Ecologism

With a protracted economic downturn stymieing efforts to combat global warming, it might be time to reflect on the spirit of the times and whether, as some say, the ecological movement, or that part of it believing industrial civilization should be re-ordered, is the "Communism of the twenty-first century."

Take this passage lifted from a passage lifted from French writer Guy Sorman:

"No ordinary rioters, the Greens are the priests of a new religion that puts nature above humankind. The ecology movement is not a nice peace-and-love lobby but a revolutionary force."

While Sorman is actually critiquing environmentalism (or what he calls "ecologism") from the socialist left--for its failure to confront capitalism as the real cause of planetary spoliation--it is hard to miss how his caricature of the green lobby might complement the picture drawn by free market Republicans in Congress trying to deep-six cap-and-trade legislation.

One of the most interesting debates today, so far largely unacknowledged by the mainstream media, is over the question of whether world capitalism is equipped to solve the enormous challenges of global warming and climate change. Marxist philosophers, of course, think not, owing to the inexorable raw material-exploiting, profit-maximizing logic of the capitalist system.

Most thinkers who are taken seriously on the subject of the climate crisis fall squarely into the capitalist camp, vowing to mitigate things by only modifying the existing rules of the game. The thought of changing the game doesn't occur to them.