After I posted a review of Bruno Latour's lecture on Ecology and Democracy at the blog 'French Politics,' an observer of the French scene wrote:
"I'm pretty skeptical about the PP, which to my mind has always been a peg to which all kinds of political posturing can be attached. The recent banning of GMO corn is a good example. José Bové and his minions went on a hunger strike, it was making big headlines, so Sarko jumped all over his own review panel and strong-armed the chair into saying that there was "sufficiently grave doubt" to invoke the PP and ban the stuff. Easy enough to do, since it accounts for less than 1 pct of French corn production and all of it was going to Africa anyway. And who likes Monsanto, an American corporation. So, for me, this "democratic" use of the PP was just a cover for "screw the Yankee corporation" and shut up some troublemakers at low political cost. But Bové is the head of an authentic social movement, so I guess if you want to call that democracy, I'd have to agree.
Meanwhile, the Rhône is so polluted with PCB that you can't eat fish from it anymore, but nobody's about to invoke the PP to shut down Péchiney, DuPont, Alstom, CGE, etc."
Where I agree with the commenter is on the difficulty of doing what Latour argues. While there is merit to the way the precautionary principle forces us to think about the uncertain and unpredictable side of human intervention into nature, a democratic appropriation of the PP is a bridge too far. Not only is it too closely wedded to the pessimistic 'precautionary' ethos of environmentalism to be prized away, towards a more humanistic approach. The other side of the political spectrum for the PP is, as the commenter notes, not democracy but opportunism. Nonetheless, if Latour is wrong to suggest we can democratically re-appropriate the PP, he is right to argue that the discussion needs to be less about what scientific experts tell us (though not ignorant of science), and more about the values and ideologies that often hide behind the science.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
A New Low
I happened upon this clip of Obama last night handling a ridiculous question from Tim Russert about Louis Farrakhan declaring his support for Obama. (In case you missed it, watch it before reading on.) I have always thought that Tim Russert is a mediocre journalist, but this was a new low for him, and for the campaign as a whole. On top of which, Hillary couldn't help herself, opportunistically invoking 'principle' ('I stand on principle and reject people who make anti-semitic remarks') when it was transparent that she was trying to score a few cheap points. Clinton wouldn't know a principle if it slapped her halfway across the country. Any reader of this blog knows how I feel about Obama, but in this case he was not the problem. The base problem here was the obscene (and irrelevant) choice presented between Obama 'denouncing' Farrakhan and 'rejecting' him. It's not just that these idiotic and superficial games over symbolic politics gets in the way of a serious discussion of actual political issues (ie, what exactly do they think should happen in the Middle East - essentially no difference between them.) In this particular case, it was also about banishing a segment of the population from the public sphere. Obama's response was about as appropriate as can be. He didn't look for Farrakhan's support, but isn't going to tell Farrakhan to hold his tongue like a parent instructing a child. Russert, Clinton and whoever takes the thought police position of 'rejection' isn't just trying to embarrass Obama, but attempting to remove a voice from the public sphere, as if that removal did anything to contest the views expressed therein.
Moreover, in this particular case, Clinton and Russert are perpetuating a kind of symbolic identity politics that only exacerbates differences amongst groups by making appearances matter far more than they should. Everyone could read between the lines and see what Clinton , by jumping on Russert's question, was trying to do here. She wanted to make it impossible for Obama to give the reasonable response, which would not offend Blacks, while still appealing beyond the Black commnity. She was forcing a difference and defensiveness where division did not need to be. One has to believe that any Black person, regardless of whether supportive of Farrakhan or not, watching the debate must have felt on the defensive, and felt resentment for such an opportunistic attempt to create differences where there aren't any. I felt that way, and I'm not even Black. This episode also suggests to me that Clinton has failed to understand why Obama is winning. In the middle of opportunistically seizing on these little moments, Clinton reveals that she offers nothing in the way of overcoming the petty and superficial differences that have dominated American politics. At the end of the day, that seems to be what matters most to people, and why Obama comes out looking good. After all, people know they aren't going to get real change - neither Obama nor Clinton represent anything truly new or different. So voters ratchet down their expectations, and least want lack of substance to come with less empty partisanship.
One more thing. I don't like or agree with much anything Farrakhan has said - but that's also how I feel about Clinton and Obama. If offensiveness and 'dangerousness of views' were the criteria for whose support we should reject, I can think of a far far longer and more important list than a few marginal players in African-American politics.*
*An addition to the original version of this post: In terms of active, ongoing discrimination (a term severely under-stating the actual situation in the Middle East), on wonders why walling the entire Palestinian population in, so that to get basic supplies like food and medicine they literally have to break down those walls, doesn't warrant at least five minutes, to the ten that Farrakhan got. Not that there is any difference between Clinton and Obama on that subject. But apparently the distinction without a difference between 'reject' and 'denounce' is more important than what actually goes on.
Moreover, in this particular case, Clinton and Russert are perpetuating a kind of symbolic identity politics that only exacerbates differences amongst groups by making appearances matter far more than they should. Everyone could read between the lines and see what Clinton , by jumping on Russert's question, was trying to do here. She wanted to make it impossible for Obama to give the reasonable response, which would not offend Blacks, while still appealing beyond the Black commnity. She was forcing a difference and defensiveness where division did not need to be. One has to believe that any Black person, regardless of whether supportive of Farrakhan or not, watching the debate must have felt on the defensive, and felt resentment for such an opportunistic attempt to create differences where there aren't any. I felt that way, and I'm not even Black. This episode also suggests to me that Clinton has failed to understand why Obama is winning. In the middle of opportunistically seizing on these little moments, Clinton reveals that she offers nothing in the way of overcoming the petty and superficial differences that have dominated American politics. At the end of the day, that seems to be what matters most to people, and why Obama comes out looking good. After all, people know they aren't going to get real change - neither Obama nor Clinton represent anything truly new or different. So voters ratchet down their expectations, and least want lack of substance to come with less empty partisanship.
One more thing. I don't like or agree with much anything Farrakhan has said - but that's also how I feel about Clinton and Obama. If offensiveness and 'dangerousness of views' were the criteria for whose support we should reject, I can think of a far far longer and more important list than a few marginal players in African-American politics.*
*An addition to the original version of this post: In terms of active, ongoing discrimination (a term severely under-stating the actual situation in the Middle East), on wonders why walling the entire Palestinian population in, so that to get basic supplies like food and medicine they literally have to break down those walls, doesn't warrant at least five minutes, to the ten that Farrakhan got. Not that there is any difference between Clinton and Obama on that subject. But apparently the distinction without a difference between 'reject' and 'denounce' is more important than what actually goes on.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Latour and Frankenstein at Columbia
(This post is cross-posted at French Politics, a blog run by Art Goldhammer, and the best source, in English, on all things French.)
It may be unfair, but when a speaker is introduced as zany and unconventional I steel myself for an unsystematic exploration of incomprehensible thoughts. (It is probably an American prejudice of mine that this is especially the case when the speaker is French.) So it was with special trepidation that I sat down for Bruno Latour’s lecture on ‘Ecology and Democracy’ last night after hearing Michael Taussig introduce Latour as “a zany, a really zany, and original thinker.” It was with even greater pleasure, however, that I then sat through one of the best lectures I have heard in a long time. Latour is on to some extremely interesting, absolutely reasonable, but quite original thoughts about the relationship between environmentalism and democracy.
