Some thoughts on the environment and politics, and other things
I am vain enough to
think that my random thoughts are sometimes worth writing down. As a result, at
any one time my world is normally drowning in pieces of paper, post-its and
pads of scribbled notes on various topics.
Many of these notes
are on the environment, something I think about a lot but haven’t written many
articles about because I feel I don’t feel I’ve found the right language to
talk about it without merely replicating the moaning and whingeing characteristic
of most writings on it. Perhaps that is because this moaning and whingeing is
the most appropriate way; nevertheless I’ve been seeking, perhaps naively, to
look beyond this – for a better politics of the environment.
Here’s a few of those
thoughts anyway - on the environment and other things from rationality to music in the Labour Party.
The environment: an afterthought to politics
Even though our environment – the world around us – is
crucial to our health and wellbeing – it is normally an afterthought to our politics.
Taking it seriously would impinge on people’s jobs and our prevailing economic
narrative of more and more growth which necessarily means intruding more into
the environment through more production, more consumption and more
‘development’. What is undeveloped becomes developed. Some academics, journalists
and activists make the point for doing something variously about air quality,
climate change, habitat loss and species extinction with it, but there is no
one there to reply, for it is a whole economic system that is responsible. That
system, its interconnections and institutions are so powerful that there seems
little prospect of any serious change happening, and our party politics remains
stuck in narrow, fearful confines.
The Greens – seeking sanctuary in narrow activism
If you care about nature and the environment, you can
join any number of charities and NGOs, and give your few quid a week to support
their projects and causes, but in politics – the place where real change can
happen – it is much more problematic. The Green Party should offer you a home,
but instead you see an incoherent high spending party taking on whatever left-wing
cause is passing at the moment and thereby losing its focus. The Greens seek sanctuary
in that hard core of highly-motivated but narrow-minded left-wing activists and
therefore sacrifice all hope of building something much wider and more
powerful.
Faith in God, or climate change
As Kant said, it is as wrong to deny God’s existence as
to affirm it. The same goes for the idea of man-made global warming now.
Climate change deniers ridicule advocates for inconsistencies and difficulties,
but they are just as guilty, and probably much more so, for being just as adamant
in the opposite direction – seemingly based on faith and desire rather than
evidence.
Globalisation and respecting our elders
For the ideology of globalisation, our elderly people are
outdated, regressive in their attitudes, past any usefulness they may have had,
a drain on our economic and social advancement, superfluous to the ‘new world
of change’.
Maintaining respect and relationships across the
generations is surely one marker of any civilised society, but it’s something
we generally fail at.
The American Indians and us
As a people, the American Indians have been wrenched from
their roots, stripped of their traditions and the meaning of their traditions,
and forced to submit to their own existential and material defeat in its
entirety. Over here in Britain, economic and social liberalism has largely
stripped us of our roots and traditions too, though not nearly to the same
extent as over there. Nevertheless, the symptoms of existential defeat –
alcoholism, drug abuse, unemployment, welfare dependency, lack of care for the
environment – are the same over here just as they are over there.
Rational
To be rational basically means to be right. Yet how is it
possible to be completely right,
about how things are, as a whole; and how they should be, as a whole; and how
we can get from one to the other? It seems like a desperately ambitious project
and except in a denuded, superficial way, is surely not possible; a fantasy. The
whole is much too mysterious and unpredictable, so being safely rational must
entail rather being critical and picking apart the big claims of others to big
knowledge and great wisdom, exposing their lack
of rationality.
Liberal politics
In liberal politics, you can say what you want, as long
as it’s the right thing.
Labour music
Is ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ as good as it gets?
Labour Party culture
Far too much Labour activity seems to be devoted towards
reinforcing the bonds within interest groups, scratching each others’ backs and
telling each other what we like to hear – especially how great and righteous we
are. We tell everyone else how great our friends are and they say how great we
are, and everyone feels better about themselves. This is how the younger Labour
elite that is largely dominant reinforces and reproduces itself. Under their
aegis, the party sometimes looks more like a mutual support network than
political party.
Comments
Post a Comment
All comments, however critical, will be accepted as long as they are not personal and/or abusive.