-Eric
Posted on 02/02/2006 7:40:25 AM PST by ZGuy
Our economic system is unsustainable by its very nature. The only response to climate chaos and peak oil is major social change.
There is no meaningful response to climate change without massive social change. We cannot sustain earth's life-support systems within the present economic system.
Capitalism is not sustainable by its very nature. And yet this ideological model remains the central organising principle of our lives, and as long as it continues to be so it will automatically undo (with its invisible hand) every single green initiative anybody cares to come up with.
Power concentrates around wealth. Only by breaking up corporate power and bringing it under social control will we be able to overcome the global environmental crisis.
Supermarkets are over. We cannot have such long supply lines between us and our food. Not any more. The very model of the supermarket is unsustainable.
We are caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of climate change and peak oil. Once we pass the planetary oil production spike (when oil begins rapidly to deplete and demand outstrips supply), there will be less and less net energy available to humankind. Petroleum geologists reckon we will pass the world oil spike sometime between 2006 and 2010. It will take, argues peak-oil expert Richard Heinberg, a second world war effort if many of us are to come through this epoch.
Catch-22, of course, is that the very worst fate that could befall our species is the discovery of huge new reserves of oil, because the climate chaos that would unleash would make the mere collapse of industrial society a sideshow bagatelle.
You can either have capitalism or a habitable planet. One or the other, not both.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Capitalism is not the issue, freedom is the issue. Capitalism is just the economic side of freedom.
My response in his language.
Blah blah blaaaaahhhhhh!
And a couple yada yada yadas.
vaudine
This guy needs to read Michael Crichton's article on the complexity of world systems or some Julian Simon and educate himself. He's clinging to the outdated and discredited Paul Erlich philosophy.
Even National Geographic had several glossy spreads in the early 90's about the enviromental catastrophe in Eastern Europe. It didnt spring up within 6 months of the wall going down.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
Historical background
During the 1950s, the Chinese had carried out a program of land distribution coupled with industrialization under state ownership with grudging technical assistance from the Soviet Union. By the mid-1950s the situation in Mainland China had somewhat stabilized, and the immediate threat from the wars in Korea against the United States and in Vietnam against France had receded. The property of people perceived as capitalists by the new leadership had been expropriated in 1952-1953, members of the left-wing opposition imprisoned at the same time, and the remaining Kuomintang on the mainland had been eliminated. For the first time in generations, China seemed to have a strong and stable national government.
However, Mao Zedong had become alarmed by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's term since the Twentieth Congress. He perceived that far from "catching up and overtaking" the West, the Soviet economy was being allowed to fall behind. Uprisings had taken place in East Germany, Poland and Hungary, and the USSR was seeking "Peaceful coexistence" with what the Chinese regarded as imperialist Western powers. These policies meant for Mao that the PRC had to be prepared to "go it alone".
[edit]
The Great Leap Forward
The Great Leap Forward borrowed elements from the history of the USSR in a uniquely Chinese combination. Collectivization from the USSR's "Third Period;" Stakhanovism from the early 1930s; the "people's guards" Khrushchev had created in 1959; and the uniquely Chinese policy of establishing People's communes as relatively self-sufficient economic units, incorporating light industry and construction projects.
It was thought that through collectivization and mass labor, China's steel production would surpass that of the United Kingdom only 15 years after the start of the "leap."
An experimental commune was established in Henan early in 1958, and soon spread throughout the country. Tens of millions were mobilized to produce one commodity, symbolic of industrialization—steel. Approximately 25,000 communes were set-up, each with around 5,000 households.
The hope was to industrialize by making use of the massive supply of cheap labor and avoid having to import heavy machinery. Small backyard steel furnaces were built in every commune while peasants produced "turds" of cast iron made out of scrap. Sometimes even factories, schools, and hospitals abandoned their work to smelt iron. The majority of this home produced iron was of extremely low quality and completely useless for any purposes. Simultaneously, the peasants were collectivized.
