The story of industrial-scale wind energy, that is, large wind turbines connected to supply the electric grid, is the same old tale of exploitative industry, of predatory capitalism, of consumerism run riot over the concerns of nature and humanity.
Wind energy does not represent change from a consumption-driven quest of continuing dividends for the investor class. It is a change of brand, nothing more. The same people behind digging up the tar sands of Alberta, drilling in the Arctic, blasting off mountaintops for coal, fracking the ground beneath our feet for methane, mowing down the rain forests, are industrializing rural and wild landscapes with the sprawling tax shelters called wind “farms”.
Like American politics, where choice is limited to which waiter you prefer to serve you from the same Wall Street kitchen (as Huey Long described it), energy policy around the world is “all-of-the-above” with politicians pretending to position themselves against one or another source to flatter different diners. Wind energy operates entirely within that game. As the realities of large-scale wind development — the decimation of habitat, birds, bats, health of human neighbors, and more — have made it harder to sell as “green”, the industry lobby group American Wind Energy Association has strategized: “We need to create a space for the wind energy industry without defining it as an alternative to fossil fuels and coal and that goes beyond being one of many ‘renewables’” (Leadership Council and Board of Directors Meeting, Carlsbad, Calif., Nov. 2, 2011). The reality is that a consumption-based economy dependent on continued “growth” doesn't need alternatives, only more choices: all of the above, whether it works or not. And that imperative excuses all.
As Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe said on June 4, 2012, at the AWEA’s annual convention in Atlanta, “Anyone standing in the way of this industry, frankly, they’re un-American.”
Because there are “important” people making a lot of money in wind, and the opening up of previously undeveloped land will enrich them well beyond wind.
Enron invented the modern wind industry by buying the support of environmental groups for large-scale “alternative” energy and all that makes it profitable: tax avoidance schemes, public grants and loan guarantees, artificial markets for “green credits”, and laws requiring its purchase. Texas Governor George W. Bush was instrumental in getting the first of these implemented at the national level on behalf of his friend Ken Lay, Enron's CEO. Texas is the USA’s leader in wind energy development, not because of some environmentalist vision, but because of the opposite: Wind energy is just one more extractive industry, and with the collaboration of Enron's environmentalists it opens up land normally off limits to such development.
The twisted rationalizations of former environmentalists to excuse the obvious adverse impacts of industrial development in the form of wind “farms” are a study in madness, akin to the military “logic” of having to destroy a village to save it. The typical refrain from the likes of the Audubon Society or Sierra Club — when they acknowledge adverse impacts at all — is that wind energy, by its theoretical and never documented reduction of carbon emissions from other electricity sources, saves more birds etc than it kills. They cling to this even as only the latter is increasingly documented and the former is increasingly clearly not. They further flaunt their moral bankruptcy by dismissing the adverse effects as a drop in the bucket compared to all the other killers of birds etc. And they join the reactionary chorus of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in presenting their plea to shovel more public money to big energy investors as one for (“American”) jobs (at any [public] cost).
At the same time, neighbors of giant wind turbines who suffer adverse health effects are derided as hysterical or mendacious. The unsurprising acoustic effects of jumbo-jet-size turbine blades cutting through vertical air spaces of almost 2 acres are simply denied. Wind's apologists reverse cause and effect and blame the victims for publicizing noise problems even as ever larger blades are increasingly documented to generate intrusive throbbing and low-frequency noise, both of which not only disturb sleep and raise stress but are increasingly tied to direct adverse physiological and psychological effects. Yet the industry fights all efforts to set even inadequate minimum distances between turbines and homes or noise limits. The CEO of Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas, Ditlev Engel, wrote to the Danish Environment Minister on June 29, 2011, against such limits: “At this point you may have asked yourself why it is that Vestas does not just make changes to the wind turbines so that they produce less noise? The simple answer is that at the moment it is not technically possible to do so.” Especially because, as he goes on to note, they are planning even larger machines.
And if human neighbors are treated with such naked contempt in the mad logic of corporate profit growth, pity the wildlife whose last refuges are invaded, divided, and destroyed by big wind (and now big solar as well) — all with the blessing of many environmental groups.
Invaded, divided, and destroyed — nineteenth-century colonialism and twentieth-century globalism are now openly revived against our own communities. Just as the Spanish company Iberdrola steals farmland from the Zapotecas of Oaxaca, and the Indian company Suzlon steals forest from the Adivasis, wind developers in more “developed” countries — in Europe, North America, Australia — prey on their rural populations, pitting paid-off landowners against their neighbors, leaving bitterness and discord, a blighted landscape, shattered peace and quiet, an industrial waste land from which the limited liability companies extract what profit they can and then move on to the next marks.
