Both the Liberals and the Conservatives are committed to "clean coal", "carbon sequestration" and "green technology". A Google search of "green energy" produces 15,300,000 hits.

Fuel up your cars, prep for air conditioning season, and munch down on that farmed baby shrimp, grilled to perfection on the gas BBQ, and served on teak plates purchased at the big box store, because we're saved by Green Capitalist Baby Jesus.

Except I'm not a believer.

Capitalism, even if it is painted green, is incompatible with sustainability. Capitalism, first and foremost, is premised on the accumulation of private wealth for private purposes through competition for resources and markets. Sustainability is inherently co-operative and requires sacrificing personal wealth and desires for a common purpose.

Worse, global corporate capitalism has severed any connection with Adam Smith's roots and connections to the local community. As Milton Friedman made abundantly clear, the only social responsibility of a corporation is to earn a financial return for shareholders. One of the most efficient ways for corporations to maximize profits is to externalize costs and in particular the costs of disposing of waste.

More, because capitalism requires constant growth to continue earning profits for shareholders, global capitalism requires mass markets and mass consumption even when the products are supposedly eco-products. The result is that modern industrial methods are turned against the earth in order to achieve economies of scale at the resource extraction stage.

For example, coal can never be clean. Coal mining whether using strip mining or mountain top removal is one of the most environmentally destructive human practices conducted on land.

The following portrays a Google satellite image of mountain top removal in W. Virginia (Sorry, didn't work, go to Google Maps and search for Mud, West Virginia, and then select satellite view. It is worth it).

Coal is already quite dirty before it ever gets to an oven.

Other news just underscores the reality that capitalist corporations primarily interested in profits just can't be relied upon to do the right thing.

"A planned increase in US ethanol production from corn would spell environmental 'disaster' for marine species in the Gulf of Mexico," according to this report.

According to the New York Times "residents of the Riverbend Farms subdivision noticed that an oily, fetid substance had begun fouling the Black Warrior River ... it turned out to be an old chemical factory that had been converted into Alabama’s first biodiesel plant, a refinery that intended to turn soybean oil into earth-friendly fuel."

And the Washinton Post details how a plant producing solar panels is poisoning the soil.

This doesn't even begin to address deforestation in Brazil and South East Asia in favour of bio-fuel production.

What about green jobs building green cars? According to an editorial in the The Recorder Online, an organ of Central Connecticut State University, "when you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius’s arch nemesis."

The issue of sustainability is one of population, consumption, and living arrangements. The capitalist consumer model will not offer an escape route for a human civilization confronting what Richard Heinburg termed Peak Everything. That economic model paved the way to hell and it can't be reformed.

Moreover, because capitalism has been so adept at both co-opting labour interests through pension plans and other capitalist investment tools, and because consumer culture is so effective at co-opting counter culture movements and even rebellion, it is unlikely a mass movement will arise in time to bring about any meaningful or far reaching political change.

The solution for people hoping to weather the coming storms, economic and ecologic, is building self-sustaining communities not entirely unlike the hippie communes of the 60s, but this time with an emphasis on self- and common-interest and survival as opposed to peace, free love, and freedom, man.

[ 12 March 2008: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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The solution for people hoping to weather the coming storms, economic and ecologic, is building self-sustaining communities not entirely unlike the hippie communes of the 60s, but this time with an emphasis on self- and common-interest and survival as opposed to peace, free love, and freedom, man.

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[ 12 March 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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In an energy starved future, it would seem that democracy isn't an option.

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ETA: For the record, I would imagine an socialist-anarchist model of some sort.

[ 12 March 2008: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
The solution for people hoping to weather the coming storms, economic and ecologic, is building self-sustaining communities not entirely unlike the hippie communes of the 60s, but this time with an emphasis on self- and common-interest and survival as opposed to peace, free love, and freedom, man.

