Vogon Today

Selected News from the Galaxy

The Pedant

Quelo, Greta and the neoliberal doctrine of multiple truth

I propose below, slightly edited, a long article by my friend Pier Paolo Dal Monte appeared a few days ago on the blog Frontiere . The analysis – so far unique in its kind, except for my oversights – has the advantage of placing the latest emergence of the "climate" in the broader methodological framework dictated by the productive and social models that today dominate without alternatives, highlighting the contradictions and omissions from the ongoing debate a faithful mirror of the crisis of those models and the violence destined to ensue.

Except for a few details (for example on the feasibility of relegating the capitalist model to minor activities, or on the function of " denial " which I would distinguish more clearly from the gatekeeping activity, while both serving the same purposes) I deeply share the thesis presented and greetings in the work by Pier Paolo a very successful attempt to unravel and document the "red thread" often perceived in the articles and comments of this blog.


Superstructure and underlying

"There is a big crisis", Quelo would say, that sort of parodic crasis of a saint and a preacher who was played by Corrado Guzzanti.

The crisis, is the "disturbing guest" of our times, always accompanies any present, with an up and coming of many crises: Economy, Lecology, Lademography, Lemigrations, Lapoverty, Lepidemias, Inflation, Ladeflazione … a pressing of crisis that it reduces the poor human beings like so many punched boxers who, unable to react, receive all the blows that the media pour on their poor minds.

Obviously, we cannot now speak of all the crises brought to the fore by the inexhaustible cornucopia of the media; we will therefore concentrate on only one of them which, periodically (and now, also, overwhelmingly), is brought to the attention of public opinion, that is what is called "climate crisis" or "global warming" whatever you want .

This time, to create dismay in the victims of media mythology about this "ghost who wanders the world", a scientist with an icy and somewhat abstruse language was not used, not a politician imbued with Al Gore, or a Hollywood actor on a leash (which, you never know, could have been photographed driving a Lamborghini or on board a private jet). No, none of this. This time the screenwriters of the crisis creation units outdid themselves and pulled an ideal person out of the cylinder to excite the infantilized postmodern masses: a poor overdeveloped and autistic (albeit low-grade) girl who claims to perceive (it is not known with as sense organ) the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere (which is calculated in parts per million). In short, a testimonial that has the stage presence of Topo Gigio and the predictive apodicticity of the magician Otelma who, however, speaks to the "powerful of the earth".

Hats off to the writers: with so few ingredients, they have managed to create a worldwide media delicacy, which has given rise to a "movement" of equal scope, the so-called Friday for Future (in short, a long weekend), spontaneous as can be the ease shown by those who try to cross a border with a suitcase of cocaine in the trunk. And so a new form of "hurry up!" Was created of global reach, a cosmic "external bond", a state of planetary exception to which to subordinate the policies of what was once called "the west".

In truth, this "emergency" is not as emergent as the directors of today's inclement weather would have us believe, since the phenomenon has been studied since the 1950s, when we began to talk about the impact of the increase in CO2 on anthropogenic base [1] . The phenomenon became known to world public opinion in 1988, at a hearing at the United States Congress of James Hansen , climatologist of Columbia University, who raised an alarm about the risk of global warming due, in fact, to the increase in "greenhouse gases". In the same year the IPCC was established by the UN. This alarm was quickly followed by the "denial" response of the giants of the energy industry (to which various product sectors joined), who created a study center, the Global Climate Coalition (1989-2001), [2] with the task to refute and contrast the conclusions of the IPCC, thus adopting the typical neoliberal strategy (also this will be elucidated later) of putting "science against science". After the dissolution of the GCC, the baton was passed on to other entities, including the Heartland Institute .

In the second half of the 1990s, the issue of global warming was the subject of growing attention from the media, which intensified in the early years of the new century, suffering an abrupt halt on the occasion of the financial crisis of 2007/2008 and the resulting economic downturn. Ubi major, minor cessat and, in the capitalist system, the major is always tied to economic issues; of course this does not mean that the other problems are not considered tout court – after all, despite what the simpleton of Fukuyama asserted, the story is not over – but this should raise some questions about why such a crucial theme, what global warming should be, it just turns up periodically. And, mind you, we do not make it a question of merit, or whether there is a climatic emergency or not, but, always and only, a question of method : an emergency should always be such, that is, urgent and impassable, whatever are the concomitant economic or political conditions. If, on the other hand, this emergency takes on an "intermittent" character, the suspicion arises that, coeteris paribus (or not by questioning its veracity), the main purpose of this periodic appearance is, once again, to direct the attention of the masses towards the direction desired by those who control the system (the famous "powerful of the earth" intimidated by the girl who perceives the increase in CO2).