Latour’s premise is that awarding Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is proof positive that environmental ideas are mainstream. The question to be asking is not “whether environmental concern” but “how and what environmental concern.” Using the “Death of Environmentalism” book by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger as a springboard, Latour spent the hour giving an unconventional answer to the question. The puzzle, for Latour, is that there is a contradiction between the hopeful, future-oriented, emancipatory thrust of democratic politics and the doomsday, philosophy of limits, pessimistic cast of environmentalism. The rhetorical means by which environmentalism has won the day has undermined its ability to generate a democratic attitude towards nature. “It is strange,” said Latour “that just at the point when we are about to achieve our dream [control of nature] we should be afraid of it.”
Although these opening thoughts seemed exactly the right question, none of it sounded that original at first. Where Latour really shined was his refusal to propose a simple synthesis between environmentalism and democracy. Instead he wove a complex argument about the problem both with environmentalism and its critics. It went something like this: Nordhaus and Shellenberger have rightly identified a deep flaw in the pessimistic attitude towards technology that plagues environmentalism. However, the problem goes deeper. For Latour, environmentalism has introduced some very important ideas about the way in which we can have a democratic relationship with nature. Through the idea of the precautionary principle, environmentalists have introduced the idea that political decisions about new technology cannot be grounded on scientific guarantees of certainty. This explodes, for Latour, the specially French idea that Reason, in the form of science, can provide us with absolute guarantees of the rightness or wrongness of a policy. For Latour, the classic French attitude towards science is undemocratic; not only does it remove real choice from politics, and reduce disagreements over value to scientific questions of facts, it also deludes itself into thinking we do not need to confront the uncertain character of human action.
What the precautionary principle does, according to Latour, is reintroduce politics into our relationship with nature, because it makes uncertainty, rather than certainty, the defining issue. It demands, as Latour put it, that “we follow through our actions through all its consequences.” (Latour made the interesting claim that it is only in France, where the religion of reason is so developed, that the counter-reaction has also been so developed – hence the adoption of the precautionary principle into the French Constitution.) However, the environmental right hand taketh away what the environmental left hand giveth. Environmentalists have also championed the idea that there are “natural limits” to what we can get from nature, that we have caused endless suffering in our quest for dominion over nature, and that the lesson of the past is that if we continue in this way we walk straight into catastrophe. Here is where Latour really got interesting.
First, he pointed out that this reintroduced the idea that science and nature impose limits on us – the very error of Reason turned on its head. Questions of value and possibility are transformed into the ineluctable fact of catastrophe. This is why, according to Latour, the precautionary principle is misinterpreted as an inescapably environmentalist tool for restraining technology, and never intervening in nature. Second, and even more interesting, Latour thought the proper position is not simply to reject his as unfounded pessimism, but rather to embrace the unknown: “we must bring emancipation and catastrophe together.” Environmentalists have learned the wrong lesson from Frankenstein. In Latour’s telling, the story of Frankenstein is not of creation gone wrong, but rather that Dr. Frankenstein repented for a sin he did not commit and failed to repent for the sin he actually committed. It was not creation that was the sin, but that he abandoned his creation: “why, why father have you abandoned me?” This, according to Latour, is what is wrong with the current environmentalist attitude. At the very moment when we have brought into view the unintended consequences of our intervention in nature; once we have become aware that our freedom entails not absolute, certain mastery, but a messy, risk-laden process of intervention and experimentation, we have suddenly run screaming from our powers of creation. In doing this, we simply run from ourselves, from our own freedom, and from democracy.
I took Latour’s argument to be for a democratic appropriation of the precautionary principle. Instead of allowing decisions about science and technology to be decided either by technocrats or misanthropes, we should embrace risk and uncertainty, and see it as an opportunity rather than a danger. There was much more to Latour’s presentation, and I will admit to not understanding all of it. But as far as I know, nobody has put the argument quite this way. It is, of course, indeterminate. Does this mean we should embrace stem-cell research and not worry so much about climate change? I don’t know, and I don’t think it was Latour’s intention to give us anything so concrete. Instead, he performed a much more important service: navigating the Scylla of technocracy and the Charybdis of environmentalism in the name of democracy itself.
It may be unfair, but when a speaker is introduced as zany and unconventional I steel myself for an unsystematic exploration of incomprehensible thoughts. (It is probably an American prejudice of mine that this is especially the case when the speaker is French.) So it was with special trepidation that I sat down for Bruno Latour’s lecture on ‘Ecology and Democracy’ last night after hearing Michael Taussig introduce Latour as “a zany, a really zany, and original thinker.” It was with even greater pleasure, however, that I then sat through one of the best lectures I have heard in a long time. Latour is on to some extremely interesting, absolutely reasonable, but quite original thoughts about the relationship between environmentalism and democracy.
Latour’s premise is that awarding Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is proof positive that environmental ideas are mainstream. The question to be asking is not “whether environmental concern” but “how and what environmental concern.” Using the “Death of Environmentalism” book by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger as a springboard, Latour spent the hour giving an unconventional answer to the question. The puzzle, for Latour, is that there is a contradiction between the hopeful, future-oriented, emancipatory thrust of democratic politics and the doomsday, philosophy of limits, pessimistic cast of environmentalism. The rhetorical means by which environmentalism has won the day has undermined its ability to generate a democratic attitude towards nature. “It is strange,” said Latour “that just at the point when we are about to achieve our dream [control of nature] we should be afraid of it.”
Although these opening thoughts seemed exactly the right question, none of it sounded that original at first. Where Latour really shined was his refusal to propose a simple synthesis between environmentalism and democracy. Instead he wove a complex argument about the problem both with environmentalism and its critics. It went something like this: Nordhaus and Shellenberger have rightly identified a deep flaw in the pessimistic attitude towards technology that plagues environmentalism. However, the problem goes deeper. For Latour, environmentalism has introduced some very important ideas about the way in which we can have a democratic relationship with nature. Through the idea of the precautionary principle, environmentalists have introduced the idea that political decisions about new technology cannot be grounded on scientific guarantees of certainty. This explodes, for Latour, the specially French idea that Reason, in the form of science, can provide us with absolute guarantees of the rightness or wrongness of a policy. For Latour, the classic French attitude towards science is undemocratic; not only does it remove real choice from politics, and reduce disagreements over value to scientific questions of facts, it also deludes itself into thinking we do not need to confront the uncertain character of human action.
What the precautionary principle does, according to Latour, is reintroduce politics into our relationship with nature, because it makes uncertainty, rather than certainty, the defining issue. It demands, as Latour put it, that “we follow through our actions through all its consequences.” (Latour made the interesting claim that it is only in France, where the religion of reason is so developed, that the counter-reaction has also been so developed – hence the adoption of the precautionary principle into the French Constitution.) However, the environmental right hand taketh away what the environmental left hand giveth. Environmentalists have also championed the idea that there are “natural limits” to what we can get from nature, that we have caused endless suffering in our quest for dominion over nature, and that the lesson of the past is that if we continue in this way we walk straight into catastrophe. Here is where Latour really got interesting.
