Sunday, May 3, 2020

3357. A Note on the Controversy About "Planet of the Humans"

By Kamran Nayeri, May 3, 2020


There has been much controversy surrounding “Planet of the Humans” (director Jeff Gibbs, producer Michael Moore, 2020) within the climate justice movement in the United States (For a sample, see, the Wikipedia entry for the film).  The reason is obvious.  The documentary takes a critical look at the leadership of this movement, in particular 350.org and its founder Bill McKibben, who thanks to the mass media has become the poster child of the climate justice movement, and some of the policies and practices they have supported.  In other words, Moore and Gibbs whose film is now seen by millions of viewers have brought to light an inconvenient truth: The climate justice movement which has a narrow technological view of the crisis hence its solution—replacing dirty fuels with “clean, renewable energy”—has become enslaved to a fictional vision of Green Capitalism that would never rid us of a catastrophic climate change.  That is the central message of the documentary which the critics do not like and would not discuss.

Instead, Moore and Gibbs have become subject of attacks by some in the climate justice movement.  Josh Fox, another liberal filmmaker, who attacks Moore and Gibbs as “the new flack for oil and gas” industry offers a typical response. He argues that Moore and Gibbs instead should have celebrated the “stunning” “achievements” of the climate justice movement. 

“The codification and structuring of the Green New Deal, the Fossil Free movement championed by Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein, which has led to universities, pension funds, and foundations to commit to divesting trillions of dollars from fossil fuels, huge advances in renewable energy efficiency, the proliferation of 100 percent renewable energy plans put forward by Stanford University Professor Mark Jacobson and others, a burgeoning youth movement inspired by Fridays for Future and Greta Thunberg; the remarkable successes of the anti-fracking movement—which finally reached the mainstream, espoused by progressives like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez but also by moderates like Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg. And the incredible civil disobedience uprising at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline. What a decade for the environmental movement! Those achievements deserve celebration on film.” (Fox, The Nation, April 30, 2020)

Somehow, Fox who suggests the documentary falls short of good scientific evidence finds it inconvenient to ask himself why despite such “stunning achievements” carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere continues to rise.  On May 1, 2020, CO2 concentration was 418.03 ppm compared to 414.88 ppm on May 1, 2019 (CO2 Daily, accessed May 2, 2020). 

I will return to Fox’s “stunning achievements” in a moment. But let’s note the important criticism the film makes of the climate justice movement and its leadership.    

Natural limits to growth
The documentary is typical of Moore movies.  It is not a film about science of climate change or any scientific assessment of “renewable” energy although it does allude to them (some of these issues are in dispute even among experts, see, for example, the important topic of “energy returned on energy invested” EROEI discussion in Wikipedia) .  

A central and critical message of the film is natural limits to growth: on a finite planet infinite economic growth including of human population and consumption is impossible.  In other words, even if “clean, renewable” energy can be had, its manufacturing and use may still exceed the natural limits of the planet if we do not substantially reduce the drive for ever-more energy consumption. The film does not discuss this but it is common knowledge that the bulk of GHGs emissions are by the U.S., China, and European Union (Chinese emissions are in part due to demand for manufactured goods from the U.S. and E.U.). At the same time 850 million people in the Global South lack access to energy (International Energy Association, World Outlook, 2019).

Of course, over-consumption in Global North and by some in Global South is also pressing against other natural limits to growth (example: oceans are running out of fish and most fish in the market these days are farmed fish which require energy to produce). This feeds into factors that have caused the Sixth Extinction which is considered an existential crisis as it will lead to the collapse of the web of life perhaps by the end of this century (Wilson, 2016; see, also, Nayeri, 2017)

 A related important point the film makes is that “clean, renewable energy” is not entirely renewable or clean.  Construction of solar panel, wind turbines and related materials and infrastructure use fossil fuels and contribute to energy consumption and they have to be replaced on certain short intervals of time.  As someone who has installed solar panels for my home I know that I am still dependent on Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) for my power at night and when it did cut off power to northern California homes last fall because of wildfire, I too had not electricity. Thus, I am still dependent on fossil fuels and nuclear energy PG&E uses.  

