> 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
> transmission 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
***********************************
John,
42. :-)
Trying to debate JH is like trying to argue with Cardinal Ratzinger, why waste your time.
Steven Medema, Warren Samuels and others have shown that "efficiency" is totally contingent on how property rights are structured; one reason why we need lawyers for quite a while longer. Lawyers that really understand ecology, science and engineering etc. not to mention human beings.
One of the question is whether said lawyers, scientists and engineers [all members of the working class too,with minor exceptions] on the planet can have some kind of neo-Veblenesque powows over the next decade that tell Wall Street, the Pentagon yaddah yaddah to fuck off, seize CNN and hold the airwaves until the White House and Congress cave to their demands etc. :-)
The best leftish arguments for distributive justice with regards to natural resources has, to my mind, been made by Brian Barry; see "Energy and the Future"[1983] and the last few chapters of "Democracy Power and Justice"[1989] and Peter Brown.
Here are some hints I've found if we can spread the word[s]....
http://www.indigodev.com/Kal.html [seems, on the evidence, to call for a non-capitalist system of property rights, don't know whether it will lead over time to different non-wage labor modes of industrial organization--some interesting people in Seattle are looking at this as possible model for getting our act together]
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/alta/alta95/robertson.html
http://www.bu.edu/cees/index.html
http://www.snre.umich.edu/ecomgt
http://www.permaculture.org.au
http://www.coop.org/ica/ica/icaevents/congress1999/food/omori.html [Japanese women make lots of trouble in this organization from what I've heard :-)]
http://www.ecocenter.org/home.html
http://www.library.arizona.edu/ej/jpe/eco~1.htm
There's lots to spark the imagination and free us from the cul de sac of cynicism on the links above....Of course there's alot I left out but I don't want to swamp people. If you feel like free associating and hooking up with others try:
Diane Elson, Hiroyuki Yoshikawa, Jim O'Connor, Robert Ayres, Patricia Marchak, David Pepper, Frank Golley, Levins and Lewonton, John Holdren, Takahashi Nobuo, Paul Ekins, Ynestra King, Cutler Cleveland, Peter Vitousek Elinor Ostrom, C S Hollings, Michael Jacobs, Paul Ekins, Reed Noss and all their friends for hints of where we need to go.
Oh yeah, and get your butt down to Patrick Bond's house for the Rio+10 conference in 2002, some heavy shit will go down I promise you http://www.un.org/rio+10/
Ian