Environmentalist Veeky Forums

I think the notion of Instinct is pretty much the idea that animals lack qualia.

Barry Lopez - Arctic Dreams
A Buzz in the Meadow
H is for Hawk
The Sixth Extinction
Field Notes From a Catastrophe
The Shock Doctrine
This Changes Everything

Any recommendations for someone who knows they should go vegetarian/vegan but enjoys meat far too much?

Human Scale by Kirkpatrick Sale

he's bff with Pynchon

>Any recommendations for someone who knows they should go vegetarian/vegan but enjoys meat far too much?
Eat meat only in the weekends, maybe? Or just less often. Now that I only eat meat rarely it is much more of a treat.
There is a book on this called "The Reducetarian Solution", but I personally don't see the point in reading it.

>I think the notion of Instinct is pretty much the idea that animals lack qualia.
If anything, based on what I'm reading on humans, we are more instinctive as we would like to be.
The recent research I'm familiar with shows that the concept of a divide between animals and humans is lessening more and more. Though I do not think there is necessarily something wrong with thinking humans are different, but I see something wrong with being special.

Frans de Waal might be interesting to look at.
There were some political science books which claim that different taste receptors make us more likely to become liberal or conservative.

>There were some political science books which claim that different taste receptors make us more likely to become liberal or conservative.
Sorry I forgot about this part, but I wanted to illustrate with this that we are shaped by our instincts as well, more as we like to imagine.

We are not such an rational ape as we like to think.

>ctrl-f 'Edward Abbey'
>0 results

step up sempai

I thought of mentioning The Monkey Wrench Gang, but thought I should wait if deep ecologists arrived, but I guess since it is such a classic they would know about it anyway

buymp

I'm not sure what to do with my thread if nobody starts arguing
So I'll talk about the image in the opening post, it is Alexander von Humboldt

There was a book about him recently and I wanted to borrow it from the library but it is so popular that I haven't got a hold of him

I recommend "The Monkey's Voyage" by Alan de Queiroz, for those interested in biogeography i.e. how some species ended up where.

>ctrl-f 'Pentti Linkola'
>0 results
you're like a little baby

Jacques Camatte was a 68er French communist who later became really critical of technology and what he called the runway of capital.

>For a considerable time, human beings have, strictly speaking, been outstripped by the movement of capital which they are no longer able to control. This explains why some people think that the only solution is flight into the past, as with the fashionable preoccupation with mysticism, zen, yoga and tantraism in the U.S. Others would rather take refuge in the old myths which reject the total and all-pervading tyranny of science and technology. (Often this is all combined with the use of some drug which gives the illusion of the rapid arrival of a world different from the horror we are now living through. [2]) On the other hand, there are people who say that only science and technology can be relied upon to provide the answers -which would explain why certain women in the feminist movement are able to envisage their emancipation through parthenogenesis or by the production of babies in incubators. [3] There are others who believe they can fight against violence by putting forward remedies against aggressiveness, and so on. These people all subscribe, in a general way, to the proposition that each problem presupposes its own particular scientific solution. They are therefore essentially passive, since they take the view that the human being is a simple object to be manipulated. They are also completely unequipped to create new interhuman relationships (which is something they have in common with the adversaries of science); they are unable to see that a scientific solution is a capitalist solution, because it eliminates humans and lays open the prospect of a totally controlled society. [4]
marxists.org/archive/camatte/wanhum/index.htm

marxists.org/archive/camatte/agdom.htm#fnB2

What does one classify him? Ecofascist? But what does that mean, anti-civ or primitivist? I'll admit that I haven't read all of them, but I think Kaczynski is the most sensible anti-civ philosopher. Zerzan seems to have some views that seem horrible outdated. Derrick Jensen might be worth checking out, but seem to have the typical hippy view of nature.

Then there's Daniel Quinn, who seems worthwhile, but I'm not sure his arguments bring anything new to the table. I think Kaczynski is more sensible because he does not rely on overly emotional and romanticized views on nature and primitive life. I'm not sure however about his conclusions and especially his recommendations what to do about it.

Thank you for the contribution, I've had discussions with communists, and those to which I talked to do not have the fetishised or romanticized view of nature, though some were also staunch anti-environmentalist

I think the first was refreshing, though I'm not fond when it results in the latter, even if some nature could potentially endure our attempts at destroying it

Is there an ideology built on the notion that trying to save Earth is futile?

bump

Did someone call for me?

The Middle Path Cookbook.

