
The Menace of Eco-Fascism (2018) - casefields
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/10/22/the-menace-of-eco-fascism/
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deogeo
> The sheer novelty of Dooley’s existence has proven irresistible to
> journalists—netting her gawking profiles in The New Yorker, Harper’s, and on
> National Public Radio—but that coverage has tended to obscure her extremism.
> Alongside advocating for sustainable energy, Dooley’s other pet issues are
> opposing amnesty for undocumented immigrants and increasing border security.

Enforcing current immigration law, which would leave legal immigration into
the US at the near-record 1.1 million per year, is now (presumably anti-
immigrant) _extremism_? In almost any other country, this would be _pro_
-immigrant extremism!

To give a sense of comparison, 15.1% of the US population is foreign born,
compared to 1.7% for Japan, and 0.1% for China.

~~~
Taniwha
For New Zealand it's 25%, Australia 22%, the UK 14%, France 9%, Germany 12%,
Canada 22%, the Netherlands 19%

Frankly 15% is about average for Western Countries

~~~
jgmjgm
I think talking about averages is somewhat misleading. There has been a steep
upward trend in the US and Europe. In the 1960s we'd be talking about less
than 5% for the US and Europe so that is a big change. It's fair to say that
there have been major policy changes over the past 50 years but it's
misleading -- I'm not accusing you, just pointing out -- to say it's an
average because that implies a steady state.

I don't think USA/EU is at 15% yet. Europe trends just a little less than the
USA (at least from 2016). I was just skimming this article today (below). I
may have misinterpreted it so feel free to set the record straight. See Fig 1.

Peri, G. 2016. Immigrants, Productivity, and Labor Markets. Journal of
Economic Perspectives, 30(4): 3–30.

Canada and Australia have had very high rates for a long time. Australia's is
higher though. I'm not sure why Peri chose to combine the series because they
are quite different but higher than the US.

The AU/NZ (and Canada too I suppose) cases are interesting because they all
have very overheated housing markets and prices are historically high relative
to average wages. The USA went through a market correction and let the housing
bubble burst but these markets did not. I've heard it argued that increased
immigration to major housing markets is considered to be one way to keep the
construction industry and house/rent prices sustainable. I'm curious if anyone
has any thoughts or insight into this.

~~~
Taniwha
Maybe "average" was the wrong word, perhaps "unremarkable" is a better one.

Before Trump the US was proud to describe itself as a nation of immigrants (I
was one for 20 years) but Americans have this myth that they take in far more
immigrants than anywhere else, it's just not true

~~~
jgmjgm
Well it does a pretty remarkable job. Recall too that the stats are foreign
born as a percentage of the population (Peri, 2016 that I mentioned above).

The USA is larger than all Canada, Australia, UK and NZ combined. So, let's
not pretend that the US is not taking new comers at all. We're still in the
ballpark of close to 50 million people. This compares to about 7 million in
Canada.

~~~
Taniwha
I think that percentage gives a reasonable job of looking at the impact that
immigrants have on the existing system - NZ takes in far fewer immigrants than
the US, but compared with their population they're taking more and would be
expected to have a larger impact on society (NZ has lower taxes that the US)

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devoply
In the end our business leaders and state leaders are too busy exploiting
science to empower and enrich themselves to have any actual concern about
science, i.e. ask environmental scientists what they should do in their
business and political decisions... And similarly the alt-right is weary of
science because it gets in the way of its dreams of domination, control,
supremacy and tribalism. They have more in common, the supposed would be Eco-
fascists and the business interests than the casual observer is led to
believe.

Science is better paired with idealists who can imagine a better world using
science than with rationalists who are simply exploited by business interest
and the state for more power and profit... solving trivial issues like how to
get more eyeballs for ad dollars.

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devmunchies
“These fascist love the planet, and here is why that’s a bad thing”

Give me a break.

~~~
smadge
The primary caution of the article is of fascist or nativist tendencies
infiltrating environmental organizations and movements.

