Essay by Eric Worrall
The Conversation channeling the work of far left Indian philosopher Amitav Ghosh.
Climate change has deep historical roots – Amitav Ghosh explores how capitalism and colonialism fit in
Published: August 30, 2024 5.01pm AEST
Amitav Ghosh is an internationally celebrated author of 20 historical fiction and non-fiction books. The Indian thinker and writer has written extensively on the legacies of colonialism, violence and extractivism. His most famous works explore migration, globalisation and commercial violence and conquest during the colonial period, against the backdrop of the opium trade in the 1800s.
…
Julia Taylor: In Ghosh’s recent non-fiction book, The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, he used his storytelling prowess to outline the roots of climate change within two systems of power and oppression: imperialism and capitalism.
…Capitalism is the dominant economic system where ownership of the means of production (industry) is private. Private actors are driven by profit and growth, which has relied on combustion of fossil fuels.
What Ghosh makes clear is that violence and destruction of the environment are key to capitalism, as they were to colonialism.
Imraan Valodia: Ghosh challenges us to think more deeply about the role of conquest and violence in shaping the planetary crisis we’re facing. And the need to reshape our economic and social relations to address climate change. He does this with remarkable acumen and clarity in another of his works of non-fiction, The Great Derangement. In the book he seeks to explain our failure to address the urgency of climate change. He asks very powerfully whether the current generation is deranged by our inability to grasp the scale, violence and urgency of climate change.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/climate-change-has-deep-historical-roots-amitav-ghosh-explores-how-capitalism-and-colonialism-fit-in-237586
Amitav Ghosh neglected to cite examples of perfect societies which have defeated the evils of capitalism, which is a shame because history abounds with examples of nations which cancelled capitalism – Cambodia’s killing fields, Soviet Gulags, Chinese mass famines are all features of nations which reject rewarding people who do the work.
Perhaps these are examples of good governance to a green – population control in action. And those enterprising Venezuelans searching trash cans for food, you’d struggle to find a better example of fulfilling the green ideal of reducing food waste.
Ghosh seems to be OK with a little personal capitalism, though who knows, perhaps all the profits are going to a good cause. Ghosh’s book is on sale through University of Chicago press for prices starting from US $17.99. Or you can see Ghosh speak next week in South Africa, in a series of public talks.
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Nations that become more wealthy via capitalism also tend to look after the environment better.
and their citizens’ welfare, health, living standards, safety, etc etc etc
(But why are educational standards disappearing down the gurgler?)
“(But why are educational standards disappearing down the gurgler?)”
Because socialism has taken over the education system.
“Because
socialismpowerful labor unions has taken over the education system.”And the unions are not necessarily about socialism- they’re about greed. Greed is everywhere in most societies other than the most primitive. Ask almost anyone if they deserve more- they’ll say yes.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/13/politics/trump-department-of-education-states-2024/index.html
Trump wants to close the U.S. Department of Education and get rid of all those Washington DC education bureaucrats.
The left, communists, marxists, socialists, are using the environment as a vehicle to promote their agenda to replace capitalism as their end goal.
For two reasons:
But climate catastrophists follow the Marxist and St. Augustine forks off Plator’s anti-human teachings. (His bizarre two-world’s theory that leads to priests and Marxist elites.)
In contrast, Aristote taught one world that humans can understand, and Ayn Rand put a moral foundation under that by explaining the requirements of life.
Where is the socialist or communist nation where the people have the freedom or prosperity we have here in the capitalist USA? Hint; There aren’t any. Socialism is like a poison apple; It looks good and tastes good and then you die!
How about Sweden? IIRC, Sweden has very high rate of taxation of incomes of people and companies to fund its social programs.
True, but that’s not socialism- which is about the ownership of the means of production and the leveling of society. There are wealthy people in Sweden- and very wealthy corporations.
Sweden is a market based democracy with a well funded welfare system provided by the market economy.
That would be USA, of course.
Also, «capitalist» appears to be an anti-concept. I mean, what definition do you even use for it? (and whose definition it is?)
From merriam-webster
2 a : practicing or advocating capitalism
capitalist nations
The USA is not socialist. At least not yet.
«Sepulkaria – sing: sepulkarium, establishments used for sepuling; see “Sepuling” »
Ruling bureaucracy of “secular” Puritan sect, with its moral panics, patronage schemes, creep of state monopolies via licensing, straightforward power creep via made up “emergencies”, de-facto state banks as enforceable oligopoly metastasizing into “zombie finance”… is not socialist enough!