Define what you mean with save the earth, I could argue against it if it implies saving all of the current ecosystems and species, but I can also argue against trying to save humans

I read Ishmael years ago and remember liking it a lot
there's also of course Walden and Industrial Society and its Future

So, essentially we must stop thinking in terms of ground/object with the environment and really environment suffers from the same problems as mind/body dualism has since forever. When we think about the environment at all it is in bad faith, because we think of it and live in it simultaneously and the way we live in it has little to do with our conceptualization of it; hence cosmology, the need for an other to show us, failing that, we must leave earth to understand it.

I never cared for it back then.

Charles Waterton

What would Deep Ecology actually look like?

A Sand County Almanac - Aldo Leopold

"The Limits to Growth" and "The First Global Revolution" by the Club of Rome are both seminal and essential environmental literature. Cop em bros. Also "Cloak of Green" by Elaine Dewar documents the merging of corporate and environmental interests in North America, it is old though so may be hard to find.

>"The Limits to Growth" and "The First Global Revolution" by the Club of Rome are both seminal and essential environmental literature.
I think it was very influential, "Silent Spring" too. But I think that the Club of Rome lost significance, not so much because they are wrong, but haven't turned out right yet.
>What would Deep Ecology actually look like?
I'm not even sure, to be honest I think it is mostly a pipe dream. I don't think all the call for reconnecting with nature will work out.

I rather bring the view that humans are animals, fragile ones, because I find human exceptionalism dangerous in the longterm. We seem to think that we can solve everything and are not pawns of natural forces - we should be afraid of climate change and other problems instead of thinking it won't affect us, or think a simple fix will do

I think cognitive biases, recent research in animal behaviour and intelligence, microbes in the human body, the possiblity of a very restrained free will, could make us become more aware of our fragility and hopefully make us act

This book is overrated.

read Murray Bookchin

ecology so strong it annihilates Islamic Fundamentalis, the commodity form, and the nation-state

also daily reminder that primitivism is stupid because it misunderstands nature as transhistorical and objective rather than a technologically and historically contingent conceptual object

Tell me more

dwardmac.pitzer.edu/ANARCHIST_ARCHIVES/bookchin/philosonatural.html

currently Bookchinite Militias are combating ISIS in northern Syria: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Protection_Units

Does Rachel Carson fit into this nu-scheme of yours? Elizabeth Kolbert? E. O. Wilson?

It seems to me the only real important 'political' distinction today is whether one is an Accelerationist or an Environmentalist. Most other positions, are rooted in ideological fairy tales about nations, races, constitutions, etc.

>other positions, are rooted in ideological fairy tales about nations, races, constitutions, etc.
The only fairytale is that your ideology is the correct one among fairytales

Penttiposting

...

>combating ISIS
funny way of saying propaganda pieces and glorified security guards

>Ecofascism

theanarchistlibrary.org/library/janet-biehl-and-peter-staudenmaier-ecofascism-lessons-from-the-german-experience

Details the origins of ecofascism. Worth reading.

The nu-scheme should not be taken all too literal, it only concerns itself with recent changing voices when it comes to pristine ecosystems. Some of these voices are from and associated with ecomodernism, but not all new environmentalists are ecomodernists. E. O. Wilson is an opponent of the new environmentalists, he values original and pristine ecosystems, and was heavily critical of Emma Marris. But, he might well be an ecomodernist in disguise as he, like the ecomodernists, think we need more intensification of agriculture and more development so that we can set a-side half of the world as this allows uncoupling of natural areas.

I can agree with development being good, if it were done more responsibly and we werent'so immensily wasteful. Haven't read Rachel Carson, know who she is and what she wrote about, but her book hasn't stopped increasing intensification and with it loss of life in the rural countryside. There are alarming rapports about the decrease of invertebrates (insects and other bugs).

I come from the Netherlands, and that has given me different experiences and shaped my views differently. Figures like Leopold and Thoreau are hardly relevant here, because there's no wilderness left. To get back to agriculture, at least the EU has more stricter rules as the United States has.

Elizabeth Kolbert. Know the book haven't read it, am aware of the loss of biodiversity, and have sort of going to the stages of grief and towards acceptance. I don't feel I can stop it from happening, and I take comfort in the novel ecosystems.

In most ways I am your typical environmentalist; I'm anti-consumerist, skeptical of capitalism (but I see no realistic alternatives), eat mostly vegan, think the private car was a mistake, and so on.

Where I differ is that I disagree that pristine nature, wilderness, is more valuable as emerging ecosystems - with the exception of monocultures, which I think we can all agree are bad. In the Netherlands ecologists want to recreate the prehistoric nature by putting cattle and wisents behind fences. They have some theory behind it, but I have a feeling they cherry-pick to justify their rewilding visions. I consider them reactionary and see their love for the past as a kind of fetish - harsh but that's how I see it.