First, he pointed out that this reintroduced the idea that science and nature impose limits on us – the very error of Reason turned on its head. Questions of value and possibility are transformed into the ineluctable fact of catastrophe. This is why, according to Latour, the precautionary principle is misinterpreted as an inescapably environmentalist tool for restraining technology, and never intervening in nature. Second, and even more interesting, Latour thought the proper position is not simply to reject his as unfounded pessimism, but rather to embrace the unknown: “we must bring emancipation and catastrophe together.” Environmentalists have learned the wrong lesson from Frankenstein. In Latour’s telling, the story of Frankenstein is not of creation gone wrong, but rather that Dr. Frankenstein repented for a sin he did not commit and failed to repent for the sin he actually committed. It was not creation that was the sin, but that he abandoned his creation: “why, why father have you abandoned me?” This, according to Latour, is what is wrong with the current environmentalist attitude. At the very moment when we have brought into view the unintended consequences of our intervention in nature; once we have become aware that our freedom entails not absolute, certain mastery, but a messy, risk-laden process of intervention and experimentation, we have suddenly run screaming from our powers of creation. In doing this, we simply run from ourselves, from our own freedom, and from democracy.
I took Latour’s argument to be for a democratic appropriation of the precautionary principle. Instead of allowing decisions about science and technology to be decided either by technocrats or misanthropes, we should embrace risk and uncertainty, and see it as an opportunity rather than a danger. There was much more to Latour’s presentation, and I will admit to not understanding all of it. But as far as I know, nobody has put the argument quite this way. It is, of course, indeterminate. Does this mean we should embrace stem-cell research and not worry so much about climate change? I don’t know, and I don’t think it was Latour’s intention to give us anything so concrete. Instead, he performed a much more important service: navigating the Scylla of technocracy and the Charybdis of environmentalism in the name of democracy itself.
Monday, February 25, 2008
There's No Such Thing As a Natural Disaster: Droughts and Famines
This post is a response to the following website: Humanitarian Early Warning Service – Drought and Food Security.
Droughts and famines are not natural disasters. They appear that way to us because they appear after an environmental stimulus - like a sustained drop in rainfall or a parasite – makes water and crops unavailable to some group. However, it is not the natural factor that causes the drought and famine. What causes the actual human suffering is the failure of society to adjust and manage that natural event. The main reason for failure to adjust is political. Amartya Sen, a nobel prize winning economist, was famous for demonstrating that famines do not happen because of lack of food supplies, but because of failures in distribution. That was why he was able to show that famines do not occur in democracies because democratic governments must be responsive to the needs of their population. Political factors are complex, and not always so straightforward as democracy v. dictatorship. Famines in
However, one thing that is clear is that it is easier for a society to respond to its population’s needs if it has an ample surplus, and if it has the kinds of technology that assist in its response – good roads, cheap fuel, communications systems.
Regular readers know where I’m going with this. The way in which natural disasters are linked to climate change seems to me substantially backwards for two reasons. First, a common argument is that natural disasters like droughts and famines will increase because of changes in the weather (shifting, reduced rainfalls, temperature changes, etc…) Second, the response is mainly to see in industrialization a problem. The problem is fundamental enough that the priorities of development should be changed: the main objective in industrial development should be reducing greenhouse gas emissions rather than in generating cheaper resources. However, if the first is false then so is the second. If the main cause of natural disasters is social, and one important factor in society’s ability to respond is the amount and quality of technology it has to manage the disaster, then the priority really should be rapid industrialization of those areas that lack adequate resources. Industrialization will not solve all problems, especially not problems having to do with democracy and representation, but it is a powerful aid.
To substantiate my point, consider the map from the website mentioned above. Almost every country experiencing a “food emergency” or “unfavorable prospects” is in Africa, besides
Rains do not have to disrupt food security, displace individuals, and force widespread migration. They do that only because
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Politics of Fear v. Quests for Transformation
Over at the Daily Dish Peter Suderman writes a favorable review of my environmentalism as a politics of fear piece. He accepts that environmentalism is a politics of fear, turning the quest for survival into a full-blooded political ideology. But then goes on to argue: "That said, I wonder if there is not something inevitable about collective quests for revolution and transformation." I disagree with putting it this way.
First, my point in the essay is that, to the degree environmentalism presents itself as a 'collective quest for revolution and transformation,' it is false advertising. It is no such quest. It actually has conservative aims - preserve what we have before it's destroyed - dressed up as a radical politics. For those looking for transformative projects, their embrace of environmentalism is misplaced.
Second, Suderman suggests that these "collective quests," whatever their concrete aims, are going to become more frequent. "In our secular, post-modern age, in which most people living in the first world have their basic needs met, there is an innate urge to find meaning in grand causes." This reductionist argument was first made by Ronald Inglehart in his book Modernization and Postmodernization, which attempted to explain the 'altruistic' and 'other-oriented' character of New Left movements and consumer politics in the very terms that Suderman suggests. However, I think this argument fits uneasily with some basic historical facts. For instance, one of the dominant pieces of common wisdom of our political life is the idea that we live at the end of history, and the total naturalization of certain basic issues of social structure - like capitalism and the liberal state. Most 'transformation' movements today take place within these constraints, calling into question how 'transformative' these quests really are. I would even go so far as to say that many of the 'altruistic,' value-based movements of today, like consumer politics reflect the narcissistic core of consumer society. On that point, I can't really explain myself here though.
Also, far more revolutionary movements, of a much more sustained and transformative character, are observable in earlier periods, including not just the 1960s but even more so the 1920s and 30s, not to mention 1870s and 1840s and so on. Or a more limited example: participation in American politics was much more vigorous in the late 19th century (think Populism) than in the late 20th century. Some kind of functional explanation of revolutionary energy in relation to poverty or prosperity just doesn't work (we can find reactionary periods in the past too). If it did, there would be no point of political argument, really, because politics would just be a function of economics in a rather crude way.
So I take Suderman's point, and agree with him that we need to think about why a desire for change would be poured into a conservative movement like environmentalism. But I disagree with his analysis.
First, my point in the essay is that, to the degree environmentalism presents itself as a 'collective quest for revolution and transformation,' it is false advertising. It is no such quest. It actually has conservative aims - preserve what we have before it's destroyed - dressed up as a radical politics. For those looking for transformative projects, their embrace of environmentalism is misplaced.
Second, Suderman suggests that these "collective quests," whatever their concrete aims, are going to become more frequent. "In our secular, post-modern age, in which most people living in the first world have their basic needs met, there is an innate urge to find meaning in grand causes." This reductionist argument was first made by Ronald Inglehart in his book Modernization and Postmodernization, which attempted to explain the 'altruistic' and 'other-oriented' character of New Left movements and consumer politics in the very terms that Suderman suggests. However, I think this argument fits uneasily with some basic historical facts. For instance, one of the dominant pieces of common wisdom of our political life is the idea that we live at the end of history, and the total naturalization of certain basic issues of social structure - like capitalism and the liberal state. Most 'transformation' movements today take place within these constraints, calling into question how 'transformative' these quests really are. I would even go so far as to say that many of the 'altruistic,' value-based movements of today, like consumer politics reflect the narcissistic core of consumer society. On that point, I can't really explain myself here though.
Also, far more revolutionary movements, of a much more sustained and transformative character, are observable in earlier periods, including not just the 1960s but even more so the 1920s and 30s, not to mention 1870s and 1840s and so on. Or a more limited example: participation in American politics was much more vigorous in the late 19th century (think Populism) than in the late 20th century. Some kind of functional explanation of revolutionary energy in relation to poverty or prosperity just doesn't work (we can find reactionary periods in the past too). If it did, there would be no point of political argument, really, because politics would just be a function of economics in a rather crude way.