Capitalism and the profit motive
Moore and Gibbs also go further than the climate justice movement and its leaderships in that in the documentary they holds “capitalism” responsible for the crisis and once refer to the “profit motive” as the source of quest for ever-more growth on a finite planet.  It was practically a conversation stopper in 350.org when I was briefly part of it and in much of the climate justice movement to speak of “capitalism,” not fossil fuels only, as the source of the crisis.  To put it differently, 350.org and all other prominent climate justice movement groups as well as all environmentalist groups refuse to consider that Our Way of Life, “capitalism,” has anything to do with the climate crisis or the broader ecological crisis. A very small current in the climate justice movement, including this author, has argued that the crisis is systemic and to overcome it we must work towards transcending capitalism.  

Green Capitalism 
Using these lenses, the documentary criticizes the leadership of the climate justice movement, especially 350.org and it founder Bill McKibben, as pursuing what is known as Green Capitalism, that is, some fictitious environmentally friendly capitalism.   The point Moore and Gibbs make is painfully clear: you cannot have capitalism and the pursuit of profit and infinite economic growth on a planet with finite resources.  Sooner or later, crises of all kinds will erupt.  The runaway climate change is the one most well-known.  But the Sixth Extinction is equally as important. The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is yet another facet of the same crisis. Even if the whole world transitions to "renewable energy" but capitalist growth continues, humanity may still go extinct. 

Which way forward for the climate justice movement?
While supporting every mass mobilization of the movement, I have been an outspoken critic of the reformist Green Capitalism politics of its leadership as the list of essays below written over a number of years show.

My criticism of the movement’s leadership has never focused on their relationship with the various capitalist groups or their sources of funding. But is it not troubling that major environmentalist groups like Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense Fund, and the Natural Resources Defense Council have had a cozy relationship with the major capitalist groups with an interest in environmentalist policy? Isn’t it a conflict of interest? Isn’t it troubling to Mr. Fox and others who are attacking Moore and Gibbs as oil and gas flake that Bill McKibben when asked on camera to disclose the funding sources of 350.org draws a blank? 

Still, my criticism of McKibben is based on his misunderstanding of why we have climate crisis and who is responsible for it and how we can resolve the crisis.  

In an April 2016 interview with an Australian website, McKibben candidly recounts the evolution of his own strategic thinking: “I spent a lot of years getting it wrong…I thought we were engaged in an argument” with the fossil fuel industry. “We waited far too long to realise what a fight it was, and that there was an adversary on the other side.” 

At that time McKibben appeared to argue that politicians are “pawns” in the hands of the fossil fuel industry and he decided to go after the “real bosses” (the fossil fuel industry).  But isn't he still "getting it wrong?" Isn't the problem capitalism and not just oili and gas industries that serve industrial capitalism? 

Not only McKibben wasted “a lot of years” unable to form a critical conception of the fossil fuel industry and the dynamics of the capitalist economy, he also has never ever took the trouble to find out. By narrowly defining the problem that the climate justice movement faces, he continued to come up with a deficient strategy.  

As he was granting that interview in Australia, 350.org  was preparing for its failed “Break Free from Fossil Fuels” campaign which used a series of civil disobedience actions targeting the “worse polluters” by a small group of activists. At the same time, McKibben was favoring Senator Sanders campaign in the 2016 elections to reform the Democratic Party, that is a capitalist electoral strategy. When Sanders lost in part due to the machinations of the Democratic Party bosses, McKibben and 350.org threw their support behind the establishment's Hillary Clinton’s bid for presidency even though she openly embraced natural gas and fracking (Fox and current critics of Moore and Gibbs seem to have forgotten that episode). Read McKibben's own account of this experience in his New Republic essay. The electoralist illusion is not unique to 350.org but is widely shared in the climate justice movement, the ecology movement, and social justice movement.  Why that is can only be explained by a lack of critical thinking. Just consider the balance sheet of other once mighty movements such as the labor movement, the movement to defend abortion right, and the African American movement who relied on a similar electoral policy and the Democratic Party who have been reduced to small mariginalized groups.  

In summary, McKibben and 350.org and all other climate justice groups such as The Climate Mobilization have no other strategy.  Thus, they help initiate, fund, or promote various other groups such as the Sunrise Movement and Justice Democrats to elect “climate friendly” (typically) Democratic Party politicians. After Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was elected to Congress in 2018 with help from Justice Democrats and proposed a non-binding Green New Deal Resolution it caused widespread jubilation in the climate justice movement and some even envisioned a a rapid transition to a fossil fuel free economy through a massive U.S. government devised and funded plan.  

