From: Damien Sullivan (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: Fri May 16 2003 - 14:35:39 MDT
On Fri, May 16, 2003 at 05:22:56AM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
> > decriminalization going on, yay. But most elected politicians called
> > "liberal" wouldn't say they were for legalization.
>
> If you say so; here in the Bay Area, it's too hard to tell! ;-)
> But even so, isn't it still true that there is a strong correlation
> between being conservative and being in favor of drug laws?
Hard to tell, most public figures are in favor of the drug laws. There are
conservative exceptions: Willian Buckley, George Schulz, maybe John
McLaughlin. And if you believe conservative, well, constitutionalist
rhetoric, Congress has no Constitutional authority to ban drug use. *shrug*
> > for that matter, for whatever that might be worth. I really do think
> > 'liberal' and 'left' can be usefully disassociated, even before we properly
> > break things up onto multiple axes (is socialist-left the same as Green-left?
> when I was in junior high school, I supposed that leftists were to
> the left of liberals, and rightists to the right of conservatives.
More than one axis, remember?
> I am also pretty certain, however, that there is a huge correlation
> between "socialist-left" and "green-left", even though (especially
Somewhat, yeah. I'm a bit influenced by Ken MacLeod's novels, where
free-market communists (don't ask) are the good guys, Greens are gray like
most everyone else, and animal-rights activists get less sympathy than the
AIs, who get genocided repeatedly. On Usenet MacLeod has emphasized the
humanist core of socialism, the ideas of technology and progress to serve
humans.
Of course the fiction of MacLeod and Banks isn't very weapon-averse; they may
be exceptional.
> > The root of environmentalism isn't about preventing change, although I'm
> > sure that's around too now, but about preventing damage. Or conserving
> > ecological capital, in economic terms.
>
> I'm either not following you or I disagree. As for preventing
The historical roots of environmentalism are about not poisoning our ecosystem
and about not making valuable or interesting species extinct. About
preventing damage. Think _Silent Spring_. Yes, there's a Gaia-worshipping
strand around these days too, and it can be vocal, but it's a mistake to focus
too much on it. For me environmentalism is about whether I can see mountains
which are six miles away. (In Pasadena you often can't, due to smog.) Clean
air, clean water. Not fouling our cage like rats.
> change, I've known nature lovers who would hate a desert area
> to become forested "because all the desert life would die",
> (showing that the increase in total life didn't appeal that
> much to them).
Desert life has appeal of its own. There're value in diversity, in avoiding
monocultures. Deserts are rarely dead, although some may be.
> What is "ecological capital", in economic terms?
The economic services provided by nature, like oxygen, or regulating floods.
Or the cost of replacing those services with technology.
> Sure---you can characterize it in terms of "damage" --- but then
And how would you characterize acid rain, or loss of life due to smog, or
having to avoid eating too much otherwise-healthy fish because of mercury
buildup, or loss of life or having to be more careful outside because of ozone
layer damage and increse in skin cancer?
-xx- Damien X-)
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