[ 12 March 2008: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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That was an almost perfect post. I agreed with everything until this last paragraph where you inserted "self" and "common interest" in the same interest. It sounds too Liberal. "Self" or self-interest is at the philosophical core of the capitalist model for market-driven economies.

What Liberal capitalists did, I believe, was jot down on paper sometime ago a description of the characteristics for man as a self-interested being and acting within a market-driven economy. It was fine in the beginning, and most Liberals agreed with socialists that man is more than just a self-interested, one-dimensional being who lives for material gain only. But this singular characteristic has been rewarded by the new Liberal capitalist ideological approach to economies even moreso post-WWII. And this has been the source cause of the distorted economic results as well as grotesque distortions of the way people consume. homo economicus has become an abomination of all of us and every person striving under the new capitalism.

And since the dot com bubble burst at start of the decade, tech sector jobs are in decline. No one talks about "Silicon North" anymore. Canada was supposed to reap the benefits of free trade, and develop an economy of the future with information technology. The IT economy, an economy that never was, is now going away. Since 2005, Canada has become an exporter of raw materials, fossil fuels and energy to the U.S., once again. Maurice Strong said in the 2001 that Canada has a responisibility to help curb the U.S. of its voracious appetite for cheap Canadian energy. So far, our two old line parties have sold the environment to Exxon-Imperial and other mostly foreign-owned and controlled energy companies.

[ 13 March 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

For example, it is in our best interest, yours and mine, to maintain clean air, soil, and water. Because regardless of what happens in the wider world, with those three things we can always feed ourselves and survive.

But corporate interests have convinced us to trade those things for jobs. And jobs then allow us to purchase the very things for which the manufacturing or industrial process poisons the essential foundations of all life.

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
I agree. Smash the TVs.

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Not at any rate before the planet loses its ability to support us in a manner woth living.

This is an endless discussion. But the bottom line is that no matter which side of the line you fall on, there is a consensus there has to be a program for what we do now.

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Originally posted by KenS:
News flash: capitalism isn't going away.

Not at any rate before the planet loses its ability to support us in a manner woth living.

This is an endless discussion. But the bottom line is that no matter which side of the line you fall on, there is a consensus there has to be a program for what we do now.

IE, a program more nuanced than its either capitalism or our survival as a species. And such a program is required, wheteher or not one expects we also have to go to "capitalism has to go, period."

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You frequently argue that the environmental movement is fundamentally lost and useless- that the real issue is capitalism.

Yet, with however many caveats, your party of choice is the Green Party.

Yes, I know your basic argument for the Green Party: because it focuses on what needs to be the focus of the public.

That is inherently a "what to do in the near term" strategy. "We must get floks attention, and the Green Party is the best means of doing that."

OK, if that's true, then where's the near term politics short of or on the way to "cpitalism has to go".

Green taxes and other things you would call band-aids [or worse]... what role do they have?

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Originally posted by KenS:
News flash: capitalism isn't going away.

Not at any rate before the planet loses its ability to support us in a manner woth living.

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I think NeoLiberal capitalism is going away, or at least it's proving to fail on its own around the world where tried.

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What do you mean by IE?

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Does this make it clear:

But the bottom line is that no matter which side of the line you fall on [whether or not capitalism MUST go], there is a consensus there has to be a program for what we do here and NOW.

This means having a program more nuanced than "its either capitalism or our survival as a species."

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Originally posted by KenS:

Does this make it clear:

But the bottom line is that no matter which side of the line you fall on [whether or not capitalism MUST go], there is a consensus there has to be a program for what we do here and NOW.

This means having a program more nuanced than "its either capitalism or our survival as a species."

And such a program is required, wheteher or not one expects we also have to go to "capitalism has to go, period."

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FM- you epitomize a HUGE internal tension of politics.

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But my rational being recognizes the pattern of destruction, the obliviousness of the average Westernized human, the corruption and irrelevancy of the so-called democratic process, and realizes there is neither the time, the momentum, nor even the emergence of a critical mass of will.

