Ecology: our perspectives and work

Submitted by webadmin on 9 September, 2024 - https://www.workersliberty.org/



The AWL affirms the following points based upon sections of our 2019-20, 2013, and 2008 conference documents as policies for our intervention in the labour movement and in environment-activist groups, and the following summary of new policy on geoengineering. We note that discussions will continue on transformation of land-use and agriculture, growth and limits, and other issues.

The working class is the agent with the capability and interest in transforming society: through immediate reforms as well as in the battle for democratic, rational control of the economy and society as a whole.

We have no confidence in the capitalist class, or their states, to stop climate change. Powerful sections of the capitalist class will fight to stop a green transition. But significant reforms, including environmental reforms, can be and have been won under capitalism. These can limit the speed of climate change, reducing harm and buying us time.

Beyond global warming, there are several major independent environmental threats.

All major industries should be socialised - taken into public ownership, under democratic control of workers - to facilitate transition. Expropriating the banks, and the wealth of the rich, would make available resources to fund rapid transition and adaptation.

In the first place, socialisation of and investment in energy production and transport.

We demand an immediate ban on fracking, tar sands, other “extreme energy”, and any new fossil power plants. We advocate the least polluting - which to first approximation means fastest - possible phasing out of all fossil-fuelled power stations, heating, and transport.

Renewable energy production should be expanded. An integrated and coordinated electricity system using “smart grid” technology would maximise efficiency and reliability.

The urgency of the need to replace fossil-fuel electricity generation makes blanket opposition to nuclear power wrong. The development of solar, wind, tidal, etc. power is an urgent necessity; and so is the redesign of cities and buildings and transport to reduce energy use; but the scale of the task of replacing fossil fuels demands that governments pursue all these changes simultaneously.

Nuclear power will be an essential part of any concerted social effort to control carbon emissions and global warming, at least in the next few decades.

We advocate and fight for a comprehensive programme of measures to redesign living spaces, industry, transport, etc to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions while protecting and improving living standards. This includes fighting for a shorter working week and longer holidays.

In the energy sector, as in others, we champion a transition organised on the basis of worker planning, and in particular the retraining of workers from polluting or obsolete roles into socially-useful jobs.

Workers' control of production! Workers' plans are central to reducing carbon emission at work. Workers' control is necessary to deal with the shift from wasteful, high-emission or polluting production to alternative jobs. Workers' control is essential for protecting the interests of workers in jobs in existing, often ecologically damaging, forms of production. We fight for the labour movement in the industries affected to discuss and develop ecologically friendly alternatives to existing jobs.

Beyond these sectors, widespread workplace environmental action is important for a society-wide transition, for sparking and spreading class struggle, and for stoking working-class environmentalism on the political front of the class war.

We advocate public programmes of insulation, electrification of cooking, and electrified large-scale heating systems.

We support a moratorium on airport expansion, advocating an expansion of high-speed, affordable, electrified and efficient rail, and policies to radically reduce flights. We support increased taxation on flights and phasing-out of short-haul flights where there are less-polluting alternatives, with flights rationed on the basis of need.

We seek an expansion of local free or low-cost good-quality electrical and efficient public transport, and policies to support cycling and walking.

We support crop rotation and scientific methods to enable more sustainable and environmentally friendly agriculture.

Animal-based food production is more energy- and land-intensive and so has a higher environmental impact (in particular a much higher level of carbon emissions) than directly plant-based food production. A societal shift away from animal-based food to more plant-based food is an essential part of a programme to sharply reduce carbon emissions and would also free up substantial land for carbon sequestration through tree-planting. There already exists a widely-consumed range of substitute foods (relatively protein-rich, plant- and fungus-based food alternatives to meat, dairy products, etc.). We advocate promotion and subsidy of such substitute foods to help reduce consumption and production of animal-based foods in the immediate term, as well as seriously funded further research and development into substitute foods to facilitate a society-wide transition. Genetic engineering is in itself not problematic, and genetic engineering of low-emissions substitute foods is positive.

We demand huge public investment in an ambitious programme of ecological restoration - and mass tree planting - to increase biodiversity and natural carbon sequestration.

We advocate a huge redistribution of wealth from the richest to the poorest countries. Wealth from the global north can help societies in the global south develop to support a high quality of life on a low-emissions, environmentally-friendly basis.

Geoengineering is not a substitute for sharp emissions reductions. Some of the geoengineering technologies might have major downsides and risks. But they may prove necessary to confront a world we never wished for.

The present stage is mostly about research, experiments and testing. On balance, it makes sense to support authorised, publicly-funded research. We raise the questions of governance of geoengineering, pushing for democratic safeguards, scrutiny and accountability, including by the labour movement.

We work to build struggles around workplace environmental demands, including on campuses.
We want to work with the radical environmental movement as a whole and win it to our perspectives. But we want to move the focus of that movement from direct action by small, self-sacrificing groups to mass action.

We see environmental activism as a crucial part of our work.

WORKERS LIBERTY

 

Supported youth become supportive adults, researchers find

UC Davis study of Mexican-origin families looks at origins of kindness

University of California - Davis

Adolescents who had emotional support from friends and relatives, and who were biologically prepared to respond well to others, were more likely to exhibit prosocial behavior and empathy for others as they entered young adulthood, compared to adolescents without that kind of backing. The findings came from a recent University of California, Davis, study of Mexican-origin teens living in the United States. 

The study is part of a continuing assessment of multiple generations of Mexican-origin families living in the United States called the California Families Project. This was the first of these studies to look at how the adolescents’ physiology and relationships worked together to support positive development across the teen years, researchers said. 

“We give a lot of attention to adolescents’ problems, and of course that’s important, but we also need to learn more about what helps youths to thrive and live better lives as kind and caring adults,” said Paul Hastings, professor of psychology and the lead author of the paper. 

Hastings said the research is important when one considers that in California more than half of children and adolescents identify as Latino or Latinx, and the majority of these families identify Mexico as their country of origin. The people studied were living in Northern California at the time.

The study found that family support predicted the youths’ helpful and compassionate actions toward people they were close to, whereas youths who had good friend support systems became more engaged in volunteer work and other helpful community actions by 19 years of age. In addition, adolescents with physiology that prepared them to be sensitive to others were more likely to be empathic, helpful and kind.