Industrial wind development may not be the worst scourge on the planet, but that does not excuse it. Big wind is not separate from the rest of exploitative and extractive industry. It is not separate from the persistent efforts of the investor class to hoard for themselves more of the public wealth. It is, however, particularly evil because it presents itself as the opposite of what it is. It is not even an alternative evil: To add insult to injury, wind is not even a good way to generate electricity for the grid: Since it does not blow according to customer demand, it still has to be 100% backed up by other sources.
Break the spell! End the charade!
See the swindle for what it is. Big wind is an enemy of the planet, its animal and plant life, its people. It is a new brand in an old game whose rules were written to ensure one winner only, and it isn't you.
—Eric Rosenbloom
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, Vermont, anarchism, ecoanarchism, anarchosyndicalism
August 15, 2012
Ridden by the Wind
Write In Annette Smith for Vt. Governor
STOP SHUMLIN’S CORPORATE TAKE-OVER OF VERMONT
Vermont is being overrun by corporate interests. Rather than trying to prevent this takeover, Governor Shumlin is encouraging it through his cozy relationships with the big corporations and their lobbyists. None of the other candidates are campaigning on these crucial issues!
GMP/CVPS merger: The Shumlin Administration pushed for the takeover of Vermont’s largest electric utility, CVPS, by Gaz Metro, a Canadian corporation that owns Green Mountain Power, giving Canadian energy corporations control of 70% of Vermont’s electric power distribution. Thanks to a behind-the-scenes deal worked out by Shumlin’s Department of Public Service, Shumlin also cheated CVPS customers out of $21 million they were owed.
Destructive wind development: With Shumlin’s encouragement, national and multi-national corporations are turning our pristine ridgelines into industrial zones, in the process destroying fragile mountain ecology and critical wildlife habitat. Shumlin refuses to pay any attention to the huge amount of credible data that shows that wind turbines in Vermont would reduce carbon emissions by only a miniscule amount, if at all, and that the detriments far outweigh any benefit.
F-35s: Shumlin is in favor of the F-35 basing in Burlington because he sees this further militarization of our major airport as a jobs creator. Meanwhile in exchange for a few new war industry jobs, thousands of modest homes are either being vacated or will be made virtually unlivable by this extremely loud new warplane.
Smart Meters: With Shumlin’s encouragement, GMP is trying to profit from yet another violation of our right to privacy.
We are encouraging Vermonters – independents, Democrats, Republicans, and Progressives alike – to vote in the August 28 primary election and draft Annette Smith of Danby as Progressive candidate for Governor by writing in her name on the Progressive primary ballot. Annette Smith has been an articulate voice for Vermont citizens for more than a decade as the head of Vermonters for a Clean Environment, an effective and independent environmental organization. She consistently stands up for ordinary Vermonters, helping them take on the big corporations and their lawyers and lobbyists. She is deeply knowledgeable about the corporate take-over of Vermont in all its many forms, and she is an excellent and passionate debater. (If you are voting Dem or Rep but oppose Shumlin, please write in Annette Smith there.)
For more information, go to: annettesmithforvermontgov.blogspot.com
Vermont
August 11, 2012
What Is.
It’s extremely dangerous to stop growing because at that point you begin to die. It’s extremely dangerous to commit yourself to one idea. Be careful you’re not caught in your own net.
We live from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, and at each point we are a little different. we are not the same twice on any two occasions. When you realize that, it becomes extremely important that the next minute be better than the last one. If you’re going to change, change for the better, not the worse. No question you will change, the only question is the direction. If there is no change, this is the open door to death. Life is a progression. It is not a standing still. It is either a plus or a minus.
— Scott Nearing (1883–1983), obituary interview with Jean Hay, May 1981 (from Meanwhile, Next Door to the Good Life, Jean Hay Bright, Brightberry Press, Dixmont, Maine, 2003)
Q: I would like to know whether you believe in God.
What is God? If you can tell us what you mean by the term, we can discuss the matter. If not, there's no way to get down to specifics.
If you think of God as a heavenly Father who can be nudged or cajoled into granting benefits and excusing delinquencies . . . no, we do not believe.
If you think of God as an arbitrary, autocratic ruler of the universe to be propitiated and worshiped . . . our answer, again, would be no.
If “your” God is a tribal chief, a God of battle, and a leader of a chosen people . . . we do not believe in Him (or Her).
However, if you see God as the unity of all things, including rocks, grass, beasts, clouds, stars, and humans . . . if your God incorporates the above and the below, the plus and the minus, the killer and the killed, the sinner and the saint, the creator and the destroyer . . . yes, we believe.