Of course, nothing of the kind ever happened. The non-binding GND Resolution is largely forgotten and the most significant action Ocasio-Cortez has been to endorse Sanders’ bid for nomination by the Democratic Party in this primary season.  When Sanders's bid became highly unlikely to succeed, he ended his campaign and endorsed Biden’s nomination. It was a Déjà vu of the 2016 experience. It is an understatement that the climate justice movement has become disoriented.  There is little doubt that 350.org and other prominent climate justice and ecology group will support the Biden bid for presidency as a matter of the lesser evil politics.  Biden does not seem to have any campaign program of his own but promises a return to the "Golden Age" of Obama administration policies. We know how effective the Obama presidency was in addressing the existential climate change crisis. 

The interested reader can find my detailed critique of the Green New Deal and its proponents (Nayeri, March 2019; Nayeri, January 2019).  But let me point out one aspect of both the Sanders’ program and the GND of Ocasio-Cortez that is relevant to the movie's central message: They are both Keynesian vision of some Green Capitalist future with the promise of prosperity to the U.S. working people when in fact what is unfolding is the systemic existential crisis of capitalism.  In his 2016 campaign, Sanders promised a 5% a year GDP growth, a really fast rate of economic growth for a mature capitalist economy.  If Sanders were elected president in 2020 and his program adopted and implemented it would certainly have cause a similarly fast rate of economic growth. Ocasio-Cortez’s proposed GND is also a Green Keynesian program that would cause rapid economic growth. 

Presumably, both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez plans would have redistributed income from the super rich to the working people and would have tied to enact programs that would have benefited them in the short run.  But their proposals would also contribute to the ecological crisis by pressing against the limits to growth while they would also increase the gap between the rich United States and the global poor who currently constitute almost half the world population— more than 3 billion people — who live on less than $2.50 a day.  Surely, the prosperity Green Capitalist politicians like Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders promise the American working people could not ever be extended to the poor regions of the world as it will certainly amount to suicide for humanity as catastrophic climate change and the collapse of the web of life will result.

Thus, Moore and Gibbs are correct to point to natural limits to growth and to the problem of unceasing capitalist economic growth fueled by ceaseless pursuit of profits as the cause for climate crisis.  To fault them for pointing out the fact that United States cannot solve the climate crisis simply by transitioning to “clean renewable” energy sources while continuing to produce and consume ever more energy and all other stuff of the American ways of life is at best ignorant. 

A culture of being, not a culture of having  
Humanity’s salvation lays only in whether billions of us can undertake a course to transcend the anthropocentric industrial capitalist civilization in the direction of an Ecocentric Socialist future where a culture of being will replace the present culture of having, when humanity will finally undo all power relations on which the current civilization rests by disempowering those who hold power.  For the past five thousand years, all civilizations have been class societies in which the ruling classes have dominated and exploited the working masses to extract wealth from nature.  This has been the root cause of ecological and social crises that have resulted in the collapse of many civilizations.  It would be foolish to disregard the fact that the anthropocentric industrial capitalist civilization is an exception. We must end the paradigm of wealth generation, radically reduce the human population over a number of generations democratically through empowerment of women, and radically reduce the size of our economies by refocusing on local economies geared to production of basic necessities of a life consistent with human development in harmony among ourselves and with the rest of nature.

To be sure, Planet of the Humans has shortcomings. But the central message it communicates deserve the full attention of and discussion by the climate and ecological movements.  Likewise, I would appreciate any critical discussion of this commentary. 

A list of my earlier writings on climate change follows:

Challenges Posed by the ‘Green New Deal’” January 16, 2019.



Who Can Stop the Climate Crisis?” June 27, 2017.











References
Nayeri, Kamran. “How to Stop the Sixth Extinction: A Critical Assessment of E. O. Wilson’s Half-Earth.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. May 14, 2017.
————————. “Challenges Posed by the ‘Green New Deal’.  Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. January 16, 2019. 
————————. “A Future for American Capitalism or The Future of Life on Earth?: An Ecosocialist Critique of the ‘Green New Deal.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. March 25, 2019.
Wilson, E. O. Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life, 2016.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to David McDonald for his suggestions on a draft of this commentarry. 

16 comments:

David Schwartzman said...

Thanks for your review, here is mine: https://popularresistance.org/film-review-planet-of-humans-misplaces-the-blame-on-population-growth/

It stirred up a very welcome hornet's nest of debate, see comments.

Best wishes,
David

Preston said...