The existence of serious environmental problems [3] (not only climatic) has been reported since the 1960s, and it has been the beginning of the next decade that economic activity has been colored with an "ecological" nuance, turning it green (color that was fine with everything, before the notorious Po populists took it), the so-called "green washing", which is also defined, with a more elegant phrase, "sustainable development", an ineffable oxymoron that has the merit of playing a lot well and not mean anything, since the two terms of the phrase are not characterized by precise definitions. «Development» presupposes a télos , an end to turn to, while «sustainable» requires a term of comparison: sustainable for whom? For what? Compared to what? How? And so on.

In the absence of these clarifications, only an epitomic motto of the politically correct remains which testifies to the wonderful ability of capitalism to transform everything, even apparently negative factors, such as pollution and the crisis of the biosphere, into new market niches: in this incessant mimetic and reifying work has succeeded in creating even a study discipline called "Ecological Economics" (complete with a dedicated magazine ) inspired by the studies of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen [4] (and, subsequently by Hermann Daly ) who sought to highlight the incompatibility of the thermodynamic parameters with the economic ones. Like all good intentions, these studies have done nothing but pave the ways of hell leading, on the one hand, to the search for a monetary value of the "ecosystem services" ( Robert Costanza ) and, on the other, as was said , in the creation of new market niches surreptitiously called "bio", "green", "eco", or whatever you want.

All these "washing" operations have the purpose, not only of creating new commercial niches and of transforming the remaining parts of the world into goods and markets; but also that of diverting attention from the real theme, that which inevitably leads to all the particular problems affecting capitalism, that is, the conceptual and inescapably factual immeasurability between economic parameters and the physical world which, as Marx is well understood, resides in the primacy of exchange value over use value (or, before him, Aristotle when he distinguished between oikonomia and crematistica). Since the foundation of capitalism rests on the exponential accumulation of monetary means (capital), which is virtually infinite, but which must manifest itself, necessarily, in an environment that has a quantity of matter that is given, it is easy to understand how this fact may come to cause some problems.

The epistemic cage of neoliberalism

Starting from these premises, we can now talk about how the above issues are inserted in the epistemic framework that characterizes today's capitalism, whose shape has been shaped by what has been called "neoliberalism". As Philip Mirowski [5] (and partly Michel Foucault , though not so explicitly [6] ) has documented, the core of neoliberal thought is not as economic as epistemological and has historically gone to connote it as a real "Collective of thought", as Dietrich Plehwe asserted [7] (inspired by the writings of Ludwik Fleck who described the scientific enterprise as formed by "a community of people who mutually exchange ideas or maintain an intellectual interaction"). [8] Therefore, it does not make much sense to consider (as many others do) this phenomenon as an economic orientation or, even less, to explain it with the obsolete categories of political thought of the last century (political right, conservatism, liberalism, etc.).

This misconception explains, in large part, the failure of the movements that criticize and try to contrast the current physiognomy of capitalism (which is called "liberalism" or "neoliberalism"), [9] in which the promises that seemed to have not been kept implicit in the "glorious thirty years" of the post-war period, when a progressive future of well-being and equality for all seemed inevitable (at least in the countries of the so-called advanced capitalism). Not only did none of this come true, but a sort of stationary state in which previous conquests had consolidated was not maintained either. Conversely, throughout the western world, there has been a progressive decrease in well-being which is leading to the disappearance of the middle class, a reduction in services and an ever greater polarization of wealth.

Most of the criticisms have limited themselves to considering the current state of our world-form as a kind of benign disease in an otherwise healthy organism whose therapy would consist of a sort of restoration of the status quo ante (confusing the medium with the aim), a sort of irenic rebalancing to be obtained thanks to a restoration of effective market regulations, to an economy that returns under the control of the States, in which the primacy of manufacturing over finance is reaffirmed (the myth of the "economy real ": another chimera made up of immeasurable domains but, above all, that" forgives debts "(Greece, poor countries, etc.). This lack of analysis has meant that the above movements, you are lulled into the illusion that it was sufficient to stage protest actions that "arise from below" against "cruel and distorted state of the world", [10] to hope to deal effectively with the status quo. in contrast, there that has occurred in the realm of reality is that almost all of these protest movements (from the no global movement to the various color revolutions) have proved, in the course of time, skilled Maskirovka that have kept under control discontent and hindered increasingly the ability to counteract the system.

