Archive of the "eco disasters" section from the Dialectical Butterflies website. Very much a work in progress.
Reports on the end-game of a world driven by the law of value End-game : ecocide and extreme capitalism.
Though the opposition to the Twyford Down bypass is now a distant memory, during the 1990s most everyone had heard of it. This was the most visible tip of similar protests, like the opposition to the extension of Manchester's "Ringworm" airport and the Bingley bypass in W Yorks. And for a brief moment it looked as if the battle against car culture was turning in our favour and the "great car economy" so stridently proclaimed by Mrs. Thatcher as against "socialist" rail and bus travel (i.e. nationalized, and definitely not to be confused with socialized industry) was being put out to grass. However the greening of town and country was much exaggerated and today no one is any doubt the car lobby is set to make a big comeback. And this time it will go largely unopposed. Unchallenged and almost on the nod, construction companies by hitching up to the PFI (Private Finance Initiative), are seizing and shaping the terrain in a manner the notorious 1960s transport minister, Ernie Marples, could only jerk-off dreaming about.
What in the meantime has happened? Well, though never ending defeat is bound to breed intense apathy, the real explanation lies elsewhere. It is the ending of dole culture that more than anything else has led to a decline in the quality of protest. Only state benefits allowed young, impoverished, largely middle class youths with something of a vision, to occupy construction sites on projected routes. Though they were often extremely naive, only a person devoid of imagination (and how their number is increasing!) could fail to be moved by the tunnelling, the tree top living, aerial ropeways, booby traps and so on, This guerrilla architecture has more potential than any piece of architecture at present being constructed legitimately and has a great potential, beginning with our unliveable cities. But meanwhile the new, totalitarian gospel of work – presenteeism – has decimated the more creative side of protest and opposition is now a long, drawn out yawn - endless marching, the signing of petitions, legal manoeuvres and home owners protesting at falling property values in areas where property prices are already sky high. This is particularly true of the present opposition to the proposed citing of London's third airport on the irreplaceable Rainham Marshes.
Seeing how the subject of the more imaginative aspects of eco protest are strapped to their desks, work stations and tools and who, not so long ago had the freedom to toss them to one side for a year or two, it is now more than ever essential eco protest links up with a critique of political economy. It has been threatening to do for some time but the ground may now be more fertile then ever. For the name of the game is suicide capitalism and ecocide and even Atari will not have the virtual scenarios to match the violence and scale of the impending destruction to come.
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Edward Newman: A Critique: Plus a compilation of his statements and facts on the butterflies of Yorkshire in the mid 19th century. Some very interesting finds!
A Revolutionary Critique of E O Wilson : A Revolutionary Critique of E O Wilson : The sociobiogist and myrmecologist E O Wilson came to eventually specialize in the study of ants through a childhood interest in butterflies. Beginning with entomology no other entomologist has laid claim to such a broad field that includes the study of human behaviours. Such inclusiveness began with the positivist Auguste Comte who was much interested in the biological sciences. Though proclaiming to be progressive it always ends up endorsing the status quo and is therefore reductive. The author of the 'Diversity of Life' is no exception. He, like many another animal behaviourist and geneticist, is blind to the richness and diversity of human life in historical societies especially in those insurrectionary moments when 'the world (is) turned upside down', a phrase the historian Christopher Hill uses to describe radical currents in the English civil war of the 1640s. Through E O Wilson the term bio-diversity, following the Rio Summit of a decade ago, has been popularized and enshrined in legislation the world over. But as we have found out through our efforts to preserve the Dingy Skipper, the law is practically a dead letter. But the fact that Wilson found it imperative he move beyond the fascinating, though rarefied micro-world of ants, means that other conservationists, through dire necessity, are also feeling the need to grope towards a far more considered and accurate socio-biological totality which can no longer pretend capitalism is a none issue.
Open Letters to Susan Stead: Regarding the Lepidoptera of Woodhall Quarries, Bradford, West Yorks. Open letters as a means of persuading the hands of Leeds Council in the hope of preventing redevelopment as car park and land fill. So far the campaign has had positive results.
Hydrology & A Critique of the Eco-City: Thoughts on the eco-city and the failure of early emancipatory projects such as psychogeography to redefine urbanism.