— Helen and Scott Nearing, ‘Homesteading Tools, Dividing Household Chores, and other Wisdom from Helen and Scott Nearing’, Mother Earth News, March/April 1981
All religions have truth in them, and all can be accepted in part. But there is no religion higher than truth, and Truth is the whole magnificent universe. What is. We believe in that — and strive to lend a hand.
— Helen and Scott Nearing, letter, 10 May 1981, in reply to response to above (from Meanwhile, Next Door to the Good Life)
Satyan nasti paro dharmah
We live from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, and at each point we are a little different. we are not the same twice on any two occasions. When you realize that, it becomes extremely important that the next minute be better than the last one. If you’re going to change, change for the better, not the worse. No question you will change, the only question is the direction. If there is no change, this is the open door to death. Life is a progression. It is not a standing still. It is either a plus or a minus.
— Scott Nearing (1883–1983), obituary interview with Jean Hay, May 1981 (from Meanwhile, Next Door to the Good Life, Jean Hay Bright, Brightberry Press, Dixmont, Maine, 2003)
Q: I would like to know whether you believe in God.
What is God? If you can tell us what you mean by the term, we can discuss the matter. If not, there's no way to get down to specifics.
If you think of God as a heavenly Father who can be nudged or cajoled into granting benefits and excusing delinquencies . . . no, we do not believe.
If you think of God as an arbitrary, autocratic ruler of the universe to be propitiated and worshiped . . . our answer, again, would be no.
If “your” God is a tribal chief, a God of battle, and a leader of a chosen people . . . we do not believe in Him (or Her).
However, if you see God as the unity of all things, including rocks, grass, beasts, clouds, stars, and humans . . . if your God incorporates the above and the below, the plus and the minus, the killer and the killed, the sinner and the saint, the creator and the destroyer . . . yes, we believe.
— Helen and Scott Nearing, ‘Homesteading Tools, Dividing Household Chores, and other Wisdom from Helen and Scott Nearing’, Mother Earth News, March/April 1981
All religions have truth in them, and all can be accepted in part. But there is no religion higher than truth, and Truth is the whole magnificent universe. What is. We believe in that — and strive to lend a hand.
— Helen and Scott Nearing, letter, 10 May 1981, in reply to response to above (from Meanwhile, Next Door to the Good Life)
Satyan nasti paro dharmah
August 10, 2012
A problem with solar power
Like wind, direct solar energy is diffuse, requiring a rather large apparatus to collect a useful amount. On a rooftop — a large area that is already collecting/reflecting the sun — solar panels may make a useful contribution to a single home or office. To expect more, however, means taking more solar energy, i.e., taking more from nature.
Vermont mandates a high payment for electricity from approved solar facilities up to 2.2 MW in capacity. A couple of solar projects under this program are a 1.0-MW facility in Ferrisburgh and a 2.2-MW facility in South Burlington.
The latter takes up a 25-acre field. That acreage is now an industrial site, without life. The field has essentially been paved with solar panels. Over the past 12 months its output has averaged 17.5% of its capacity, an average rate of 385 kW. The Ferrisburgh site averaged 15.9%, or 159 kW. In January, their average outputs were 5.4% and 7.3%, respectively, or 120 and 73 kW. Of course, that output followed the curve of daylight, decreasing every evening to 0, so they require complete duplication with some other source of power. Such duplication in the form of battery storage, as an off-grid home system uses, is impractical at the grid scale.
These facilities are clearly not making any meaningful contribution to Vermont’s electricity supply, which must meet an average load of about 650 MW. If the cost to taxpayers to subsidize these projects (i.e., provide generous profits for their owners, such as the governor’s friend David Blittersdorf) is judged to be worth it to learn about grid-level or industrial-scale solar, then what have we learned so far?
Using a capacity factor of 15% for sun-tracking solar and the ratio of 2.2 MW capacity per 25 acres, we would need almost 50,000 acres, over 75 square miles, to provide Vermont’s average load. That’s more than all of the land area of Burlington, South Burlington, Winooski, Colchester, and Essex Junction combined.
(For comparison, the McNeil generating plant (wood and natural gas) in Burlington takes up about 16 acres and produces at a rate of 50 MW. Thirteen such plants, requiring 210 acres, would provide the state's entire average load. Using the McNeil plant to provide heat [instead of letting it escape up the chimney] as well as power has been explored in recent years and would essentially double its usefulness.)
If we based it on a January capacity factor of 5%, add the land areas of Shelburne, Williston, Essex, Milton, and most of Jericho.
Of course, the capacity factor represents output only during daylight hours, so less land might be required to meet demand during the day. On the other hand, demand is higher during daylight hours as well, so there would actually not be much leeway there.
