No subject

explicitly utopian thinking can clarify the minimal conditions for the
preservation of human solidarity in face of convergent planetary
crises. I think I understand what the Italian Marxist architects Tafuri
and Dal Co meant when they cautioned against "a regression to the
utopian," but to raise our imaginations to the challenge of the
Anthropocene, we must be able to envision alternative configurations of
agents, practices and social relations, and this requires, in turn,
that we suspend the politico-economic assumptions that chain us to the
present. 


I speak, of course, as an aging Socialist, who still believes
in the self-emancipation of labor with the same fervor with which
Governor Palin believes in shooting caribou. But utopianism isn't
necessarily millenarianism, nor is it confined just to the soapbox or
pulpit. One of the most encouraging developments in that emergent
intellectual space where researchers and activists discuss the impacts
of global warming on development has been a new willingness to advocate
the Necessary rather than the merely Practical. A growing chorus of
expert voices warn that either we fight for 'impossible' solutions to
the increasingly entangled crises of urban poverty and climate change,
or become ourselves complicit in a de facto triage of humanity. 


Thus I think we can be cheered by a recent editorial (11
September 2008) in Nature. Explaining that the "challenges of rampant
urbanization demands integrated, multidisciplinary approaches, and new
thinking,' the editors challenge the rich countries to finance a
zero-carbon revolution in the cities of the developing world. "It may
seem utopian," they write, "to promote these innovations in emerging
and developing-world megacities, many of whose inhabitants can barely
afford a roof over their heads. But those countries have already shown
a gift for technological fast-forwarding, for example, by leapfrogging
the need for landline infrastructure to embrace mobile phones. And many
poorer countries have a rich tradition of adapting buildings to local
practices, environments, and climates - a home-grown approach to
integrated design that has been all but lost in the West. They now have
an opportunity to combine these traditional approaches with modern
technologies." 


Similarly, the 2007/2008 United Nations Human Development
Report warns that the 'future of human solidarity' depends upon a
massive aid program to help developing countries adapt to climate
shocks. The Report calls for removing the "obstacles to the rapid
disbursement of the low-carbon technologies needed to avoid dangerous
climate change. ... the world's poor cannot be left to sink or swim
with their own resources while rich countries protect their citizens
behind climate-defence fortifications." "Put bluntly," it continues,"
the world's poor and future generations cannot afford the complacency
and prevarication that continues to characterize international
negotiations on climate change." The refusal to act decisively on
behalf of all humanity would be "a moral failure on a scale
unparalleled in history." 


If this sounds like a sentimental call to the barricades, an
echo from classrooms and studios of forty years ago, then so be it.
Because if you accept any of the evidence presented in the first half
of this talk, then taking a 'realist' view of the human prospect, like
seeing Medusa's head, would simply turn you into stone."
(http://brechtforum.org/who-will-build-ark-utopian-imperative-age-catastrophe?bc=)