Remember when we used to actually talk about "zero population growth" as a goal? Without population reduction, there is not a sustainable system. Unlimited growth is not sustainable with finite resources. I fail to understand how this is difficult to comprehend. Thanks for the review. I have not sen it.

Kamran Nayeri said...

Dear David, thanks for your comment and for sharing your own review.

We disagree on the population question. Let me outline the issues invloved. First, you and many other socialists seem to confuse Marx's critique of Malthus dealing with specific condition in England in the nineteenth century with the present-day concern with the rapidly rising human population and its ecological impact. For the nineteenth century debate please see John Bellamy Foster “Malthus’ Essay on Population at Age 200: A Marxist View” (MR, 1998) and my for my own discussion please see, "On the Population Question: Malthus, Marx and Beyond." (in this blog, 2014).

Second, Angus and Butler "Too Many People? (2011) answer their own rhetorical question in a chapter entitled "Is the World Full?” They write: “One day, when we have broad agreement on the answers to all of Joel Cohen’s questions, and when we have eliminated the gross waste, destruction, and inequities of capitalism, we may be able to measure the earth’s carrying capacity scientifically. If so, humanity may then decide to consciously limit its numbers.” (Angus and Butler, 2011, p. 61 on Kindle edition)

If that "answer" satisfies you, I does not satisfy meThis "answer" does not satisfy you. But who is Cohen? A demographer who published a book and an article in 1995 which used a model to estimate the human carrying capacity of the planet. Please note that between 1995 when Cohen's work was publihed and 2011 when Angus and Butler published their book, sixteen years had passed. Could there have been other studies? No doubt there have been. Why are they not consulted? No doubt Angus and Butler have cherry picked a source to back up the answer they give and I quoted. If you as a scientist are happy with this methodology , I am not. I served a peer-reviewer for medical and political economy jounrnals for two decades. No paper with such shoddy methodolgy would ever be published in a scholarly kournal.

Finally, in my reading of the literature I find a general agreement among biodiveristy and conservation biologists that human population growth especially when linked to rising per capita income/consumption has a deterimental effect on ecosystems and their species. I have written about this and cited sources. Please see, "How to Stop the Sixth Extinction: A Critical Assessment of E. O. Wilson’s Half-Earth" (OPITW, 2017), "The Coronavirus Pandemic as the Crisis of Civilization," (OPITW, 2020)

Best wishes,

Kamran

David Schwartzman said...

First, responding to Preston, what kind of growth are we talking about? Knowledge, culture or what is truly unsustainable and unwelcome growth, what the GNP captures, endless consumption of needless commodities, military hardware, and of course fossil fuel consumption? I like the what the Dutch academics proposed: "a move away from development focused on aggregate GDP growth to differentiate among sectors that can grow and need investment (the so-called critical public sectors, and clean energy, education, health and more) and sectors that need to radically degrow due to their fundamental unsustainability or their role in driving continuous and excessive consumption (especially private sector oil, gas, mining, advertising, and so forth: (https://climateandcapitalism.com/2020/04/20/five-proposals-for-a-better-world-after-the-pandemic/).
Now regarding the issue of population, it is a complete mirage to expect a reduction of global population rather than stabilization unless a global catastrophe kicks in, with the prime examples being climate catastrophe, nuclear war or a much worse pandemic than we now witness. Only the first is inevitable unless avoided by activity of the global climate/energy justice movement. if an effective prevention program will be implemented in time to avoid climate catastrophe with much worse horrors than we now witness, then global population can be stabilized at a level of about 9 billion by 2050, since the well-known measures that stabilize population would be in place, namely empowerment of women in society and elimination of poverty. We have argued in our book, The Earth is Not for Sale, that such a prevention program would be very likely a path to ecosocialist transformation of global civilization since the main obstacle would have to be overcome and terminated once and for all, i.e., the Military Industrial (Fossil Fuel Nuclear State Terror and Surveillance) Complex. Kamran says that human population growth especially when linked to rising per capita income/consumption has a deterimental effect on ecosystems and their species. Indeed, that is precisely why such growth needs to come down coupled with radical changes in both the physical and political economies.

RSmith said...

