The call for a planetary patriotism

Environmental historian Angus Wright calls for planetary patriotism and collective action in the face of climate change.

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I am not as interested in the purity of intention or personal practice as I am concerned about correctly identifying the nature of problems and getting to work in an organised way to solve them.

The emphasis, for example, on whether individuals are hypocritical when their personal consumption is out of sync with their political/ecological views has been a diversion. It undermines effective organisation and helps to maintain the myth that it is personal rather than collective action that really matters. When we think we are saving ourselves, we tend to become self-righteous in ways that separate us from the other people we need to work with in order to effect societal change. The important moral question is social, not individual. How do we collectively figure out ways to live that don't require that we destroy the planet's capacity to sustain life?


http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011111410635906623.html

More at the link.

Thanks for the thread, PETRUS.

:(

I will always honor him for that alone.

Until people realize this is the problem, nothing else will solve our troubles. Well, except for the typical ones like greed. But even greed is exacerbated by how population has made everything scarce.

The other is RFK Jr. Another great human.

This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me -
The simple News that Nature told -
With tender Majesty

Her Message is committed
To Hands I cannot see -
For love of Her – Sweet – countrymen -
Judge tenderly – of Me

"The emphasis, for example, on whether individuals are hypocritical when their personal consumption is out of sync with their political/ecological views has been a diversion. It undermines effective organisation and helps to maintain the myth that it is personal rather than collective action that really matters."

"Collective action" is what all of we individuals do, when taken together. If we all lived like Al lives, then "collectively" we'd be using a massively unsustainable amount of energy.

The logic is ineluctable, I'm afraid. :shrug:

Collective action is what a group decides to do together. There's a difference between letting each individual citizen decide whether he or she wants to go to Europe and fight Nazis or sending an army, for example.