So I flow between wanting to believe something can change and realizing nothing will change and that means I, on one hand, participate and I am engaged in the political process, while, on the other, I am quietly disengaging myself from the process and planning for a much different future where I, and my family, will have to meet all our own needs and wanting, and working at, establishing a community of like-minded individuals.

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
I think that is because I am truly conflicted.

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Capitalism will fall, but soviet style communism will take its place.

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Where does it say that in the section you quoted?
ETA: For the record, I would imagine an socialist-anarchist model of some sort.

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[ 13 March 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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But my rational being recognizes the pattern of destruction, the obliviousness of the average Westernized human, the corruption and irrelevancy of the so-called democratic process, and realizes there is neither the time, the momentum, nor even the emergence of a critical mass of will.

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On the surface at least I'm not so different.

My feeling is that as a person who thinks in terms of probabilities, I don't give us very good odds on avoiding serious social consequences [if not complete collapse] in the face of climactic change effects.

That by the time we really put to it, we'll be pushing against too much collapse.

But none of us know. At bottom, there's no compelling rational basis for such a pessimistic final analysis.

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But I have more faith in the patterns recognized by my rational self than the hope that haunts my emotional self.

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And that is a false dichotomy. Utterly and completely.

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
For example, it is in our best interest, yours and mine, to maintain clean air, soil, and water. Because regardless of what happens in the wider world, with those three things we can always feed ourselves and survive.

But corporate interests have convinced us to trade those things for jobs.

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Okay, I want a clean environment. And I don't care what sacrifices I will have to make or stuff I'll have to do without as long as everyone agrees to do the same. Let's have a national referendum to include environmental protection measures into the Canadian constitution. We can help the U.S. become less reliant on cheap Canadian fossil fuels by developing a made in Canada national energy plan. I can't imagine of a more democratic way of doing it.

But I don't think the feds and their friends in big energy would trust Canadians with such a democratic choice. I think the two old line parties prefer clinging to power by an obsolete electoral system and low voter participation rates - voter turnouts that ranked 109th in a comparison of 163 countries in the decade of the 90's. I think we can have democracy and save the environment, or continue down the path of destructive NeoLiberal capitalism. But we can't continue electing pro-big business and pro-big banking governments whose very existence is to promote growth based on perpetual debt-driven economies. As someone said above, growth is encoded in the chromosomal DNA of capitalism. And that DNA trigger is permanently switched on.

IMO Ken S is also correct that "Capitalism" isn't just going to disappear overnight nor can it easily be just legislated or 'policied' away with some swipes of the pen. Neither do I think the solution is to talk about other theoretical constructs, meaning...well we have to move to some sort of 'socialism' or 'soviet style communism' or even trying to 'name it' all. The point being that I don't think we know exactly what a sustainable, ecologically sound system will look like, because arguebly such a system has never existed in modern times.
Personally I've spent a lot of time arguing at the level or overarching theory..yes I totally agree that 'Capitalism' is the problem, but now I don't even bother to talk from a point of labeling.
I look at the system or in this cases the micro systems that make up the whole system with one question in mind...is working counter to ecological principles or not and what can be done at both a political level, a community level and at an individual to better bring it even parts of it into that line. Right now it is virtually impossible to design 100% completely sustainable micro system from start to finish because by nature it's connected to the whole system...which as it stands now is completely unsustainable, whether you want to label that as 'Capitalism' or whatever. There is no 'magic' pill that is going to suddenly change everything. It has to be approached on numerous fronts and levels.

FM does a good job in articulating a lot of what I personally feel. I don't think as Ken S states that it's a problem of 'dualism' but that it's recognizing the place of the individual who 'sees' the whole with it's numerous problems and system dysfunction and the ability of the individual to change/affect that dysfunction on a broad scale particularly on a political/policy level. He states that he is basically charting a different future for him and his family by disengaging from that system that's so dysfunctional.

