Talk on "Ecotopia, Capitalism in Crisis, and the Power of the Imagination" by Dr. Richard Greeman November 17th 7:00 pm at Edinburgh University Chaplaincy Auditorium 

"Ecotopia is a bet you can't refuse. Global capitalism in crisis is
structurally unable to halt ecocidal productivism and the looting of
the environment for quick profit. As a result, the planet is likely to
become uninhabitable in two or three generations as tendencies like
global warming, nuclear proliferation, flooding, epidemics, food
shortages, pollution of air and water, and destruction of human
communities increasingly combine in destructive synergy.

If there remains a marginal (say 1 in 100) chance for human society to
survive, it would entail replacing the competitive profit system with a
planetary network of producers -- a cooperative commonwealth or
democratic socialism. Against the near certainty of planetary
catastrophe under capitalism, we must bet on the unlikely dream of a 
harmonious, healthy ecosocialist world. The `Ecotopian Bet' is one we
can't refuse.

Let us then begin by dreaming the dream, by imagining a technically
feasable, ecologically sustainable post-capitalist future and
historically possible roads leading to it. One such road, based on
theories of cybernetics, chaos, emergence and an idea of Cornelius
Castoriadis, I call the "New Archimedes Lever." It involves connecting
the historically proven lever of solidarity with a global electronic
platform (the Internet) in order to `lift the earth' before it succumbs
to capitalist ecocide.

Longtime U.S. socialist Richard Greeman was awarded his Columbia Ph.D in
April, 1968 while occupying Columbia University as one of the radical
leaders of the student strike. He is best known for his translations and
studies of the Franco-Russian novelist and revolutionary, Victor Serge,
whose posthumous novel Unforgiving Years, has just been published by
N.Y. Review Books, translated and introduced by Greeman. He is one of
the founders of the Praxis Research and Education Center in Moscow,
Russia, and lives in Montpellier, France. He is the author of "Beware of
Vegetarian Sharks", available at http://www.lulu.com/content/923573.