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polotics
I guess the time has come to point you all to the archdruid:
[https://www.ecosophia.net/the-next-twilight-of-
environmental...](https://www.ecosophia.net/the-next-twilight-of-
environmentalism/)

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carapace
What was that? Hitler was a vegetarian?

FWIW, the environment really is the ultimate non-partisan issue and I think we
are about one or two heat waves or water shortages away from finding that out.

This made me think we'll see unilateral geoengineering by e.g Bangladesh
before it gets too hot: [https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-
dyer-geo...](https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-
geopolitics-in-a-hotter-world-ubc-talk-transcribed-sept-2010/)

I don't think there's anything intrinsically authoritarian in ecology, if
anything evolution is anarchy, but I can entertain (and be dismayed by) the
thought that e.g. Chinese Communism may turn out to be the successful system
in a hundred years. Recall "How is China able to provide enough food to feed
over 1B people?"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20537409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20537409)
that describes regenerative ecological farm systems.

~~~
7952
At a local level environmental decisions are highly political. Try building a
road, a wind farm, a cycle lane, or a pedestrian precinct and you will get a
lot of anger and passion. And a lot of interventions have a number of
unintended consequences that affect people.

A lot of these environmental decisions have winners and losers. That makes
them political and partisan. But politicians often don't want to deal with
that. They want to delegate authority to a bunch of experts and independent
organisations who can make objective decisions. Except there are still loosers
who will be angry. And they just see a faceless beurocracy that doesn't care
what they think.

We should accept that the environment is political and try and win the
argument. Stop relying on science and actually pursuade people on an emotional
and moral level.

~~~
carapace
Personally, I think the problem is Spiritual, and no amount of politics will
fix it. We are divorced from Nature, we treat life as a thing to exploit
rather than neighbors to live with. I don't think we can save ourselves
_without_ a deep shift in our world view, a renewal of our relationship with
life.

I think we will either reach a crisis and transform (in a biologically-rooted
variant of the Singularity, IRL not cyberspace) or we will crash and burn.

Of course, there's a third possibility: we scrape by without crashing and
without spiritual renaissance, e.g. some combination of geo-engineering and
ecological agriculture lets us off the climate-apocalypse hook. In the first
two scenarios we don't need politics anymore, but in the third it still exists
and is caught up in the strange loops of modern space-age-a-go-go life.

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rurban
They were missing another prominent case: Jörg Urban, now the AFD leader in
Sachsen, who was a former Green League party leader. I guess you can call that
an eco-fascist party, but I'm not an expert. You may call him a Neonazi
officially though.
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B6rg_Urban](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B6rg_Urban)

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deevolution
The KISS solution would be to shoot all 1.4B cows on earth. That would slow
climate change significantly and give us enough time to transition the world
into using renewable resources. Also before I get downvoted for suggesting
such an appalling idea as going on a cow murdering genocide, stop and reflect
about the origin of that big piece of meat you ate for dinner tonight. Let's
kill these cows once and for all.

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adrianN
Methane accounts for less than 20% of all GHG emissions (in CO2 equivalent
units), and cows are only responsible for a part of that. Reducing the number
of cattle is important, but killing all cattle would only buy us a few years
before we have to completely decarbonize the global economy. In industrialized
economies, agriculture's relative impact is even lower, since we emit so many
GHGs from other sources.

~~~
deevolution
It's still a significant contributor of methane. This change wont happen
overnight of course but more alt meat companies such as beyond meat and
impossible burger will be able to engineer superior food products that will
eventually price real meat out of the market. The cow populations will suffer
slowly as will their corporate slave masters.

~~~
jesssse
Cows are happier being farmed than not being.

~~~
deevolution
As a human maximalist, I could care less about what those cows think. The
problem we face as a society is that too many of us are cow maximalist to the
point we're prioritizing these cows lives over our own. Buying that cheese
burger at McDonalds is a vote for more cows which has far more negative
externalities than eating veggies.

~~~
jesssse
Cow meat makes me strong. Veggies makes me poop.

