George Monbiot - Workforce (Guardiuan Article 9/6/15)

We know that our conditions of life are deteriorating. Most young people have little prospect of owning a home, or even of renting a decent one. Interesting jobs are sliced up, through digital Taylorism,  into portions of meaningless drudgery. The natural world, whose wonders enhance our lives, and upon which our survival depends, is being rubbed out with horrible speed. Those to whom we look for guardianship, in government and among the economic elite, do not arrest this decline; they accelerate it.

This weeks Green Thought comes George Monbiots Monbiot.com article ‘Workforce’ posted on 9^th June 2015

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Monbiot

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/feb/28/education-jobs-middle-class-decline

 

Gilles Deleuze

 “The fundamental problem of political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly (and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered): Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?”

This weeks Green Thought comes from the late French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925 – 1995) .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/deleuze/

Neil Evernden - ‘Natural Alien’ 2nd Edition

For, at bottom, nothing has changed. The natural environment remains vulnerable whenever there are short-term benefits to be had by sacrificing environmental protection…….by basing all arguments on enlightened self-interest the environmentalists have ensured their own failure……’

 

He then goes on to quote Anthony Brandt  - ‘The industrialist and the environmentalist are brothers under the skin; they differ only as to the best use the natural world ought to be put to.’

 

 

This weeks Green Thoughts are taken from page 10 of Neil Everndens’ ‘Natural Alien’ (2nd Edit. 1993).

 

http://www.dgfg.org/1/post/2011/10/book-review-the-natural-alien-humankind-and-environment-by-neil-evernden.html

Stephen Jay Gould - Eight Little Piggies

We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well – for we will not fight to save what we do not love.

 

From the essay ‘Unenchanted Evening’ in the American paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Goulds (1941 –2002) 1993 book Eight Little Piggies

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Little_Piggies

Tim Jackson - ‘Prosperity without Growth : Economics for a finite planet'

The extraordinary ramping up of global economic activity has no historical precedent. It’s totally at odds with our scientific knowledge of the finite resource base and the fragile ecology on which we depend for survival.

This weeks Green Thought comes from the British ecological economist Tim Jackson’s 2009 book ‘Prosperity without Growth : Economics for a finite planet.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Jackson_%28economist%29

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_Without_Growth

http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_jackson_s_economic_reality_check?language=en#

Wolfgang Sachs - The Development Dictionary

For more than a century, technology carried the promise of redeeming the human condition from sweat, toil and tears. Today, especially in the rich countries, it is everybody’s best kept secret that this hope is nothing but a flight of fancy.

 

This weeks green thought comes from the introduction of The Development Dictionary (1992) edited by Wolfgang Sachs.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Sachs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postdevelopment_theory

Karl Polanyi - The Great Transformation

To allow the market mechanism to be the sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment, indeed, even of the amount and use of purchasing power, would result in the demolition of society.

This weeks Green Thought Green Thought comes from the 1944 book The Great Transformation by the late Hungarian economic historian1886 and social philosopher, Karl Polanyi (1886-1964).

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Transformation_%28book%29

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Polanyi