Well with all do respect, no one can leave the system or completely disengage from it by doing what your doing and working on what is essentially a small scale micro system for your family and other like minded individuals. I don't think this is a nialist way of thinking at all, but rather a creative way of playing a part in the 'reformation' or what I like to better term, the evolution of the economic system as it is now.

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And that is a false dichotomy. Utterly and completely

It is dualism that haunts you.

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Then you, yourself, are guilty of it:

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My feeling is that as a person who thinks in terms of probabilities, I don't give us very good odds on avoiding serious social consequences [if not complete collapse] in the face of climactic change effects ... there's no compelling rational basis for such a pessimistic final analysis ... game is nowhere near over. So why act as if it is?

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So you are wrestling with the same "false dichotomy" and "dualism".

But I think you are also falling into the trap of looking at the world with a narrow vision when you say, "climactic change effects". If it were only climate change, I might not be so pessimistic. But climate change is just the dramatic tip of a very large ice berg.

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FM states that 'capitalism' can't be reformed. IMO he's both right and wrong in that statement depending on whether your talking about the theory or the actual real world economic system which were are all a part of whether we like to be or not.

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The point being that I don't think we know exactly what a sustainable, ecologically sound system will look like

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There is no 'magic' pill that is going to suddenly change everything. It has to be approached on numerous fronts and levels.

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FM does a good job in articulating a lot of what I personally feel. I don't think as Ken S states that it's a problem of 'dualism' but that it's recognizing the place of the individual who 'sees' the whole with it's numerous problems and system dysfunction and the ability of the individual to change/affect that dysfunction on a broad scale particularly on a political/policy level. He states that he is basically charting a different future for him and his family by disengaging from that system that's so dysfunctional.

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Well with all do respect, no one can leave the system or completely disengage from it by doing what your doing and working on what is essentially a small scale micro system for your family and other like minded individuals.

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we are quickly reaching points where factors are going to force broader change whether people like it or not and those factors are going to bring about more sweeping changes to larger parts of the system.

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Originally posted by KenS:

My feeling is that as a person who thinks in terms of probabilities, I don't give us very good odds on avoiding serious social consequences [if not complete collapse] in the face of climactic change effects.

That by the time we really put to it, we'll be pushing against too much collapse.

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And that's why I find it strange that someone who is overly concerned about destruction of the environment and climate change would vote for the Green Party, a party which basically says the capitalist system must be part of the solution. There must be some assumption that people can change their consumption habits regardless of the billions of dollars spent on expensive marketing campaigns to promote the useless widgets and junk of which price stickers never reflect the real cost to either the environment or society, or iow's, the total cost of producing all this junk for the sake of continuing to prop up a cold war era lie about middle class capitalism based on consumption.

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Originally posted by Fidel:

And that's why I find it strange that someone who is overly concerned about destruction of the environment and climate change would vote for the Green Party, a party which basically says the capitalist system must be part of the solution. There must be some assumption that people can change their consumption habits regardless of the billions of dollars spent on expensive marketing campaigns to promote the useless widgets and junk of which price stickers never reflect the real cost to either the environment or society, or iow's, the total cost of producing all this junk for the sake of continuing to prop up a cold war era lie about middle class capitalism based on consumption.

Cap and trade of carbon credits won't work. That's letting the foxes tend the chickens. We need real leadership to deal with a real issue. I think odds are that we won't get real leadership with an obsolete electoral system or relying on individual consumers to do the right thing. What will get are more pro-big business and banking agendas, or iow's, more consumption and more inequality and even less democracy with dwindling global resources. War and chaos will rein merrily.

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Originally posted by ElizaQ:
There is no 'magic' pill that is going to suddenly change everything. It has to be approached on numerous fronts and levels...

