Discuss: Beyond Radical

Bill McKibben is a good-hearted and thoughtful man, but one who cannot get “beyond radical” as long as he propagates the libertarian distortion of the term.

Radical means - literally - going to the root. The first political radicals were the Levellers who wanted to disempower the aristocracy, reverse the enclosure of the commons, and democratize society. Their movement was co-opted by enlightenment liberals and then “enlightened” libertarians, so that now the only possible solutions (such as the economic ones that McKibben proposes) are lowest-common-denominator compromises that don’t affect the status quo.

“Radical right” is as clever an oxymoron as is the “radical middle” which McKibben would like to draw together to “solve” our global crises.

Nothing short of reversing the enclosure of the commons by industrial consumer culture will be radial enough to stave off the mass extinctions that are already underway, including the extinction of that most unfit of all creatures - man.

Bobbie, The context for “laws of nature” is metaphysical as well as practical. Obviously “survival of the fittest” is not a natural law if how you survive destroys the environment that sustains you. Any clear thinking human who honestly contemplates their temporal existence will see that.  People who do not contemplate this have had their priorities obscured by the abstraction of nature which began occurring around the time of “the Enlightenment”.

Bill, it is surpassing odd that you would choose this of all moments in history to lament the absence of conservatives from the political debate. 

Surely one of the very causes of their ebb from relevance is precisely the flat-earth, know-nothing mentality on questions of science generally and climate change specifically to which they have steadfastly clung.

Whatever the reason for their current irrelevancy, without countervailing conservatives around as obstacles (or cover), the path to action is left (ostensibly) clear for controlling majority of Democrats.  Left without plausible excuses for not seizing this moment and acting forcefully on climate change (and health care, and a raft of other issues) perhaps theirs are the flanks to which the spurs of action are better applied.

Perhaps form will hold, and the Democrats will again prove more faithful to their corporate constituents’ interests, and their failure will thereby deliver a return from the wilderness for conservatives.  Do the imperatives of climate change action admit of waiting to see?

D. Foster,

Your response makes sense, as Martin Buber so well described in “I and Thou.” Abstracting reality to the extreme is an illness.

Community activity forces us back into true relationships. I cannot think of a better way to lift the lens of abstraction than building community involvement opportunities. I believe that McKibben is correct on this score. If there is a better way, I sincerely wish to hear it. Especially since “community” is not built overnight - although Twitter is getting us there.

R. Riversong,

How do we reverse the enclosure of the commons if not in the ways suggested by McKibben?

Sincerely wanting to know. I work tirelessly as a volunteer for social change in my small town and want to be more effective. Thanks for any links/references you can provide.

Your article suggests a continuuum in conservative thought over time that may not be there.  Do you not think that neo-conservative ideology, associated with the Chicago School of Economics and its adherents, has replaced the more “small c” conservatism to which you are appealing in your article?  Neo-conservatism, the dominant strain of “conservatism” now, is - as you note - alarmingly radical, and not really conservative at all.

Climate change deniers, no matter their ideological persuasion, can’t argue with the “dragon in the living room” which is China’s current rush to ecocide.

Brought to us by the neo-liberal, free trade model which “conservatives” and liberals alike continue to espouse, China’s experiment with unrestrained growth has devastated its landscapes, poisoned its water and air, and inflicted epidemic rates of cancer and industrial injuries on its citizens.

While providing affluent consumers in the US and Europe with abundant cheap goods, it has also accelerated climate change and spread its environmental plunder far and wide in an insatiable quest for energy and raw materials.

The “miracle” will soon collapse of its own inability to “keep land fit to live upon,” a task so vital to human existence Aldo Leopold declared all advances in consumer goods and technological gadgetry “mere parlor tricks” by comparison.

May China’s great sacrifice not be in vain.

I agree with McKibben. Yet, something about the bigraphical description of him at article’s end rankles me.
Bill is “working on behalf of the rest of us.” When did the rest of us elect him?  When did he consult us?
I’m actually glad he’s out there advocating and expressing concerns so well, it’s just the choice of words to describe him that irritates. I seriously doubt he is as inflated as the description suggests.
————————————————-

And an FYI: Since 1996, the world population has increased by over one billion. One billion more consumers.  An increase that used to take humans many centuries to grow now takes just two decades. What number can, or should, the planet attempt to sustain? Where will we be by 2016 if we don’t act?