When will it be socialist enough, then? At the point of full-Trotskyite communism implemented? Or will it still “have never been tried” even then?
There is a strong element of nihilism in both Green belief systems and socialism, to the extent they differ. The level of special pleading and cherry picking in their history and “science” is also remarkable.
In what history or place do their precious models work? Erewhon?
All political “systems” are dangerous. A society with a great deal of freedom isn’t a system- because people are free to do different things in their own way- think the way they like- say what they like. In any “system”, everyone is part of “the machine”.
You know the answer. «But the re-e-eal Ism has Never Been Tried».
The sad thing is, it’s not even always moving the goalposts. It’s so much worse.
When the incursion of schizophrenic delusions into reality leads to disastrous results, obviously it’s the fault of reality: after all, delusions never did this back in the schizophrenics’ heads.
We have already run this experiment TWICE!
Split the German people into two entities in 1945. The “capitalism” side was much better keeping the environment clean, the people fed, and did not create a gulag for the politically disfavored.
Split the Korean people into two entities in 1953. The “capitalism” side also kept the people fed and did not create a massive gulag. South Korea is generally very clean. I have no idea how much industrial pollution is created in North Korea, since a large portion of the population lives in a roughly Iron Age society.
India and China have both run the socialism economy experiment for 80 years and proven how disastrous it is. It creates widespread poverty, environmental destruction, corruption, helplessness, and despair. Soon after India’s independence in 1947, having learned nothing about the merits of free markets from the British colonists, India turned socialist. In the 1950’s the government seized control of major private industries and started taking the banks. By 1980 all banks were owned by government. Following the worldwide fall of communism and the USSR, India started privatizing again in 1991. Here is the result of switching from socialism to a more free market economy, though India, like China, hasn’t fully divested itself from socialist ideas:
To label his new book about climate change “The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis” as his latest non-fiction work says it all. It is all fiction.
‘Planet in Crisis’ EXCEPT factually it isn’t:
Good list, here’s another:
1. More rain is not a problem.
2. Warmer weather is not a problem.
3. More arable land is not a problem.
4. Longer growing seasons is not a problem.
5. CO2 greening of the earth is not a problem.
6. There isn’t any Climate Crisis.
That’s the part that gets me- I recognize SOME weather changes different than my youth- most likely temporary changes when viewed long term- it’s the “emergency”, “crisis”, “threat”- stuff that ticks me off. Wokeachusetts is all about the emergency. Every daily newspaper has a least one column about it, every day. The state and local governments talk about it all the time. But I walk around in a rural area- and see no emergency or crisis. An emergency is when an engine on your plane is on fire- or the dam upstream from your house just burst. Here, it was a hot and wet summer. My lawns, trees, gardens, flower beds never looked so happy.
Colonialism and fossil fuels? You mean those nasty things that brought India into the modern era?
Exactly how does changing ownership of the means of production change the fuel that those means use?
How dare you ask such a logical question of ‘an internationally celebrated author’. If not stopped now, next you will be challenging Mann and Oreskes.
They kind of explain that – they see socialist economic stagnation as a desirable feature, they blame capitalism for climate destroying economic growth.
It is not stagnation that they consider desirable, it is degradation they desire.
They want most of the population to lead short, brutal lives serving the elite.
If the population lives longer than their productive lives, like retiring to enjoy life, then they must be eliminated.
It has become a cliche but is nonetheless true as The Conversation piece shows: it’s no longer about the climate if it ever was.
No. It never was. It has always been about telling humanity to go to hell in such a way that it looks forward to the trip.
The self-anointed elites have always used fear to control and enslave the masses.
What makes him an expert and why should I care about his opinion? It seems to me that I lived in a country that originated as colonies also, but we are doing fairly well here.
“What makes him an expert and why should I care about his opinion?”
Good question.
Somebody should ask him if he knows the difference between Crony Capitalism and Free Enterprise.
I suppose this fool knows nothing about Haiti. That’s a perfect example of a place that is no longer a colony of any large nation. A place where the average citizen has a really, really low carbon footprint. And also a place where most of the struggling populace has stripped nature and wild places bare just trying to survive. So yes, let’s get rid of fossil fuels. That’s when you would see a real environmental disaster.
No matter how you figure it, leftists are ALWAYS hypocrites.
“Warmunism” is what it is. The term is not a taunt, but a fact based assessment of the true motives and objectives of the warmunists. They aren’t out to “save the planet” – they are out to make another attempt to impose worldwide communism. In the past they were correctly tagged as “watermelons” – green on the outside, red on the inside.
