ecoglobe The Devil's Dictionary for the Environment

a-z	A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H   I   J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z - Deutsch
Also consult Eco Glossary [Notes:] A= amendment, adaptation to reality E= euphemism, whitewashing, defusing terminology; frequently used by activists of all shades, from extreme capitalism to soft ecologism P= behavioural psychology R= reality	Suggestions and new entries are welcome. Thank you! On-line feedback   A [top]   ADD - Attention Deficit "Disorder" and ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder - The acquired disability to listen to what others say, combined with a flow of non-pertinent, evasive and faulty assertions as a non-reply to what was not heard. ADHD is believed to be engendered by schooling and career and it is found to be more prevalent and more serious the higher up people raise in the soci-economic structures.   B [top]   Biodiversity - the variety of life on Earth, i.e. the number of different species (birds, fish, animals, insects, plants, etc. that exist and survive. It does not include homo sapiens sapiens (the present-day human species) since we are bound to to become extinct - rather sooner than later - because of our imprudent imbalance with the rest of nature. Human extinction is expected to occur before the end of 21st century. [A]   Bioenergy - energy produced by animal and human power, biofuel, biogas, wood [R].   Biotech - Biotechnology; the manipulation of genetic material in animals, plants and bacteria with potentially catastrophic outcomes for life on earth [genetic engineering]   C [top]   Capitalism - "Our commitment to the idiotic philosophy of the free market and the idea that unregulated pursuit of private profit will result in the satisfaction of the people's needs. Private enterprise needs to be profitable, but needs not be useful, may even be absolutely damaging, as long as it brings profit to those who are in control" (Letter to the editor, NZ Herald 9 May 1991, section 3 page 2).   Carrying capacity - The number of humans the Earth or one of its regions can support until one of the key non-renewable resources are depleted and system collapse ensues.   Challenge - Problem, serious problem, desastrous development, etc.   Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking. (Chrestomathy, 1942)   D [top]   Democracy - Rule, government by the people of a region, a country (related concept: self-determination)   Depleted uranium - see Nuclear wastes: Depleted uranium   Doublethink A method of control designed by the government to produce in people the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time and accept both. (Orwell, "1984")   E [top]   ecoglobe - Our world in the balance with the natural resources. A project of ecological education ecoglobe   Ecological Economics - economics as a sub-system of human ecology   edfnz - ecology discovery foundation new zealand (charitable trust) P.O.Box 24184 Wellington New Zealand [ecoglobe]   F [top]   False Consciousness According to (1961, 21) "MARX, like Spinoza and later Freud, believed that most of what man think is 'false' consciousness, is ideology and rationalization; that the true mainspring of man's actions are unconscious to him." People should become aware of their true human needs and ideals by transforming false consciousness into true consciousness, that is, by becoming aware of reality, rather than distorting it by rationalizations and fictions.   Falsety (Mitchell) A term used by Karl Marx indicative of his anti-rationalist view of society. Whilst those who own and control the forces of production, including labour, may have a rational perception of hte relationship between their aims and the ways of accomplishing them, those who are subordinate do not. They have a view or a set of ideas which act as substitute and preventative; in short they have a false consciousness. Such a false consciousness is manipulated by those who support an ideology in their own interest; sometimes even becoming victims of it themselves (MITCHELL ed. 1979)   Family (Delphy 1984, 13) The strongest and most instinctively compelling of social groups was, and still is, the family. The family is necessitated among human beings by the great length of infancy, and by the fact that the mother of young infants is seriously handicapped, in the work of food gathering. It was this circumstance that with human beings, as with mot species of birds, made the father an essential member of the family group. This must have lead to a division of labour in which the men hunted while the women stayed at home.   Female labour (Fisher) - in places like Java in Indonesia, where hulling machines have replaced the need for hand pounding, women heve lost a source of income. In fact, the green revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, with its introduction of farm machinery including hullers, has generally tended to force rural women out of agriculture (Fisher 1989, 89)   Feminism, (Maguire 1987, 5) as used in Chapter 4 and throughout the book, refers to a worldwide movement for the redistribution of power.   Feminism is a) a belief that women all over the world face some form of oppression or exploitation, b) a commitment to uncover and understand what causes and sustains oppression, and c) a commitment to work individually and collectively in everyday life to end all forms of oppression, whether based on gender, class, race, or culture.   Feminist strategy and myths (black)   "The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppressions are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face" (Zillah Eisenstein 1978, quoted in Smith 1983, xxxii).   "We examined our own lives and found that everything out there was kicking our behinds - race, class, sex, and homophobia" (Smith 1983, xxxii).   "I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and and loathing of any difference that lives there. See whose face it wears" (Audre Lorde, in Moraga & Cher’e 1983, 101, quoted in Smith 1983, xlvi).   "You don't go into coalition because you just like it. The only reason you would consider trying to team up with somebody who could possibly kill you, is because that's the only way you can figure you can stay alive ... Most of the time you feel threatened to the core and if you don't you're not really doing no coalescing" (Bernice Johnson Reagon 1983, 356).   "As women, we have been taught to either ignore our differences or to view them as causes for separation and suspiscion rather than as forces for change. Without community, there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But community must not mean a shedding of our differences, not the pathetic pretence that these differences do not exist" (Audre Lorde, in Moraga & Cher’e 1983, 101, quoted in Smith 1983, xxxix). "Myth No.1: The Black woman is already liberated. Myth No.2: Racism is the primary (or only) oppression Black women have to confront. (Once we get taken care of, then Black women, men, and children will all flourish. Or as Ms. Luisah Teish writes, we can look forward to being 'the property of powerful men'. Myth No.3: Feminism is nothing but man-hating. (And men have never done anything that would legitimately inspire hatred.) Myth No.4: Women's issues are narrow, apolitical concerns. People of color need to deal with the larger struggle. Myth No.5: Those feminists are nothing but Lesbians" (Smith 1983, xxvi-xxx).   