Controlling The Population
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Reducing carbon dioxide emissions has been a solution in search of a problem for decades. It was once supposed to be the answer to global cooling. What it always entails is that high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs for the working class in general and for working-class men in particular must never be created or restored, while travel (and now even meat-eating, for which our teeth are designed) must be re-restricted to the rich, and while development in the poor world must be arrested or reversed. And today, not for the first time, it became bound up with the view that the problem with the world is that there are proles and (a mercifully old-fashioned British word) darkies in it, so that they have to be stopped from breeding.
Everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone, should read my friend Ann Farmer’s Prophets and Priests: The Hidden Face of the Birth Control Movement (London: The Saint Austin Press, 2002). In addition to its unyielding racism, the war against fertility is, and has always been, the war against the working class, the war against the poor at home and abroad, the war against the electoral base of the potentially Post-Right Left, the war against the social provisions for which that Left exists, and, above all, the war against women.
Furthermore (this bit is Lindsay, not Farmer – but I’m sure that she would agree with it), the idea of fertility as a medicable condition, requiring powerful drugs or even surgical interventions to prevent a woman’s body from doing exactly what it does naturally, is basically and ultimately the idea that femaleness itself is such a condition, a sort of XX Syndrome. I can think of nothing that is actually more misogynistic than that, although some things are equally so, notably the view that the preborn child is simultaneously insentient and a part of the woman’s body. Is it the whole of a woman’s body that is insentient, or only the parts most directly connected with reproduction?
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This whole charade about reducing carbon dioxide is about getting rid of our dependence on fossils fuels. It is merely the marketing that is designed to cover the fact that peak oil is on the horizon.
Jeremiah, no, peak oil is a myth. David has this one right.
Thomas,
Do you disagree with Hubbert’s peak theory? Just curious.
CO2 control is definitely about control— control of the very air humanity breaths (out). I’m curious about Farmer’s book. There have been some interesting tidbits here and there in the news about the negative impact of birth control pills on women’s health and their ability to choose a biologically optimal mate. (Google birth control pill and immune system.) Regardless of the original sinister intent of encouraging birth control, it seems like it’s the most educated and sophisticated members of society whose ranks are thinning thanks to reduced and later in life reproduction. In my experience, it’s the progressive careerist that is most likely to devote herself to her profession and screw around until her mid-thirties before she decides to have one baby with a man she may or may not stay married to. War on the family, yes. War on the poor? Not so sure how that works. Maybe I should read the book.
Thomas,
Just curious, do you dismiss Hubbert’s peak theory as myth?
Jeremiah,
Of course, I cannot say that there will never be an oil peak, but I do not think it is on the near horizon. Aren’t we already passing Hubbert’s original peak oil timeline anyway (and with all the limitations on oil drilling)?
Even here in Norway, they know there is far more oil to be found…if only we can get past the New Left and Euro-liberal tools who have adopted an obscurantist ideology of de-development.
Plus I am extremely sceptical whenever I hear peak oil mentioned due to the past few years when the Goldman Sachs minions were on financial TV all day saying the price of oil had to quadruple almost overnight because the Chinese just started buying cars and we are reaching peak oil. Of course that was an excuse for them to pull people into their speculative bubble and screw them badly.
Pardon my speech there.
Thomas,
Yes, Hubbert’s peak oil timeline was wrong(he predicted world production would peak in 1995),however he was spot on regarding when U.S production would peak.
I highly doubt that it’s the Euro-Left that’s preventing oil drilling, considering how dependent the continent is on Russia to meet its energy needs. As for the North Sea, it peaked sometime ago and the EROI continues to drop.
It’s the same in the U.S.A. All the easily extractable oil in places like Texas and California are gone and now were getting most of our oil from remote regions of Alaska and offshore wells.
Your right about Goldman Sachs speculating in the oil markets after the housing boom cooled off.