Jenny Bankie's List: thesis ideas

• I applaud Mr. Speth for his refreshing honesty. I always knew environmentalism  was simply an elaborate trojan horse for socialism, so I am very happy to hear a  respected environmentalist explicitly state the goal of the movement: the end of  capitalism. I have often been ridiculed for telling people this, but having a  leader of the environmental movement write this article serves as confirmation  of the watermelon theory: Environmentalists are green on the outside but red on  the inside.

  • Socialism again! There's only socialism or capitalism. No in-between. How is it that having some socialistic-like characteristics a bad thing? We already have them. It's necessary to have regulations within capitalism. We aren't individuals; we aren't competitive corporations. We are each one person in a world of 7 billion. Wecan't be so selfish.
• Poets, Preachers, Philosophers... yes, indeed, how I do remember Rabindranath  Tagore's work, Red Oleanders. If there is one, this is the epic song that sang  so evocatively and eloquently the confluence of socio-enviro-agendas that must  be fought together inorder to revolutionalize change

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• a “cool” approach is needed, a master plan that systematically includes all  issues in all places, a spatially oriented vision that calmly knits places  together in an ecologically sensible way.
  

  • reminds me of Obama's personality-cool, rational. He doesn't use personality and political talk to sway people. He focuses on a thoroughly thought-out plan.
• immediate and substantial relief of human suffering and injustice (the sine qua  non for change). There is no other path to success. The earth made whole again,  with the vast store of human knowledge at its disposal, is what we must strive  toward.
  
• To over-simplify, over-consumption needs to evolve to sustainable living; and, a  population in overshoot needs to be stabilized.
  
• Removing barriers to fertility regulation across the Earth is no more or no less  urgent than cutting carbon emissions -- they are, along with the myriad other  obstacles to an authentic sustainability, all urgent.
• We should all follow our passions and skill sets to address whatever  sustainability thread most appeals to us, while supporting each other and not  letting our egos make us believe our own issue is THE issue.
  
• Few people make the connection between population and our current environmental  condition. I really cannot see how to engage people now in the monumental task  of turning our environmental condition around. It would mean making a  fundamental change in how we live our lives and Americans at least are not  prepared to do that.
  
• This is a rare opportunity to put forth a different vision of an economy -- one  that is more like and more compatible with nature's highly successful and  long-lived system of interconnected economies -- and one that can provide for  human needs without devastating the free life support system we get from nature.  
  
• He also advocates that our issues be linked, although I didn’t get clear how he  thought that should be done. As things stand, the term environmentalism is  probably inadequate. Within the field of environmentalism alone, there are a  variety of issues which are currently in competition!
  
• Deforestation, air and water quality, loss of topsoil, loss of species are among  environmental issues that are usually tackled in isolation of each other. As are  the development issues – economic policy, industrial practices, energy sources,  built environment, trade, population density – that exacerbate them. The  resulting lack of coordination or wholeness contributes to public apathy and  confusion.
  
  We need an “environmental” movement simple enough for  everyone to feel a part of.

  • I don't think it contributes to apathy-it's a good thing there are so many issues to which people can latch on. They can find one that interests them. There are FAR too many issues to create one coordinated, central movement. This goes completely against what Speth advocates. Simplifying to this extent would ignore the majority of issues and seriously decrease the number of people who care to be involved.
• City General Plans and other kinds of geopolitical land-area plans offer  fruitful ways to begin integrating issues. This is because these plans are  comprehensive in scope, and lend themselves to the development of synergies  between issues. General Plans are often comprised of elements that include:  infrastructure, economic development, land use, housing, circulation,  conservation, open space, health policy, transportation, scenic routes, air  quality, parks and recreation, arts and culture, design, noise, safety, historic  preservation, among others. And the law usually requires that there be internal  consistency between elements.

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• Tom Friedman has been a major voice for the kind of environmentalism I think we  need. In his view, environmentalism and nation building are one and the same  thing. Green development is the hub of the wheel of governance, not one of its  many spokes. A green-development philosophy affects every aspect of governance.
• If all the baby boomers in the US were to voluntarily eliminate themselves the  US population would decrease by approximately 78 million. That would go a long  way to restoring some sanity in this country.

  • That's a lot of man power we could direct to a cause.
• We should be looking at the Transition Towns movement which is about  decentralizing the system and transitioning from a growth economy to a highly  efficient static economic system. To achieve that the current system needs to be  challenged in the policy making arena instead of just feeding at the edges as  the non-profit environmentalist and social activist communities do.
• How many times have bureaucrats - end-career - started to hark on about the  power of social movements. Gus: you should have been in the streets, then,  instead of in New York/UN Headquarters.

  • interesting point-work w/ the people directly, or w/ the major groups that currently have power, not inspiring the people and potential recruits?
• The answer is YES, in part because environmentalism has become a religion. It's  not enough to be green, you have to suffer, you have to feel guilty, you have to  sacrifice for sacrifices' sake, regardless of what the outcome of your sacrifice  will be. And in part because greens actually caused some of the messes they cry  about.

  • environmentalism= religion b/c religion= sacrifice and a belief in some value? just means a belief in some value, no? hopefully the value leads to behavior, but that doesn't need to be sacrifice

15 more annotations...

• The real problem with the modern environmental movement is they have abandoned  reality for ideology. Hence, they constantly invoke the high holy word  ’sustainability’. In the chaotic, non-linear world we live in, sustainability is  not only unnatural, but impossible. Change is not just normal, but the only  thing in this world that is constant. For environmentalism to work, it must be  founded in reality and embrace the concept that there is no ‘correct’ state of  the environment, only more or less desirable states. Then it must convince the  rest of society what is desirable, not threaten everyone with eternal damnation!