And still, other sources would be needed as night falls — a complete duplicate system. In other words, solar would not replace any other sources. It would pave over more than half of Chittenden County to at best reduce the use of those other sources.
There’s a better way to reduce the use of existing energy sources — without taking from the earth yet more by building sprawling “renewable” energy facilities that require 100% backup. It is to reduce the use of energy.
But of course, no backers of politicians get rich by people consuming less.
Large-scale solar, like large-scale wind, is a consumption-based solution. It is a change of brand, nothing more.
Question, 11 July, 2014: Has anyone compared the (minuscule) carbon effect of covering a field with solar panels versus letting it return to carbon-capturing forest, or even versus just leaving it as a green field?
solar power, solar energy, environment, environmentalism, animal rights, Vermont
Vermont mandates a high payment for electricity from approved solar facilities up to 2.2 MW in capacity. A couple of solar projects under this program are a 1.0-MW facility in Ferrisburgh and a 2.2-MW facility in South Burlington.
The latter takes up a 25-acre field. That acreage is now an industrial site, without life. The field has essentially been paved with solar panels. Over the past 12 months its output has averaged 17.5% of its capacity, an average rate of 385 kW. The Ferrisburgh site averaged 15.9%, or 159 kW. In January, their average outputs were 5.4% and 7.3%, respectively, or 120 and 73 kW. Of course, that output followed the curve of daylight, decreasing every evening to 0, so they require complete duplication with some other source of power. Such duplication in the form of battery storage, as an off-grid home system uses, is impractical at the grid scale.
These facilities are clearly not making any meaningful contribution to Vermont’s electricity supply, which must meet an average load of about 650 MW. If the cost to taxpayers to subsidize these projects (i.e., provide generous profits for their owners, such as the governor’s friend David Blittersdorf) is judged to be worth it to learn about grid-level or industrial-scale solar, then what have we learned so far?
Using a capacity factor of 15% for sun-tracking solar and the ratio of 2.2 MW capacity per 25 acres, we would need almost 50,000 acres, over 75 square miles, to provide Vermont’s average load. That’s more than all of the land area of Burlington, South Burlington, Winooski, Colchester, and Essex Junction combined.
(For comparison, the McNeil generating plant (wood and natural gas) in Burlington takes up about 16 acres and produces at a rate of 50 MW. Thirteen such plants, requiring 210 acres, would provide the state's entire average load. Using the McNeil plant to provide heat [instead of letting it escape up the chimney] as well as power has been explored in recent years and would essentially double its usefulness.)
If we based it on a January capacity factor of 5%, add the land areas of Shelburne, Williston, Essex, Milton, and most of Jericho.
Of course, the capacity factor represents output only during daylight hours, so less land might be required to meet demand during the day. On the other hand, demand is higher during daylight hours as well, so there would actually not be much leeway there.
And still, other sources would be needed as night falls — a complete duplicate system. In other words, solar would not replace any other sources. It would pave over more than half of Chittenden County to at best reduce the use of those other sources.
There’s a better way to reduce the use of existing energy sources — without taking from the earth yet more by building sprawling “renewable” energy facilities that require 100% backup. It is to reduce the use of energy.
But of course, no backers of politicians get rich by people consuming less.
Large-scale solar, like large-scale wind, is a consumption-based solution. It is a change of brand, nothing more.
Question, 11 July, 2014: Has anyone compared the (minuscule) carbon effect of covering a field with solar panels versus letting it return to carbon-capturing forest, or even versus just leaving it as a green field?
solar power, solar energy, environment, environmentalism, animal rights, Vermont
August 8, 2012
You have only yourself to blame
A friend writes:
Friedman is at it again: Average is Over, Part 2. Jesus, this guy is dumb. And scary. Who wants to live in the world he envisions; a fascist hell on earth — in fact this hell is already here in the US, with corporations pulling all the strings and calling all the shots, and shipping jobs overseas to slaves, or importing PhDs in from India, etc.... People are told again and again that they need so much "education" to survive well now, and then get stuck with an obscene amount of debt that in many cases forever stunts their lives, often can't even find work, it's just a horrible scam. Education should be free.
Education is important, but not the kind Friedman and most Americans think of. Friedman, and a lot of dumb Americans, think it's perfectly okay to tailor our lives to what the corporations want, they don't even question the whole notion of hyper-competitiveness and cut-throat workaholic get-ahead-ism. No, when corporations say "jump" it's our duty as foot-soldiers in the brave new world of fascist America to ask "how high."
A truly good education would give us the power and courage to say "fuck off" to these corporate monsters, not how can I deform myself enough to get you to hire me. Also a truly good education would move Americans to say goodbye to the government we have — a revolution is desperately needed, a real one and a revolution in thinking, but people seem so willing to go along with these fascist fantasies of the Friedmans of the world.