So I take Suderman's point, and agree with him that we need to think about why a desire for change would be poured into a conservative movement like environmentalism. But I disagree with his analysis.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Neither Plagiarism Nor Hope
As is typical of this election race, reportage about a particular event, like Clinton's famous pre-New Hampshire breakdown, or the most recent furore over Obama's plagiarized' stump speech, has covered everything but the interesting part. For those who missed it, Obama recently defended himself from Hillary's accusation that he is all words no substance by more or less reiterating a few lines from a speech by Obama's friend, Massachussetts Governor Patrick Duvall. As ABC reports
The problem in Obama's case is a congenital lack of originality and the way in which he empties past slogans of their meaning. Obama has been campaigning off the reflected glory of 'hope' mantras for a while, making 'Yes We Can'/'Si Se Puede' a chant since he became a viable candidate. But the only thing left of the words of FDR, JFK, MLK or Cesar Chavez are the mere words themselves, and their lingering aura, rather than the politics to which they refer. This is why they are useful to Obama. I have already described the disanalogy between Obama and MLK so let me illustrate my point with a different slogan.
'Yes We Can' used to be the expression of a politics of a solidarity amongst the working class, and later immigrant labor, that was combined with an intense, militant, dare we say partisan, attitude towards politics. This militant partisanship is precisely the kind of thing Obama wants to nullify. Obama rejects that one even has to take sides in politics. So when Obama claims that 'We hold these truths to be self-evident' 'I have a dream' and 'yes we can' are more than 'just words' he is wrong...now. They once summarized and helped produced the solidarity of an actual political movement - be it civil rights struggle, class politics, or the fight for independence. These words once referred to political substance; they were slogans in the good sense. Now they really are just empty words, referring nothing more to the glossy hopes of an electoral movement revolving around a single personality, unable to generate a politics beyond himself.
In 2006 Patrick gave a speech quoting famous phrases: "'We have nothing to fear, but fear itself,' … just words. 'Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.' Just words. … 'I have a dream' … just words,'" he said, switching effortlessly from FDR to JFK to MLK.
On Saturday in Wisconsin, Obama said, "Don't tell me words don't matter. … 'I have a dream.' Just words. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' Just words. 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself.' Just words. Just speeches."
Hillary's supporters accused Obama of plagiarism, and since then the media has dutifully reported the ongoing spat. But reporting the mutual accusations misses the point. In politics plagiarism is not a problem, and in some sense is a necessary virtue. Unity, solidarity, and joint pursuit of cause means that more than one person will say the same thing. They should say the same thing if they jointly believe in it!The problem in Obama's case is a congenital lack of originality and the way in which he empties past slogans of their meaning. Obama has been campaigning off the reflected glory of 'hope' mantras for a while, making 'Yes We Can'/'Si Se Puede' a chant since he became a viable candidate. But the only thing left of the words of FDR, JFK, MLK or Cesar Chavez are the mere words themselves, and their lingering aura, rather than the politics to which they refer. This is why they are useful to Obama. I have already described the disanalogy between Obama and MLK so let me illustrate my point with a different slogan.
'Yes We Can' used to be the expression of a politics of a solidarity amongst the working class, and later immigrant labor, that was combined with an intense, militant, dare we say partisan, attitude towards politics. This militant partisanship is precisely the kind of thing Obama wants to nullify. Obama rejects that one even has to take sides in politics. So when Obama claims that 'We hold these truths to be self-evident' 'I have a dream' and 'yes we can' are more than 'just words' he is wrong...now. They once summarized and helped produced the solidarity of an actual political movement - be it civil rights struggle, class politics, or the fight for independence. These words once referred to political substance; they were slogans in the good sense. Now they really are just empty words, referring nothing more to the glossy hopes of an electoral movement revolving around a single personality, unable to generate a politics beyond himself.
Black man vs. white woman
Over at the Boston Globe Ideas Section, Drake Bennett writes:
"It would be a gross oversimplification to reduce the Democratic race to the white woman versus the black man. Factors like Obama's eloquence and inexperience and Clinton's policy mastery and her association with the ambivalent legacy of her husband have played a larger role in how the race has been talked about. And indeed, this presidential contest can be seen as the country's attempt to lurch beyond a blinkered, monolithic identity politics.
But in a campaign in which it's hard to find many substantive policy differences between the leading Democratic contenders, it's notable how well the psychological research on bias predicts the race we've seen so far."
The piece explains that psychological research has discovered gender prejudice to be somewhat stickier than racial prejudice. (Full disclosure, Drake is a friend of mine.) However, to me the most interesting point is the one from above. Superficial considerations are given greater play when there are few profound, political questions raised by a campaign. The campaign is already an invitation to obsess about symbolism, personality, character, rather than program and substance. It would not actually be that surprising is some kind of superficial, gender mediated prejudices end being the determining factor. Although, even here, one has doubts that it really is a contest between prejudices. After all, if psychological race v. gender studies 'predict' the current voting outcomes, this prediction is just a correlation. It is more likely to me that this correlation is spurious. If confuses the accidental fact that the boring, establishment candidate is a white woman woman and that the more exciting, charismatic anti-establishment Democrat is black man, with the actual reasons for Obama's (very small) lead. As they tell in the first day of stats class, correlation is not causation.
"It would be a gross oversimplification to reduce the Democratic race to the white woman versus the black man. Factors like Obama's eloquence and inexperience and Clinton's policy mastery and her association with the ambivalent legacy of her husband have played a larger role in how the race has been talked about. And indeed, this presidential contest can be seen as the country's attempt to lurch beyond a blinkered, monolithic identity politics.
But in a campaign in which it's hard to find many substantive policy differences between the leading Democratic contenders, it's notable how well the psychological research on bias predicts the race we've seen so far."
The piece explains that psychological research has discovered gender prejudice to be somewhat stickier than racial prejudice. (Full disclosure, Drake is a friend of mine.) However, to me the most interesting point is the one from above. Superficial considerations are given greater play when there are few profound, political questions raised by a campaign. The campaign is already an invitation to obsess about symbolism, personality, character, rather than program and substance. It would not actually be that surprising is some kind of superficial, gender mediated prejudices end being the determining factor. Although, even here, one has doubts that it really is a contest between prejudices. After all, if psychological race v. gender studies 'predict' the current voting outcomes, this prediction is just a correlation. It is more likely to me that this correlation is spurious. If confuses the accidental fact that the boring, establishment candidate is a white woman woman and that the more exciting, charismatic anti-establishment Democrat is black man, with the actual reasons for Obama's (very small) lead. As they tell in the first day of stats class, correlation is not causation.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Global Warming 'may cut deaths'
From the BBC - more on the heat wave v. cold snap issue:
"milder winters mean deaths during this time of year - which far outstrip heat-related mortality - will continue to decline."
"While summers in the UK became warmer in the period 1971 - 2003, there was no change in heat-related deaths, but annual cold-related mortality fell by 3% as winters became milder - so overall fewer people died as a result of extreme temperatures."
"milder winters mean deaths during this time of year - which far outstrip heat-related mortality - will continue to decline."
"While summers in the UK became warmer in the period 1971 - 2003, there was no change in heat-related deaths, but annual cold-related mortality fell by 3% as winters became milder - so overall fewer people died as a result of extreme temperatures."
You Can't Make This Stuff Up: Ecopsychology
I have nothing more to say*:
Anxious About Earth’s Troubles? There’s Treatment - New York Times
*I'm actually not sure which is more bizarre the above or the below:
EcoMoms
Anxious About Earth’s Troubles? There’s Treatment - New York Times
*I'm actually not sure which is more bizarre the above or the below:
EcoMoms
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Somalia: the forgotten crisis?
