File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9802, message 557


Date: Tue, 24 Feb 98 2:42:49 EST
From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Ecology and "value free" Marxism







		To whom...,




	Comrade Proyect firmly places himself in the PETA camp with this
missive.  The shamans have told him to protect the environment, but he
seems only to have heard the message as it pertains to the big, majestic
creatures.  Of course this is because his views are not based on science. 
Science tells us that the wee beasties are the ones to worry about.  Louis
cries about dead bald eagles while a hundred species of nematodes go
unmourned. 



	Of course it's ridiculous to say that pollution simply "changes'
the environment.  Pollution stresses the environment and it kills
environments. The problem is to rationally assay what nutrient cycles are
threatened, how many species are threatened, how unique and interconnected
these species are, and whether these species can be preserved even if
displaced.  Then you minimize the damage, maximize the benefit and avoid
*permanent* damage at all costs.  That is real environmentalism. 



	Lou's environmentalism makes arguments about fishing swordfish
into extinction by fishing out the population of large adults (you can't) 
in order to preach a radical anti-meat Marxism.  It's stupid.  Let the
fishermen fish and go broke, I say.  Let their rigs rust out and fall to
the bottom of the ocean and let their children go hungry.  Scientific
American published an excellent article for environmentalists to take note
of (I can't find the cite..., rats).  It was a study by a forest ecologist
who espoused, strangely enough, allowing people to cut down all the mature
mahogany tress they want, rather than trying to set up large reserves
against logging.  The SCIENTIST realized that you can't kill the species
by cutting down the old-growth individuals, and that if you try and stop
local peasants from supplementing their income with mahogany, they resort
to clear-cutting and burn agriculture.  Of course it is disturbing to
people to see all those huge mahogany trees go, but not if they remember
that there are ten times the number of small ones that no one is
interested in cutting down.  They won't be suitable for the sawmill for a
hundred years.




	Of course idealistic green reformists object to all logging and
can't be nudged from their naive stances.  Real ecologists are opposed to
clear-cutting and do what's necessary to stop that scourge - even if
old-growth trees have to be sacrificed.  The problem is that people are
not value-neutral enough.  They get excited about huge trees and big
animals, but forget that little plants and bugs are the bulk of the
eco-system.






	peace





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