cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/12352161
"The Chinese Communist Party, once famous for pillaging from the natural world, has set to protecting parts of it. But the country’s “eco-authoritarian” approach deserves scrutiny"
"Yes, China is saving the environment while we in the West continue to destroy it, but at what cost?!"
The Yangtze’s initial recovery is testimony to China’s “immense” ability to concentrate state resources on environmental problems, says Wang Limin, a veteran Chinese conservationist. He is encouraged most by the rise in the finless porpoise population because, as an “indicator species” and top predator, the porpoise is a sensitive barometer of the health of the overall ecosystem. It is also cute enough to attract lots of public attention. Mr Wang hopes the tale of the Yangtze’s decline and rebound will make the Chinese people more environmentally aware. Even so, the human cost of the Yangtze’s recovery has been substantial. Some 230,000 fishermen lost their jobs and their boats, which were destroyed or confiscated. According to China’s state-run media, they were given compensation, were retrained and in some cases found new jobs that were better paid than their old ones. But a visit to former fishing communities paints a different picture.
Jinxian county is on the banks of Junshan lake, south of the Yangtze’s main channel. Locals reckon that only one in five fishermen got compensation for the loss of their livelihood, and even that was far less than they used to earn. Most had to leave to work as migrant labourers in big cities. “No one listens to the common people. The government decided everything. You can’t argue with them,” says one bitter former fisherwoman who now runs a restaurant. A propaganda sign nearby offers cold comfort: “Ban fishing together; move forward together.” At a village down the road Mr Zhang, shirtless in the stifling heat, points to the dock where his boat used to moor, now overgrown with weeds. He once enjoyed the best fishing on the lake, he sighs. Encouraged by the government, he has raised swamp eels, a local delicacy, in ponds since the ban. But unlike fishing, aquaculture requires big investments that can go sour if demand slumps. “Everyone’s losing money this year,” he says.
So "at what cost" is they found two bitter uncles, one who transitioned to running a successful restaurant and the other who transitioned into running a successful aquaculture business with the help from the government
And no effort to contrast how this would have shook out in America (for example)
Looks in the general direction of Hurricane Katrina
Excerpt from the article itself
THE MIGHTY Yangtze, running 6,300km from the Tibetan plateau to Shanghai, is sometimes known as China’s “mother river”. Yet it was not always treated with much respect. Sewage and industrial waste were poured into its waters. Millions of tonnes of fish were dragged out. Mega-dams clogged up its channels. It was all too much for some of the Yangtze’s most wondrous inhabitants. The baiji, a white-bellied, nearly sightless dolphin, is probably extinct; so is the gigantic, sword-nosed paddlefish. But not all the damage is permanent. Asia’s longest river is now making a remarkable comeback.
Sweeping protection measures in place since 2021 seem to be aiding a recovery. Fish biomass (the estimated total weight of all the fish in the river) has risen by over 200% since then, after seven decades of decline, according to a study released in February by researchers in China, Canada, America and France. In April other scientists witnessed a rare type of sturgeon breeding in the wild for the first time in two decades. Another study published in July found that a significantly greater proportion of fish in the river were reaching sexual maturity, good news for the prospects of the next generation. The latest government figures, meanwhile, say over 1,400 finless porpoises—a chubby, snub-nosed relative of the baiji that locals call a “river pig”—now live in the river’s basin, up from a low of 1,000 in 2017.
It's also a way to obfuscate and prepare people for the west's oncoming eco-Fascism.
"Once famous for pillaging from the natural world"????? What level of projection is this? Coming from the mouthpiece of the British empire that deforested every habitable continent, directly caused the extinction of countless species, and strip mined all of its colonies.
That's copium because China has rare earths the west wants and can't get because of totally self inflicted policy.
unlimited piss on the economist
You WILL protect the environment.
You're telling me what to do! That's authoritarianism!
I hate The Economist more than any other publication
European organ of the aristocracy of finance
the journal that speaks for British millionaires
Shit site for jerks
Me
The competition is too fierce for that, but it's absolutely up there with the worst
Ecologically responsible destruction is actually eco-terrorism
Ecologically responsible construction is actually eco-authoritarianism
Marx failed to consider that the slightest bit of mercy for the biosphere imperils our democracy
the last time "eco-authoritarian" crossed my attention was when i read on d peter theil. It talked about that lord of the rings remake by that russian neo-nazi who cast mordor as enlightened industrialists fighting an "oppressive" shire. oppressive because they were environmentalists.
Yeskov is a turbolib, Shire is absent, all the fighting is done by elves (who are fighting to preserve their hegemony) and Gondor (who just want to expand). Or you read something else and not The Last Ringbearer.
i won't dispute that i didn't commit all the details to memory from the wikipedia article it was a repulsive book i looked at because i knew that theil bases his strain of nazism on it.
The only way it can be true is if he is basing his views on elves, who are extremely obviously evil in that book.
it is a textbook victim inversion story. the poor poor enterprising businessmen in their humble peace loving kingdom who and I quote "bravely pitch [their] barely adolescent technology against ancient magic" of those squatters on valuable land "picking lice in their log "castles" [sic]"
spoiler
in other words total disdain for the savage obsolete Other who refuse to see the brilliance of mordor's civilization (a thing described in terms that would fit on the Colosseo Quadrato) and are therefore best depicted as a bloodthirsty and oppressive existential threat. Fascist stuff. Theil said it was good because "in mordor things work"
I've only ever seen the book praised on here so the fresh perspective is nice.
TBH, it is not that good. Just okay.
I don't think the book is fascist. It is instead rooted in the liberal tradition of medieval historiography and is very strongly pro-industrialization and pro-modernization, because Yeskov hated Tolkien's own preference for pre-industrial society. It is basically capitalist lib shitting on feudalism fan.