According to the BBC, Somalia is 'the forgotten crisis', though one wonders about the poor Afghanis, steeping stones on the way to invading Iraq. But if Somalia is a forgotten crisis, it has not faired well when remembered. The 'humanitarian' intervention in 1992, nominally under UN-control (UNOSOM I and later II), but really directed by the United States, guaranteed Somalia would have deep trouble putting the state back together. And as a precursor of subsequent humanitarian efforts, showed that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Among other things, the food aid of the 1980s, and aid increase in the early 1990s helped sustain the civil war, itself the major cause of famine, rather than improve the situation. This was because the different warlords who controlled Mogadishu and its outlying areas were able to seize the food aid and use it to bind Somalis to them. The previous decade of food aid, combined with fluctuation in world food markets and European protectionism, had ensured that Somali farmers moved either to subsistence farming or away from their farms altogether. Without a source of income or means of survival besides aid, Somalis in Southern Somalia switched from being clients of the international aid industry to clients of warlords who controlled supplies. Moreover, what possibility of overcoming the divisions of the civil war in the south were destroyed by the blundering, inept and frequently violent actions of the intervening forces, which included 30,000 American troops.
The crisis in Somalia is not just the outcome of the failures of the early 1990s, but is a case study in a fundamental problem with humanitarian intervention that goes beyond the "road to hell" issue. It is not just what the intervening powers don't know that creates problems, but what they think they do. A humanitarian intervention is always cast in black and white terms, as a question of doing good and preventing evil. Doing good is often reduced to just preventing evil - this prevention has even been worked up into a 'duty to prevent.' This orientation turns complex political situations into a simplified moral spectacle. Intervening with that kind of outlook produces blunders, small and large, while making diplomacy that much more difficult.
Even worse, humanitarian interventions mean that a people's salvation depends upon the good will of others. This good will tends to have the attention span of a five year-old, and the memory too. It is possible to sustain the public interest of other nations only for so long, both because they have their own political swings, and because each humanitarian situation competes with so many more. Humanitarian sympathy for some quickly appears as callous indifference towards everyone else. It is not just the absence of intervention in Rwanda, soon after Somalia, but also more recent claims about the Congo and Sudan that reveal the problem. Being dependent upon the political mood of other, powerful nations for one's own political fate is a recipe for chaos. Somalia is a case study. After the interventions of the early 1990s, the US became gun-shy, and pawned off peace negotiations to international negotiations. Under the war on terror, a new interpretive frame opened up whereby Somalia became a threat, another misjudgment that eventually had disastrous consequences. The US supported a reinvastion of Somalia by Europe to overthrow the first Southern government with any chance of uniting that region of the country. Hence the new crisis. Indeed, calling it a 'forgotten crisis' is highly misleading. It is more like an ongoing crisis aided and abetted by international forces, which have always, in one way or another, been intervening in Somalia. It is only to the apolitical humanitarian sensibility that such a crisis could be considered forgotten, and need more intervention.
The crisis in Somalia is not just the outcome of the failures of the early 1990s, but is a case study in a fundamental problem with humanitarian intervention that goes beyond the "road to hell" issue. It is not just what the intervening powers don't know that creates problems, but what they think they do. A humanitarian intervention is always cast in black and white terms, as a question of doing good and preventing evil. Doing good is often reduced to just preventing evil - this prevention has even been worked up into a 'duty to prevent.' This orientation turns complex political situations into a simplified moral spectacle. Intervening with that kind of outlook produces blunders, small and large, while making diplomacy that much more difficult.
Even worse, humanitarian interventions mean that a people's salvation depends upon the good will of others. This good will tends to have the attention span of a five year-old, and the memory too. It is possible to sustain the public interest of other nations only for so long, both because they have their own political swings, and because each humanitarian situation competes with so many more. Humanitarian sympathy for some quickly appears as callous indifference towards everyone else. It is not just the absence of intervention in Rwanda, soon after Somalia, but also more recent claims about the Congo and Sudan that reveal the problem. Being dependent upon the political mood of other, powerful nations for one's own political fate is a recipe for chaos. Somalia is a case study. After the interventions of the early 1990s, the US became gun-shy, and pawned off peace negotiations to international negotiations. Under the war on terror, a new interpretive frame opened up whereby Somalia became a threat, another misjudgment that eventually had disastrous consequences. The US supported a reinvastion of Somalia by Europe to overthrow the first Southern government with any chance of uniting that region of the country. Hence the new crisis. Indeed, calling it a 'forgotten crisis' is highly misleading. It is more like an ongoing crisis aided and abetted by international forces, which have always, in one way or another, been intervening in Somalia. It is only to the apolitical humanitarian sensibility that such a crisis could be considered forgotten, and need more intervention.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
The More Things Change
A nice post at EconoSpeak pokes some serious holes in Obama's message of unity and change by looking at his intellectual roots. EconoSpeak notes that one of Obama's main advisers is Cass Sunstein, a well-known constitutional scholar at University of Chicago. Sunstein has been aggressive in his defense of Obama, lodging numerous interpretations and ripostes in defense of Hope's Messenger. I already commented on the conservatism of Obama's 'visionary minimalism,' but when one starts to put together his team of 'intellectuals' one really does wonder about the 'change' he speaks of. Sunstein is not just a pragmatist, he also supports some of the most retrograde aspects of the jurisprudence around the war on terror. For instance, he supports the idea of 'unlawful combatants,' under which individuals can be indefinitely detained and tried by military tribunals, even though this designation arises out of a hideous, pathetic and bizarre Supreme Court decision (ex Parte Quirin) from World War II. Indeed, in his letter to the American Prospect linked to above, Sunstein makes no effort to address how badly decided ex Parte Quirin was, and how awful the parallel case, In re Yamashita, also was. Sunstein hides behind the idea that 'this is what the law says' to defend his basic argument that "President Bush's choice stands on firm legal ground insofar as he seeks to use military commissions to try people who planned and participated in the September 11 attacks (and similar actions)." We are, of course, seeing the fruits of these military commissions now. As with the original case, ex Parte Quirin, these commissions are designed not to bring criminals to justice, but to cover the government's ass and conceal misdeeds (especially, in this case, evidence acquired by torture.)
Sunstein's judicial pragmatism doesn't look so much like the good kind of unity so much as an unwillingness to rock the boat. As EconoSpeak notes in his criticism of Obama's unity message, there is a bland 'willingness to listen to all sides' and then there is a real diversity that comes with the clash of all kinds of opinions: "We need to really extend the conversation to the vast regions beyond the pale of approved discourse. The resulting zone of consensus will be moderate by the standards of intelligent human thought but extreme with respect the political constraints we live under today."
This is exactly what Obama will not do. Indeed, for all of those anti-war lefties who think Obama is also the messenger of Peace, they might think about his intellectual inspiration in foreign policy. Samantha Power
one of the most dogged, unflagging defenders of humanitarian intervention, was personally tapped by Obama to advise him on foreign policy. Alongside the leftover bits and pieces from Bill Clinton's neoliberal, humanitarian foreign policy team, Power's inspiration is not so much change for the future as throwback to the 1990s - that period of sanctions, inspections and continuous bombing of Iraq, as well as interventions in Somalia, Haiti, ex-Yugoslavia.
