[MCN] Do we really "need" electric (i.e., coal-powered) can openers?

[Lance Olsen]

"While we face 'hard choices' about which species and ecosystems to conserve, it's odd how we face no such quandaries over which of our frivolous luxuries to refrain from ... writes Derrick Jensen. And of course, there's no question at all of tackling the root causes of global ecocide."

http://www.tlaxcala-int.org/article.asp?reference=20941 <http://www.tlaxcala-int.org/article.asp?reference=20941>

Caution: Jensen is angry, so anyone reluctant to encounter anger might not want to read the full article. He sometimes uses rough language, including four-letter words that will offend some readers. 

Excerpts from 1st 6 paragraphs : 

Last year I read an Op-Ed in the New York Times entitled …. 'Building an Ark for the Anthropocene <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/sunday-review/building-an-ark-for-the-anthropocene.html>'.

The article begins, "We are barreling into the Anthropocene, the sixth mass extinction in the history of the planet. A recent study published in the journal Science concluded that the world's species are disappearing as much as 1,000 times faster than the rate at which species naturally go extinct.

"It's a one-two punch on top of the ecosystems we've broken, extreme weather from a changing climate causes even more damage. By 2100, researchers say, one-third to one-half of all Earth's species could be wiped out. As a result, efforts to protect species are ramping up as governments, scientists and nonprofit organizations try to build a modern version of Noah's Ark.

"The new ark certainly won't come in the form of a large boat, or even always a place set aside. Instead it is a patchwork quilt of approaches, including assisted migration, seed banks and new preserves and travel corridors based on where species are likely to migrate as seas rise or food sources die out.

"The questions are complex. What species do you save? The ones most at risk? Charismatic animals, such as lions or bears or elephants? The ones most likely to survive? The species that hold the most value for us?"

Excerpt from mid-article: 

But there's a much bigger problem than this. Did you notice who is on the chopping block, and what is not. Did you see it? What is missing is any mention of technologies, luxuries, comforts, elegancies.
Sure, we're supposed to choose whether to extirpate or save Bulmer's fruit bats or Sumatran Rhinos, wild yams or hula painted frogs (with the default always being extirpate, of course); and we're supposed to make careful delineations of how we choose who is exterminated, and who lives (at least until tomorrow, when we all know there'll be another round of exterminations, complete with another round of wringing our hands over how difficult these decisions are, and another round of heartbreak; and then another round, and another, until there is nothing and no one left).

But just as after Fukushima a Japanese energy minister said that nuclear energy must continue to be produced because no one "could imagine life without electricity", so, too, entirely disallowed is any discussion of what technologies should be kept and what should be caused to go extinct.

There's no discussion of extirpating iPads, iPhones, computer technologies, retractable stadium roofs, insecticides, GMOs, the Internet (hell, Internet pornography), off-road vehicles, nuclear weapons, predator drones, industrial agriculture, industrial electricity, industrial production, the benefits of imperialism (human, American, or otherwise).

Not one of them is mentioned. Never. Not once.

None of these are mentioned because none of the benefits of our dismantling of the planet can be seriously questioned. 

Full article at the link:

http://www.tlaxcala-int.org/article.asp?reference=20941 <http://www.tlaxcala-int.org/article.asp?reference=20941>

Caution: Jensen is angry, so anyone reluctant to encounter anger might not want to read the full article. He sometimes uses rough language, including four-letter words that will offend some readers.

=====================                    —————                             ============================

“We don’t need to guard against alarmism, against depression, against anger, against despair when it comes to climate change.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2017/07/we_are_not_alarmed_enough_about_climate_change.html

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“Full of recent references and statistics, Harvesting the Biosphere adds to the growing chorus of warnings about the current trajectory 
of human activity on a finite planet, of which climate change is only one dimension.

“One can quibble with some assumptions or tweak Smil’s calculations, but the bottom line will not change, only the time it may take 
humanity to reach a crisis point.”

Stephen Running. “Approaching the Limits” Science 15 March 2013.
Book review. Harvesting the Biosphere: What we have taken from Nature. by Vaclav Smil .  MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2012. 315 pp. $29, £19.95. ISBN 9780262018562.

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