Personplanet politics:

1
Person/planet politics

• The political ecology of sacrifice

2
For everyone to admit to our inherent drive
towards heroism would probably release such
pent-up force as to be devastating to societies
as they now are."

• Ernst Becker,
• The Denial of Death

3

• Sacrifice, n.(a) The destruction or surrender
  of something valued or desired for the sake of
  something having, or regarded as having, a higher
  pressing claim(b) to make sacred the act of
  becoming sacred

4
(No Transcript)
5
Poor Nations to Bear Brunt as World Warms
6
(No Transcript)
7
(No Transcript)
8
(No Transcript)
9
Ecological Sacrifice Making Sacrifice Visible

• To the extent that the culture of consumption
  creates the illusion of getting without giving,
  sacrifice goes underground.
• The global economy as massive conversion of gift
  wealth to market wealth
• Distancing
• geographic
• temporal

10
Ecological debt

• The socio-temporal dimension of sacrifice
• Global flow of wealth from periphery to core
• Carbon Debt
• Shadow ecologies and ecological footprints gtgt
  
• What is being sacrificed and by whom?
• North/South divide
• and to what gods?

11
Sacrifice the political ecology of food

• Beef
• History Spanish colonies, New World frontier,
  British elites, buffalo slaughter, destruction of
  grasslands, deforestation
• Today subsidies, chemicals, antibiotics,
  factory farming, bad working conditions, fast
  food, increased consumption in DCs, symbol of
  prosperity
• Mitigating factors health concerns, mad cow
  disease, animal rights movement

• Sugar
• History
• Slavery, deforestation, symbol of prosperity,
  colonialism, industrialization, working class
• Today subsidies, chemicals, wetlands
• Geography
• From core to periphery
• Health addiction

12
Sacrifice of the unborn and the nonhuman

• Intergenerational ethics
• Toxic nuclear waste
• Ozone depletion
• Climate change
• Biodiversity
• Trans-human sacrifice
• Animal rights
• Mass extinction crisis
• Most sacrifice is involuntary and unconscious
• Making the unconscious sacrifice conscious
• CHOICE!
• Are we happier?

13
(No Transcript)
14
Green consumerism Sustainability without
sacrifice?
15
(No Transcript)
16
(No Transcript)
17
Are we stuck between a rock and a hard place?
18
Interrogating Sacrifice

• Stuck in the Mud
• Constraining effect of the shroud of negativity
  associated with sacrifice
• Make Current Sacrifice Clear
• Ecological debt, sacrifice of unborn nonhuman
• Illuminating the Underground
• Sacrifice occurs regularly, but has gone
  underground.
• Practical Ju-Jitsu
• Todays sacrifice can be tomorrows gain.
• Deeper exploration of ontology and questions of
  meaning

19
Modernity and sacrifice

• Sacrifice ubiquitous across human cultures
• Modernity denigrates sacrifice
• Resistance to environmentalism premised upon
  gloomy view of sacrifice
• Sacrifice as loss
• Inevitable under an ontology of individualism
• Sacrifice does not disappear it goes underground.

20
Sacrifice under a cosmology of wholeness

• Sacrifice to make sacred by offering
• A celebration of consumption and being consumed
• Relationships
• To transcendental forces
• Sublimating the awesome
• Forges community
• Gift economy as the basis for culture
• Gifts must flow
• Market economy occludes gifts, especially
  natures

21
An Affirmative Politics of Sacrifice

• Global eco-crisis as crisis of meaning
• Ontology of holism and radical interdependence
• Holistic ontology participatory cosmology
  revival of cyclical processes
• Sacrifice as a premise of interdependence
• Not the death of the individual, but his/her
  entry into ecological adulthood in a
  participatory universe
• Modernity has given us the social construct of
  the individual who can choose this.
• Acknowledging our integral role in Earths gift
  economy
• We are Earth becoming conscious of itself

22
(No Transcript)