If Obama's current intellectual inspirators are anything to go on, the more things change, the more they will stay the same.
Sunstein's judicial pragmatism doesn't look so much like the good kind of unity so much as an unwillingness to rock the boat. As EconoSpeak notes in his criticism of Obama's unity message, there is a bland 'willingness to listen to all sides' and then there is a real diversity that comes with the clash of all kinds of opinions: "We need to really extend the conversation to the vast regions beyond the pale of approved discourse. The resulting zone of consensus will be moderate by the standards of intelligent human thought but extreme with respect the political constraints we live under today."
This is exactly what Obama will not do. Indeed, for all of those anti-war lefties who think Obama is also the messenger of Peace, they might think about his intellectual inspiration in foreign policy. Samantha Power
one of the most dogged, unflagging defenders of humanitarian intervention, was personally tapped by Obama to advise him on foreign policy. Alongside the leftover bits and pieces from Bill Clinton's neoliberal, humanitarian foreign policy team, Power's inspiration is not so much change for the future as throwback to the 1990s - that period of sanctions, inspections and continuous bombing of Iraq, as well as interventions in Somalia, Haiti, ex-Yugoslavia.
If Obama's current intellectual inspirators are anything to go on, the more things change, the more they will stay the same.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Conventional Wisdom v. Science
One of my favorite blogs, Climate Resistance, has a post today skewering a Green member of the European Parliament, Caroline Lucas. The most interesting and relevant part to me of the post is where they start trying to track down some of Lucas 'scientific' claims such as "that 'increasing numbers of scientists' are pointing to the link between toxic chemicals and breast cancer, or that 75% of cancers are caused by environmental factors." They even called her office to ask for the source of her claims and figures, and didn't get much response.
What has made the debate about the environment so complex is precisely situations like these. Conventional wisdom, prejudice, superstition used to be much more distinguishable from science. Conventional wisdom took the form of something like 'don't go to sleep with your arms crossed, because you're tempting death.' To the extent superstition took the form of testable propositions, science could distinguish between the actual wisdom contained therein and plain old superstition. An example might be herbal remedies for various colds, or the boiling of willow bark for pain. Now, however, the boundaries are much more difficult to establish, ironically because the authority of science is so hegemonic. Conventional wisdom and superstition are expressed in the language of science; to state something in scientific terms is to make it acceptable without it necessarily having any scientific basis. When Climate Resistance comes across someone claiming '75% of cancers are caused by environmental factors,' it already sounds scientistic, and the fact that it is expressed that way is enough to lend it de facto plausibility, even though it appears that there is no study to support it. What's more, some deeply unscientific and anti-modern (one might even say, superstitious) ideas, are expressing themselves in these scientific phrases. As the Climate Resistance post points out, there is literally no mention of the upside of chemicals, of the way they have extended and improved human life, and that is because the actual interpretation of the facts is driven by a hostility toward modern advances. (Others have pointed to how selectively science, for example science on genetically-modified organisms, is used to defend certain positions) The plausibility of the 'scientific statements' is driven by an unscientific mentality, but one that is difficult to address directly because of the way it expresses itself.
One upshot, I suspect, is that it is inadequate simply to defend science itself, at least in the narrow sense of a procedure for generating knowledge about the natural world. Something probably needs to be said about the way science is more than just a technical procedure for producing neutral facts to fit any particular outlook. And something more probably needs done unwinding the way the authority of science is misused in politics. None of this is very easy, it seems to mean, because of how deeply science and superstition are now intertwined.
What has made the debate about the environment so complex is precisely situations like these. Conventional wisdom, prejudice, superstition used to be much more distinguishable from science. Conventional wisdom took the form of something like 'don't go to sleep with your arms crossed, because you're tempting death.' To the extent superstition took the form of testable propositions, science could distinguish between the actual wisdom contained therein and plain old superstition. An example might be herbal remedies for various colds, or the boiling of willow bark for pain. Now, however, the boundaries are much more difficult to establish, ironically because the authority of science is so hegemonic. Conventional wisdom and superstition are expressed in the language of science; to state something in scientific terms is to make it acceptable without it necessarily having any scientific basis. When Climate Resistance comes across someone claiming '75% of cancers are caused by environmental factors,' it already sounds scientistic, and the fact that it is expressed that way is enough to lend it de facto plausibility, even though it appears that there is no study to support it. What's more, some deeply unscientific and anti-modern (one might even say, superstitious) ideas, are expressing themselves in these scientific phrases. As the Climate Resistance post points out, there is literally no mention of the upside of chemicals, of the way they have extended and improved human life, and that is because the actual interpretation of the facts is driven by a hostility toward modern advances. (Others have pointed to how selectively science, for example science on genetically-modified organisms, is used to defend certain positions) The plausibility of the 'scientific statements' is driven by an unscientific mentality, but one that is difficult to address directly because of the way it expresses itself.
One upshot, I suspect, is that it is inadequate simply to defend science itself, at least in the narrow sense of a procedure for generating knowledge about the natural world. Something probably needs to be said about the way science is more than just a technical procedure for producing neutral facts to fit any particular outlook. And something more probably needs done unwinding the way the authority of science is misused in politics. None of this is very easy, it seems to mean, because of how deeply science and superstition are now intertwined.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Adaptation or Mitigation?
There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of responses to climate change. In the lingo of the debate, these are 'mitigation' and 'adaptation.' The former refers to reducing our emissions of greenhouse gases, on the hope of reversing the changes (until when?), the latter refers to developing new technologies and forms of social cooperation for dealing with whatever nature throws our way. Each is a theory of the best way to allocating resources. I am very partial to a version of the 'adaptation' strategy, and therefore agree, in part, with
a post by John Tierney over at his NYTimes blog.
Tierney sites a report by Indur Goklany, an analyst at the libertarian CATO Institute, which accepts the science of the International Panel on Climate Change, but argues adaptation is still the best use of resources. While I do not agree with all of the libertarian prescriptions of Goklany's report (and which Tierney supports), I agree with the basic conclusion. As Tierney puts it:
"I think [Goklany] points to a real risk in making large sacrifices today to address problems that will be easier to address when people are richer and more technologically advanced. If anything, Dr. Goklany writes, these projections underestimate the capacity of future generations to deal with these problems because they’ll have technologies we can’t imagine today..."
The proper technologies, the best way of developing them, and the process by which we produce and distribute them are all serious questions. But since resources are limited, it makes more sense to me to devote those resources to improving our ability to control nature's effects, rather than to slow down or inhibit our industrial growth. Mitigation, especially at the levels required to bring greenhouse gases down to a 'natural' level (whatever that means), would require dramatic limitations on development in industrial areas, and even more limitations on undeveloped countries. In the end, it's hard to see how this would be a humane way of setting up our relationship to nature. After all, even if we were to 'reverse' global warming, the weather would still happen. There would still be fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, heat waves, cold snaps and earthquakes. How they impact us depends on the technologies at our disposal, and the way we organize society.
a post by John Tierney over at his NYTimes blog.
Tierney sites a report by Indur Goklany, an analyst at the libertarian CATO Institute, which accepts the science of the International Panel on Climate Change, but argues adaptation is still the best use of resources. While I do not agree with all of the libertarian prescriptions of Goklany's report (and which Tierney supports), I agree with the basic conclusion. As Tierney puts it:
"I think [Goklany] points to a real risk in making large sacrifices today to address problems that will be easier to address when people are richer and more technologically advanced. If anything, Dr. Goklany writes, these projections underestimate the capacity of future generations to deal with these problems because they’ll have technologies we can’t imagine today..."
