Tuesday, January 08, 2013
Neoenvironmentalism
Twenty years ago, market propaganda promoted what Wall Street called Free Market environmentalism. As a capitalist philosophy, it laid the basis for shell games like the UN Millenium Development Goals and pyramid schemes like the REDD carbon market trading programs. Today, neoliberals are promoting neoenvironmentalism, essentially a recycled Free Market environmentalism imbued with a harsh criticism of collective cultural values and indigenous spiritual traditions. In his essay Dark Ecology, Paul Kingsnorth reflects on neoenvironmentalism and neoenvironmental propaganda aimed at romanticizing the future through its pseudo optimism and promotion of green technology populism. Rejecting the false hope of market hype, Kingsworth recommends ways of weathering socioeconomic and ecosystem collapse that keep one's values and psyches intact.