(cw: harry potter) if you scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds what happens if you scratch a turbo-liberal?
very strongly pro-industrialization and pro-modernization
this is key, because i combine that, when i read about it, with my experience of a species of material that is written by and for the far right and leaves the kind of residue that's all over this book, from its themes and narrative to its prose. i obviously can't speak for the broad content of the book but from these quotes and the synopsis it, unless it jarringly changes in the details, is a book about how technology is a moral good, unconditionally, therefore it must be accelerated and interference with that imposes tyranny. no-one is allowed to complain about industrialization or indulge themselves in a lesser mode of existence, and the culture that does modernize the fastest is necessarily supreme. get in the way of capital and you are evil and want to hold back "progress". remind you of anything? it has the smug, snide and frothing arrogance of a sociopathic edgelord who's totally confident in the righteousness of his intellect and his lust for more of everything. they only join communists (which remember yakov isn't) in punching down on feudalism because the peasants are in the way.
it suits billionaire ghouls because it's TESCREAL fanfiction. perhaps you'd like harry potter and the methods of rationality. i definitely read that myself. if you can look past the transphobia there's a story about how a scientist raises harry and now that he's a rational Bayesian three finker he can almost single-handedly unlock the true potential of magic with his fellow slytherins (they're the coolest and he gets to be a real rationalist with them) for like a billion chapters. between his investigations he goes on other romps such as him enthusiastically describing how he'd dismember his schoolmates for improvised weapons should he need to defend himself.
lesswrong pattern utilitarians are really dangerous. they might act like they want to help the most people they can but they have no limits to what they'd sacrifice for their maximizations. eugenics, nukings to protect datacenters or the virtual 10^kajillion superhuman citizens of "the vast and glorious cosmic future", lobotomizing the public to improve the efficiency of pleasure, and they'd never ask permission if they had the power. don't let them fool you
a book about how technology is a moral good, unconditionally, therefore it must be accelerated and interference with that imposes tyranny. no-one is allowed to complain about industrialization or indulge themselves in a lesser mode of existence, and the culture that does modernize the fastest is necessarily supreme.
Please read the book, if you want to criticize it. In the book elves deliberately suppress technological development of men to maintain their own hegemony. And Mordor is not portrayed like some unconditional good, just as an ordinary state that was dehumanized by its enemies as part of genocidal campaign against it.
perhaps you'd like harry potter and the methods of rationality.
I read it and it was okay-ish, if you can tolerate high levels of libness.
he can almost single-handedly unlock the true potential of magic with his fellow slytherins
Please don't make me defend this book, but it is obvious that you heard some massive misrepresentation of the plot.
he goes on other romps such as him enthusiastically describing how he'd dismember his schoolmates for improvised weapons should he need to defend himself.
!!MASSIVE SPOILERS!!
Because is a sort-of amnesiac copy of Voldemort, and this is one of the early clues.
lesswrong pattern utilitarians are really dangerous. they might act like they want to help the most people they can but they have no limits to what they'd sacrifice for their maximizations. eugenics, nukings to protect datacenters or the virtual 10^kajillion superhuman citizens of "the vast and glorious cosmic future", lobotomizing the public to improve the efficiency of pleasure, and they'd never ask permission if they had the power. don't let them fool you
Look, I agree with you that they are pretty much techbro equivalent of priests, whose ideology revolves about justifying billionaire rule, but please don't make stuff up, when criticizing then, it is counterproductive.
Please don't make me defend this book, but it is obvious that you heard some massive misrepresentation of the plot.
i read the whole thing (eventually).
no-one here is making you defend it. if you think that plot was as "okay" as the last ring bearer then that's quite alarming to be honest and shows to me that i needn't read the last ring bearer. fascists can demonstrate a keen awareness of oppression when they want to smear an enemy. the depiction of elves and men is designed to subtextually justify the ideology i described and is exactly what i'd expect.spoiler
i didn't give a proportional description of the plot but he did befriend malffoy and join slytherin to find out fastest how magic worked so he could export it to muggle society. he spend chapters experimenting with time turners, successfully transfigures part of an eraser or something upon visualizing the matter as wavefunctions and fawning over the apollo program. he spends a chapter talking with malfoy about his weakening magic hypothesis.
Look, I agree with you that they are pretty much techbro equivalent of priests, whose ideology revolves about justifying billionaire rule, but please don't make stuff up, when criticizing then, it is counterproductive.
i promise you with my hand on my heart i didn't make up any of that besides how i depicted the hedonium swarm as lobotomies.
At this point I think we read different books.
maybe we dwelled in different circles years ago but i know TESCREAL and i know my roko's basilisks from my... basilisks.
i wouldn't be the only survivor of that cult but i and the coiner of "tescreal" are outliers. there are several neo-nazi voices in that subculture and they all get blind eyes from the rest, crusading against cluster headaches as the worst evil of all, trying to discourage "autogynephiles" of transitioning lionizing "high iq individuals" it just goes on and onspoiler
(i did double-check and yes it is the same man responsible for that and the book, how do you think he feels about the us adding months or years to the singularity by embargoing perfectly good datacenter equipment because its chinese?)
In the 90s and early 00s western politics often used "watermelons" in a similar manner, green on the outside but red on the inside. I never came across eco-authoritarian back then, but the same concept was being used to disparage any regulation for the sake of ecology or climate. It was a slippery slope to eroding of liberty.
there it is.. been waiting for this to come. They're doing good things for the environment, BUT AT WHAT COST?
Globalize climate ~~Stalinism~~ Xiism
Reassemble the letters of "authoritarian" and you get "butatwhatcost".
Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.
No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
Slop posts go in c/slop. Don't post low-hanging fruit here.