The proper technologies, the best way of developing them, and the process by which we produce and distribute them are all serious questions. But since resources are limited, it makes more sense to me to devote those resources to improving our ability to control nature's effects, rather than to slow down or inhibit our industrial growth. Mitigation, especially at the levels required to bring greenhouse gases down to a 'natural' level (whatever that means), would require dramatic limitations on development in industrial areas, and even more limitations on undeveloped countries. In the end, it's hard to see how this would be a humane way of setting up our relationship to nature. After all, even if we were to 'reverse' global warming, the weather would still happen. There would still be fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, heat waves, cold snaps and earthquakes. How they impact us depends on the technologies at our disposal, and the way we organize society.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Ben Casnocha: The Blog: The Politics of Fear and Environmentalism
A blogger, Ben Casnocha, made an interesting comment on a piece I wrote identifying environmentalism as a politics of fear. The most important point of his post is the following:
"Look, I believe in most environmental issues, and think we need to deal with global warming in a proactive manner, but enough with the shrieking and doomsday overreach. Three billion people live on less than two dollars a day; 790 million people are chronically undernourished; 1.1 billion people lack daily access to clean water; etc etc. I don't know about you, but poverty strikes me as a much more pressing moral issue than global warming."
I think this is a fair point, but I would push it a bit further. There is something undeniable strange and disturbing about the way so many liberal elites, from Gore, through Elizabeth Kolbert at the New Yorker and Andrew Revking at the New York Times, on down, will immediately get on their high horse about global warming and environmental problems, yet can only shake their head in dismay at the far more devastating and immediate human consequences of global inequality. Of course, a common argument is that they're not mutually exclusive concerns, one can 'care about both,' or, more perversely, as a comment on Casnocha's blog claims, concern for the environment 'is' concern for the poor, because climate change will make the poor poorer ("If Africa and south Asia get drier, it follows that those places will get poorer and more people will suffer famine or starve").
I've already developed some arguments as to why the latter is not true. But it's also just not true that one can 'care about both.' This is not what happens. As I mentioned in the post about Katrina, environmental concerns consistently displace concerns about equality. There is a degree of passivity and hopelessness about the possibility of changing society that goes hand in hand with environmental activism. That is one of the reasons, I think, for why some people think that climate change means the poor will get poorer. If you really think society is static, then it is true that changes in nature will harm that society. If you really think Africa and South Asia can't develop better irrigation technologies and dams (or think they shouldn't), then it's true they will remain dependent upon rainfall patterns, and the alteration of those patterns will screw them. But if they were more developed, and if their uneven development has to do with things like the (alterable) structure of global markets, concentration of wealth in certain nations, and international and national regulations, then it just isn't true that changes in rainfall patterns would be that devastating at all. There would be no reason to think they would get poorer. Rather, they would get richer, and have more technology at their disposal to improve their fate.
But the truth is, this is not how environmentalism tends to think. Poverty is mainly a function of nature, not social organization, on the environmental view. And for the most part, it has managed to trade off pessimism about the possibilities for social change (despite its best efforts to present itself as utopian.) It is with unerring consistency that environmentalism has proven, despite its protestations otherwise, that one can't be concerned with the environment and poverty at the same time. They really speak to distinct moral concerns and attitudes towards politics.
"Look, I believe in most environmental issues, and think we need to deal with global warming in a proactive manner, but enough with the shrieking and doomsday overreach. Three billion people live on less than two dollars a day; 790 million people are chronically undernourished; 1.1 billion people lack daily access to clean water; etc etc. I don't know about you, but poverty strikes me as a much more pressing moral issue than global warming."
I think this is a fair point, but I would push it a bit further. There is something undeniable strange and disturbing about the way so many liberal elites, from Gore, through Elizabeth Kolbert at the New Yorker and Andrew Revking at the New York Times, on down, will immediately get on their high horse about global warming and environmental problems, yet can only shake their head in dismay at the far more devastating and immediate human consequences of global inequality. Of course, a common argument is that they're not mutually exclusive concerns, one can 'care about both,' or, more perversely, as a comment on Casnocha's blog claims, concern for the environment 'is' concern for the poor, because climate change will make the poor poorer ("If Africa and south Asia get drier, it follows that those places will get poorer and more people will suffer famine or starve").
I've already developed some arguments as to why the latter is not true. But it's also just not true that one can 'care about both.' This is not what happens. As I mentioned in the post about Katrina, environmental concerns consistently displace concerns about equality. There is a degree of passivity and hopelessness about the possibility of changing society that goes hand in hand with environmental activism. That is one of the reasons, I think, for why some people think that climate change means the poor will get poorer. If you really think society is static, then it is true that changes in nature will harm that society. If you really think Africa and South Asia can't develop better irrigation technologies and dams (or think they shouldn't), then it's true they will remain dependent upon rainfall patterns, and the alteration of those patterns will screw them. But if they were more developed, and if their uneven development has to do with things like the (alterable) structure of global markets, concentration of wealth in certain nations, and international and national regulations, then it just isn't true that changes in rainfall patterns would be that devastating at all. There would be no reason to think they would get poorer. Rather, they would get richer, and have more technology at their disposal to improve their fate.
But the truth is, this is not how environmentalism tends to think. Poverty is mainly a function of nature, not social organization, on the environmental view. And for the most part, it has managed to trade off pessimism about the possibilities for social change (despite its best efforts to present itself as utopian.) It is with unerring consistency that environmentalism has proven, despite its protestations otherwise, that one can't be concerned with the environment and poverty at the same time. They really speak to distinct moral concerns and attitudes towards politics.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
GreenBiz | News Center | Columns
I complained recently about how climate science has turned into something else. This recent article, trying to figure out why everything from childbirth to gender differences are measured in terms of their impact on the environment, says it well: "Climate change science and policy is rapidly becoming carbon fundamentalism, an over-simplistic but comprehensive structure of moral valuation that can be applied to virtually any individual or institution." What's disturbing about this 'structure of moral valuation' is not just the way it has become fundamentalist and oversimplified. It is also the morality itself. Despite its own claims to the contrary, it is clear that environmentalism's ultimate object of concern is nature, not human beings. That is why it leads to measuring human events - birth, movement, eating - in relation to their impact on nature, rather than nature in terms of its ability to serve human needs.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Confessions of a Snarky Politico
A friend of mine has a great post answering the question “Daniel, you are a leftie, why aren’t you voting for Barack Obama?”
Why Remember Hitler?
The NYTimes ran a couple of op-eds today reflecting on the 75th anniversary of Hitler's rise to power in Germany. They are, to varying degrees, less reflections on the past than the present. While each make important points, they nonetheless put on display a kind of humanitarian sentimentalism that disturbs me, mainly for its political implications. The first, by Susan Neiman, assesses whether Holocaust memorials should remember the Holocaust's victims or its heroes. Since memorials are for the living as much as the dead, she proposes "we restrain our attention to the suffering of the victims of those crimes and turn to the courage of those who worked to stop the criminals." The reason being that she thinks the emphasis on the victims is socially and politically enervating. It does not, in fact, inspire to resist new evils as they arise. Focusing the heroes shifts emphasis "on what you’ve done to the world, not what the world did to you."