The study was published in Developmental Psychology, a journal of the American Psychological Association, in August. 

Researchers looked at 229 Mexican-origin adolescents from fifth grade onward (ages 10 through 19), with data collected from 2006 through 2016. They assessed adolescents’ electrocardiography (heart rate activity), their socialization in relationships with family and friends, and multiple aspects of their prosocial tendencies, including empathy, helpfulness, kindness and civic engagement with their communities. 

The study was performed by researchers conducting individual assessments using questionnaires, behavioral tasks, and physiological monitoring of the youths’ ability to manage their physiological arousal. Youths reported on social support they received from family and friends in surveys between ages 10 to 16. They then had their baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia, or RSA, measured at 17. Empathy and prosocial behavior were assessed at ages 17 and 19.

“The unique benefit of having supportive friendships was evident for emerging adults’ engagement in broader community-oriented prosocial behaviors,” researchers wrote.

“This finding suggests that feeling secure and connected may be particularly important for youths to be prepared to engage with the broader community,” Hastings said. 

Additional authors of the paper include Jonas Miller, University of Connecticut; Davis G. Weissman, California State University Dominguez Hills; Gustavo Carlo, UC Irvine; and from UC Davis, Richard W. Robins (psychology), Amanda E. Guyer (human ecology), and Ryan T. Hodge (human development).

The research was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

 

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Journal

Developmental Psychology

DOI

10.1037/dev0001780 

Method of Research

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Parasympathetic Regulation and Support From Family and Friends Predict Prosocial Development in U.Sl Mexican-Origin Adolescents

KURDISTAN

Kalkan: Destroying nature is the origin of every form of oppression and exploitation

Duran Kalkan called for participation in the 32nd Kurdish Culture Festival to be held in Frankfurt.


ANF
BEHDINAN
Sunday, 8 September 2024

Duran Kalkan, member of the KCK Executive Council, talked about the importance of 1 September, the ecocide carried out by Turkey, and the festival in Frankfurt,

On 1 September, Peace World Day, millions of people around the world took to the streets to demand an end to the war. Most people are talking about the genocidal war in Gaza or the war in Ukraine, but the war here in Kurdistan is also in the spotlight. What would you like to say to the people who are campaigning for peace on the streets?

1 September was actually a day of war. They called it ‘International Day of Peace’, but on 1 September 1939, Hitler’s fascism crossed the border and attacked Poland. That’s how the so-called World War II started. That is to say, the catastrophic war that lasted 6 years and killed more than 50 million people started with Hitler’s attack on 1 September 1939. In order to reverse this, socialist, progressive, democratic circles declared a day of peace.

Again today, there are calls for peace, but as you mentioned, there is a war. And it has been going on for years, decades. There is no end to it in sight. How can we talk about peace in such a war environment? Only if you fight a big war for peace can it have a meaning. Otherwise, no one will give up the war by saying, “I want peace; peace is good; everyone should give up the war.” War will not end like this. However, those who oppose the war, those who want peace, must wage a struggle for freedom and democracy against this war so that there can be peace. Peace can only come with democracy and freedom.

Can there be peace where there is no freedom and democracy? Of course not. So it is necessary to win freedom and democracy and to fight for them. This is the biggest war for peace. In today’s situation, we should not talk about peace but about the war for peace. It is obvious that the greatest pioneer, leader, representative, and solution force of the war for freedom and democracy is Rêber Apo. Those who want to do so must see this leadership. They must unite with his struggle. Especially in Turkey, this should be the case. Turkey is in dire need of peace. The anti-Kurdish mentality and system, most recently the AKP-MHP fascism, has turned Turkey into the most unrestrained, unethical, and unlawful country in the Kurdish war. In order to put a stop to this, it is, of course, necessary to impose peace in Turkey. And how can this be done? We need to impose freedom and democracy. There can be no peace without Kurdish freedom, without the democratization of Turkey. These are intertwined like fingernails and toenails. In order to win peace, we need to mobilize for the war for freedom and democracy, for the antifascist war.

All peace lovers should be involved in such a great antifascist resistance and struggle; they should develop an antifascist resistance front or unity and alliance and develop a great struggle for freedom and democracy that aims to overthrow AKP-MHP fascism. In particular, Turkey needs this more than bread and water. The power to realize this is the Kurds. They struggle with everything they have for freedom and democracy. They do not only want freedom for Kurds; they want democracy for Turkey, the Middle East, and the world. This means the struggle for peace. The pioneer of this is Rêber Apo. Turkey’s freedom and democracy forces, women, and youth movements must unite more strongly in this struggle. Everyone who says they are anti-fascist should recognize this reality, unite with these forces, grow and develop the anti-fascist movement, and try to save Turkey from this AKP-MHP disaster.

It is interesting that some people still keep saying, “There will be war.” For example, Tayyip Erdoğan said, “World War III may happen in the future; we need to prepare for it.” But the Third World War is already a reality. War has been happening for decades. How can people not see this? How did the First World War end? It ended with the October Revolution. The Second World War developed in an environment that was different. But it was the October Revolution and the Soviet Union that brought the capitalist modernity system out of its internal contradictions, conflicts, and wars in order to redivide the world and exploit it more. Then the Soviet Union collapsed, and the war started again. We call it the Third World War. This is how Rêber Apo evaluated it. In 1990, there was the Gulf Crisis and the war, which has been going on ever since.

If people are not involved in war, if they do not experience it, they do not understand it. When there is a different situation sometimes, they fall into the situation of evaluating it according to themselves. We need to get rid of this. Some say “preparations are still being made.” Some say it started with Ukraine. It is not like that. There has been World War III for 35 years, since the beginning of 1990. It has been going on all over the Middle East. Those who are curious should open the books of the history of war; wherever World War I took place, they will see that World War III is now also going on there. From Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, and Syria to all the Ottoman lands, all of them are at war again. What is called World War III is actually a search to bring World War I, which ended differently with the October Revolution, to a new conclusion, taking into account the 100 years of development after the collapse of the system created by the October Revolution.

