Saturday 29 November 2008

Greenpeace has recently slammed Apple for its poor environmental track record. Other computer manufacturers have similarly bad practices, but they aren't as bold as Apple to claim "green production" in their advertising campaigns.

Can we take Greenpeace seriously given the uncompromising extremist positions they advocate? Even some of the founding members have drifted away from the movement as it pushes very unrealistic agenda.

Yet the Greenpeace position has echoes of the approach espoused by Daniel Quinn in his Ishmael series of didactic fiction. What we call unrealistic is in fact a much older way of viewing our relationship with the world. To label this worldview unrealistic is to fall into the trap of blindly accepting the stories of Mother Culture, which places humans in an antagonistic rather than cooperative relationship with the physical environment. A truly cooperative perspective would recognize that no single species (even our own) should be allowed to let its desires subordinate the needs of other cohabitants of the planet. We may compete to the full extent of our abilities, but to take from the planet more than we need to survive is to establish an unstable relationship with the resources that sustain us.

The capitalist dictum "grow or die" can only emerge from a mindset that views the world as the rightful property of humankind, intended for us to shape and exploit as we see fit.