There are some good comments to the essay, but not many and out of the hundreds of comments thus far, most are lame and insipid, merely pointing fingers at parents for not being good enough re education, or kids being lazy, blah blah blah. No real questioning of the system, of it being driven by malevolent forces, and what is life for anyway, just to work like hell for a corporate master until you drop??!! Here is the ONLY unique and thoughtful comment out of hundreds (actually there was one other really good one but this one really gets it — it didn't get many recommends, no surprise):
Friedman is at it again: Average is Over, Part 2. Jesus, this guy is dumb. And scary. Who wants to live in the world he envisions; a fascist hell on earth — in fact this hell is already here in the US, with corporations pulling all the strings and calling all the shots, and shipping jobs overseas to slaves, or importing PhDs in from India, etc.... People are told again and again that they need so much "education" to survive well now, and then get stuck with an obscene amount of debt that in many cases forever stunts their lives, often can't even find work, it's just a horrible scam. Education should be free.
Education is important, but not the kind Friedman and most Americans think of. Friedman, and a lot of dumb Americans, think it's perfectly okay to tailor our lives to what the corporations want, they don't even question the whole notion of hyper-competitiveness and cut-throat workaholic get-ahead-ism. No, when corporations say "jump" it's our duty as foot-soldiers in the brave new world of fascist America to ask "how high."
A truly good education would give us the power and courage to say "fuck off" to these corporate monsters, not how can I deform myself enough to get you to hire me. Also a truly good education would move Americans to say goodbye to the government we have — a revolution is desperately needed, a real one and a revolution in thinking, but people seem so willing to go along with these fascist fantasies of the Friedmans of the world.
There are some good comments to the essay, but not many and out of the hundreds of comments thus far, most are lame and insipid, merely pointing fingers at parents for not being good enough re education, or kids being lazy, blah blah blah. No real questioning of the system, of it being driven by malevolent forces, and what is life for anyway, just to work like hell for a corporate master until you drop??!! Here is the ONLY unique and thoughtful comment out of hundreds (actually there was one other really good one but this one really gets it — it didn't get many recommends, no surprise):
The future will hopefully hold out for something other than science and technology. The concerns of this article arouse feelings that seem very very "old hat." What has been forgotten is the rape of planet Earth, mostly committed by the hyper-competitive hedonistic cohort that Friedman is championing here. It is hoped that the future will be won by those wise enough and courageous enough to see that business as usual must end, that the future demands an enlightened citizen, one who cares about the Earth and about universal sustainability. Someone who cares deeply about the many other species who share the planet, who cares about the unique cultural contributions of peoples everywhere, a citizen who doesn't measure worth in money, power, prestige — one who doesn't insist upon having more of everything than the next guy. If we're going to survive on this planet, have any future at all, we must stop this race to nowhere, come together across all continents to save the world from hyper-competitiveness, exploitation, greed and the wrong-headedness that has brought us to this frightful impasse. —Susan R., Honoluluenvironment, environmentalism, human rights, anarchism, ecoanarchism, anarchosyndicalism
August 7, 2012
Western Civilization Is Obsolete
Providing sufficient relief to end physical hardship and formulating a program aimed to achieve social justice is outside the scope of western civilization. Its institutions were not designed to share abundance. On the contrary, they reached their present proportions of planetwide diffusion under an economy of scarcity so organized that only a propertied and privileged minority of mankind, with their middle class retinues, could enjoy e necessaries and comforts, leaving the vast majority in the outer darkness of hunger, malnutrition, periodic famine, inadequate housing, ill health, ignorance, superstition and despair. A social pattern which has served for a thousand years as a means of benefiting the few at the expense of the many must be redesigned and rebuilt before it can serve as an instrument of shared abundance. Until that rebuilding is completed the obsolete social pattern must continue to be one of the chief obstacles blocking the path to social improvement.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to state that western civilization has had a thousand years to demonstrate its capacity to assimilate and utilize the abundance which science and technology make possible and, barring accidents, inevitable. By any standard of judgment the results of this millenium of testing permit only one interpretation: the outlooks, activities and institutions of western civilization are inadequate to share abundance or to achieve social justice.
First, it has been operated for generations by an aristocratic-business minority to defend and promote minority interests. This minority has concerned itself with the general welfare only in so far as advancing the general welfare furthered minority interests. Consequently, in the chief centers of western civilization (the capitals and the commercial and industrial cities) poverty and riches have existed side by side as two parts of the establishment. The oligarchs drew their necessary cheap exploitable labor and their cannon fodder from among the poor.