This seems to me a perfectly sound argument - why emphasize hopelessness and loss in the face of evil, rather than put forward the possibility of resistance? What bothers me, though, is that it is far too vague and bland in its generality, to the point of being apolitical. The problem, after all, in using the Holocaust as a source of inspiration is that it is not really the victim-consciousness that stands in the way of action. The aggressive humanitarianism of our time has not really been paralyzed by a sense of hopelessness. The problem, rather, has to do with the way we think of evil as self-evident, while the great powers compete to tramp around saving others to whom they have attributed victim-status. In this, the general formula of bravery and action over passivity and victimization fails. Neiman ends her op-ed "After all these years, isn’t it time to send a message to Germany’s children — and everyone else’s — that will help them to stand up against present evils as well as mourning past ones?" But this was never the issue. The real political issue s have been, which evil, and whose responsibility? These are questions that cannot be answered if a situation is reduced to a confrontation between Good and Evil, in which the evil-doer is self-evident, and in which the only question is, who has the will and the power to act. If the lesson of the Holocaust is that it was a great evil, which should inspire us to present similar ones, we lose any sense of the political texture of the present, and how this intense moralization of politics can be counterproductive and its own cover for sheer violent domination. Indeed, one would think the Iraq War would have sucked some of the confidence out of this highly stylized way of thinking.
Ian Kershaw, one of the most famous historians of Hitler and the Nazis, also wrote an op-ed, which initially promises to present us with a more politically nuanced comparison of 1933 Germany and the present day. He lists a whole host of present day leaders who have been compared to Hitler - Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Robert Mugabe, Pervez Musharraf, European neo-fascists - and notes that "None of these examples, however, poses a close parallel to what happened in Germany in 1933." Kershaw specifies "neither in their acquisition of power nor in their use of it do modern authoritarian rulers much resemble Hitler." The value of reflecting upon and remembering the Holocaust is to emphasize the difference, the tremendous political gap between now and then. Thinking politically and carefully about the two periods, rather than through the flimsy dichotomies of good and evil, reveals the 20th century to be a complex series of political struggles and conflicts, rather than a timeless struggle against 'fascism.' The thrust, it seems, of Kershaw's point is not just to clarify that the present requires real thinking about the present, but also that the past, too, was more complex. Although he doesn't mention it, one thinks of the fact that the 'good v. evil' narrative of the Holocaust has led many to believe that from the very beginning it was about exterminating the Jews, when in fact the first groups to be targeted for political repression and assassination were union leaders, left-wing political activists, and leading figures in the Communist and Socialist parties. This is the kind of knowledge about the past that disappears when it is filtered through humanitarian sentimentalism.
But Kershaw, too, can't resist closing the gap between the past and present in a flim-flam way. Despite the fact that "what happened in Germany in 1933, and its aftermath, will remain a uniquely terrible episode in history" it nonetheless "reminds us — if such a reminder is necessary — of the need for international cooperation to restrain potential “mad dogs” in world politics before they are dangerous enough to bite." Here again, a free-floating, highly impressionistic view of the world based on a superficial comparison with the past - 'mad dogs' running wild on the global stage - is the lesson derived. One doubts that Kershaw supported Bush's invasion of Iraq, but one struggles to find the difference in their relation to world politics. Even if Kershaw's practical judgment about Iraq, or Bosnia, or whichever recent conflict, was different, it is precisely this view of the globe, as populated with 'mad dogs', vaguely-Hitler like in their potentiality, that creates the climate within which such ill-advised adventures like the Iraq War take place. It is never good when an opponent has been turned either into the incarnation of the Devil, or into a crazed mad man. This is simply preparation for the exercise of power, not an assessment of the other side's political and social circumstances. If anything, once we turn others into these symbols of Evils past reincarnated, it is we who go mad.
This seems to me a perfectly sound argument - why emphasize hopelessness and loss in the face of evil, rather than put forward the possibility of resistance? What bothers me, though, is that it is far too vague and bland in its generality, to the point of being apolitical. The problem, after all, in using the Holocaust as a source of inspiration is that it is not really the victim-consciousness that stands in the way of action. The aggressive humanitarianism of our time has not really been paralyzed by a sense of hopelessness. The problem, rather, has to do with the way we think of evil as self-evident, while the great powers compete to tramp around saving others to whom they have attributed victim-status. In this, the general formula of bravery and action over passivity and victimization fails. Neiman ends her op-ed "After all these years, isn’t it time to send a message to Germany’s children — and everyone else’s — that will help them to stand up against present evils as well as mourning past ones?" But this was never the issue. The real political issue s have been, which evil, and whose responsibility? These are questions that cannot be answered if a situation is reduced to a confrontation between Good and Evil, in which the evil-doer is self-evident, and in which the only question is, who has the will and the power to act. If the lesson of the Holocaust is that it was a great evil, which should inspire us to present similar ones, we lose any sense of the political texture of the present, and how this intense moralization of politics can be counterproductive and its own cover for sheer violent domination. Indeed, one would think the Iraq War would have sucked some of the confidence out of this highly stylized way of thinking.
Ian Kershaw, one of the most famous historians of Hitler and the Nazis, also wrote an op-ed, which initially promises to present us with a more politically nuanced comparison of 1933 Germany and the present day. He lists a whole host of present day leaders who have been compared to Hitler - Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Robert Mugabe, Pervez Musharraf, European neo-fascists - and notes that "None of these examples, however, poses a close parallel to what happened in Germany in 1933." Kershaw specifies "neither in their acquisition of power nor in their use of it do modern authoritarian rulers much resemble Hitler." The value of reflecting upon and remembering the Holocaust is to emphasize the difference, the tremendous political gap between now and then. Thinking politically and carefully about the two periods, rather than through the flimsy dichotomies of good and evil, reveals the 20th century to be a complex series of political struggles and conflicts, rather than a timeless struggle against 'fascism.' The thrust, it seems, of Kershaw's point is not just to clarify that the present requires real thinking about the present, but also that the past, too, was more complex. Although he doesn't mention it, one thinks of the fact that the 'good v. evil' narrative of the Holocaust has led many to believe that from the very beginning it was about exterminating the Jews, when in fact the first groups to be targeted for political repression and assassination were union leaders, left-wing political activists, and leading figures in the Communist and Socialist parties. This is the kind of knowledge about the past that disappears when it is filtered through humanitarian sentimentalism.
But Kershaw, too, can't resist closing the gap between the past and present in a flim-flam way. Despite the fact that "what happened in Germany in 1933, and its aftermath, will remain a uniquely terrible episode in history" it nonetheless "reminds us — if such a reminder is necessary — of the need for international cooperation to restrain potential “mad dogs” in world politics before they are dangerous enough to bite." Here again, a free-floating, highly impressionistic view of the world based on a superficial comparison with the past - 'mad dogs' running wild on the global stage - is the lesson derived. One doubts that Kershaw supported Bush's invasion of Iraq, but one struggles to find the difference in their relation to world politics. Even if Kershaw's practical judgment about Iraq, or Bosnia, or whichever recent conflict, was different, it is precisely this view of the globe, as populated with 'mad dogs', vaguely-Hitler like in their potentiality, that creates the climate within which such ill-advised adventures like the Iraq War take place. It is never good when an opponent has been turned either into the incarnation of the Devil, or into a crazed mad man. This is simply preparation for the exercise of power, not an assessment of the other side's political and social circumstances. If anything, once we turn others into these symbols of Evils past reincarnated, it is we who go mad.
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