Feminist Analogies "In the past year, our appartment was broken into, ransacked and robbed. The robber identified himself as a Black man by writing it on the just-painted walls. Having ascertained that I was Black and a Lesbian he also aimed the vilest obscenities at me. Incensed that a Black woman existed who was not a potential sexual partner for him, he said just that" (Smith 1983, xlvi). In Christian culture, male homosexuals are possibly persecuted because they are seen as deserters from the ranks of masculinity, as traitors to the cause of male supremacy. "... those complexities of Black women's identities that result from color, class, and nationalities" (Smith 1983, lii). This may be the same for all humans.   G [top]   GDP - Gross Domestic Product, the financial account of money turned over in a country over a one year period. growth of GDP is generally believed to be good, although the account includes many bads, such as costs because of accidents, natural disasters, the restorative health care (as opposed to preventive care), pollution, the justice system (criminality, jails) and so on.   Greenhouse gases - Gases in the Earth atmosphere that retain radiation: Carbondioxide CO2, Methane CH4, water vapour H2O, CFCs   Greenhouse effect - the increase in the ambient temperatures and climate change because of the increased amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, caused by human industrious activities.   Genetic engineering: Genetic engineering biotechnology: Basic concept - Modifying genetic structures of animals, plants, insects, bacteria   GoNGOs & BuNGOs - Government and Business NGOs   H [top]   Hope The one charm that did not come out of Pandora's box. Since people can't have it, they consider it as the greatest good, but it is evil. (Waltraud letter 7.11.91) Cf.: Technology, Money, Optimism, and Hope The quartet that is killing humankind   Hydro (water) energy - energy generated by the flow of water (river, dams, tidal, wave)   I [top]   J [top]   K [top]   Kiwis - Products of New Zealand: Kiwis, kiwifruits and kiwi birds     L [top]   Limits to Growth -     M [top]   Murpy's Law - Risk and danger assesment [genetic engineering]     N [top]   Nature - Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, or the environment, physical universe, material world or material universe.   Nuclear energy - Atomic energy. A method of producing electricty that uses Uranium and creates radioactive wastes that will endanger life for hundreds of thounds of years.   Nuclear wastes - All radioactive wastes that are produced while mining uranium, using it it in civil and military products, and the wastes after use. Compare: reports on depleted uranium in armaments See [nuclear] Radioactive armaments: depleted uranium and radioactivity in the food chain The effects of depleted uranium in armaments on our food chain.     O [top]   Organics - 'bio' - chemicals-free (organic) agriculture, horticulture and foodstuffs; also free from genetically engineered ingredients.     P [top]   Photosynthesis - The production of new plant material by the use of sunlight.   Progress -   Prosperity - being successful or thriving; especially: economic well-being.   Psychiatry - the medical discipline of treatment of people with psychological problems.   Psychology - The knowledge and understanding of human behaviour.     Q [top]     R [top]   Resources - Natural and mineral resources.   Risk - An estimate of the probability that an undesired event will occur. Murphy's Law states that if something can go wrong it will. It's a matter of time. Theoretically, zero risk does not exist. See: Risk - A scenario of environmental catastrophe     S [top]   Symbiosis (Butterworths) The intimate association of 2 organisms of different species; in the ususal, more restricted sense, to their mutual advantage, an advantage which may be so important that one could not live without the other; commensuralism, mutualism. In the widest sense it also includes parasitism. Antagonistic ~, antipathetic ~. Parasitism. Conjunctive ~. Symbiosis with some bodily union. Constructive ~. A symbiosis that assists the metabolism of one of the symbions. Disjunctive ~. Symbiosis without bodily union. (Butterworths 1978)   Socialism (H&P) theory that land, transport, chief industries, et., should be owned by the State or public bodies in the interest of the community as a whole   "Substantial equivalence" - The political notion that a genetically engineered food ingedient can be assumed to be as safe as the natural variety, if appears to be similar to its natural counterpart. See substantial equivalence (1) and (2)   Sustainability - Organising our lives in such a way that sufficient resources are left for our children. Sustainability means that a given societal structure and mode of functioning can be maintained UNCHANGED for a very long time, say many hundreds of years.   "Sustainable Development" - ("SD") - Development that can go on for a very long time. Since development, for any practical purpose, always means more resource consumption and more wastes, it cannot be sustainable. "SD" is therefore a misnomer, an oxymoron, always to be used within quotation marks. Development graph, Carrying Capacity, Ecological Footprint, Limits to Growth with a chilling scenario..., etc.     T [top]     U [top]     V [top]   Volksgeist "Prejudice is good in its place. It makes people happy. It takes nations back to whatever is crucial to them; it ties them fairly and squarely to their roots; it enables them to flourish in their own proper manner. They become more passionate and therefore happier in whatever purposes or inclinations they may have. The most ignorant nation, the one most given to prjudices, is often, on that very score, pre-eminent. (Herder, Une autre philosophie de l'histoire, Aubier-Montagne, 1964, pp.185-187, quoted in Finkielkraut, 1988, p.47, note 15.)     W [top]   Welfare The economic well-being of a person or entity - prosperity. Usually used to describe a stipend given out by a federal government to aid those who live below the threshold of certain socioeconomic conditions.   Well-being: The term usually refers to the degree to which an individual is well. In this sense it is synonymous with 'quality of life'. Wellbeing, in the chosen meaning, manifests itself in the degree to which people live long, healthy and happy lives. Happiness is relative to what other people enjoy in the neighbourhood or area. Well-being and happiness are different from 'prosperity' and 'welfare', which account material posessions.     X [top]     Y [top]     Z [top]
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