Vandana Shiva an activist? The word activist conjures up something else in my mind, like people who sit at tables in front of Low Library collecting signatures to stop sweatshops or free Mumia. Ben Linder was an activist. Greenpeace is an activist group, but nowhere as much as it used to be. Earth First is an activist group. Rainforest Action Network and the Canadian Settlers in Solidarity with Indigenous Struggles are.
Shiva is a scientist and political theorist. Along with Jerry Mander and Kirkpatrick Sale, another 2 big-shots, they constitute the big 3 of what might be called a neo-Rousseauan trend. They in fact are opposed to industrial society, whether capitalist or socialist. But their main "activity" is writing books and speaking at conferences.
What I had in mind are groups like Ecological Action that is cited below in the Feb. 1, 1998 NY Times article on the impact of oil on Ecuadorian rural society:
---- Florinda Balla prays that no more of her cows, pigs, chickens or dogs will venture to the black pool by her farm. Its surface is viscous, its contents thick with arsenic and other toxic wastes. She has watched five of her cows who drank from it grow listless and fall dead, she said.
Mrs. Balla, who has lived here for more than 20 years, said the pool has been there all that time, one of hundreds of waste pits left behind after Texaco pulled out after two decades in Ecuador. As partners with the state, Texaco pumped nearly all the oil this small Andean country produced until 1990, maximizing profits, ecologists here say, by using inexpensive and environmentally unsound methods.
"Go to the school, there's another pool," said Mrs. Balla. "Go down the road, there's another."
About 30,000 residents here are trying to hand Texaco the bill for the dead animals, lost crops, health problems and environmental damage. In 1993, two American law firms filed a class-action lawsuit in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York -- on the doorstep of the White Plains-based company. The suit sought more than $1 billion in damages and cleanup costs and demanded that the company rebuild the oil-pumping infrastructure to meet prevailing United States standards.
Judge Jed S. Rakoff dismissed the case last year, and the United States Court of Appeals is reviewing his decision. In Ecuador, the case remains a live issue, with anti-Texaco graffiti scrawled on walls. Texaco denies any wrongdoing, arguing that Ecuador lacked specific environmental laws during its time there.
Paulina Garzon, leader of the Quito-based group Ecological Action, said that if upheld, the case's dismissal would signal that oil companies "can do whatever they want in developing countries and not be held responsible." Class-action lawsuits do not exist here and Ms. Garzon said that the maximum fine for environmental damage is $12,500. . .
Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)