The countryside of civilized nations was run by and for the landlords who used unpaid forced labor or wretchedly paid seasonal farm hands to do the necessary work. Poverty was so widespread and exploitation was so savage in the countryside, especially in the more fertile areas, that workers hoping to better their lot fled to city slums as an escape from countryside under-employment, degradation and wretchedness.
Second, throughout their history the civilized oligarchies which decided the policies of European nations, devoted their energies to the concentration and monopoly of wealth and power in their own hands. Their chief source of wealth was the ownership of land in the countryside and of land and capital in the cities. Property ownership, one of the pillars of western civilization, enabled the owners to live without labor and accumulate rent and profit by exploiting the labor power of poverty-ridden peoples.
Third, during the last four centuries of western civilization, oligarchies of the wealthiest and most powerful European nations organized colonial empires in the Americas, Asia and Africa by invading, occupying, and sometimes colonizing the conquered territory, plundering its wealth and using slave labor, forced labor and grossly exploited wage labor to provide the European imperialists with cheap food and raw materials, captive markets and investment opportunities in which they made super profits. Living standards among the colonials were even lower than the poverty levels among workers in the European homelands. Such shocking conditions persisted until colonial independence movements and revolts put an end to the imperial-colonial relationship.
Fourth, the major political preoccupation of West European oligarchs was preparation for war and the waging of wars, organized by the oligarchs and fought by the healthiest and sturdiest sons of the people. The oligarchs planned and officered military operations. During the later centuries businessmen made fortunes providing money, supplies and weapons. It was into these wicked and wasteful enterprises that the West poured its wealth and manpower during five centuries of competitive free enterprise empire building.
Fifth, the economic, political and social institutions of the West were developed during an era of economic scarcity, intensified by the wastes of war and conspicuous consumption. Ideas, practices and institutions generated under conditions of scarcity cannot be adapted easily to conditions resulting from the abundance developed by mechanized and automated assembly lines.
Sixth, during the half century following 1910, western civilization suffered a catastrophic breakdown, including two general, devastating wars; economic inflation, insolvency and depression; planetwide colonial independence movements, and the rise, after 1917, of a socialist sector which presently includes about one-third of the planet.
The accumulation of this mass of damaging evidence led up to the anti-imperialist and essentially anti-western movement which has played so conspicuous a part in the international relations of the 1960s. On the face of the evidence, western civilization stands condemned as inadequate, anti-social and obsolete.
Leaders of western civilization do not aim at adapting their outmoded social apparatus to mechanized productivity with its consequent abundance, shared among the planet’s inhabitants on the basis of need. On the contrary, since 1946 they have utilized the surpluses of their vast mechanical, automated productivity to plan, construct and stockpile weapons of mass destructivity which threaten the existence on the planet of the entire human race.
Advocates of the new capitalism or “people’s capitalism” (symbolized by states like Britain and France, with large public sectors in their economies and an extended welfare program; or most important, the United States — the home of assembly-line production and widely distributed stock ownership in giant trusts and cartels) argue that western civilization has made a come-back and is adapting itself to the mandates of mechanization and abundance. The facts do not support this contention. Not only has widespread poverty continued among members of the Atlantic Alliance, but the Cold War, waged since 1946 against socialism-communism, is directed against the principle that income should be distributed according to need.
The weight of evidence today makes it probable that the coalition of empires and former empires, led by Washington, will fight another general war rather than permit the socialization of the social means of production, the ending of exploitation and unearned income, and the distribution of abundance according to need.
Recent developments, particularly the direction and scope of the Cold War, lead to only one conclusion: western civilization is out of line with presentday trends toward social justice, symbolized by shared abundance, and is the victim of internal contradictions and conflicts which must eventuate in its self-destruction.
(from Chapter VI, The Conscience of a Radical, Scott Nearing, Harborside, Maine: Social Science Institute, 1965)
Buy a copy of the book directly from The Good Life Center, Harborside, Maine.
[Click here for all more excerpts.]
Perhaps it would be more accurate to state that western civilization has had a thousand years to demonstrate its capacity to assimilate and utilize the abundance which science and technology make possible and, barring accidents, inevitable. By any standard of judgment the results of this millenium of testing permit only one interpretation: the outlooks, activities and institutions of western civilization are inadequate to share abundance or to achieve social justice.
First, it has been operated for generations by an aristocratic-business minority to defend and promote minority interests. This minority has concerned itself with the general welfare only in so far as advancing the general welfare furthered minority interests. Consequently, in the chief centers of western civilization (the capitals and the commercial and industrial cities) poverty and riches have existed side by side as two parts of the establishment. The oligarchs drew their necessary cheap exploitable labor and their cannon fodder from among the poor.
