Campaigning Against Dioxin
This article originally appeared in Z Magazine, May 1996, and reprinted in Garbage and Waste: Current Controversies, San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1997. In even the briefest of visits, it is clear that Louisiana is a land of extremes. It is a shorter trip than many people realize from the uninhibited multicultural melting pot of downtown […]
Trading away the Earth: Pollution Credits and the Perils of “Free Market Environmentalism”
This article originally appeared in Dollars and Sense, March/April 1996, and was reprinted in Theodore Goldfarb, ed., Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues, Eighth Edition, Dushkin/McGraw Hill, 1999. The Republican takeover of Congress has unleashed an unprecedented assault on all forms of environmental regulation. From the Endangered Species Act to the Clean Water Act […]
The Third Revolution Vol 1 (introduction)
The title of this book, The Third Revolution, is taken from what may seem an extraordinary historical coincidence. The demand for a “third revolution” was actually raised in two great revolutions: the French Revolution in the closing decade of the eighteenth century, and 120 years later in the Russian Revolution during the opening decades of […]
Biotechnology: Consumer Beware
This article originally appeared in Food & Water Journal, Spring 1996, and reprinted in Third World Resurgence (Penang, Malaysia), Number 79, March 1997. The floodgates are opening this year for the widespread commercial sale of genetically engineered foods. After nearly a decade of research in laboratories and experimental farm plots across the country, U.S. government […]
Biotechnology vs. Biodiversity
This article was originally published in Wild Earth, spring 1996. Recent campaigns by food safety activists have raised a new level of public awareness about the risks of biotechnology. Products like genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone for dairy cows, tomatoes engineered for longer shelf life and virus resistant squash have inspired more widespread debate and […]
The Fallacy of “Neither Left nor Right”: Militia Fever
At a time when the political sands have shifted massively to the right nearly everywhere, when the right is riding high while the left languishes in debris, it is increasingly common to hear the cry “Neither left nor right!” Few right-wingers issue this cry—but then, why should they? Their political label is the toast of […]
When Realism Becomes Capitulation
Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. –Thoreau One of the most dangerous aspects of the present cultural and social counterrevolution is the widespread belief that capitalism is here to stay, that it is a […]
Theses on Social Ecology and Deep Ecology
(This article co-authored with Murray Bookchin) When “Realism” Becomes Capitulation Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. –Thoreau Ever since the debate between social ecology and deep ecology broke out in the summer of 1987, […]
Theses on Social Ecology in a Period of Reaction
Social ecology developed out of important social and theoretical problems that faced the Left in the post-World War II period. The historical realities of the 1940s and the 1950s completely invalidated the perspectives of a proletarian revolution, of a “chronic economic crisis” that would bring capitalism to its knees, and of commitment to a centralistic […]
Biotechnology
This article originally appeared in Z Magazine, June 1995, and reprinted in Third World Resurgence, Number 63, November 1995. For many years, public debates around biotechnology and genetic engineering were mostly the domain of scientists, ex-scientists and anti-scientists. Now, those days are clearly past, as products of biotechnology have begun to transform the nature of […]
