On 9 th July (yesterday as I write) I led off a discussion on ‘Ecology and Socialism’ not having prepared a paper. I had prepared for talking about this subject only by collecting material, intending to pass the material around the table. I’d assumed I could ad lib on subjects I know a lot about – big mistake! and a missed opportunity. As an attempt to remedy my failure, I’ve put together the list of sources below. (This paper also available as download.)

Mainly I talked about land degradation instead of ‘ecology’, since for me the issues are the same. I suppose you know what land degradation consists of, but in case not it’s soil erosion, salinisation, deforestation, desertification, and toxification, and there are plenty of figures to show how serious this all is, and irreversible in short timescales. Soil that took hundreds, even thousands, of years to form can be lost in a year or two. To wash the salt out of salinised soil takes more water than can be put to the task. Deforestation, particularly in the tropics, leaves soil with no organic matter, perhaps producing a crop for a couple of seasons from the ash left from clearance, and grass for grazing for perhaps a little longer, and then it’s completely barren and dead. Another factor is that deforestation alters the local climate, since there’s no forest sponge through which rain can be recycled to move inland, the result is floods and then drought. Re-forestation is possible as long as the loss is not too extensive. Desertification is a longer term process usually triggered by deforestation at some time in the past.

I thought afterwards of a key point I might have made – this always happens however well-prepared one is – which is that blaming capitalism is a convenient excuse for socialists and other discontents. But the destruction which has been wrought on this planet by the human species since its beginnings is our collective responsibility now; we cannot blame a system which we have created: the system is us/ours. One thing I did say is that the ecology/green/environmental movement – even the permaculture movement, which should have known better – is to blame for focusing on ‘future threats’, in particular climate change, recently adding to that peak oil, rather than telling the rest of the world about the damage already caused which is visible and thus undeniable. A focus on future threats always brings two responses, firstly denial: it won’t happen, the predictions and the science are wrong, secondly: technological fixes can be found so business as usual can continue. Both responses have certainly been made with climate change, and the technological fixes, particularly switching to biofuels, will add – is already adding – to the more serious problem of land degradation. If the green (etc.) movement had majored on land degradation for the last 30 years, surely we’d have thrown off capitalism by now to save the planet.

At one point in my ‘talk’ I said I believe it to be ludicrous to regard carbon dioxide as a pollutant – and it’s become the only ‘pollutant’ anyone worries about. Carbon dioxide is what enables plants to grow – we all know about photosynthesis: nCO2 + mH2O + sunlight = CxHyOz + pO2 (you can fiddle about with the n,m,p,x,y,z to get this to balance). If there is good land, extra CO2 from burning fossil fuels would just result in more plant growth – which could be used as biomass fuel to replace the used up fossil fuels. But when land is so extensively degraded, and the oceans are polluted so that photosynthesising algae etc. cannot thrive, and the oceans have absorbed all the CO2 they can take, then of course there’s nowhere for the CO2 to go, and the atmospheric blanket keeps the heat in that isn’t radiated out into space so there’s a net warming.

The cause of problems of land degradation is, in my view, alienation from the land, brought about by civilisation(s), ancient and modern; by the needs of urban dwellers being met by slaves, peasants and farmers, and industrial machinery, working on land over which the people in cities have no conscious oversight or direct responsibility. The solution is re-localization: a crystallization of urban conglomerates into small, self-governing, cooperative communities who meet their basic needs from the resources they can control because they are within reach.

As a lifelong socialist, I too ‘blame capitalism’, but Marxist socialists have little to say about what kind of society might succeed capitalism, and centrally planned, urban, highly industrialised futures would not address the issues that concern me. I don’t see re-localization as return to a way of life we have advanced beyond, like feudalism. It would be feasible to make use of whatever technological advances people decided would meet their needs and desires. I also see approaches like permaculture, permanent agriculture, as the design of diverse, high-yielding and resilient agricultural and horticultural ecosystems, as advanced, and having enormous potential.

I have been looking at how to bring together the kinds of ‘green’ ideas which look interesting with Marxist socialism and anarchism, and one of my websites is focused on that, see especially www.des4rev.org.uk/observation.htm. I have other websites too with other ideas I thought when I set them up would lead somewhere. An index of those is at http://www.homeandlocalfood.co.uk. I recommend this inspiring piece by Rabindranath Tagore: http://www.homeandlocalfood.org.uk/tagorecityandvillage.htm .

I hope this has helped to make up for my poor performance yesterday. But do look this up yourselves, maybe starting with the stuff I brought along for the talk listed below.

Results of search on‘land degradation’

http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/earth/food-and-soil.php

http://www.wri.org/publication/content/8426

http://www.wri.org/publication/content/8427

http://www.goodplanet.info/goodplanet/index.php/eng/Pollution/Soils/Soil-degradation/(theme)/1662

http://www.seafriends.org.nz/enviro/Soil/erosion.htm

http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/land-ch.htm

http://www.unep.org/desertification/successstories/

http://www.unep.org/desertification/successstories/16.htm

Results of search of ‘land degradation permaculture’

http://www.tagari.com/?page_id=20

http://www.thefarm.org/permaculture/

http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2004/s1071698.htm

http://www.des4rev.org.uk/permacultureaudit.htm

http://www.homeandlocalfood.org.uk/losttheplot.htm

http://www.habitude.org.uk/resignation.htm

Extract from conference proposal:

‘Topologically, in spacetime, humankind is thorn shaped, as is the universe, emerging from a singularity, expanding and diversifying, likely to exhaust its potential in a ‘heat death’. Our singularity was a hominid species living a few million years ago in West Africa. Evolving into Homo erectus, big brained, fire using and tool making, a social creature, gesturing but speechless, we spread over half the world, evolved a bigger brain, a descended larynx and speech, already re-forming our environment destructively, destroying forests, changing climates, slaughtering megafauna to extinction, further evolving by sexual selection into a spectrum of skin colours and body shapes, each group culturally distinct and rooted in its specific land and ecology. Finally, and very recently in the formation of that thorn, built civilisations appeared, with their written records, their administrations, their censuses, and in 10,000 B.C. there were about one million of us; today over six billion, with nine billion predicted for 2050.’

Results of search on world population history

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/history/world-population-growth.htm

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldhis.html

‘Modified Marxism’ paper

http://www.des4rev.org.uk/modifiedmarxism.htm

My father’s ecological awareness

http://www.des4rev.org.uk/sidneyjewell100.htm#top

Riches from guano

‘Drastically, by 1900, most of the great guano deposits were depleted and the world was well on its way to dependence on chemical fertilizers. But not before many fortunes were made. Between 1840-1880, Peru exported 20 million tons of guano for a $2 billion profit. Individual guano fortunes founded corporate giants such as W. R. Grace & Company. Some of the guano money is still enjoyed to this day as it was used by William Gibbs to build the beautiful Tyntesfield Estate and St. Michael’s Church in England.’ (http://www.archipelagobatguano.com/6.shtml )

‘Centre for Non-Violent Farming in India’ in Permaculture Works Vol II Issue 10 Summer 2009, pp.14-15, also in http://www.justgiving.com/cnvf/

Permaculture Magazine

http://www.permaculture.co.uk/main2.html

‘Village as a Basic Unit’, ‘The Panchayat’

http://www.des4rev.org.uk/villagebasicunit.htm

Books on land degradation

http://www.des4rev.org.uk/#booksonlanddeg

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