[edit]
Outcome
The Great Leap Forward is now widely seen both within China and outside as a major economic disaster. As inflated statistics reached planning authorities, orders were given to divert human resources into industry rather than agriculture. Various sources now put the death toll somewhere between 25 and 60 million people, with the majority of the deaths owed to starvation. The three years between 1959 and 1962 were known as the "Three Bitter Years," the Three Years of Natural Disasters (although this name is now rarely used in China), and the Great Leap Famine, as the Chinese people suffered from extreme shortages of food. It is believed by some to have been the greatest famine in history.
Droughts, floods, and general bad weather caught China completely by surprise. In July of 1959, the Yellow River flooded in East China. According to the Disaster Center[1], it directly killed, either through starvation from crop failure or drowning, an estimated 30 million people, while other areas were affected in other ways as well. It is ranked as the seventh deadliest natural disaster in the 20th century.
In 1960, at least some degree of drought and other bad weather affected 55 percent of cultivated land while an estimated 60 percent of agricultural land received no rain at all [2].
The Encyclopaedia Britannica Yearbooks for 1958 to 1962 speak of abnormal weather, droughts followed by floods. This includes 30 inches of rain at Hong Kong in five days in June 1959, part of a pattern that hit all of South China.
According to Jasper Becker - a journalist with long experience in China - in his book Hungry Ghosts: China's Secret Famine, most of the critics of the Great Leap outside China "watched China from Hong Kong." Thus, the conflict in the 1950s and 1960s over the Great Leap shaped up roughly along the lines of those who had experience living in Mao-governed China and those who did not.
Starting in the early 1980s, critics of the Great Leap added quantitative muscle to their arsenal. U.S. Government employee Judith Banister published what became an influential article in the China Quarterly and since then estimates as high as 30 million deaths in the Great Leap became common in the U.S. press. Critics point to birth rate assumptions used in the most widely cited projections of famine deaths.
However, estimations vary largely because of inaccurate data.
Today there is a growing exchange of ideas between China and the West. Discussion of population projection and statistical issues of the Great Leap is becoming more frequent.
During the Great Leap, the Chinese economy initially grew, and iron production increased 45% in 1958 and a combined 30% over the next two years, but plummeted in 1961, and would not reach the level it was at in 1958 until 1964. Despite the risks to their careers, some Communist Party members openly laid blame for the disaster at the feet of the Party leadership and took it as proof that China must rely more on education, acquiring technical expertise and applying bourgeois methods in developing the economy. It was principally to crush this opposition that Mao launched his Cultural Revolution in early 1966.
Mao stepped down as State Chairman (President) of the PRC in 1959, predicting he would take most of the blame for the failure of the Great Leap Forward, though he did retain his position as Chairman of the CCP. Liu Shaoqi (the new PRC Chairman) and Deng Xiaoping (CCP General Secretary) were left in charge to execute measures to achieve economic recovery. Additionally, this failure in Mao's regime meant that he became a "dead ancestor" as he labeled himself, a person who was respected but never consulted, occupying the political background of the Party. Furthermore, he also stopped appearing in public. All of this was later regretted by Mao, as he relaunched his Cult of Personality with the Great Yangtze Swim.
Insanity is defined as doing things over in the same way, and expecting different results. When will these maroons get Socialism out of their system?
MOLAN LABE!
-Eric
May I reccomend suicide for him and all his followers...its obvious its the humans fault..so we need less humans...take the lead..and take yourself out....
Suffer now or suffer later; seems like an easy choice to me.
Check him out at Greenspirit. And check out his article, How Sick Is That? Environmental Movement Has Lost Its Way.
And if aliens invade with biological weapons that leave us defenceless, we will be wiped out. Or if a giant meteor hits the earth. Or if it rained for 300 daya and 300 nights all over the world. Or if an indestructable pest ate all the grain. Or if bird flu became a pandemic. Or if guys like this got into elected office ...
Good grief, this guy is completely stupid.
Yet, on the other hand, I see headlines like this: Global environment improving, report says
So which is it?
This author is an ideologue and a moron.
Have you ever read "Rainbow Six" by Tom Clancy? Wouldn't be surprised if the author of this piece wasn't of the same mindset as the enviro-wackos in that book.
I would ask this neo-hippy one question (and it's the one question I pose to all neo-hippies): And how many children, i.e. "planet killers", do you have?
Ding Chavez rules!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.