At that time, the searches of those who started the war did not come to a conclusion because of the October Revolution. Neither the aims of the German-Ottoman front nor those of the Anglo-French front and their alliances came to any conclusion. Because an alternative was born in Russia. They were afraid of it and had to make different compromises among themselves to prevent it. Also, the Turkish Republic was born in this environment, and this is how the Treaty of Lausanne was formed. They think that they fought very well, celebrated, and won victories. There is no such thing. They made good use of the conjunction. They evaluated the politics well. The Kemalist movement also showed some resistance. It achieved this result under those conditions. But the conditions of 1923 will never happen again. Tayyip Erdoğan is focused on this time period. He is reading Abdulhamid and is trying to see if something like that will happen again. He wants to become a second Abdulhamid or a second Mustafa Kemal, but in vain.

The war in other areas, the war in Ukraine, is the spread of war to the Black Sea. World War I had already spread. Pacific tensions and conflicts are linked to these. There are those who analyze this war who say that World War II ended with the use of the atomic bomb. They say that the next World War will only happen if the atomic bomb is used. But nuclear bombs are already being used everywhere at the tactical level. They just need to look at what is going on in Zap.

This is how this war is going. This is what happens in Gaza. They are sacrificing the Palestinian people here. Now they say this war will spread to Lebanon and Syria. Every place that was a center of war in World War I is today again a center of war in the Middle East. And this is gradually moving towards Turkey. It is eventually going to focus on Turkey. Some people in Turkey saw this; they understand it. They are aware of this. To prevent this, they are trying to provoke an Israeli-Iranian war. They already started an Israeli war with Hamas, and now they are trying to provoke a Hezbollah-Israel war. They are trying with all their might to prevent the war from approaching Turkey, but in vain. They will not be able to do so. Let’s make this clear. This war will come; Turkey is going to be a center of war. The only thing that will save Turkey from this situation is democratization on the basis of Kurdish freedom and creating democratic unity with the peoples of the region, organizing a democracy front, a peace front against this war by forming the democratic Middle East confederalism. This is the only way for Turkey to survive. No one can get out of this war in any other way. Like Tayyip Erdoğan, by expanding into Syria and Iraq, one can plunge into war. Those waging this war are actually using Tayyip Erdoğan as an agent. Eventually, it will be Turkey’s turn.

As I mentioned earlier, it was Rêber Apo who foresaw this. He evaluated how much damage this would cause for the peoples. He tried to prevent it, developed alternative ideas, developed political projects, and put forward the will for a solution. But he was prevented and is being prevented. The international conspiracy attack is an attack to prevent exactly this. The fact that no news has been received from Rêber Apo for 42 months is actually to make this politics work. That is why they are preventing even a word of Rêber Apo from coming out in order to prevent the development that will prevent this catastrophe. Everyone should be aware of this. You cannot just say we want peace. This is serious. Everyone should come to their senses. Let’s understand capitalism correctly. Let’s understand the internal relations of the capitalist modernity system correctly. Let’s open, read, and analyze the first World War. 100 years of developments… I mean, what is Turkey’s place to stand up to Israel and launch a new energy route project against Israel? The most extreme point of capital is Israel. The US, the UK, they are all behind it.

In this respect, the current situation requires a more accurate understanding. In the reality of this World War, we should not be confused like this. Everyone should stop saying, “There will be preparations; it will come later, this and that.” The danger is great. We are fighting to prevent the danger from having more serious consequences and, if possible, to achieve peace and democracy. Everyone should understand this. Those who really want this should give strength and support to this. This is our promise, our call, our invitation.

While the genocidal war is being waged by the fascist Turkish state, nature continues to be targeted and exploited. It is something that is often overlooked or perceived as a separate problem, even though there is resistance in some places. What can you tell us about this?

The exploitation of man and the exploitation of nature are forms of oppression that go hand in hand. Fascist terror, the oppression and exploitation of the male-dominated mentality and system on women, means attacks and exploitation against nature. On the other hand, this means that ensuring the free coexistence of society, democratic self-administration, and the freedom of women is the basis for living peacefully in harmony with nature. Destroying nature is the origin of every form of oppression and exploitation: fascist dictatorship, the male-dominated system, and aggression to the maximum. This is how it should be handled. So, just as we want women’s freedom, we want the freedom of society, we want democracy – and this can only be realized through a correct approach to nature. Accordingly, we need to mobilize against the attacks that destroy, plunder, burn, and destroy our atmosphere and nature. They are building hydroelectric power plants; they are mining; they have made the country uninhabitable; society has become unable to produce; it is being poisoned. How can we live without air, without opportunities for economic production, without soil, environment, and greenery? These are being destroyed for the maximum profit of some people. This must not be allowed to happen. Everyone must resist this. We need to become more conscious. Social ecology movements, consciousness, organization, and action must develop more.

We attach great importance to every stance and struggle on this basis. All our people, all the peasants, all the villagers, all the kocers, wherever they are, must protect their own lands, their own assets as they protect their own lands. It is absolutely necessary not to allow this fascist, colonialist, genocidal system to plunder nature.

We salute all the struggles carried out on this basis. Everyone who calls themselves free and democratic should support and participate. This struggle still remains weak. In most places the struggle takes place quite isolated, but particularly the villagers are carrying out a very valuable and meaningful resistance. They need more solidarity and support. Everyone who considers themselves libertarian, democratic socialist, and democratic should protect these places more than anything else. Priority should be here.

Social freedom on the basis of women’s freedom and protecting nature are intertwined. In this respect, it is necessary to overcome the current weak approaches, to make the ecological struggle more organized and effective in every field, and to wage the war against fascism much more effectively from this front.

Our call is directed towards all women, all our people, all the peoples of Turkey. Because AKP-MHP fascism is not only anti-human, anti-people, anti-women, and anti-Kurdish, but it is also an enemy of nature, an enemy of forests, and an enemy of land. This animosity must be stopped.

Finally, I would like to talk about the Kurdish Cultural Festival in Frankfurt, which is also coming up in the near future. What do you have to say about it?