...no one can leave the system or completely disengage from it by doing what your doing and working on what is essentially a small scale micro system for your family and other like minded individuals. I don't think this is a nialist way of thinking at all, but rather a creative way of playing a part in the 'reformation' or what I like to better term, the evolution of the economic system as it is now.

As the years go on, I see more and more people thinking this way and working on 'parts' that they do have influence over. Whether it will reach a 'critical mass' in time to save us all from massive disruption and pain and suffering I don't know...in fact I think that's doubtful. Imo we are quickly reaching points where factors are going to force broader change whether people like it or not and those factors are going to bring about more sweeping changes to larger parts of the system.

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Yes, I concur with most all of what you, and indeed FM, stated in this respect. And I have observed over the years some people, including myself and family, doing such things to make changes in a micro way, on the fronts that they choose to.

But there are lots of people driving around in SUV's, Blazers, Rams, and the odd Humvee though. What kills me is when we see one person driving and without any passengers. And the guy drives across town from suburbia to pick up a plastic screw for some widget that calfed on him just past warranty. Or maybe it's a bag of groceries he has to three five miles from home to buy.

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
What about green jobs building green cars? According to an editorial in the The Recorder Online, an organ of Central Connecticut State University, "when you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius’s arch nemesis."

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Nice to see that a couple years later this completely full of shit and widely and easily debunked study by a firm considered "fly by night" is still being professed as truth. They had to do some real statistical gymnastics to accomplish their feat.

(Edit to add: If you are wondering how it is pretty simple. First divide all the energy spent on hybrid research and development between about a hundred thousand Prius's which had been built at the time, instead of dividing it in between the millions of cars - both Prius' and other hybrid models that will be developed both by Toyota and by the other automakers who have purchased that research and development from Toyota, while at the same time dividing the R&D for the Hummer between several GM models and millions of cars. Then say that the Hummer has a lifetime 3.7 times as long, despite admitting that the Pruis is tremendously well put together car that could easily (and has easily) last as long. Do that and a couple other manipulations large enough to drive a hummer through and viola! the Prius is worse.)

[ 13 March 2008: Message edited by: Trevormkidd ]

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Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics

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Most of us avowed "energy fanatics" who know anything about the real costs of motive transport are well aware that the Prius is progressive only in a limited sense.

[Let alone as trevormkidd pointed out, that the 'study' numbers are bogus in the extreme.]

ETA: It isn't really even a bad 'study'. Its just an article that is one guy's hatchet job filled with disjointed and meaningless facts.

[ 13 March 2008: Message edited by: KenS ]

KenS:

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Green taxes and other things you would call band-aids [or worse]... what role do they have?

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I find the band-aid solutions being introduced lie entirely with the same capatilist mind-set (throw out your old and buy the new and improved!), and most of them are simply psycological improvements and offer very little real results. The band-aids usually operate as 'what else can we consume to conceal our consumption from ourselves?'... Or if you prefer, the producer going 'Throw out all the non-green and buy our new and improved green instead!'. At times, it's hard to tell if it's an environmental movement hitting the wall of capitalism, or capitalism recognizing the opportunity to sell consumers new items and using the green label for marketting.

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Originally posted by Noise:

I find the band-aid solutions being introduced lie entirely with the same capatilist mind-set (throw out your old and buy the new and improved!), and most of them are simply psycological improvements and offer very little real results.

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Those same bandaid taxes and higher per barrel oil royalties in countries like Norway and Russia have created soverereign petroleum funds worth more than Alberta's paltry Heritage Fund and Canada Pension Plan investment funds combined.

Corporate welfare handouts to Exxon-Imperial and the like don't seem to be working in Canada. Because we can't afford to build new hospitals - our post-secondary tuition fees and interest charges on student loan debt sentences are highest in the world - we have a shortage of doctors - and we still have no national daycare plan in this frozen Puerto Rico. Our stoogeocrats have been tripping over one another to handover our sovereign wealth to strangers and prolly on the QT with a little kick-back and graft.