ECOANIMAL

In this episode, Chris Hedges focuses on the harsh criticism Michael Moore’s new film Planet of the Humans has received in many quarters, including some with solid ecological qualifications in knowledge and activism. Guest is the film’s director, Jeff Gibbs.  The film is an indictment of a corporate-friendly environmentalist bureaucracy apparently incapable or unwilling of understanding the nature of corporate power. . 

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to writer, teacher and activist Victor Wallis about the prospect and need for Ecosocialism. As Vitor Wallis notes, “A disdain for the natural environment has characterized capitalism from the beginning. As Marx noted, capital abuses the soil as much as it exploits the worker.1 The makings of ecological breakdown are thus inherent in capitalism. No serious observer now denies the severity of the environmental crisis, but it is still not widely recognized as a capitalist crisis, that is, as a crisis arising from and perpetuated by the rule of capital, and hence incapable of resolution within the capitalist framework…”

JON HOCHSCHARTNER—What many are not aware of is an emerging technology that will make aligning our values and actions easier. Cultured meat is grown from animal cells without slaughtering nonhumans. It has the potential to remove unimaginable misery from our food system with little to no sacrifice on our part. In some ways, this sounds too good to be true, like promises on a late-night infomercial. But the science is real.

DAVID STUDDERT—In a 1982 interview I said that Australians can’t continue to live in Australia unless we adapt and learn from the indigenous culture; we need to learn from them, how this land IS. Of course literalists and the Murdoch press will parody this as wanting to live in a gunya, wander from place to place, eat witchetty grubs and throw boomerangs. This type of nonsense is their stock in trade. Any idiot who thinks we should wilfully deny ourselves the help of the great technology we now possess is truly a fool.

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS—Consider the extinct and vanishing species of animals, insects, reptiles, birds. Why did we do this? For no other reason than a few rich people could be a bit richer. They didn’t need the money that erased animals, plants, forests, clean water, fish and marine life, birds, butterflies, bees and large numbers of insects.