We can define the importance of the 32nd Kurdish Culture Festival in Frankfurt in terms of timing. We are approaching the end of the first year of our global campaign for the physical freedom of Rêber Apo. It is an action that takes place at a time when the anniversary is approaching, which gives it more meaning.

The cultural festival has become an important tradition within the last decades. Through the festival, the Kurds always asserted their existence, presented themselves to the peoples of Europe, and spread their culture. They expressed their democratic demands. But this year’s festival is also an action that marks the first anniversary of our global freedom campaign. It is necessary to organize accordingly. We have to work harder; we have to attach more importance to it. Our people and our friends in Europe should definitely define it in this way, and they should embrace and mobilize accordingly.

They must make our global freedom campaign reach a new peak. The biggest duty and responsibility in this falls on the youth. Of course. The youth are already in constant action for the physical freedom of Rêber Apo. They are starting a long march before the festival, and they are preparing the festival as well as the environment for it. They are leading the way.

This is important and, of course, meaningful. All young people, Kurdish youth and international youth, all our young friends, and young comrades should see the meaning and importance of this and accordingly make their marches the most spectacular, with the widest participation, with the most concrete demands, and not only that, that is, they should participate most actively in the preparatory work for the festival at the leading level.

I am calling for participation in the festival, and I celebrate it. I especially call on the Kurdish youth and the international youth to mobilize for such a festival to be the most spectacular.

“Post Growth”—Why and How?

By Michael Albert

September 5, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.


People against destroying our planetary home often favor “No Growth”—“steady as she goes”—or even the rhetorically catchier “DeGrowth”—“shrink baby shrink.” Their pro-growth opponents sometimes say, “grow baby grow,” or more pointedly, “drill baby drill.” But if you asked me, “where do you stand vis a vis growth? Give yourself a really short label that includes the word growth.” I would reply, “I favor what I think most degrowthers and no-growthers also favor and what many pro-growthers oppose. That is, I am for “post-growth” or, to clarify, I am for good growth and against bad growth.

To focus on growth per se orients us to care most about the size of a pile of products. But to focus on pile size misdirects eyes away from full consequences. We may tend to ignore what each product may be. We may tend to ignore how the pile arrives. We may tend to ignore where the pile goes.

Many growth advocates like that effect. They want growth per se center stage. They want eyes off well-being much less impoverishment, alienation, subordination, and planetary impact. Some then say “ignore consequences. Go for growth. Growth is good.”

Degrowthers and no-growthers instead care what’s in the pile. They care about how it got created and where it winds up. They want eyes on well-being, impoverishment, alienation, subordination, and planetary impact. Consequences matter. But in that case, why do degrowthers and no-growthers opt for a label that suggests our eyes should see mainly pile size?

“Post growth” as an alternative label would instead suggest that growth per se is not the point. Post growth would not imply that growth per se guarantees net benefit or imposes net damage. Post growth would say highlight the consequences of production, consumption, and allocation that enhance human fulfillment and development and decry the consequences of production, consumption, and allocation that reduce human fulfillment and development. Likewise, reject what violates ecological sustainability. Welcome what enhances ecological sustainability. So should we all say “post growth” to avoid making growth per se the issue? Or how about if we say “we favor good growth and we oppose bad growth?”

Many analysts incorrectly treat growth as homogenous. Some then wrongly deduce that growth is good. Growth is essential. Don’t question growth. Welcome growth. But their entreaty is demonstrably, wrong—or worse, maliciously deceptive. Some other analysts also treat growth as homogenous but then wrongly deduce that growth is bad. Growth harms. Reject growth. Their entreaty is also demonstrably wrong.

Growth is not always good. Growth is not always bad. Growth is not essential for sensible economy. Growth need not destroy sensible economy. To perceive a zero sum face-off, “grow or don’t grow,” can derive from willful obfuscation but also from correctable confusion.

Growth of any kind surely requires an increase in something over some period of time. Height, weight, income, wealth, distance, whatever. But what is the thing whose increase from one year to the next ought to constitute year on year economic growth? This is harder to agree on.

Some say or at least imply that economic growth should register more weight or perhaps more items this year than last year. But with that definition, there will be more growth next year if we switch some effort from tending the sick or educating the young to producing more gas guzzling suvs, or even piling up unused cement. To drop more bombs that generate more corpses and headstones would contribute to growth. To reduce bombs, corpses, and headstones would diminish growth. If we define growth by pile size, even disgusting choices could augment growth. Spit poison. Clean it up. More growth than if we did neither. So we can define growth as pile size, but should we? Is to define growth as pile size useful or obfuscatory?

What if we take society’s total productive output and measure it by worth per worker, and then do so again, and so on, to see if it is more per year with each new year? With this definition, only more worth of output per worker would constitute growth. Since we can define things however we choose, should we define “growth” this way?

We should want our concepts, the things we keep track of with a label, to be things that we care about and we want to pay attention to. Assuming we want everyone to eat, sleep, and be merry—and not just those who work—let’s direct our attention to worth per person, not worth per worker. Growth would then mean more worth per person. Worth not volume, is that a good definition?

It depends on what counts as worth. How about benefits of society’s product for people minus costs of the product’s creation for people? The reason to subtract cost is straightforward. If we use five pencils to produce two pencils, our net result is minus three pencils, not plus two pencils. Similarly, if we use fossil fuel, lithium, sunlight, or human work hours to produce household energy whose consumption can increase human well being, then we need to subtract the cost of the production to see if the economy’s yearly productive output has grown. What if we ignore some costs of either production or consumption, or, for that matter, some benefits of either? We would calculate the wrong result. Why would anyone do that? Here are some reasons.

The automobile industry uses energy, human labor, steel, rubber and so on to produce vehicles. What is its positive output and what should we subtract to determine the net worth of the auto industry’s yearly activity? The positive output is presumably the vehicles. What is the cost to subtract? We used up steel, rubber, human labor, etc. But we also generated some other productive output than just the vehicles, for example pollution, smashed souls and severed limbs of workers, and reinforced class divisions. For that matter, to further the picture, to use the outputted vehicles provides transport, a good thing, but it also generates traffic deaths and more pollution, decidedly bad things.

