The “”“problem of overshoot”“” is that the human species is still in the death grip of capitalism. The task of preserving a habitable world is not being ignored because humanity is just too stupid to understand how to do it, but because it’s incredibly profitable for a tiny handful of extremely rich and powerful people to enforce the current course by any means necessary, including extreme violence - or indeed, funding academics to point the blame at anything but themselves. “It’s just human nature!”
I would respond to the problem of ‘over’ shoot by ‘exactly’ shooting the capitalists in their rotten hearts, with the help of an army of communist soldiers.
To be fair, if there’s a coherent definition of ecofascism, I’m not sure what it is, and I think I have seen ecofascism be over-applied, and I didn’t read the entire article nor look deeply into Rees’ body of work. But eugenics, ecofascism, and capitalism are closely linked.
Your book presents a belief in eugenics as one of the most important intellectual threads that runs through Palo Alto’s history. Is eugenics still a force in the region today?
We’ve seen a huge swing back towards eugenic philosophy in Palo Alto. There are a lot of startups invested in eugenic technology. If you ask people, “Is that eugenics?” they’ll say “No!” But if you ask, “Are you trying to improve the quality of the baby stock?” “Well, yes, obviously.” These people are constantly forgetting the names for what they’re doing, intentionally, or as a useful adaptation, because then they can sell old-school eugenics as some new app.
To be fair the ecofascists and the palo alto eugenics crowd are different crowds so shouldn’t conflate them as being the same.
Also there is nothing inherently immoral about eugenics unless its coerced. If you read the history of eugenics you will see many leftists and anarchists had nuanced pro-eugenics arguments that were life-affirming and non coercive .
Also i kind of think ecofascists are almost a myth. I spent the majority of my life purposely seeking out and interacting with everyone from the most extremist libertarians to anarchists to all the flavors of leftists to weird neoreactionary occultists . In my entire life ive only interacted with one person that had ecofascism as part of their identity and they are primarily an internet blogger edgelord.
the fascists fucking hate nature and see it as an abomination to be dominated and converted to money for the most part, they see ecology as the domain of homos and liberals. This is why the venn diagram of eco and fascii doesnt have much overlap
The human enterprise is in overshoot; we exceed the long-term carrying capacity of Earth and are degrading the biophysical basis of our own existence. Despite decades of cumulative evidence, the world community has failed dismally in efforts to address this problem. I argue that cultural evolution and global change have outpaced bio-evolution; despite millennia of evolutionary history, the human brain and associated cognitive processes are functionally obsolete to deal with the human eco-crisis. H. sapiens tends to respond to problems in simplistic, reductionist, mechanical ways. Simplistic diagnoses lead to simplistic remedies. Politically acceptable technical ‘solutions’ to global warming assume fossil fuels are the problem, require major capital investment and are promoted on the basis of profit potential, thousands of well-paying jobs and bland assurances that climate change can readily be rectified. If successful, this would merely extend overshoot. Complexity demands a systemic approach; to address overshoot requires unprecedented international cooperation in the design of coordinated policies to ensure a socially-just economic contraction, mostly in high-income countries, and significant population reductions everywhere. The ultimate goal should be a human population in the vicinity of two billion thriving more equitably in ‘steady-state’ within the biophysical means of nature
This guy reeks of 19th century white male anthropologist.
I won’t disagree there. But I would like to pick your brain on various statements if you don’t mind.
The human enterprise is in overshoot; we exceed the long-term carrying capacity of Earth and are degrading the biophysical basis of our own existence. Despite decades of cumulative evidence, the world community has failed dismally in efforts to address this problem.
I assume we’re on the same page here, that the Earth is experiencing a biophysical/ecological crisis?
I argue that cultural evolution and global change have outpaced bio-evolution; despite millennia of evolutionary history, the human brain and associated cognitive processes are functionally obsolete to deal with the human eco-crisis. H. sapiens tends to respond to problems in simplistic, reductionist, mechanical ways. Simplistic diagnoses lead to simplistic remedies.
I expect you reject the evolutionary psychology perspective here, but would you agree that humanity’s cognitive behaviors are unsatisfactorily dealing with the ecological crisis?
Politically acceptable technical ‘solutions’ to global warming assume fossil fuels are the problem, require major capital investment and are promoted on the basis of profit potential, thousands of well-paying jobs and bland assurances that climate change can readily be rectified.
Okay so here the author is simply giving their definition of what they consider politically viable, not too important on its own except that they clearly don’t believe these “solutions” are adequate.
If successful, this would merely extend overshoot.
This is what I’m more interested in. Do you think that if our current solutions alleviate the immediate crisis, that this will put us further into overshoot? Or do you think politically viable solutions can lead to an outcome that diminishes capacity strain such as soil health and fertilizer usage?
Complexity demands a systemic approach; to address overshoot requires unprecedented international cooperation in the design of coordinated policies to ensure a socially-just economic contraction, mostly in high-income countries, and significant population reductions everywhere.
I’m going to toss in my own objection here: The author is not supported imo in saying population reductions “everywhere.” Even acknowledging that many lower income countries have inflated populations due to foreign capital ensuring labor power is minimized, there are some localities that simply do not have a density issue.
Would you agree, though, that significant population reduction at the global scale is necessary in our current state to eliminate long-term overshoot? And would you agree that high-income countries need to experience the most economic contraction?
The ultimate goal should be a human population in the vicinity of two billion thriving more equitably in ‘steady-state’ within the biophysical means of nature.
I’m not sold on the 2 billion number, but do you agree that a population reduction of some degree is necessary to attain an equitable steady-state, or in other words, to avoid collapse?
I find most of these statements to be relatively true and/or supported, and without an overt political orientation. It’s horribly written, but the most contentious parts I see are the 2 billion number and the conclusion that “everywhere” must experience population reduction. The evolutionary psychology statements could simply be replaced with “as you can see, our actions are not adequately addressing these issues” and it wouldn’t change much imo.
You call it ecofascist, but if it were better written (and preferably not in such libby language) I would cite this publication as a demonstration of why revolution against capital is the only hope of success and why the highest priority must be the degrowth of the imperial core. Maybe the author actually is my ideological enemy, but if so, in describing reality they couldn’t help but paint a picture of why fascism must be overthrown if we are to survive. Or at least that’s how I’m reading it, and I’m curious as to where you agree/disagree.
Add comment