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The Disastrous Inseparability of Western Science and Capitalism
THE DISASTROUS INSEPARABILITY OF WESTERN SCIENCE AND CAPITALISM
The following is an exert from Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World, by Jonathon Crary. [Verso, 2022]
Any effective imagination of a post-capitalist material culture must confront the inseparability of modern technology from the institutional formations of modern science. We are currently overwhelmed from all sides by reverential exaltations of “science” and of the unimpeachable authority of “the scientists” who will deliver us from the climate crisis. The absurdity of this sanctification of one of the primary agents of biosphere destruction—including global warming—is evident to many, but there is a strict prohibition on openly acknowledging it. Science, in its many powerful institutional manifestations, is now essentialized as an a priori source of truth, existing above economic interests or social determinations and exempt from historical or ideological evaluation. It is the one remaining mirage of legitimacy behind which global capital continues its rampage of planetary looting and destruction. The marginal figures of the altruistic climatologist or oceanographer are foregrounded as camouflage for the structural complicity of most scientific research with corporate and military priorities. In the face of reactionary attacks on all forms of knowledge and learning, our response should not be a mindless celebration of a fairytale account of “science.” Such cowardly obsequiousness is an anti-intellectualism as damaging as the rightwing embrace of ignorance. The voluminous and many-sided critique of the limits and failings of Western science has been rendered invisible and unmentionable. Contributors to this essential body of thought include some of the most discerning philosophers, scientists, feminists, activists, and social thinkers of the last hundred or more years. We’re at a moment when the survival of life on our planet depends on reanimating this critique, and recovering an unequivocal awareness of how most of the foundational paradigms of Western science have brought us to our current disastrous, possibly terminal, situation.
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The Big Green Lie
THE BIG GREEN LIE
At the next Convention on Biological Diversity summit [phase one: 11-15 October 2021], world leaders plan to agree turning 30% of the Earth into “Protected Areas” by 2030.
Big conservation NGOs say this will mitigate climate change, reduce wildlife loss, enhance biodiversity and so save our environment. They are wrong.
Protected Areas will not save our planet. On the contrary, they will increase human suffering and so accelerate the destruction of the spaces they claim to protect because local opposition to them will grow. They have no effect on climate change at all, and have been shown to be generally poor at preventing wildlife loss.
It is vital that real solutions are put forward to address these urgent problems and that the real cause – exploitation of natural resources for profit and growing overconsumption, driven by the Global North – is properly acknowledged and discussed. But this is unlikely to happen because there are too many vested interests that depend on existing consumption patterns continuing.
Who will suffer if 30% of Earth is “protected”? It won’t be those who have overwhelmingly caused the climate crisis, but rather indigenous and other local people in the Global South who play little or no part in the environment’s destruction. Kicking them off their land to create Protected Areas won’t help the climate: Indigenous peoples are the best guardians of the natural world and an essential part of human diversity that is a key to protecting biodiversity.
We must stop the push for 30%.
These Khadia men were thrown off their land after it was turned into a protected area. They lived for months under plastic sheets. Millions more face this fate if the 30% plan goes ahead. © Survival
The truth about Protected areas
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The Big Three: The 21st Century “Clean Energy” Regime
THE BIG THREE: THE 21ST CENTURY “CLEAN ENERGY” REGIME
*Breakthrough Energy Coalition Founders
The “big three” that comprise the 21st century “clean energy” regime are Mission Innovation, Breakthrough Energy Coalition (BEC), and the Global Apollo Programme, with BEC in the driving seat.
What we are witnessing is militarized advertising campaign for pseudo ‘public interest’ purposes. This is an example of ‘gray ops’ in psywar terminology. Promoting it as a patriotic mission sets up the opposition as ‘unpatriotic’. A massive and unspoken con for a pre-orchestrated bailout under the guise of “climate solutions”. A last ditch effort to save an ailing capitalist economic system which has become dangerously stagnant for those in power.
“We are flying at close to stall speed,” Mr Summers said in Washington. Matthew Lloyd
Larry Summers was a primary architect of the modern U.S. financial system, which collapsed in 2008 leaving some 8 million Americans unemployed and destroying some $13 trillion in wealth, according to the GAO. (Sourcewatch)
“The global economy is in serious trouble as emerging markets have basically taken a major turn down. We are flying at close to stall speed — Larry Summers, Financial Review, October 22, 2015
Mission Innovation was announced by Bill Gates at COP21 on 30 November 2015, on stage with President Obama, President Hollande and Prime Minister Modi. [Source] Its link to private sector investment is via the Breakthrough Energy Coalition group of private investors, also spearheaded by Bill Gates and which formed in parallel at COP21.”[Source]
Several example technologies were mentioned at the launch of the initiative: biofuel, carbon capture and storage, airborne wind turbines, nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. [Source]
Further reading: http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2015/12/04/cop21-gets-a-spark-of-nuclear-energy-from-breakthrough-energy-coalition/
*Founders:
- Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries
- John Arnold, Co-chair, Laura and John Arnold Foundation
- Marc Benioff, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Salesforce.com
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