Ecology in a Liberated World
Ken Knabb (An extract from The Joy of Revolution by Ken Knabb, www.bopsecrets.org)
A self-managed society will naturally implement most present-day ecological demands. Some are essential for the very survival of humanity; but for both aesthetic and ethical reasons, liberated people will undoubtedly choose to go well beyond this minimum and foster a rich biodiversity.
The point is that we can debate such issues open-mindedly only when we have eliminated the profit incentives and economic insecurity that now undermine even the most minimal efforts to defend the environment (loggers afraid of losing their jobs, chronic poverty tempting Third World countries to cash in on their rain forests, etc.). (1)
When humanity as a species is blamed for environmental destruction, the specific social causes are forgotten. The few who make the decisions are lumped with the powerless majority. Famines are seen as nature's revenge against overpopulation, natural checks that must be allowed to run their course -- as if there was anything natural about the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which force Third World countries to cultivate products for export rather than food for local consumption. People are made to feel guilty for using cars, ignoring the fact that auto companies (by buying up and sabotaging electric transit systems, lobbying for highway construction and against railroad subsidies, etc.) have created a situation in which most people have to have cars. Spectacular publicity gravely urges everyone to reduce energy consumption (while constantly inciting everyone to consume more of everything), though we could by now have developed more than enough clean and renewable energy sources if the fossil-fuel companies had not successfully lobbied against devoting any significant research funding to that end.
The point is not to blame even the heads of those companies - they too are caught in a grow-or-die system that impels them to make such decisions - but to abolish the setup that continually produces such irresistible pressures.
A liberated world should have room both for human communities and for large enough regions of undisturbed wilderness to satisfy most of the deep ecologists. Between those two extremes I like to think that there will be all sorts of imaginative, yet careful and respectful, human interactions with nature. Cooperating with it, working with it, playing with it; creating variegated interminglings of forests, farms, parks, gardens, orchards, creeks, villages, towns.
Large cities will be broken up, spaced out, 'greened' and rearranged in a variety of ways incorporating and surpassing the visions of the most imaginative architects and city planners of the past (who were usually limited by their assumption of the permanence of capitalism). Exceptionally, certain major cities, especially those of some aesthetic or historical interest, will retain or even amplify their cosmopolitan features, providing grand centers where diverse cultures and lifestyles can come together. (2)
Some people, drawing on the situationists' early 'psychogeographical' explorations and 'unitary urbanism' ideas, will construct elaborate changeable decors designed to facilitate labyrinthine wanderings among diverse ambiences - Ivan Chtcheglov envisioned 'assemblages of castles, grottos, lakes', 'rooms more conducive to dreams than any drug' and people living in their own personal 'cathedrals' (3) . Others may incline more to the Far Eastern poet's definition of happiness as living in a hut beside a mountain stream.
If there aren't enough cathedrals or mountain streams to go around, maybe some compromises will have to be worked out. But if places like Chartres or Yosemite are presently overrun, this is only because the rest of the planet has been so uglified. As other natural areas are revitalized and as human habitats are made more beautiful and interesting, it will no longer be necessary for a few exceptional sites to accommodate millions of people desperate to get away from it all. On the contrary, many people may actually gravitate toward the most miserable regions because these will be the 'new frontiers' where the most exciting transformations will be taking place (ugly buildings being demolished to make way for experimental reconstruction from scratch).
(1) Isaac Asimov and Frederick Pohl's Our Angry Earth: A Ticking Ecological Bomb (Tor, 1991) is among the more cogent summaries of this desperate situation. After demonstrating how inadequate current policies are for dealing with it, the authors propose some drastic reforms that might postpone the worst catastrophes; but such reforms are unlikely to be implemented as long as the world is dominated by the conflicting interests of nation-states and multinational corporations.
(2) For a wealth of suggestive insights on the advantages and drawbacks of different types of urban communities, past, present and potential, I recommend two books: Paul and Percival Goodman's Communitas and Lewis Mumford's The City in History . The latter is one of the most penetrating and comprehensive surveys of human society ever written.
(3) SI Anthology, pp. 3-4 [Formulary for a New Urbanism]
End of fourth and last chapter of 'The Joy of Revolution,' from Public Secrets: Collected Skirmishes of Ken Knabb (Bureau of Public Secrets, 1997). (No copyright)