PARAMARIBO Suriname - A frog with fluorescent purple markings and 12 kinds of dung beetles were among two dozen new species discovered in the remote plateaus of eastern Suriname, scientists said Monday.

The expedition was sponsored by two mining companies hoping to excavate the area for bauxite, the raw material used to make aluminum, and it was unknown how the findings would affect their plans

How have these cultures emerged to view the earth purely as a resource and not a living thing in which we need to co-habitate and nurture?

I'm no model citizen from an environmental perspective. I am trying to improve.

Capitalist enterprises make products for exchange at the marketplace. They don't produce on the basis of need, or the goodness or usefulness of the product, but on whether it will fetch a profit.
What will earn a profit?

-goods that are cheap to produce, or produced cutting corners. This explains why there is a definite trend to: Factory meat production. Monoculture in vast areas of farming land. GM products. Boom and slump style exploitation of resources (profit has to be made as quick as possible, not just as much as possible.) Products that require less labour, or where labour can be replaced with cheaper machinery. This means growing cotton instead of other fabrics (cotton = 25 % of world's pesticide use), it means vodka and tobacco (there are better drugs, but they'd not be as cheap to produce, hence tobacco took off), it means opium.

Secondly WHO can pay (effective demand). There is a need for a cure for aids. There is no effective demand. Most of the aids patients are black or yellow and live in the colonies. There is no need for more tanks and guns in africa. But there is a demand for it, from the rich who live there, who want to protect their stolen wealth and aids-free families from retribution from below, and invasion from other crooks.

Thirdly, with every firm acting to maximise its own profit, you get a mad rush to exploit everything here and now. So people in madagascar, indonesia, looking to grow cash crops haven't got time to wait for the forest to be cleared for farms. So they set it alight.
Europe hasn't got time to fiddle with developing new energy technologies. So it is building nuclear plants and will re-open coal plants.
And because no company is held reponsible for what it does outside of its actual walls, and because companies hide the people who run them from the law, the negative effects of a company do not cost that firm a penny, giving them an incentive to pollute rather than clean up, to ravage rather than extract. (social 'externalities' do not match private responsibilities).

Capitalism in entirely incompatible with the rational use of resources. The reason in summary is the fact of a price based on commodity exchange value instead of commodity use value; a chasm between effective demand and real need (caused by inequality); and lastly the unorganised (and hence planless, hurried) approach to production.

This cannot be undone without undoing the legality of corporations.

Last Edited on 8-Jun-2007 1:13 AM

Last Edited on 11-Jun-2007 5:08 PM

Perhaps you could adopt a dog or cat from your local high-kill shelter?