The countryside of civilized nations was run by and for the landlords who used unpaid forced labor or wretchedly paid seasonal farm hands to do the necessary work. Poverty was so widespread and exploitation was so savage in the countryside, especially in the more fertile areas, that workers hoping to better their lot fled to city slums as an escape from countryside under-employment, degradation and wretchedness.
Second, throughout their history the civilized oligarchies which decided the policies of European nations, devoted their energies to the concentration and monopoly of wealth and power in their own hands. Their chief source of wealth was the ownership of land in the countryside and of land and capital in the cities. Property ownership, one of the pillars of western civilization, enabled the owners to live without labor and accumulate rent and profit by exploiting the labor power of poverty-ridden peoples.
Third, during the last four centuries of western civilization, oligarchies of the wealthiest and most powerful European nations organized colonial empires in the Americas, Asia and Africa by invading, occupying, and sometimes colonizing the conquered territory, plundering its wealth and using slave labor, forced labor and grossly exploited wage labor to provide the European imperialists with cheap food and raw materials, captive markets and investment opportunities in which they made super profits. Living standards among the colonials were even lower than the poverty levels among workers in the European homelands. Such shocking conditions persisted until colonial independence movements and revolts put an end to the imperial-colonial relationship.
Fourth, the major political preoccupation of West European oligarchs was preparation for war and the waging of wars, organized by the oligarchs and fought by the healthiest and sturdiest sons of the people. The oligarchs planned and officered military operations. During the later centuries businessmen made fortunes providing money, supplies and weapons. It was into these wicked and wasteful enterprises that the West poured its wealth and manpower during five centuries of competitive free enterprise empire building.
Fifth, the economic, political and social institutions of the West were developed during an era of economic scarcity, intensified by the wastes of war and conspicuous consumption. Ideas, practices and institutions generated under conditions of scarcity cannot be adapted easily to conditions resulting from the abundance developed by mechanized and automated assembly lines.
Sixth, during the half century following 1910, western civilization suffered a catastrophic breakdown, including two general, devastating wars; economic inflation, insolvency and depression; planetwide colonial independence movements, and the rise, after 1917, of a socialist sector which presently includes about one-third of the planet.
The accumulation of this mass of damaging evidence led up to the anti-imperialist and essentially anti-western movement which has played so conspicuous a part in the international relations of the 1960s. On the face of the evidence, western civilization stands condemned as inadequate, anti-social and obsolete.
Leaders of western civilization do not aim at adapting their outmoded social apparatus to mechanized productivity with its consequent abundance, shared among the planet’s inhabitants on the basis of need. On the contrary, since 1946 they have utilized the surpluses of their vast mechanical, automated productivity to plan, construct and stockpile weapons of mass destructivity which threaten the existence on the planet of the entire human race.
Advocates of the new capitalism or “people’s capitalism” (symbolized by states like Britain and France, with large public sectors in their economies and an extended welfare program; or most important, the United States — the home of assembly-line production and widely distributed stock ownership in giant trusts and cartels) argue that western civilization has made a come-back and is adapting itself to the mandates of mechanization and abundance. The facts do not support this contention. Not only has widespread poverty continued among members of the Atlantic Alliance, but the Cold War, waged since 1946 against socialism-communism, is directed against the principle that income should be distributed according to need.
The weight of evidence today makes it probable that the coalition of empires and former empires, led by Washington, will fight another general war rather than permit the socialization of the social means of production, the ending of exploitation and unearned income, and the distribution of abundance according to need.
Recent developments, particularly the direction and scope of the Cold War, lead to only one conclusion: western civilization is out of line with presentday trends toward social justice, symbolized by shared abundance, and is the victim of internal contradictions and conflicts which must eventuate in its self-destruction.
(from Chapter VI, The Conscience of a Radical, Scott Nearing, Harborside, Maine: Social Science Institute, 1965)
Buy a copy of the book directly from The Good Life Center, Harborside, Maine.
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August 6, 2012
A Good Life for Fellow Creatures
While our fellow creatures are put behind bars or held captive in the camouflaged cages of modern zoos, where they are stared at and poked by the young, the curious and the idle, our consciences should continue to disturb us. So long as animal hunting and fishing licenses are issued by the million, permitting the holders to trap or shoot our fellow creatures for sport or as a business, we cannot rest content. While our fellow creatures are bred and raised by tens of millions to be butchered in cold blood, their bodies hung up or laid out for sale in public markets and finally cooked and eaten, cannibal fashion, those of us who are radicals in our interpretation of the precept “thou shalt not kill” must continue to agitate and organize on behalf of these myriad victims of artificially stimulated and jaded human appetites.
