“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Thursday, September 13, 2012

Dipesh Chakrabarty Liveblog 4

Therefore Narayan et al. say it's not environmental but political. What is required is a third world bloc that seeks Western allies. This argument, which India and China ran with, ran into problems not only from US and Australia, but from a whole bunch of small island nations. For whom climate change raises an immediate prospect of being inundated.

A deep suspicion of the category of the human. The 2009 climate change document: climate change doesn't mention models of development. If development was really really even, climate change would be worse! Unless you argue that there is some other model of development. It's hard to sustain the argument that uneven development is a problem. And it forgets the technical definition of development within Marxism.

Another argument: the per capita figures allow the Indian rich to hide. But more than that, they raise the question of population. Now that China is the greatest emitter, because of number of people involved...the question becomes, Where do you put the blame for the expansion of population if you have to blame someone? In the 50s and 60s when China was explicitly socialist and India wasn't as vigorously capitalist!

You can say this is the West's fault. But DC recalls reading Mao, who says white population is not a problem: the paper tiger. Even the bomb wouldn't have finished all the Chinese off, etc. (Mao). There is a history to be told. There is question about how does one raise the question of responsibility.

Population is also an interesting problem now, because assuming that gw is happening and that it affects nonhumans, science can recall previous global warming e.g. 55 million years ago (Eocene). Most significant period: lots of species extinction. When the planet becomes uninhabitable, lifeforms migrate. Scientists now assert that nonhumans will have the problem that we will stand in the way, as we are so well dispersed. (cont.)

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