Environment

People, Energy, Food, Environment: The Crisis of Ideas

     by Noel Chellan

On the journey to so-called civilisation and progress much sacrifice has been made - some more than others - when one takes into consideration the loss of lives. The mass-slaughter of the indigenous peoples of the world seemed to have been the beginning of the road-map to so-called progress.

The extermination of millions of Jews in Germany, two World Wars, military invasions into countries possessing huge amounts of natural resources, the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the untold misery wrought on the middle eastern region by rogue states, the more than despicable treatment of black people in South Africa and in many other parts of the world, the relegation of women to the status of the 'less than human' category, the abuse of children in so many unimaginable ways and the many other acts of incomprehensible proportions line the pavements of the road map to so-called civilisation and progress.

That the vast amount of wealth was amassed on the backs of millions of workers, is perceived by the progress protagonists to be the natural order of things is testimony to this twisted and demented hegemonic notion of progress. 

However, there is a much more powerful and formidable ''opponent'' that has the potential to dislodge the dominant idea that stubbornly occupies the private and public discourse on progress. Global Warming, albeit contested by some in the scientific community and by some sectors of society, has brought the earth into laser-sharp focus as to its fragility, finiteness and the undeniable link of humans to it - in all aspects of the word. Unfortunately, the dominant discourse seems to be about whether appropriate technology is being utilised to ''solve'' the perceived Global Warming crisis. Meanwhile countries that have been perceived to be backward, are rapidly catching on to the formula of historically determined progress, and are ''told'' that the means that they are utilising to achieve such progress, are outdated as well as threatening all life on earth. Simultaneously, new technologies are being conceptualised, perfected and patented at break-neck speed by many countries in the North. Once too often the South is left dependent on these technologies from the North-thereby reasserting the former's dependency and the latter's hegemony. The re-configuration of technology and the perpetuation of the ''slave-master'' relationship are further, qualitatively and quantitatively, adding to the hungry and disenchanted peoples of the world in general and the developing world in particular.

Together with all the doomsday predictions that the discourse on Global Warming presents, it also presents the opportunity to reason that History is an intrepid traveller of which we have not seen the end. This is especially so in the knowledge that historical progress up to and until this point in time occurred at the expense of not only the worker but of the natural environment as well. The meaning of progress has been vulgarly reduced to the amount of goods that is produced by a country's people and its technology. If anything, the rapid degradation of the natural resource base from which the goods and services are generated are ''screaming'' loud and clear, that it cannot and should not be ''business as usual!''. Historically defined progress encapsulated in quantifiable indicators, the dominant of which is the Gross National Product, has to be debunked in the face of the energy crisis, the food crisis, the environmental crisis, the unemployment crisis, the safety and security crisis and the many other unwarranted crises that seem to overflow from the womb of capitalist development. Actually, the crisis that we are burdened with, is a crisis of ideas, in so far as it is these ideas that define and inform how people, energy, food and the environment intersect with each other.

''Global Warming'' has accelerated the globalisation of the discourse on the natural environment. However, the aggressive mooting of solutions does not seem to penetrate past that which are technological ones. The development trajectory thus far, has meant progress for some and impoverishment, death and destruction for others. Worse still, class inequalities were and are being perpetuated and strengthened by the very technologies that were presented as the solution to the appalling socio-economic and environmental conditions that the downtrodden find themselves in. Technological innovation and development, under capitalist command, has revealed its inability to sustain a balancing act between meeting the needs of people and conserving the natural environment.

Further still, the nature of capitalist technology has pitted the poor against the natural environment as manifested in the current bio-fuel and fossil fuel saga. The current state of affairs simply means that ''people, planet and profit'' have not and cannot co-exist in a synergistic and harmonious relationship. Hence, the custodians of the earth and the people themselves must engage in a dialogue that will serve to finally eliminate the alien factor of ''profit'' from the formula that has invaded and dominated the discourse on progress thus far.

Noel Chellan is a lecturer at the School of Sociology & Social Sciences.