Science against ideology, a manifesto (was Re: Ecology)

["Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky" <gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

En relación a Re: Ecology,
el 5 Feb 00, a las 11:11, Louis Proyect dijo:

> Nestor:
> >I can speak of the Argentinian dams on the Paraná, Uruguay and Limay
> >rivers, and of the Brazilian dams in the Paraná and Uruguay basins.
> >The dams are necessary in themselves: we need to obtain as much hydro
> > energy as possible (or it is only the USA who can have a Hoover
> >Dam?), and we also need to enhance the navigability of our inner
> >rivers.
>
> Nestor, when you dam a river, there are environmental consequences.

Of course, every first year student of Biology knows that, and yours
truly has been studying Biology from 1972 to 1974, and what's more,
with a definite choice for ecology over other specializations.

In what I tend to consider his typical mood, Louis Pr has sent to the
list (and will probably send more) many excellent and wonderfully
researched postings as a kind of an answer to my contention that -at
least in Argentina, and, insofar as I have learnt from other list
members, in South Africa also- ecologism may become a spearhead for
imperialism and for an acceptation of the status quo in the Third
World.

But in spite of his excellent research, he is not answering me,
though his postings are illustrative (and I will most probably keep
them in my files). Louis has sent top quality material on the dangers
of large dams, on the need for Marxists to accept that humans are a
part of nature (and that the stress we put on nature can not stretch
out unbounded forever), on the costs of hydro power relative to other
sources (Lou Pr was wrong with the Yacy-Retá example, however, since
most of the costs there arise from corruption and graft; a truly
ecological criticism should have pointed to different issues than the
cost, and it has been done -among others by yours truly- in Argentina
since the 1970s).

Now, as to me, this is an useless effort. Lou will hardly convince me
of things I was propagating decades ago, perhaps the only Marxist who
was a serious student of Ecology in Argentina, 1972-3.
But I am no "ecological fundamentalist" either. Argentina is a
country without _that_ many energy sources. I know it may sound
anathema to American and First World ears, but one of the most
ecological solutions here would be --nuclear energy, under full
control and design of the State (not of private capitalists).  Let us
however -and for the sake of clinging to the main point in debate-
put nuclear energy aside (1). There may be -in the future- some
interesting development of wind farms in central and southern
Patagonia, but this is very far away in time and no research is made
in Argentina on this field now.

This leaves us with natural fuels (hydrocarbons) hydro power. I
suppose there is not too great a need to explain hydrocarbons away.
OK. Then we are left with hydro power.  For these purposes, the last
great source of hydro power left to us is the Paraná-Uruguay basin.

Keep in mind that most of the country is either awesomely flat, too
thrifty in rivers, or arid. There are some alternative hydro
projects, but they are few, not well sited, and will have to serve
regional needs the day we finally build them. Most of the viable
"alternative" dams have been built already, and while the current
situation of privatized power sources remains no dam will be built.
So that we socialists will have to build the dams if we want to have
power (and this is an important thing to take into account in a
country that is beginning to suffer power breakdowns due to lack of
investment).

Then, problems arise, many of which Louis is pointing out.

Large dams are a problem. Big ideas, big problems. This I do not
deny. I may add verse to all that Louis has posted.

Yes, Louis, I know this basic truth very well. You can have lots of
fertile silt kept behind the dam (Asswan), you can also have problems
with geologic faults and even an enhanced danger of landslides and
earthqwakes, you can have problems with the freatic (is it good
English?) level around the dam if you are building it on a plain, you
can generate great problems to wildlife and you can even propagate
terrible diseases, such as it happened with many of the dams that
were built in Brazil (anchylostomiasis).  You can, nay, you WILL
change the patterns of living of people around the area to be
swamped. And so on. What I contend is that a socialist must
understand that all these issues are socially tractable, and that
none of them makes the dams less necessary, from the social point of
view. So that technological arguments are not the point.

But then, Louis follows with something particularly interesting:

> The desire to have a "Hoover Dam" is understandable if your only
> criterion is cheap electricity.

Well, if there is a criterion I would not follow to build a "Hoover
Dam" is cheap electricity. Mine was just an example, and a bad one
(now I see it). Rational damming of the Paraná-Uruguay-Paraguay
basins would bring about good transportation routes, good crosspoints
for roads (preferably railroads) linking the Atlantic with the
Pacific, freedom for agriculture from the pains of Niños or Niñas,
large aqueducts carrying water to the Central Pampa region where tap
water is on the verge of toxicity due to fluorine -and an increase in
cattle production leaving new lands for agriculture in the East-,
protection against the floods in the Paraná basin (by intelligent
usage of the Iberá swamps as a derivator / retainer of unusual
overflows), management of the Pantanal as well as of the southeastern
fringes of the Chaco (what is known as the Bajos Submeridionales) a
vast area subject to periodic flooding, and so on. With additional
works on the Bermejo, they would even generate navigation ports at
the foot of the Salta Andean ranges in Northwestern Argentina.

Additionally, and only additionally, they would produce electricity.
And, on the symbolic level, these works would help our countrymen to
have a sense of Nature if properly integrated within a vast plan of
ecological education, and an ample set of social and political
debates prior to the adoption of the project.

Of course that I know that

Unfortunately, such large-scale
> projects have led to intractable environmental problems in the
> American southwest, including desertification, destruction of
aquatic
> life such as the salmon, counterproductive irrigation practices,
etc.

What I want to say, however, and here is the main thrust of my
argument, a thrust that no mountain of evidence can derail because it
has nothing to do with that evidence, is that the intractable
environmental problems are not necessarily to be predicated of the
dams themselves, but _of the society that built them_. Same might be
said of the brutal experiences in the fSU which, by the way, do not
seem to have been as tremendous as some in the USA.

When these sad experiences are mentioned in Argentina, they are
always used in the sense that Argentina should not attempt to produce
more power, because this may produce environmental harm. This is what
the whole "ecologist ideology" boils down to when confronted with
actual facts.

BECAUSE I am a socialist ecologist, BECAUSE I do not need to be
convinced that ecological concerns are an essential part of our task,
I struggle against "ecologists" in the sense we are having here.
These "ecologists", by the way, are generally well paid World Bank or
IMF officials.  As a lover of nature, I cannot but warn against this
wave of cheapskate ecologism (not of ecology) that has been spilt
over the Third World in order to reinforce the TINA ideology with
Malthusian arguments.

And BECAUSE I am a socialist ecologist, I am also convinced that this
particular species that writes poetry, plays music, paints, makes
films, builds monuments and carves sculptures, this species whose
essence (that socialism is called to make real) is not the day-to-day
economy of food and shelter, but the creation of a new world of
beauty, this species is the ONE species that most care needs.

In my own opinion, this flows naturally from Marx's "it is humans who
explain the monkey, not the other way round", a phrase which reflects
on Nature his own contention that capitalism was not just another
class society, but the one that carried to perfection the essence of
class societies. It is we humans who, as a species, carry to
perfection the essence of living things, and it is BECAUSE of that,
not IN SPITE of that (such as the "ecologists" want us to believe)
that we must take care of nature. First and foremost we must ensure
pleasure and leisure for all humans, and in this task we shall have
to POETICALLY but nonetheless firmly put the whole of nature to our
service, which is to its own service.

Wow, I came out with a Manifesto!

(1)  Some day I may tell you something about the inherently safe
power generation technology developed in Argentina by our scientists
at the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA), a project that,
after 1976, the military attempted to divert to military goals -and
struggle against this cost exile or even life to more than one person
within the CNEA- and that eventually was torpedoed after 1983)




Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxx