Planetary Engineering and the Politics of Gaia
* Book: Politics, Planetary Engineering, and Environmentalism: The Politics of Gaia. By Peter Critchley.
Description
"This book is Part Two of Of Gods and Gaia. The book examines the case for a planetary engineering and management that seeks to redefine and reorganise environmentalism around nuclear power, biotechnology, GM food and geoengineering. This amounts to moral and political disarmament of the environmental movement and can be resisted. This book examines what these proposals amount to and what kind of thinking – and politics – lies behind them. The people that I refer to as planetary engineers and managers do not revalue the dignity of human beings as moral beings capable of assuming responsibility for their powers and exercising choice. Instead, they equate power with technology. This is the Faustian delusion at its most crude. Far from resolving our predicament, Brand and Lynas do not even recognise it. They cannot see that the price for Faustian pacts is now being demanded. Instead, they still think that our technology, reliance upon which has brought us to this predicament, will save us. It soon becomes apparent that what Lynas and Brand and the planetary engineers and managers are offering is a massive gamble dressed up as a technological fix. The irony is that the claims made for technology are pitched at such a high level, overriding so much within culture and politics and ethics, that they are likely to rebound. This gamble can be refused. What Jacques Ellul identified decades ago as ‘the technological bluff’ can be called. We can refuse the bribe of the megamachine. The promise of salvation through technology has never been rendered so bare. The basic rationale of the gamble urged on us by Lynas and Brand is not the pull of a better life but the push of environmental necessity. The old promise of science and technology has never sounded so weak. In this second part of Of Gods and Gaia, I set the case for planetary engineering and management within a broader philosophical discussion of human power and progress. Above all, I call for the integration of our moral and technical capacities so as to achieve a balanced development of the human ontology. This also requires a deeper understanding of the human essence and how it flourishes only when we find our true place within nature. Forget the "men as gods" delusion. "It's our limitations that keep us sane." Dr. Bertha Simos"
More information
* Book: Peter Critchley, Of Gods and Gaia, 2012