A very elegant and cogent essay. The conclusion does a good job of summarizing the core conundrum.
I would add only that our predicament and the systems that have brought us here are largely due to a structural imbalance in modern humanity's ingenuity versus wisdom. We continually confuse the former for the latter.
Pre-agricultural societies got around this built-in imbalance by incorporating enduring wisdom into culture, which provided a check on our impact on the environment. Modern culture eschews wisdom for ingenuity - the global equivalent of leaving an open jar of cookies with a gaggle of toddlers.
And now that we elect toddlers to the highest office, it will be increasingly harder to wrest that cookie jar away.

Kamran Nayeri said...

Dear David:

Three issues about the population question. First, even the human population today at 7.7 billion is determinetal to the health of ecosystems. You seem to be happy to see it grow to 9 billion by 2050 and then "stablize." According to the 2019 UN projecttion world population will reach 9.7 billion in 2050 and could peak at nearly 11 billion around 2100. (https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world-population-prospects-2019.html) You must have cited old projections. Second, as I pointed out earlier even the recent increases in human popuation have been deterimental to the health of ecosystem and we are in the midst of the Sixth Mass Extinction. Unless you can cite the literature that show increasing human population is not part of the complex of reasons for the mass exinction I would stay with the consensus of biodiverity and conservation biologists noted in my earlier comment. Third, as I note in the post you are commenting on more than 3 billion people — who live on less than $2.50 a day. Per capita daily conumption of an American (that is an average, with some below and some above) have $175 to spend per day! As an ecological socialist, you, of course, want to ensure that the rest of the world lives as well as American do. If 7.7 billion people consumer $175 worth of resources, inlduding food, energy, etc. what do you thin will happen to the rest of ecosphere? Now you seem quite comfortable with 9.9 billion of us spending as much per day or more by 2050? Finally, why a Marxist would oppose democratic family planning diven by empowerment of women? Have you not noticed that much of human population growth happens in countries were women are especilly oppressed. The demographic transition you are talking about is caused in large measure due to empowerment of women and family planning. What I and many others suggest is that by reducing the population replacement rate through democratic decisions by women within a number of generation it is possibe to reduce human population drastically. I rather live in a much smaller humanity well taken care of without undermining the rest of nature than in a heavily populated world with billions in dire need and the web of life in danger of collapse. I hope you would as well.

Kamran Nayeri said...

David Schwartsman contacted me by email that he has technical difficulty posting a further comment. I am posting his comment below. Kamran Nayeri

"Kamran,

I never said I oppose democratic family planning, au contraire that is precisely the way that population growth can slow down. And yes the present global population of 7.7 billion is indeed detrimental to ecosystems because of the prevailing physical and political economies, i.e., fossil fuel being the dominant energy source, industrial/GMO/biofuel agriculture and capitalism being the dominant politics economy. The UN projections do not capture in our view the bifurcation we face, either climate catastrophe or its prevention. The former would likely cause the global population to crash, the later would be the opportunity to stabilize as I noted in my last comment. I think that there is another choice besides those you pose at the end of your comment, which we discuss at length in our book, namely the other world that is still possible, a demilitarized world with a global energy infrastructure of wind/solar (photovoltaic and CSP), with agroecologies having replaced industrial/GMO/biofuels. We argue this alternative global physical and political economy, ecosocialism, is necessary for the optimal relations between a human population of 9 billion and biodiversity.


Be well, stay well,

Hugs from more than 6 feet,

David

NTROPEE said...

The notion of "empowering women" as a magic bullet for reducing population strikes me as fairly simplistic. It may reduce the number of children women choose to have, but education and social empowerment is usually accompanied with a rise of income and living standards as women enter the middle class. Then they have fewer children, but the ones they do have consume resources at an unsustainable middle class level. So you have traded more poor & oppressed women & children with small ecological footprints for more affluent families gobbling up unsustainable resources like middle classes all over the industrial world are wont to do. This will clearly improve the lives of these more affluent families, but it doesn't do much good for the planet.

Kamran Nayeri said...

In the future, please identify yourself when posting a comment. That is the policy for OPITW. Thank you.

Of course, I agree with you that empowering women and democratic family planning by themselves are not enough. Not only the size of human population, but also its distribution and and per capita consumption and what is consumed and how they are produced matter.

The rule of thumb is that to save the world we must love the world. That is why human civizations have been in a permanent state of crisis--alienation from nature and social alienation are at their base. Without them, class socities in which the working masses are explited to extract wealth from nature to generate wealth the ruling classes could not exist.

