That's the fallacy of the mindset that environmentalism will ruin the economy; there's a hell of a lot of new product to be made to change out our inefficient systems for efficient ones ...
And he also wrote:
Let's look at the LA-Bay Area corridor, for instance, which is surely the highest volume segment of the I-5 corridor. Not a hell of a lot of mountains there--2 minor passes (minor by Western standards, a qualification I have to make having spent time in the Appalachian mole hills recently...). I doubt those could cost more than a few hours in delivery time, which shouldn't be that big a deal for 80%+ of shipments.
James Heartfield wrote:
I expect socialism will involve greater use of natural resources, not less.
And he also wrote:
But even if it (fossil fuel exhaustion) was in sight, they (fossil fuels) are no use in the ground, are they? Foregoing new exploration makes no sense at all.
I now write:
Jeezus Peezus, talk about a hangman's choice !!! Patrick Ellis argues on behalf of eco-rational freight rail transport in order to _reduce_ the turnover time of capital, thus ensuring (other things being equal) capital's expanded reproduction (and hence another round of resource exhaustion and pollution, not to mention another round of exploiting wage-laborers). From my POV, once you tread the path of defending green policies in terms of "efficiency," the game's up. Capital wins. Basically Ellis' proposition is a proposition straight out of turn-of-the-century progressive managerialism -- to save the anarchy of the capitalist market from itself.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, James Heartfield blithely ignores that accumulation for accumulation's sake destroys the long-term future prospects for a transition to socialism (_any_ kind of socialism, much less eco- socialism). Basically a proposition straight out of some Stalinist comic book about the glorious triumph of the productive forces, gleaming electrical tranmission towers dominating the landscape.
Position One contends that capitalism is okey-dokey as long as it shepherds its resources wisely; Position Two denies that capitalist depletion of resources and generation of waste is nothing to get up in arms about. Like I said, talk about a hangman's choice. Ian Murray, somebody, please intervene and rescue this "debate" from the false dyadic opposition b/w Teddy Roosevelt (or Paul Hawken) and the Soviet planners who decided to divert the rivers that fed the Aral Sea.
John Gulick