From Lenin's tomb to Spiked On Line

Just been updating my blog roll and stuck on Lenin's Tomb which is not especially ecosocialist or zen but has some excellent discussions which are worth a look at.

For example this post on the evils of carbon trading is essential:

In 2007, the carbon markets reached an historical peak of $117bn in value, and can only go up from here. The great thing about for investors is that it doesn't rely on the opportunities that markets can independently provide. Rather, governments and inter-governmental institutions can through subsidy and regulation utterly re-order the balance of risks and advantages, create a new set of winners and losers. For this reason, the carbon market has, er, 'weathered' the credit crunch and expanded beyond expectations.

Also put on a link to Paul Kingsnorth, Paul is a good guy, used to be an editor of the Ecologist has written some good books and I ran into him at a Green Left conference a couple of years ago where Joel Kovel was speaking.

This is his guest post from Brendan O'Neill...I ran into Brendan at Doughty Street and he introduced himself and had to admit to him that I preferred the robust but rather calmer criticism of the Economist to Spiked on Line which he runs with.

Any way here he is via Paul.

Regular readers will know that I've long had a beef with the rabidly anti-environmentalist editorial team over at Spiked magazine.

But I thought it was about time we tried to build bridges. So today this blog features its very first guest blogger - Brendan O'Neill, editor of Spiked, who writes here in a personal capacity.


Hi, I'm Brendan O'Neill - and you are a wanker.

That's a fact - an empirical one. Whether you like it or not.

Let me explain. Not that I need to explain myself to you people. But let me do it anyway because, God knows, you need to be enlightened.

Not that there is a God. And here's why.

One fine day, a long, long time ago, a fish crawled out of a swamp. Not long after that, the fish became a monkey.

Do I need to tell you what happened next?

That's right - the monkey became you. And me. And that's when it all really kicked off. Between us we did great things. Wrote the plays of Shakespeare. Built loads of cool machines. Started tonnes of fuck off big wars. Chopped down loads of crappy forests full of cunty animals and replaced them with roads and shit hot things like that. You and me - we're the fucking greatest. There's nothing we can't do. And believe me, my friends - we haven't even started yet.

But you don't believe me, do you? And that's the whole problem.

Because you people are scared. You look at the grand sweep of human progress, and instead of saying 'Bring it on!', you say 'Eeew! it's big and scary! I'm going back under the blanket with my cup of fucking cocoa!'

Poofters. The lot of you.

Progress, you see, is under threat. It's under threat from you. We've got tonnes of stuff that could make the world even cooler. We could genetically modify ourselves, for instance. I could make myself three mouths, so I could express three times as many groovily controversial opinions at once. You could get yourself a spine (ha!) We could grow tonnes more food to feed poor people so they could get rich like me, which everyone knows is better. We could kill all the fucking flies and shit that sting us. We could build flying cars and warp drives, so we could go off to other planets like Captain Picard. All of this is possible.

Or it would be - if you'd all just die.

Because you lot hate progress, don't you? You hate progress and you hate freedom. Like big, fat, crippled, spastic Luddite elephants, there's nothing you won't do to impede it. 'Climate change!' you whine. 'Oooh, trees and animals!' you squeal. 'Overfishing!' Overfishing? What's that? Never heard of it. Twats.

The reality is, these are all just excuses. Your real agenda is clear for all to see. You hate progress, and machines and freedom and modernity. Most of all, you hate people. You want to kill them all, don't you? Say it. Go on: say it. It's what you're thinking. You're all like that schoolkid who just shot up all his mates in Finland. His mum was an 'environmentalist.' Did you know that? Or did the eco-liberal media keep it from you? Perhaps they didn't tell you that Hitler was a vegetarian either. It's pretty obvious what that means, isn't it? Hmm?

You may not like hearing it, my friends - but it's an empirical fact.