One of the most influential works were from an artist Christ Jordan. I suggest to check out his project "Running the numbers". There is not that much wrong with technological development, but the way we are wasting resources, cheap fossil fuels and destroying the soil we depend on, is highly repulsive.

Perhaps we have luck on our side, and the problems affecting us will be solved, but I think there is a high chance future generations will look at our generation with some disgust.

no arne naess ITT? wtf

theanarchistlibrary.org/library/arne-naess-and-george-sessions-basic-principles-of-deep-ecology.pdf

(Cont)
Thus I'm not an ecomodernist, though some of their ideas are alright, like going nuclear. Not sure where I stand on GMOs.
Besides Chris (not Christ lol) Jordan I'm inspired by some of my countries ecologist and at least one evolutionary biologists who share similar views.

I'm hoping we can discuss without me being the only writing everything, I'm interested in other environmentalists and their views, and how they were shaped.

I'm going to read it. But before I do the national-socialists weren't that green as some people might think.
The book The Green and the Brown discusses this. I still need to finish that book, but the author wrote that conclusion already in the beginning.

I'll check that out.

From Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience
>The National Socialist “religion of nature,” as one historian has described it, was a volatile admixture of primeval teutonic nature mysticism, pseudo-scientific ecology, irrationalist anti-humanism, and a mythology of racial salvation through a return to the land.
not very green at all.

I don't really see how you can reconcile loss of pristine ecosystems with at least some decline in species. Wilson argues elegantly in The Diversity of Life that the number of species is a function of the habitat size, meaning that an area cut in half cannot support the same number of species as before albeit with smaller populations, but that some species must disappear as a consequence. Anyway, since you are obviously interested in modern farming problems you might enjoy pic related. It's light in tone but does not shy away from complex issues of environmental degradation brought about by post-WWII agricultural development.

From the Green and the Brown:
>The conservationists’ cause enjoyed some support among some Nazi leaders, as this book will show, but the Nazis never made the protection of nature a truly urgent part of their policy
I think that green is more about practice as theory or belief. From what this essay shows is that the national-socialists adopted a lot of ecological terms and ideas, but I think in practice them being green is overrated by some people.

I'm reminded by Theodore Kaczynski essays and how he claims that due to competition between nations, policies will go to short-term gain. I do think that in the future we will experience the short-term effects of our long-term wrongdoings so we will have to act to not let is escalate in the longterm.

Good a discussion.
>I don't really see how you can reconcile loss of pristine ecosystems with at least some decline in species.
It is not that easy. We are not good at predicting how changes will end up. In all honesty I don't think we can generalize between all ecosystems as well.
I wouldn't say I am against all restorations perse but many times I feel they might be doing more harm as good. I think how we use fossil fuels and certain resources are wasteful (though I'm certain I'm no saint either, even if I try), so in that way it seems odd to use pesticides and machines to restore it. If you let it restore on its own, I would think, theoretically the only energy being used is that of the sun.
>Wilson argues elegantly in The Diversity of Life that the number of species is a function of the habitat size, meaning that an area cut in half cannot support the same number of species as before albeit with smaller populations, but that some species must disappear as a consequence.
Yes but that seems to be a consequence not so much if it is pristine but because of scale. And in some cases non-native species can increase the diversity as has happened in Hawaii and the UK (but not so much in Australia).

I think there are some good arguments against my view, and I acknowledge that it is not all based on science but also belief (I wish more ecologists would admit this). So what that means is, yes, if not restoring ecosystems would result in a loss of species, I could accept that. But it seems to be notoriously difficult to know the amount of loss if we do.

You could argue the intristic value of these species is in danger. Ok. First I am skeptical that humans do not push their ideas on nature, as even I have my favorites that I would be sad of if they would be lost. And from there I would follow perhaps we do not deserve these species.

In the long-term, unless you do not accept the phenomenon of evolution, new species will evolve again and biodiversity will be raised. I think that it is alright to think that we do not want to live in an ecologically impoverished world. But the concept of intristic value seems rather strange because it is still a human value as we cannot derive values from nature itself - I think.

I guess that (still) makes me anthropocentric, but as I wrote earlier in this thread, I consider myself (also) evocentric. I think it is important that we maintain evolutionary potential. And I could argue that some ecocentrists are more anthropocentric as they wished since they are using human values.

I'm sure there are errors in my reasoning and that is why I want to discuss. Not just errors but also ideological bias. Ecologists like to pretend that they are being scientific, but I think they are mistaken if they think they do not use scientific backing to support their views, and maybe more important, values might be informed by science they are not (necessarily?) factual.