It turns out, even in our simple survey, that to highlight net worth of output, we have an advisory. We should count the the beneficial impact of what’s produced, including of how it is produced and of its consumption, but then we should also count the harmful impact of how it is produced and of its consumption including what gets used up or harmed. So far, so good, but a new problem arises. How do we count the worth or cost of anything? Where does such a measure come from?

In our capitalist economy, markets assign prices. If these prices accurately account for all costs and benefits, we can add up the total price of all units of stuff to get the price of the whole pile of stuff, and then take that per capita. Bingo, except—wait a second. Do those prices actually reveal what we mean by worth? Do market prices accurately assess positive impact on workers, consumers, society writ large, and the planet? Do they accurately subtract negative impact on each including what we used up and bad consequences for global warming or for workers’ well being? Via the clash and jangle of market competition, where bargaining power rules, do prices of what goes into producing outputs and prices of outputs themselves and prices of outputs’ consumption effects accurately account for the full personal, social, and ecological consequences of producing and consuming stuff?

We can easily see that they don’t. Think of public transport, health care, parks, safe streets, and education. Think also of missiles flying and bombs exploding. Consider liposuction that thins few and pollution that sickens many. Think of exhausted souls exiting factories at day’s end. Do the changes in workers’ well being on and off the job get counted? Tesla, Amazon, Apple, and Google disperse gigantic profits that gild owners’ mansions of glory. How does that get assessed? What about positive and negative economic implications for future ecology or for future social relations? Do prices account for killing the planet?

My too quickly argued point is that market accounting doesn’t register accurate full personal, social, and ecological consequences of producing and consuming stuff for all those affected or even for anyone affected. Rather it reflects the relative power of those who want this or that as against those who suffer the consequences of this or that.

So why are utterances about the virtues of capitalist growth bogus? It is because market prices don’t actually measure full personal, social, and ecological costs and benefits. They instead measure what buyers and sellers were able to buy and sell things for, which in turn depends overwhelmingly on what people were able to coerce by their bargaining power.

No market mechanism accurately tallies the real personal, social, and ecological effects on workers of doing their jobs to produce what they produce, or on residents near workplaces affected by factory run-off, or on the intended direct consumers, or on those who didn’t buy but who are affected by other consumer’s consuming what they bought, or on those affected by emergent social relations, or those affected by ecological implications. What does get measured reflects who can take what, who can impose what, and also, bearing directly on our discussion of labels, on who decides what consequences are named and counted and what consequences go unnamed and uncounted.

In capitalism, choices of how to produce, how much to produce, and what to consume are made overwhelmingly by necessarily competitive and inexorably profit-seeking owners and by consumers unavoidably saddled by restrictive social situations. All confront horribly inaccurate prices. Markets bend us all out of shape. Bent outcomes emerge.

In our world, economic growth names an increase in something economic from one period to the next. Fair enough. But what is the something that economic growth measures? Who has an interest in measuring that something? Who is mislead by eyes being focussed on only that something?

Consider when British imperial control of India was at its height. Suppose about a billion dollars worth of stuff moved from India to England yearly. Suppose the cost of maintaining the imperial relation between England and India was about two billion dollars yearly. Why might England pursue such a costly policy? Follow the money. Where did the billion that came back to England wind up? Where did the two billion that it cost England come from?

Suppose the billion that went to England from India went to British owners as profits. Suppose the two billion that were spent to maintain the relationship came from British taxpayers. In that case, what grew? The wealth of the owners in England. Who lost? The rest of the population of England, and of course, India, suffering not only extraction but subordination. Now consider the U.S. in the world today. The U.S. has roughly 800 overseas military bases. Imagine the costs. Are there any benefits? Who pays? Who profits? Gross pile size ignores differential consequences.

Consider a more domestic example, the auto industry, mentioned earlier. Broadly speaking, the picture is clear enough. The owners and less-so but still significantly, empowered employees do stupendously or at least fantastically well. Other disempowered employees and the pollution-breathing population, not so much. Take into account ecological effects like global warming and depletion of non replaceable resources. Count the direct and indirect personal effects. Count the effects on social relations inside and outside the auto plants. Count pain, danger, ill health, nervous tension, and hate. We would then see workers with not much that grows other than bodily damage year to year—and we would see owners and to a lesser but not insignificant extent empowered employees whose income and influence grows greatly year to year. We would see differential consequences.

Consider another example, also mentioned earlier, the “suck away the fat cosmetic surgery” industry. Stuffed wallets of the rich bid up the product’s price. Given the incredible inequality of bargaining power among different constituencies, the will of the rich counts far more than that of the poor regarding all aspects of production and consumption including what is done, how it is done, and how it is valued. It turns out that if we judge output by market prices, we get an incredibly bent accounting and very seriously warped outcomes. Many consequences go un-counted. This is capitalist profit-seeking as usual.

So it comes down to this. Suppose we want “growth” to measure something that bears on human well being and development in all its dimensions. Then what should growth measure? What should we care about enough to want keep track of and celebrate its increase?

How about a comparison, from year to year, of the total value per capita of society’s economic activity where value (somehow) takes into account the full consequences of both production and consumption on individuals and groups regarding the well being and development of people, of the environment they live in, and of the social relations that bear on their future options—and where the benefits and costs that people enjoy or suffer count just as much for each person as for each other person?

That is not precisely perfect. None of the above is. It is all too brief to be precisely perfect. Nonetheless, perhaps the proposed definition is good enough to clarify what we ought to mean by growth, and who should want it.

But now comes a worldly wrinkle that often gets overlooked. It is a kind of intellectual con game. Suppose we talk about a society in which the economy properly and equitably accounted for true personal, social, and environmental costs and benefits. In that case, if we define it as above, growth would track the net gain (or loss) of benefits outputted per year per capita. It would tally harmful consequences for equity, self management, ecological balance, and social and personal material well being as negatives. It would tally beneficial consequences of all those types as positives. It would calculate the net result. Positives minus negatives. In that case, if we grew that economy year to year, it would mean that having taken everything into account, we would have generated more net good for people per capita. In that case, if there is also equitable dispersal, we should all favor growth. With that definition and in that type of post capitalist economy, growth would be good. But that is not our world. And to act as if it is our world—that is the con game.