This post just "a note." If youwish more details, please read some of my longer essays. For example, The Crisis of Civilization and How to Overcome It: An Introduction to Ecocentric Socialism (October 2018). https://knayeri.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-civilization-crisis-and-how-to.html

Thank you.

Brian Tokar said...

I really appreciate the perspective here, but I feel you're reading things into the ‘Humans’ film that just aren’t there. If it had a serious critique of capitalism and didn’t just use the word as an epithet to tar various environmentalists, it might actually be useful. I find far more critical discussions of capitalism in various local and regional 350 affiliates (notwithstanding Bill McKibben's excessive caution around this question) than anything actually stated in the film. Its outlook is entirely Malthusian and reactionary, in my opinion. For more, see my commentary at http://greensocialthought.org/content/humans-are-not-problem-reflections-useless-documentary.

Kamran Nayeri said...

Dear Brian:

Than you very much for your comment and the link to your review of the film. I read it and we obviously take a different approach to the film. Like Fox, you focus on the technical shortcomings of the film and view it as a worthless contribution to the discussion in the climate justice movement, even worse, an attack on it. I admit to its technical flaws. But I also think the film is raising important criticism of the movement and its leading organizaiton and its leader for having come into a cozy relationship with Green Capitalism.

As you probably know, I have long argued against a technological interpretation of the fossil fuel use as the cause for the climate crisis. The problem is rooted in our social system, capitalism. It is not secret that the movement and its leading organizaitons are NOT anti-capitalst. In fact, they work on the premise that it is entirely possible to use the capitalist market and the capitalist state to transition off fossile fuels. The film criticize this not by offering a good definition of capitalism, Moore and Gibbs probably have none. But to point out two facts regularly ignored in the movement. First our existential crisis is not limited to climate change but includes others like the Sixth Extinction. Second, they use the well-know Natural Limits to Growth to argue that we must chart a course away from capitalism's grow forever paradigm fueld by the profit motive.

I submit that there have been groups here and there who argued this point of view (I did when I was in 350.org). But it has never ever become a mass discussion in the movement. It has become one NOW THANKS TO MOORE AND GIBBS film.

I hope it is clear to you now why it is important to focus on this message of the film no matter how imperfectly it is delivered than its old technical details.

NTROPEE said...

I tend to agree with Kamran on most counts here. However, I think he leaves out an important weakness of the film. My review is a lot shorter. But I try to make a point that is left out of this review.

See: https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-05-01/the-bizarre-blindspot-in-planet-of-the-humans/

dbayer49 said...

I think the problem goes beyond capitalism and beyond communism. We are a flawed species and have met our limits. This has nothing to do with good or evil. It's our nature, and as I watched Micheal's movie (admittedly stoned) I felt as much love and sorrow for us humans as I did for the orangutang. I know this is not helpful, but we are totally fucked.

Kamran Nayeri said...

In this thread, David Schwartsman and I discussed the question of population growth and whether and how it may have had contributed to the Six Extinction, an existential threat. David and I rfollwoed this dicussion in private emails and eached an understanding. I like to invite the reader to a section of the E.O.Wilson's Hallf-Earth: Our Planets' Fight for Life (2016) that I published as a post entitled "The Sixth Extinction: Life and Death in the Biosphere." Please read this post as it offers detailed information about how human population growth has been contributing to the Sixth Extinction. Here is the link to the post: http://forhumanliberation.blogspot.com/2016/12/2525-eowilson-sixth-extinction-life-and.html

Thank you.

David Schwartzman said...

Regarding E.O. Wilson's support for putting a large fraction of the Earth's surface in protected status to preserve biodiversity, I suggest you check out the following article which has a different analysis:

https://foodfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Backgrounder_WINTER-2019_Final-Final.pdf
Biodiversity and Agriculture: Nature’s Matrix and the Future of Conservation

I know Ivette Perfecto and John Vandermeer, both have done extensive research in the field on this issue, and are leaders in the agroecology field.

Unknown said...

Kamran,

Thank you for sharing your incisive review of Planet of the Humans…I saw it and am in total agreement. Unfortunately, the leadership of the climate justice movement may have been well intention but fail to comprehend the full scale of the systemic cause of climate change---they appear to have reified social behavior consistent with capitalism---which made the movement seamlessly susceptible to being hijacked by those who are responsible for the problem. I also agree with your comments about population control but would mention that the process of the democratic “empowerment of women through family planning” assumes first the non-alienated future human person.

Regards and Stay Safe, Tony