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  cophobia. Is it a reasonable fear
based on the ecology of extinction set forth by deep ecology
thinkers, or is it a groundless, alarmist eco-militancy come
full circle?
 Are we, as
Murray Bookchin and Janet Biehl write in Ecology & The
Modernization of Fascism, witnessing the rise of an ecological
state of emergency that will give rise to a pessimistic "regime
of the green"?
Will the leaders
of this "green regime" be corporate moguls who have
circumvented the true purpose and meaning of the environmental
movement? Just imagine: environmental criminals, such as Chevron,
Exxon and McDonalds, merging into an earth-first green regime
with corporate captions and TV media sound bites that could help
them emerge as secular environmental superpowers.
Instead of
restructuring the global economic order, they would render radical
environmentalism as an impotent, political wimp. They would do
this by showing, however grudgingly, that they are responding
to such issues as global warming and the destruction of species,
even as they continue to contribute to the ecological crisis.
They would also tell us of the numerous grants and funds they
have set aside to "study" the issue. Like Esau, they
would have us sell out our natural birthright for a pot of porridge.
I don't think so. You see, we, the people, are learning discipline
to control our appetites and passions by fasting twice a week.
And just what
should we make of the environmentalist rhetoric of overpopulation,
which is usually a polite term for a "pressing surplus of
nonwhite poor"? That's not to say that our cities are not
overcrowded. But how many women from wealthy countries have reached
out in the spirit of true sisterhood to alleviate the misogynist
oppression that renders females as virtual sex slaves to men?
In addition, how many went giving assistance, but gave it to
the oppressors of the women?
Yet, what
if the solution to ecological deterioration rested in the bosom
of those whom the rich consider "dynamic dysfunctionals"
by virtue of their material poverty? Solar ovens have been used
by African women for thousands of years, yet Americans want us
to think they discovered it. In mythology, doesn't the master
sometimes come disguised as a slave?
Justice cannot
be subjected to market environmentalism. To the extent that social
justice is convenient and conceivable in purely economic terms,
pseudo-solutions and mystical incantations such as "sustainable
development" must be redefined.
The World
Bank has taken an official post-Rio position that sustainable
development is a "blessed" condition in which growth
can continue indefinitely, ecologically and profitably.
The vague,
magic word of consensus - sustainability - creates an illusory
world in which almost everyone could make common cause without
much difficulty. Socialists and capitalists, economists and scientists
can all now march together on a straight path, as long as they
don't ask any potentially divisive questions about where they
are going.
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