.’
This is a very naive political statement. Firstly it is entirely possible for someone to be environmentally concerned/active and be anti-socialist. You have conceded that many join such pressure groups out of a superficial emotional response to the problems of the world – they are not accessible to rational argument. As Alan has noted as soon as we challenge their liberal/leftist shibboleths (which always, in my experience, accompanies the ideology of such people – there is no such thing as ‘only talking about environmental collapse’) they will manifest intense hostility towards us. Secondly there is the well known and sadly tested phrase: ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’. Many of the members of XR (like many on the Left) are people of integrity with benign intent but this is no substitute for knowledge of how capitalism really works. Obviously we have no objection to talking with such groups but just occasionally it would be nice if they were to approach us – but this will never happen for the reasons that I’ve outlined above.
The good and the bad
“…If global population stabilizes at 8.5 to 10 billion people, the next 50 years may be the final episode of rapid global agricultural expansion. During this period, agriculture has the potential to have massive, irreversible environmental impacts. The minimization of these impacts, while providing sufficient and equitably distributed food, will be a great challenge. Although there are likely to be mechanisms and policies that can reduce, or perhaps reverse, many of the trends that we have identified, these solutions will not be achieved unless far more resources are dedicated to their discovery and implementation…” [my emphasis]
“…It is clear that further improvements in HANPP efficiency are likely to lead to a further increase in agricultural inputs and aggravate environmental pressures, at least if they are based on the currently predominant technologies...” [my emphasis]
As always, the possibilities and potentials are there but political will is what is required. Are we confident that capitalist-driven policies will be sufficient? Socialists are not. Having skimmed a few of the articles, which require deeper reading, what strikes me is that we advocate production for use, and I don’t actually believe this is a concept many of the authors fully understand…there remains a focus on the continuing role of cash-crops and international trade.
But to be perfectly truthful and I have said it on this forum many times when it comes to mathematical explanations, my mind goes blank.
I wonder how long it is going to take XR to copy-cat the democracy protesters occupation of Hong Kong’s airport and shut it down
https://apnews.com/a4ad41c1f940459f810111ddc2eea825
Certainly, air travel is on the XR hit-list
And will the UK follow China’s hints that they will treat demonstrators as “terrorists”
Aeon magazine only takes artilces written by people with proven specialist knowledge in their field.
I don’t know what specialist knowledge this “schekn_itrch” is claiming to have.
“It is wishful thinking to say that humans are any different from fruit flies in their reproductive patterns in societies that do not provide sufficient education. Where is the scientific basis for such assertions?”
Where’s the scientific basis for saying that human reproductive patterns *do* follow this pattern? Which historical examples can you give?
Here’s a couple more articles from the time we last had to do battle with these people (Malthusians and Neo-Malthusians) in the 1970s:
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