Creating an Ecological Society. Chris Williams
like? Is such a thing even possible? If so, what would the basic organizational, economic, and ethical principles underlying such a society consist of? What are the forms of resistance, practices, and approaches needed to replace capitalism and start anew?
In attempting to answer these questions, we have divided Creating an Ecological Society into four parts:
Part One: Why an Alternative Is Essential (chapters 1–4) outlines where we are today, the severe social and ecological problems facing humanity, the systemic cause of the crises, and the ecological and social consequences. We examine capitalism’s role in creating and exacerbating these crises and their effects.
Part Two: Is an Ecological Society Possible? (chapters 5–7) surveys and evaluates supposed obstacles that are commonly said to prevent changing our economic system to an entirely new one—that our relationship to nature has to be one of domination, our inherent human nature prohibits transformation to a different socioeconomic system, and that the supposedly innate differences among groups of people of different ethnicities, races, classes, nationalities, or genders make an equitable society impossible.
Part Three: Learning from Nature (chapters 8–10) discusses basic ecological concepts, the characteristics of relatively stable and resilient ecosystems and how some aspects of these might apply to human society, and proposes a selection of ecologically sound technical practices for provisioning human needs.
Part Four: Toward a New Society (chapters 11–12) delves into how an ecological society could be organized, how it might operate, and how we might bring such a society into existence. An argument is made for a cohesive alternative system to replace capitalism. One that is democratic and equitable, organized and carried out to fulfill human needs in ways that regenerate and maintain a healthy biosphere. Even though much of our focus is on the country in which we live, what we have written is not meant to apply to a particular country or even region; such a system needs to extend across the globe.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is the result of a true partnership in which each author learned from the other. During the writing process we grappled with differing ideas and approaches, leading us to new ways of thinking about the complex issues we discuss. Chris would like to thank Fred for inviting him to participate in the project and co-author the book with him.
Our personal and intellectual debts to others in relation to this work are too vast to acknowledge in full. Participating and helping to organize demonstrations, protests, rallies, and meetings across so many years, and all the people, comrades, and students we have met across the world has given us the strength, conviction, and energy to keep writing. We would like to thank especially those who read or commented on early drafts and put in many hours to offer us extremely useful and specific critical feedback: Hannah Holleman, Penny Gill, Jan Schultz, Ruth Perry, George Bird, Elise Guyette, Will Fritzmeier, Phil Gasper, James Early, John Foran, and Robert Dockhorn, as well as members of the study group on the growth economy and environmental sustainability at the Southampton Friends Meeting in Pennsylvania, who offered feedback on various chapters and/or the entire manuscript. We would like to thank copy-editor Erin Clermont and especially Martha Cameron and Erika Biddle for the countless hours and numerous ways in which they helped us to improve the manuscript.
We also acknowledge the tremendous support of those at Monthly Review and Monthly Review Press, especially Michael Yates and Martin Paddio. Some of our close friends and colleagues have contributed to our understanding of ecological issues in ways that have influenced this book, especially Brian Tokar and Ian Angus. Most critically, John Bellamy Foster has been a forceful presence in our project, as someone who offered important early insights into the contours of the book and whose work has greatly influenced our thinking.
Chris would like to thank his partner, Hannah Holleman. Without her political acumen, passionate commitment, and steadfast support his contribution to this work would have been much delayed and markedly inferior. Fred would like to acknowledge his father, Harry Magdoff, who so shaped his general political outlook and understanding of social and economic issues. Finally, Fred would like to thank his partner, Amy Demarest, with whom he shares his life and the struggle for a humane and equitable ecological society.
—DECEMBER 11, 2016
BURLINGTON, VERMONT AND AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS
CREATING AN ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY
PART ONE
Why an Alternative Is Essential
The Social and Ecological Planetary Emergency
They claim this mother of ours, the earth, for their own and fence their neighbors away; they deface her with their buildings and their refuse. The nation is like a spring freshet that overruns its banks and destroys all that are in its path.
—SITTING BULL, LEADER OF THE HUNKPAPA LAKOTA SIOUX1
Climate change is a social justice issue. With the climate crisis, as with the economic crisis, governments have prioritized the interests of those who caused the problem, despite the consequences for ordinary people. We are not “all in it together.” An increased understanding of this has led the climate movement to grow in size and to adopt more radical slogans.
—SUZANNE JEFFERY2
ON JUNE 24, 2012, IN THE GALÁPAGOS archipelago, birthplace of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, Lonesome George took his final breath. This giant Pinta Island tortoise, five feet long and over two hundred pounds, was the last surviving member of Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii. Giant tortoises can expect to live well into their second century. At roughly a hundred years old when he died, George was in the prime of his life.
A sad little note scrawled on a blackboard at the Darwin Research Station marked Lonesome George’s death: “We have witnessed extinction. Hopefully we will learn from it.”3 But what can we learn from these giant tortoises? What can we learn from this irrevocable loss? What is the cultural, scientific, and biological significance of these tortoises to humans?
When the Spanish first landed on the islands 600 miles off the coast of modern-day Ecuador in the sixteenth century, giant tortoises numbered around a quarter million. Because they were so abundant, the archipelago was named after the old Spanish word for tortoise, galápago. Three centuries later, in his diary entry of September 15, 1835, Darwin noted what “seemed to my fancy like some antediluvian animals,” which have “of course been greatly reduced.” Darwin went on: “It is said that formerly single vessels have taken away as many as 700,” though giant tortoises were still abundant when he made his visit.4 On October 8, Darwin describes himself and the ship’s crew as living “entirely on tortoise meat” and that “young tortoises make excellent soup,” but he nevertheless found “the meat to my taste is indifferent.”5
Almost inevitably, then, these giant tortoises formed part of Darwin’s earliest musings on natural selection:
When I recollect the fact that [from] the form of the body, shape of scales and general size, the Spaniards can at once pronounce from which island any tortoise may have been brought; when I see these islands in sight of each other and possessed