Pentti Linkola "Can Life Prevail?"

First the press release, then an explanation as to why this is important:

Pentti Linkola is an environmentalist from the old school, called a conservationist. Conservationists realize that whatever land is open for human use gets sold, and eventually gets converted into cities, suburbs or farms.

However, animals and plants need open space -- unbroken by roads, fences and walls -- in which to reproduce and interact. Each creature needs a certain amount of acreage and a certain amount of roaming space, or they clash and eliminate each other. Worse, without open space natural selection is interrupted, and they become inbred.

Pentti Linkola, like Aldous Huxley before him, realized that a society based on the fulfillment of individual desire has no STOP button. It keeps expanding because each individual wants as much as he can get. Even worse, individuals get bitter because they do not feel fulfilled because society does not address their non-material needs.

However, Linkola was too smart to believe in the dogmas of left or right. Communism, he saw, was so focused on material equality that it could not stop expansion. The right wing, who believe in a libertarian form of social Darwinism, did not take into account the damage done by individuals pursuing "freedom" in material form.

Instead, he realized that a new form of politics was needed, one based on reverence for things outside of us, and as a result, the ability to tell ourselves and others "NO" when individual desires threaten to promote reckless expansion.

Linkola sees that we already exist in a time of radical evil where our personal fears and desires have trumped all sense, making a chaotic mess that consumes everything it touches. Even more, he sees how politics has devolved into material infighting and ignored nature.

Read this book for an insight into how we can fix our environmental problem and make ourselves spiritually stronger, through the Zen of learning to appreciate nature and struggle.

While most "environmentalists" are going to tell you to recycle condoms and buy green lightbulbs, Linkola offers you the hardline reality and doesn't take any prisoners. In doing so, he shows how the solutions we need are readily accessible if we can just open our minds to them.

 

I like what I have read so far

We do not need concessions.

We need real, wholistic change... we must realize that amenities are not truly amenities if the result of saving a few footsteps is choking on poisonous gas...

Recycling is not a solution, it only sustains the problem... PRODUCTION is the problem... things need not be produced that are not in some way beneficial to all things. A plastic container may keep your juice fresh, but that bit of plastic x billions is going to cause your grandkids some serious headaches....

All because you wanted a dam cup of orange juice, or clean water because your parents set situations in place that polluted your local water system to a point where it is not good for you, WHILE big brother prescribes a heavy dose of flouride, chloride (more pollution.................) and who knows what else as the solution...

Is it really worth it...

no, not to me.

 

Though I totally agree we must conserve existing natural areas, conservationists tend to accept that we must allow cities, agricultural land, etc. into environmental sacrifice zones. What we need to do is restore the environment to some extent in these areas and stop unsustainable practices so they are no longer sacrifice zones but good places for people and the rest of the species to live while still producing food or housing people. Where I live in central Illinois 99% of the land is corn and soybean fields and there is very little nature left. Here, organic agriculture, not farming fencerow to fencerow, restorations of forest and prairie can play a big part in helping the local environment come back.