Barack Obama: Greenwasher Elect
Posted by keith on November 5th, 2008
I’m going to make a prediction, and you can hold me to this: within a year of taking office, Barack Obama will seem like just another President of the United States. I feel sorry for him because — having an instinct for these things — I think he really does want to make change happen, at least in a social context, yet he has but one choice: toe the line or face the consequences.
A few months ago I wrote a highly contentious article called “Obama Or McCain: Who Cares?” which said the following:
Sorry to upset your political sensibilities — if you feel that party politics is a big deal — but it makes no difference at all who becomes president; and here is why.
It has always been the foreign policy of all civilized nations to maximise the amount of resources it can obtain, whether that be fossil fuels, metals, farmland, fish or slaves — like the people who make most of our clothes and consumer goods. Civilization requires natural resources and labor in order to keep it running: failure to secure these is economic and political suicide. The USA is no different: neither Obama nor McCain will change that policy, because one of them will become head of the most powerful civilized nation on Earth. Their raison d’etre will be to ensure the continued success of that nation on the world stage, and so their primary objective will be to secure resources — that’s the way it has always been; that’s why all civilizations have sought to create empires.
Don’t get me wrong, the man in office may want to change, but his head will be on the block from Day One. Should he choose to make sweeping changes to the healthcare system that are detrimental to the income of the pharmaceutical industry, those changes will be watered down or canned via the House or the Senate (whichever has the ear of that industry); should he choose to implement tough new emissions regulations on vehicles (detrimental to the motor and oil industry), those changes will be watered down or canned; should he choose to impose strict rules on employee exploitation, which hurt the bottom line of retailers, those changes will be watered down or canned; should he choose to ban all logging and toxic releases in protected areas, and expand these protected areas, those changes will be watered down or canned.
Should he try and defy the powers that be, he will put himself in serious danger. There is a precedent for this.
Worse still, none of the changes described above will actually make a significant difference to the net impact of civilization upon the lives of people, and the environment which we all depend on: the President operates within a context of continuing to expand Industrial Civilization. The President has no choice but to work with the system. The President will do the bidding of the system because he represents the system, in all its toxic glory.
That is why Barack Obama will become a greenwasher — it’s his job, whether he likes it or not.
November 8th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Hello Mr. Farnish
I am French and owns a science website. I discovered your interesting blog about Greenwashing through a comment on the Guardian.
I will now begin to wander about here now.
Your post is perfectly true : change can only be very small (or a trend) at best. That won’t change fate. Greenwashing will surely rise at an unprecedent level with Obama because he would perhaps try to mark history but lobbies and pressure will restrict his move.
Besides, even if, as an science and technology fan, I have yet to recognize that he believes that science and innovation will lead the US out of the present crisis but I believe that it will only get the world further into doom.
In the meantime, I admit that there is a lot of greenwashing in the world (as researchers pointed out, most of the Prius buyers are show-off and not really ecologicaly concerned …). I wrote a post on this topic three years ago already (shocked by some French hypocrit commercials).
I regret that very few try to understand why and how we got there in the first place.
I really invested mentally in finding the roots of all this. To be honest, my conclusion is that all what happened and happens and will be happening is … SEX-driven.
This word SEX may shock you but I actually use it in the reproductive sense and in the frame of EVOLUTION.
If you or a reader is curious about this statement and want to know more about my arguments (and sources because I do not state without backing), please feel free to send me a mail.
To post all this in a comment is not suitable.
[The word “sex” doesn’t shock me at all – that’s what genetics is all about, after all. The difference between what is happening now, that is so damaging, and what humans did in the hundred thousand years before the agricultural revolution (and more specifically before the industrial revolution) is cultural – “memes” rather than “genes”. This is the crux of Level Three in Chapter 16 of my book.
Thanks for taking an interest.
Regards, Keith]
November 8th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
I took 4 hours this night to read all your very interesting book (I did not know about lichen by the way, thanks !) and I certainly agree about 90 % of it, beginning with the Growth problem.
[Very impressive]
Yet, I disagreed twice at last :
The first time concerned your opinion about the non existent positive aspects of our growth somewhere. You seemed too extreme then. You seem to strangely forget at that page (because it is so obvious to recognize the benefits) that our growth was based on our technological progress and it allowed incredible MEDICAL and COMFORT boost that permited human longevity and reproduction (with overpopulation now).
Even the present cancers and diseases due to ecological problems are NOTHING compared to what we suffered BEFORE the (polluting) growth.
[It would be good if you could quantify the problems humans suffered before the industrial revolution. Although mean lifespan was shorter than present, much of this was down to ante-natal death – something which would be less common if we were to go non-industrial now, given the knowledge we have. The same goes for the amount of anatomical knowledge we have. Medical knowledge is perhaps the one good thing we have gained from civilization, so it would be foolish to ignore this – I didn’t say *everything* about it was bad, just most of it.]
In a way, if growth had been a deliberate way of doing, planned thousands of years before, and we could right now stop all this growth and obey all the “laws” you edict at the end of the book and share with everyone, it would be really great for humanity. We would have played quite well with relatively limited impact. Good job, Man !
[Thanks]
Then, you write :
“I know what the problem is, and so do you: at its heart, it is not environmental change and it is not humanity itself – it is that we are disconnected from what it means to be human. The solution is the answer to this simple question:”
I disagreed : I think you do not have understand the REAL problem but just the manifestation of it (thesis of growth + disconnection). HUMAN IS the problem.
[In a way, you are right – but then without humans we don’t have any say, nor any awareness, so the point is moot. This is why I spend the whole of Part Two justifying our existence.]
As I began to say before and that you may be prone to understand since there were some hints in your arguments about survival and DNA, I am deeply convinced (with sources) that the problem lies actually IN humanity (or, should I say also, in our animality as well).
If my argument stands true, then the solutions are far less easier than you think.
This pessimistic view come from the fact that we are indeed probably commited in an Evolutionnary Suicide because our brain is the terrible machine that give our sex (reproduction) motives such an incredible power that we, for a while, created our own “artificial” (disconnected) environment (without great negative feedback from it … till now).
In our (mammal) world, there is a quite fierce male competition over females and males do not reproduce so well compared to females (half less in human history ! ! ! ).
CONCLUSION : Giving advice about how to behave so as to limit consumption and economic growth will not work before addressing the REAL issue : that is, saying to the males “STOP boasting ! ” (which is seen in EVERY human culture, I read) and to the females “STOP picking the wealthy !” (which is seen in EVERY human culture again, I read as well).
[I think this is a cultural inheritance, not a genetic inheritance. Females do *not* pick the wealthy in most primitive societies, they pick the best survivors – sometimes wealth goes along with this, but it is not causal. Males boast of their genetic suitability, and this is common to all species.
So, you are right in saying that competition is the issue; but it is the *type* of competition that is specifically the issue: cultures that value wealth and material possessions above survivability are the destructive ones.]
I admit this represent a very tough job to convince everyone worldwide of it and that is why I am so pessimistic …
To sum up, we should either address the SEX or the BRAIN issue but the present mix of both seem to lead us to extinction (through the way of the illogic exponential growth on limited resources you noticed).
Note : I have all the sources and references if you are interested to know more … (just write to me)
[Here is my response. Thanks for discussing things. K.]
July 23rd, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Just one third party style with NBC inside the Tv show. He still includes a seriously tough immigration law scheme. This individual managed to graduate about the Harvard College. Today he features their one Radio stations Show. He don’t like this United states us president.