Unlike in an imagined vastly better future world, in our actual capitalist market economy, we have no proper accounting of costs and benefits, nor are they equitably distributed. An increase in production and consumption in our world can yield more negatives than positives, but with the negatives not counted or undercounted, and with the positives over counted and also inequitably allotted. Such growth can be not just bad, but even catastrophically bad. High waters rising. Essential resources disappearing.

For our proposed definition, we can see various ways to maintain or increase desirable growth from time 1 to time 2. We could produce more benefits per capita with no increase in detriments, or we could produce the same amount of benefits per capita, but with less detriments. We could apportion more fairly. But if we are eager for, or quite content with, or even just unaware of or misinformed about negative outcomes, we may accept that to produce more value of what some get even at the expense of producing less that others get and regardless of how much harmful stuff we suffer even unto ecological death could seem to be wonderful and essential growth.

The con game causes people to think that more growth will necessarily mean more good stuff for them despite that it will often instead mean more good stuff for someone else plus more loss or devestation for them. Or it causes people to think that cutting back output will necessarily mean less good stuff for them even though it can mean less bad stuff for them.

It turns out if we think things through, we need to be careful when we talk about growth. Perhaps we should arrive at the observation that we might better call ourselves “post growth” then “no growth” or “degrowth” much less “pro growth.” Perhaps we should pay attention to what actually matters, not to what professors or media minions of power and wealth tell us to pay attention to.

But how do we do that? Ultimately, I happen to think we reject all hierarchies of inequitable influence. We reject private control of productive assets. We reject a class-creating corporate division of labor. We reject competitive market or centrally planned authoritarian allocation. We adopt instead an approach to economy (kinship, polity, and culture) that elevates diverse participation, equity, solidarity, and self management. We adopt classless collectively self managed work and enact classless collectively self managed participatory allocation. We uncover and properly account for ecological impact and entwinement. We abide the ecological precautionary principle.

But even if we all came to agree on all those ultimate steps, still what about the here and now? What about global survival? The long haul should inspire and inform us now, for sure. But how do we prevent current warming turning into to tomorrow’s heating? How do we prevent tomorrow’s heating turning into next year’s boiling? How do we prevent next year’s boiling turning into next decade’s end times? And how ow do we deal, as well, with other less known but also urgent ecological crises?

Some say we can only deal with global climate change or any other ecological crisis by first winning a new world. For them, “Revolution is the only solution.” But that sentiment fails to recognize that escalating current ecological nightmares and foreseeable desirable future social revolution don’t share one timeline. For the former, we don’t have much time to avoid calamity. For the latter, we need considerable time. We better not ignore that we have to win calamity-preventing changes while the whole world is still horribly flawed. We can wish we could attain a post capitalist economy quickly enough that its subsequent operations would organically reverse global warming, but for people who are against destroying our planetary home to treat that wish as reality would unintentionally drown and burn us all in a surging, boiling pool of self-imposed delusion. Winning a new world won’t happen soon enough to reverse global warming before global boiling incinerates us.

We want a new vastly better society. But we also want to survive ecological crises. The order of these accomplishments is not a matter of free choice. To survive to then battle on to win a new world is a possible path. To win a new world to then survive is not a possible path. The new world part would take too long. We would succumb to an endless night before we won a new morning.

On the way to a new world, we must win calamity-preventing reforms in our current world, albeit in a manner that develops informed desire for and prepares means to win much more later.

With capitalism, racism, and sexism still propelling the opposite of our desires, we nonetheless have to win changes that immediately reduce, curtail, and reverse ecological damage. Our practices, demands, and struggles and our self definition should communicate to those not yet immersed in our agenda that we want not growth per se and also not no growth or degrowth per se. We want positive growth, which first requires an end to global warming and attention to other on-coming ecological crises.


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Michael Albert
Michael Albert`s radicalization occurred during the 1960s. His political involvements, starting then and continuing to the present, have ranged from local, regional, and national organizing projects and campaigns to co-founding South End Press, Z Magazine, the Z Media Institute, and ZNet, and to working on all these projects, writing for various publications and publishers, giving public talks, etc. His personal interests, outside the political realm, focus on general science reading (with an emphasis on physics, math, and matters of evolution and cognitive science), computers, mystery and thriller/adventure novels, sea kayaking, and the more sedentary but no less challenging game of GO. Albert is the author of 21 books which include: No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World; Fanfare for the Future; Remembering Tomorrow; Realizing Hope; and Parecon: Life After Capitalism. Michael is currently host of the podcast Revolution Z and is a Friend of ZNetwork.

 

For many animals sleep is a social activity, but it’s usually studied as an individual process

Cell Press

Group sleeping can impact when animals sleep, how long they sleep for, and how deeply they sleep. For example, groups of meerkats time their sleep according to “sleep traditions”; olive baboons sleep less when their group size increases; bumblebees suppress sleep in the presence of offspring; and co-sleeping mice can experience synchronized REM sleep. To fully understand both sleep and animal social structures, we need to pay more attention to the “social side” of sleep, animal behaviorists argue in an opinion paper publishing September 5 in the Cell Press journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution.  

Although many animals sleep in groups, most sleep studies are conducted under laboratory conditions that only consider one animal at a time. These laboratory sleep studies provide high-resolution information on sleep depth and phase, but they are unable to capture the environmental or social contexts in which sleep usually occurs. To understand the interconnections between sleeping and sociality, the researchers say that we need to study groups of sleeping animals in the wild.

“Social sleep is a research frontier that we believe holds exciting potential for new insights into both sleep science and wild animals’ lives,” write the researchers, who include behavioral ecologists Pritish Chakravarty (@prit_chak) and Margaret Crofoot (@MegCrofoot) of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz Germany. “We propose a new framework that leverages simultaneous monitoring of the sleep of members of social groups, combined with time-series and social network analyses, to investigate how the social environment shapes (and is shaped by) sleep.”

To study sleep in the wild, the researchers recommend leveraging technologies such as wearable or implantable accelerometers, which provide information on animal movements with video or direct observations of the animals’ behavior. Pairing this sleep data with measurements of the group’s social networks like dominance hierarchies and kinship relationships, for example, could provide important ecological and evolutionary insights into the impact of sleep on the fitness and survival of both individual and groups of animals, the researchers say.

