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Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - 'The real enemy is humanity itself' - 2 views

  • the first “Earth Summit,” was held in Rio, leading to the Agenda 21 “blueprint for a sustainable planet,” UN conventions on climate change and biodiversity, and the creation of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (UNSCD). Since then, an entire ecosystem of global, national, governmental and non-governmental organisations has emerged to advocate and implement the closer integration of human productive life with knowledge about the environment: to observe the “limits to growth.” The most notable of these is the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), under which a global agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions is being sought.
  • There is vast disparity between what the advocates of political environmentalism have claimed and reality. So why are world leaders set to meet next month in Rio at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development?
  • The 1972 Stockholm meeting discussed the “need for new concepts of sovereignty, based not on the surrender of national sovereignties but on better means of exercising them collectively, and with a greater sense of responsibility for the common good.” In other words, the world can be fed, clothed and housed at the cost of autonomy. This surrendering of autonomy is a price worth paying, according to its advocates, whose argument has been reduced to a neat little slogan: global problems need global solutions.
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  • For instance, while trying to understand why scepticism of climate-change policies seems to correspond to a conservative persuasion, the Guardian’s Damian Carrington recently opined: “The problem is that global environmental problems require global action, which means cooperation if there are to be no free-riders. That implies international treaties and regulations, which to some on the right equate with communism.”
  • James Lovelock, has distanced himself from the more extreme implications of his hypothesis. Where Lovelock once predicted “Gaia’s revenge,” he has reflected in a short interview for MSNBC.com on his alarmist tome, and criticised others such as Al Gore for their over-emphasis on catastrophic narratives. This is a remarkable volte face in itself, but reflects a broader phenomenon: the coming to fruition of environmentalism’s incoherence.
  • The idea that there are too many people, or that the natural world is so fragile that these things are too difficult for normal, democratic politics to deliver, flies in the face of facts.
  • The truth of “sustainability,” and the meeting at Rio next month, is that it is not our relationship with the natural world that it wishes to control, but human desires, autonomy and sovereignty. That is why, in 1993, the Club of Rome published its report, The First Global Revolution, written by the club’s founder and president, Alexander King and Bertrand Schneider. The authors determined that, in order to overcome political failures, it was necessary to locate “a common enemy against whom we can unite.”
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    On one level, the critique of the "managerial ethos" is commendable.  On another level, the author seems content with presenting arguments that range perilously close to the James Inhofe "climate change is a hoax" camp.  This is fine, but it is not enough to claim that sustainability is all about politics.  One should offer good arguments in support of this, and in response to strong arguments from opposing perspectives.
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    If humanity don't act in time it could be the end of our lifetime soon natural gas report.
Joelle Nebbe-Mornod

BEarthright - Spiritual Economics - 0 views

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    "If you own no land to support yourself, you must rent, hire or buy it from those that do, so that you may both live and make a living If you cannot use the planet to feed, clothe and provide for yourself then to stay alive, you must choose to either work for those who own your planet, to become a thief or a beggar, or to die. This servitude has taken on many forms throughout history: slavery, serfdom, day-labour, employment. The only variation being the share of the wealth produced left to the planet borrowers by the planet owners This simple reality underlies much of today's poverty, inequality, lack of freedom, unemployment and powerlessness, experienced as the sheer struggle to get by that looms so large in so many peoples' lives These latter day pharaohs, the planet owners, the richest 5% - allow the rest of us to pay day after day for the right to live on their planet. And as we make them richer, they buy yet more of the planet for themselves, and use their wealth and power to fight amongst themselves over what each posesses ~ though of course it's actually us who have to fight and die in their wars"
Benno Hansen

Deadly Environment - 6 views

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    This report looks at known killings of people defending environmental and land rights. It identifies a clear rise in such deaths from 2002 and 2013 as competition for natural resources intensifies. In the most comprehensive global analysis of the problem on record, we have found that at least 908 people have died in this time. Disputes over industrial logging, mining and land rights are the key drivers, and Latin America and Asia-Pacific particularly hard hit.
Arabica Robusta

allAfrica.com: Africa: Continent Rejects New Climate Change Pact (Page 1 of 1) - 0 views

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    "Developed" countries should take responsibility for climate change mitigation.
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    nice news change climate environment
Benno Hansen

We Don't Know What We're Missing | Psychology Today - 2 views

  • Across generations people construct a conception of what is environmentally normal based on the natural world encountered in childhood
  • with each ensuing generation, the amount of environmental degradation increases, but each generation tends to take that degraded condition as the non-degraded condition, as the normal experience
  • None of us living today have experienced certain forms of interaction with nature that were common even one or two hundred years ago.
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  • Today the Highlands of Scotland are one of the most deforested lands in the world. Perhaps equally disturbing, the Scots of today, according to Hand, have virtually no conception of a forest, of its ecological vastness and beauty.
  • environmental problems can be understood as equally serious across generations even while the problems worsen.
Benno Hansen

Policy: An intergovernmental panel on antimicrobial resistance : Nature News & Comment - 0 views

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    i like this article
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