Agreed. Ultimately they hate the creation as much as the Creator. And since man was created in God’s image, even he has to go. But they believe they should stick around to enjoy the stuff, and us plebes have to go.
I originally coined the ‘warmunist’ term in footnote 24 to essay Climatastrosophistry in 2014 ebook Blowing Smoke. It was, as the footnote explains, an homage to Vaclav Havel’s 2007 book ‘Blue Planet in Green Chains’, comparing the then current climate mania to his experiences before his Czech Republic was freed of its communist chains.
In The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016)[Wiki], Ghosh accuses modern literature and art of failing to adequately address climate change.
His thoughts on literature and art will be “non-fiction” but insofar as there is not a climate crisis and miniscule changes in “climate”, his underlying assumption is wrong. I hope his other books are better based.
“literature and art” aren’t literature and art if they focus on politics- the Soviets did that
The ownership is owned by those who pay for it.
EVERYONE is driven by profit- or higher salaries.
Try getting some profit and growth with only the wind and sun driving an economy.
An Indian “thinker” who learned nothing from his own nation’s legacy of socialism. So not much of a thinker, actually. Remember when widespread poverty, chronic malnutrition, and environmental degradation ran rampant in India? That was socialism, which, incidentally, had nothing to do with the British and their colonizing. Indians chose socialism. When they ended the disaster of socialism and embraced freedom and free markets, they quickly turned it around. They’re still working on the environment, as are all countries that have become prosperous enough to pay attention to the environment, thanks to freedom and free markets (aka “capitalism”).
‘Thinker’ has different meanings in different contexts.
Joe Biden was just a gaffe prone thinker according to Dems.
Kamala Harris is just a cackle prone thinker according to Dems.
Albert Einstein was not a thinker according to 100 German scientists in 1930’s.
Per HRC, only Deplorables think PDJT is a thinker.
Biden, the great “Thinker”
Thunk and thunk and thunk and
Oops
A little Pooh
Can you clarify this statement?
For example, when and where exactly was socialism chosen for India? Because it seems to me that the most accurate answer to these questions would be «August 14, 1941» and «in Placentia Bay, off Newfoundland».
Without capitalism/industrialization this gentleman would probably be looking at the rear end of a cow or ox pulling a plow. I doubt he’d have time to write even one, let alone 20 books, fiction or non-fiction.
I pay no attention to people like Ghosh.
Good idea.
That is clearly the proper action to take.
Ghosh’s statements and writings seem to be habitually ignored in his native India, so I am more than comfortable doing likewise.
Violence and destruction are the key tools on environmental communists
So,
Historic colonialism by Western nations is bad but eco-colonialism is good.
Violence by capitalists is bad but the forced transition by eco-capitalists is good.
Extractivism of fossil fuels is bad but eco-mining of rare earths by children is good.
Old-fashioned capitalists didn’t cut down millions of trees in Scotland to make way for intermittent energy, that was the eco-capitalists.
This so good I’ve copied it and will give credit where credit is due, I may reword it a little to make it more relevant to a Canadian audience, Thanks for this.
The former DDR, east germany, when it became reunited with the rest of Germany, was the most polluted country in Europe after four decades of that beneficial anti-capitalism.
Mr Ghosh is not even a fool, he is a clown.
….and Putin and gang only care about the Ukrainian environment and changing the climate.
Ayn Rand on the morality of capitalism and the real motive for the Socialist Mindset (voice only).
Mr. Amitav Ghosh is just one more intellectual lacking the psychological courage to live in freedom.
Socialism and Marxism are weapons. They are not alternative philosophies or economic systems. They are weapons against humanity, aimed particularly at ideas of personal soveriegnty, private property, and the nuclear family. A Marxist Utopia is an oxymoron. It is the same as calling for an H-bomb utopia! Weapons only destroy when deployed.
Throughout human history, there has been a subset of humanity that was denied personal soveriegnty, private property and the stabilizing structure of the nuclear family. They were called ‘slaves’. Now, the Luciferian globalists want all of humanity to become their slaves, but they cannot enslave us by force. We are many. They are few. They can only achieve their goal by convincing us that we want to be their slaves.
Marxism and socialism are just some of the psychological weapons they are using for this purpose. COVID (virology) and the climate crisis are also weapons being used by the Luciferian globalists to enslave the masses. The Federal Reserve is the king of all the fake narratives. Each fake narrative gets us a little closer to our complete enslavement.
And the masses line up to enlist.