“It is likely that key aspects of group behavior, including coordination, decision-making, and cooperative potential, will be influenced by the sleep of its members,” they write. “By collecting data on sleep and sociality and applying our proposed tools to analyze social sleep, we can begin unraveling the adaptive functions and evolutionary trade-offs of sleep that may not be revealed by studying individual animals alone.”

###

This research was supported by the Max Planck Society, the Packard Foundation, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the European Union, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation), the Agence Nationale de la Recherche, and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship.

Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Chakravarty et al., “The sociality of sleep in animal groups” https://cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(24)00176-9

Trends in Ecology & Evolution (@Trends_Ecol_Evo), published by Cell Press, is a monthly review journal that contains polished, concise, and readable reviews and opinion pieces in all areas of ecology and evolutionary science. It aims to keep scientists informed of new developments and ideas across the full range of ecology and evolutionary biology—from the pure to the applied, and from molecular to global. Visit http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution. To receive Cell Press media alerts, please contact press@cell.com.

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Journal

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

DOI

10.1016/j.tree.2024.07.011 

Method of Research

Commentary/editorial

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

The sociality of sleep in animal groups

Article Publication Date

5-Sep-2024

 

5 lessons to level up conservation successfully

Imperial College London

 

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Mangrove planting in Zanzibar

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Credit: Matthew Clark/Imperial College London

Conservation needs to scale successfully to protect nature. A new paper takes lessons from around the world to show how that might be done.

To reverse biodiversity loss and meet ambitious global targets, conservation programmes designed to preserve everything from forests to fish need to work ‘at scale’.

Scaling can mean three things. Scaling ‘out’ means expanding a programme to new people and places, while scaling ‘up’ means bringing in higher-level institutions, such as governments introducing policies or incentives that make it easier for individuals and private companies to engage.

Scaling ‘deep’ means changing hearts and minds – what is socially acceptable. A particularly good example of scaling deep is the ‘Don’t Mess with Texas’ campaign in the 1980s, which successfully made littering a social no-no.

But not every attempt to expand pilot programmes in one or more of these directions works. Now, the Catalysing Conservation team led by Dr Morena Mills at Imperial College London researchers have reviewed conservation initiatives around the world with global experts and come up with five lessons to avoid the pitfalls of ineffective expansion.

The study is published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution, and we spoke to two of the authors on the paper, Dr Thomas Pienkowski and Dr Matthew Clark, both from the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial.

Before we dive in, Dr Clark says: “There’s no magic bullet – it’s not a case of ‘do these five things and you will succeed’ – but we hope these lessons will allow reflection on what hasn’t worked, and where we need to go from here.”

Lesson 1: There must be a balance between what is effective and what is scalable

Say you have a pilot programme that works with coastal communities to protect fish and other marine resources, aiming to improve the local ecology and economy. Then lots of neighbouring communities take up the programme. Great! This is scaling out, but has it actually been effective? Did it meet the stated goals of protecting marine life and improving local livelihoods? If the answer is no, it has scaled but it is not effective.

Conversely, something can be effective but not scalable. Dr Clark works with communities to support mangrove conservation, which can involve planting programmes. However, many of the seedlings die young. It’s possible to use specialised tools and know-how to increase survival rates, which makes the planting more effective, but it is an intensive process, and so not very scalable across rural communities.

The team say these trade-offs between what’s scalable and what’s effective must be balanced.

Good example: Community-based forestry management in Nepal has been adopted for more than 20,000 forests since the 1980s and appears to have reduced both poverty and deforestation, showing that some initiatives can be both highly scalable and effective.

Lesson 2: Effectiveness can depend on scale

A pilot project that is successful in one area may not work when moved out to a new area. This is common, say the researchers, and can be for a number of reasons: pilots may be in optimal locations and have lots of oversight and investment that expanded programmes won’t have, for example.

But it can also work the other way. For example, says Dr Clark: “Where the goal is to protect land for wildlife, larger animals that move over larger areas will only benefit once enough land is conserved, and enough patrols are in place to enforce the protection.”

Good example: Cacao agroforestry in Belize became much more effective at scale when a clear market for sustainable cacao emerged and more international companies wanted to promote their use of these products.

Lesson 3: The effects of conservation can change the conditions for further conservation

Sometimes, conservation expansion can backfire even when it’s effective. For example, a 10-year project in Mozambique introduced ‘no-take’ zones for fish and mangrove timber, which increased food security. However, once these areas had regained their value as sources of food and income, conservation support declined, leading to the abandonment of the zones in some areas.

These kinds of feedback loops between environmental change and human behaviour can be negative, as in Mozambique, or positive, where the impact of conservation schemes in one area can lead to neighbouring areas taking them up spontaneously, or where grassroots actions become national policy.

Good example: on the island of Pemba, Zanzibar, protected forest areas initially led to more harvesting on the edges of these zones; but this in turn led to neighbouring communities applying for their own forest protection, spontaneously expanding conversation.

Lesson 4: Pressures to scale can lead to bad practices that undermine long-term outcomes

Ambition is needed to meet ambitious goals, but ambition without care can be harmful. Dr Pienkowski explains one way this can happen: “NGOs [non-governmental organisations] play a really important role in scaling out, providing technical and financial support to local communities. But there can also be blurred boundaries between assistance and coercion.

“This can take the form, for example, of NGOs misleading communities of the benefits they might get from engaging in conservation programmes, or only engaging with people in the community who are most likely to benefit, leaving more vulnerable members behind and widening inequalities.”

For example, the REDD+ scheme is designed to help developing countries manage their forests and improve carbon stocks, but its implementation in parts of Tanzania was marred by promised payments not materialising, leading people to abandon conservation efforts and be suspicious of other schemes.

Larger NGOs are often needed to scale programmes, but this can be at the expense of local knowledge and grassroots organisations. For example, ‘slash and burn’ agriculture is considered bad practice in Europe, so European NGOs may lobby against it, but in communities in Africa it can be well used and an integral part of local ecosystem management.