Restraint does not cease to be imprisonment when it is applied to our fellow creatures. Nor is a form of sport tolerable which maims its victims or deprives them of their lives. Deliberate killing is murder whether the object of the attack is a human being or a fellow creature.
Violations of fellow creature rights take many forms: trapping and shooting wild life for food or sport; saturation spraying and dusting of poisons which destroy birds, mammals and insects; raising and slaughtering creatures for food; torturing and killing fellow creatures for educational, diversional or experimental purposes; the use of fellow creatures as “work animals”; shearing the wool from sheep, goats, camels, rabbits; using the fur of wild or domestic animals; the incarceration of fellow creatures in circus and zoo cages; the maintenance, in permanent servitude, of domestic pets who would not know how to care for themselves if released, who “enjoy their servitude,” “love their masters,” and who, if released, would return voluntarily to live parasitical lives.
There was a time, not too long ago, in the United States or elsewhere, when human beings were hunted and eaten, bred, bought and sold as chattels. For the most part, this form of slavery is a thing of the past. The enslavement, torturing, imprisonment and killing of animal, bird and insect fellow creatures to satisfy human fancy. whim, habit or assumed need is still practiced, on a larger scale than elsewhere, in highly industrialized and civilized communities, where mass slaughter, mass chemical poisoning, mass experimentation with fellow creatures, and mass incarceration behind barbed wire and other restraining means are matters of every day occurrence.
Restraints, incarceration, exploitation, torture and murder of fellow creatures attracts no more attention and arouses no more comment in the leading civilized countries of today than the like treatment of human slaves aroused in the leading civilized countries of previous centuries. Humanity has passed through periods of cannibalism and of chattel slavery. In the course of its evolution, it will surely reach a point at which the greatest good to the greatest number of living creatures will be accepted and applied with equal rigor to humanity’s fellows and neighbors.
If there is a “right” to the demand for security, for dignity and for life itself, that right must apply with equal force to all living things. We humans, as trustees for the planet and its inhabitants are duty bound to recognize and uphold such rights and to protest against their denial, no matter who or what the victims of the denial may be.
(from Chapter VI, The Conscience of a Radical, Scott Nearing, Harborside, Maine: Social Science Institute, 1965)
Buy a copy of the book directly from The Good Life Center, Harborside, Maine.
[Click here for all more excerpts.]
environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism, ecoanarchism
Restraint does not cease to be imprisonment when it is applied to our fellow creatures. Nor is a form of sport tolerable which maims its victims or deprives them of their lives. Deliberate killing is murder whether the object of the attack is a human being or a fellow creature.
Violations of fellow creature rights take many forms: trapping and shooting wild life for food or sport; saturation spraying and dusting of poisons which destroy birds, mammals and insects; raising and slaughtering creatures for food; torturing and killing fellow creatures for educational, diversional or experimental purposes; the use of fellow creatures as “work animals”; shearing the wool from sheep, goats, camels, rabbits; using the fur of wild or domestic animals; the incarceration of fellow creatures in circus and zoo cages; the maintenance, in permanent servitude, of domestic pets who would not know how to care for themselves if released, who “enjoy their servitude,” “love their masters,” and who, if released, would return voluntarily to live parasitical lives.
There was a time, not too long ago, in the United States or elsewhere, when human beings were hunted and eaten, bred, bought and sold as chattels. For the most part, this form of slavery is a thing of the past. The enslavement, torturing, imprisonment and killing of animal, bird and insect fellow creatures to satisfy human fancy. whim, habit or assumed need is still practiced, on a larger scale than elsewhere, in highly industrialized and civilized communities, where mass slaughter, mass chemical poisoning, mass experimentation with fellow creatures, and mass incarceration behind barbed wire and other restraining means are matters of every day occurrence.
Restraints, incarceration, exploitation, torture and murder of fellow creatures attracts no more attention and arouses no more comment in the leading civilized countries of today than the like treatment of human slaves aroused in the leading civilized countries of previous centuries. Humanity has passed through periods of cannibalism and of chattel slavery. In the course of its evolution, it will surely reach a point at which the greatest good to the greatest number of living creatures will be accepted and applied with equal rigor to humanity’s fellows and neighbors.
If there is a “right” to the demand for security, for dignity and for life itself, that right must apply with equal force to all living things. We humans, as trustees for the planet and its inhabitants are duty bound to recognize and uphold such rights and to protest against their denial, no matter who or what the victims of the denial may be.
(from Chapter VI, The Conscience of a Radical, Scott Nearing, Harborside, Maine: Social Science Institute, 1965)
Buy a copy of the book directly from The Good Life Center, Harborside, Maine.
[Click here for all more excerpts.]
environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism, ecoanarchism
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