Show 202a: Earth Day Special: Joel Kovel – The Enemy of Nature

Earth Day Special: Joel Kovel

The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World

Audio here!

As the world’s scientists converge on the all too real crisis of “global warming,” even while Right-wingers and the Bush Administration continue to spin the crises into a Left-wing Conspiracy – probably headed up by Al Gore – too few discussions are taking place concerning the root causes of our ecological dilemma.

Conservatives who are willing to acknowledge what science is telling us, and even those whom exhibit a real sense of urgency, are afraid of what might happen to the economy if we go at environmentalism full force. Mainstream liberals like Al Gore have been working hard to dispel this fear by assuring us that the economy will get even stronger, not weaker, if we take care of our planet.

But what if the economy is at the very heart of the crisis?

Al Gore and others are to be commended for doing their best within their current mindset – that of big-government social democracy. The scientists certainly need to be commended for not bending to political or corporate pressure… telling us the truth about the health of our planet. Still, like the proverbial elephant in the living room, most people are ignoring the root causes of not only global warming, but of the entire ecological crisis.

In recognition of Earth Day 2007 next week, Equal Time for Freethought presents a discussion with Dr. Joel Kovel, author of The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World, about what is missing from the mainstream dialogue as we perhaps enter a new era of environmentalism. If we really want to reverse the state of the planet before it is too late, more people need to be addressing the roots of the current ecological crisis.

Joel Kovel is an American politician, academic, writer and eco-socialist. A practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst until the mid-1980s, he has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies and has published many books on his work in psychiatry, psychoanalysis and political activism. White Racism: A Psychohistory, released in 1972, was nominated for a National Book Award in Religion and Philosophy. Other works have focused on politics and eco-socialism, including Against the State of Nuclear Terror (1983) and 1994’s Red Hunting in the Promised Land, a study of anticommunist repression in America.

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