Political Economy & Butterflies: Musings on Hegel and E B Ford
Energy & Extinction : A long discussion on present energy options and the often dire options the state now has to confront.
Energy & Freeman Dyson : In the form of letters and related to the above web, a discussion on the limitations of Freeman Dyson in relation to Rimbaud and William Blake, as well as Dyson's failure to adequately grasp the lunacy of present society.
G(eneral)M(otors) Food : On GM foods and the coming bio-economy and bio-assembly lines leading eventually to a bio-mass maufactory: a new medical Fordism of designed and cultured parts. To be developed and added to as time passes--------------.
Street One & Codlings : Memories of butterflies and moths before the age of environmental planners: The wild life rich brownfield experience of Aycliffe Trading Estate, Co Durham in the 1950s.
Icteric 1966: Some Remarks on Butterflies?. Followed by a precursory examination of the events surrounding the article on butterfly swarms and art/anti art events that decades ago in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne anticipated the ethos of the Turner Prize but also pointed to its revolutionary transcendence.
Fuel Convoy: On the Fuel protests by hauliers and small farmers in the Autumn of 2000 plus our and friends leaflet handed out to the Convoy participants. "Whilst many of the less ideologically befuddled poor supported this movement, it was left to the professional middle-classes to denounce the blockaders (most of whom earned peanuts compared to these well paid professional liars) as 'greedy' and 'voracious'.
Reflections on Romanticism: A line of radical research a keen young academic might like to pursue and elaborate upon, this is basically a series of notes relating to the self-destruct of the arts in relation to English and Germam romanticism with emphasis on the revolt and transformation of poetic form. Comments on Goethe, Schiller, Hegel, Marx, Heine, Keats Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Mallarme wrapped up in "Dialectical Lines for Insects" bringing together John Ray, Von Frisch and others...
Fabre, Darwin, Dalton & 'DNA' Watson meet Lautreamont: Perhaps to be read in conjunction with 'Reflections on Romanticism', this is the point where the horrific potentialities of the bio-economy seem so prescient in the creatures which inhabit 'The Songs of Maldoror'.
As Common as Muck: A surprising encounter with a considerable number of Adonis Blues on August 25th 2005 on Ranmore Common Surrey, set off a train of thought and drift encompassing psychogeography, chance encounter, the changing relationship between town and country and the frightening conclusions science now has to accept in embracing an autonomous critique of political economy.
Leeds: Geology as Subversion?: Thoughts on the changing face of a derive encountering scientific specialisms and its ambient historical background in Leeds - the UK's second city and financial centre.
Derives Housing & Real Ecos: The mid-1970s and the Lucas Aerospace Plan and community architecture. Jack Common and a Newcastle urban derive. Historicism and Aestheticism. BedZed, the Stern Report and a Thames barge. Eco capitalism as the final saviour of markets and humanity. Written in the summer of 2007, the sub-titles in themselves provide all the explanations needed though the theses at the very end are the points really needing to be remembered.
Scientists and Conservation: A critical discussion of Bernal, Haldane, Levy and Needham plus a social assessment of the ecologists of the end of most life like Lovelock, Fortey and Lynas with a passing critique of Colin Tudge etc. The "businessmen of domesday" and the contemporary lies about much conservation come in for stinging attack.
On George Bataille: The Accursed Share : - versus sado-masochistic aestheticism and shock marketing: Although this text is about a concrete overlap between art and science in Georges Bataille's 'The Accursed Share' written in the mid 20th century, its real subject is about a proposed recombined DNA human being in Genesis P Orridge's marketable "pandrogony" and the aesthetic counterpart of Craig Venter's recent experiments combining DNA's to create new species.
Bio-Economy or Bio-Industrialisation?: A discussion about the heavily capitalised bio-economy fields and how ecology has been press-ganged into a free market vista of hyped stock market quotations as the virgin rain forests and Antarctica are patented in a future trillion dollars industry. Craig Venter is to the forefront of this ghastly experiment and this text should be read in conjunction with the one on Georges Bataille.
Land Art, Icteric & Wordsworth : On the egos and pretensions of the Land Art giantism movement which we had a hand in preparing. What a disaster and what would Wordsworth have thought?
The Strange Case of the Disappearance of the West Yorks Green Hairstreaks Written by David & Stuart Wise
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