Good example: Eco-tourism in Costa Rica started locally with support from NGOs, but has now become self-sustaining, meaning it no longer relies on direct aid or other structures that may undermine its long-term success.

Lesson 5: More evidence is needed

Dr Pienkowski explains: “This one is really an appeal from us researchers, who are struggling to develop the evidence base we need to inform more effective scaling strategies. It’s very difficult to know which initiatives have gone to scale or not – this information isn’t collected in a systematic or rigorous way.”

This is particularly true after programmes have ‘ended’ – few NGOs routinely review whether a scheme is still working years after their intervention has ended, or whether it has been abandoned.

Dr Pienkowski concludes: “For those calling for conservation scaling, this is a valuable moment to pause and reflect: with these examples and these lessons, what do we need to change? If we do this, we’re more likely to be able to deliver impact at scale and finally bend the curve on biodiversity loss.”

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Journal

Nature Ecology & Evolution

DOI

10.1038/s41559-024-02507-4 

Article Title

Five lessons for avoiding failure when scaling in conservation

Article Publication Date

6-Sep-2024

SOCIAL ECOLOGY

Re-creations of 1870s railway photos reveal profound change to Kansas, Colorado plains

University of Kansas

 

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A fascinating new book by University of Kansas researcher Town Peterson chronicles transformation on the plains of Kansas and western Colorado using repeat photography — contemporary re-creations of 1870s photos — to reveal startling changes to the landscape.

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Credit: Town Peterson

LAWRENCE — A fascinating new book chronicling transformation on the plains of Kansas and western Colorado uses repeat photography — contemporary re-creations of 1870s photos — to reveal startling changes to the landscape.

Its author isn’t just a photographer and veteran of years of “Kansas-ing” — his term for searching off-the-beaten-path curiosities across the Sunflower State — but also a University Distinguished Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas and senior curator of ornithology at KU’s Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum.  

While Town Peterson usually focuses his research on the geography of biodiversity, tropical ornithology and systematics, distributional ecology and disease-transmission risk mapping, his new book, “One Hundred and Fifty Years of Change on the Great Plains,” is a bit different. 

“I've gotten interested in what you could call ‘historical ecology,’ essentially going deeper in time than what we can sample and study now,” Peterson said. “This historical photograph series from 1873 has become really interesting. First, it’s unique because the photographer was hired to travel the length of the Kansas Pacific railroad and take photos, apparently for promotional purposes. At nearly every major stop along the railroad, Robert Benecke took photographs. By nothing short of a miracle, most or all of these photos survived and ended up in the collections of Southern Methodist University.”

Other repeat-photography projects have re-created the work of 19th century photographers in the region, but none with the landscape locations as precisely described as Benecke’s.

“There's also an older collection from a man named Alexander Gardner, who also traveled the length of the Kansas Pacific railroad, but when it was being surveyed around 1867-69,” Peterson said. “Benecke took his photos in 1873, when the railroad was mostly in place and functioning. The Gardner photographs have been part of a repeat-photography effort about 20 years ago, which was fascinating. But Benecke’s material had never been touched, even though Benecke’s photo locations were better described. Gardner would say things like ‘334 miles west of St. Louis,’ while Benecke would reference specific towns like Brookville or Russell.”

During travel restrictions put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, Peterson found himself unable to conduct his usual international research and education. So he decided to focus on a Kansas-based project and started working with Benecke’s material, distilling it down to landscape photographs that he could find and photograph today.

“It came to around 50 landscape views,” he said. “Over the last couple of years, I traveled back and forth between Kansas City and Denver a few times. Some were painfully hard to relocate, and others, even when you knew where they were, were painfully hard to photograph… brambles, ticks, trees, etc.”

Even when Peterson was able to pinpoint sites of Benecke’s photos, sometimes changes to the landscape made exact re-creation through the camera viewfinder impossible. Indeed, the KU scientist had to make very difficult choices in how to best re-create Benecke’s original images. 

“There were some tough decisions involved,” Peterson said. “Do I take a picture of an ugly cement drainage culvert, or do I move a half-mile down the river and photograph the mouth of the same river where it now empties into the Kansas River? Do I take a picture of a dense forest that wasn’t there in the 19th century, or do I use a drone to get a shot of the broader landscape — something closer to what the original photographer might have taken?”

The changes over a century and a half, revealed by comparing Benecke’s and Peterson’s images side by side, are striking. Peterson said that, as an evolutionary biologist, the starkest difference was the presence of so many trees today in places that had none 150 years ago.

“We live in the Great Plains, yet if you look out pretty much any window here in Lawrence, it doesn't look like plains — it looks like a forest,” he said. “I've been here for 30 years, and it has always pretty much looked like this. So, I got interested in how long-term that view is. I've come to appreciate how our Great Plains is very different from the Great Plains that was settled 150 years ago by Europeans, much less farther back still. You get west of Manhattan, and there’s pretty much not a single tree in any of Benecke’s photographs. Now, there are trees all the way to Denver, at least in the towns and cities.”

Peterson said this “afforestation” — the opposite of deforestation — is a pervasive force across the Great Plains. Indeed, the KU researcher is carrying out studies to explore the phenomenon more.

“That, to me, was the biggest lesson on the science side,” he said. “I’m involved in studies where we’re exploring how much the biodiversity has changed at sites along this route. We’re seeing how dozens of species have taken advantage of the now-forested landscape to expand their ranges westward into the Great Plains.”

Some hallmarks of the 19th century American West are notably absent from Benecke’s photos, such as American bison or signs of Native American life and culture. Peterson thinks these omissions spring from the promotional purposes of the Benecke photos, which were in part intended to sell railroad-owned land at a massive profit.

“It was all about getting settlers of European descent from the East to come out and settle on this landscape,” he said. “If they could sell the land deeded to the railroad by the U.S. government, it was pure profit. Life in western Kansas wasn’t at all easy, but the settlers didn’t need to know that until they had already paid their money.”

“One Hundred and Fifty Years of Change on the Great Plains” is a book that is intended to be accessed freely and openly. It is available as an e-book via KU ScholarWorks. A hardcover version is available for purchase at the cost of printing and shipping.