It is difficult for those who are driven by the idea of ​​"changing the world" to believe that the "spontaneity" of such protests is, in reality, the staging of a script written by others, a product ready to be put on the market of ideas . But the world created by the neoliberal collective of thought works just like this: it has been able to create an all-encompassing epistemology that permeates contemporary culture with a heap of multiple truths, all equally "true", which are able to cover all possible alternatives: from conformism to nonconformism, from reaction to revolution, from system to antisystem. A kaleidoscopic and protean regime in which a real and sensible criticism of the status quo has no basis on which to rest (difficult to fight against something that does not have a defined form, being able to take all forms). When the world is represented, in all its aspects, with a distorted image, it is almost impossible to perceive this reversal: as in the Platonic cave, viewers are led to believe that the images projected on the walls correspond to the real world.

We will not address this topic in its entirety, but we will focus only on the problem of global warming, so that it can constitute an exemplary paradigm of the aforementioned manipulation.

The neoliberal utopia and global warming

As we have said, the neo-liberal collective of thought has been able to build an entire paraphernalia of epistemic and political proposals which, in fact, have occupied the whole space of possible alternatives. Of course we are not talking about the banal and false center-right / center-left dialectic, democrats / republicans, conservatives / laborers who, however, invades the whole parliamentary space of liberal democracies. No, we are talking about a much more widespread and pervasive occupation (obliteration, when this is not possible) of all forms of thought and action, even outside the "politicized politics", which it has managed to pack, with the complicity of the beautiful souls of progressivism of all forms and of all ages, not only, a panoply of empty utopias aimed at sterilizing the political ambitions of the masses such as, for example, brotherhood between peoples, society without borders, government global (or, with a greater dystopian streak, the post-human corbellerie and the multiplication of genders), inhibiting, thanks to the emptiness of the end, any possibility of real action, but – and here is the genius – to create an all-inclusive catalog of "political" proposals, able to cover the whole range of public demand, with short, medium and long term objectives .

To fully understand this operation it is good to take a small step back and briefly explain a crucial point of neoliberal epistemology. It has always rejected the false dichotomy of the state liberal class laissez faire versus the market as antithetical devices. Unlike the latter, the neoliberals do not consider the market a place for the allocation of goods (tangible or intangible), but an information processor, the most effective and efficient processor known, much better than any human entity (individual or collective ). [11]

Secondly – even here unlike classical liberal thought and its modern offshoots – neoliberal ideology advocates a strong state which, however, does not have as its main (and not even secondary, in truth) task to control the animal spirits of the market, but that of controlling himself , or, as Marx would say, acting as a "bourgeois business committee" whose purpose is to promote, safeguard and extend the areas of the market. To carry out this supreme task, the state must operate with all its prerogatives (including that of the monopoly of force) to build a sort of totalitarianism of the market (a potentially infinite telos ) through an increasingly widespread and widespread commodification of the existing.

Also with regard to global warming (which is ecological / thermodynamic in nature), we can note the difference in approach between neoliberal and classical liberals. For the latter, the problems of the biosphere are symptoms of market malfunction ( market failure ), the solution of which should lie in attributing a fair price to externalities (pollution, etc.), resources and so-called ecosystem services (approach of the Ecological Economics ). For neoliberals, however, this type of problem is bound to arise inevitably due to the inextricable complexity of the interactions between society and the biosphere, to understand which human knowledge is inadequate. In reality, neoliberal thinking adopts this epistemological panoply in an entirely opportunistic way, using pro domo sua complexity: since we cannot rely on human knowledge to understand and foresee this multifaceted and becoming reality, there is a need for a sort of deus ex machine , of a devil of Maxwell, of a rhetorical fiction passed off as truth: an idealized image of the perfect market, spontaneous authorizing officer of the spontaneous order and supreme information processor, the motionless (but, in fact, mobile) engine to which it is tasked with finding solutions to any problem. Since, however, this "spontaneous" order is not given in political systems – and we would miss more! – all the strength of a strong state is needed which, with its empire, can spontaneously spontaneously what is not spontaneous (hence also the fiction of the "free" market).

At this point, the strategy appears somewhat circular: since we cannot rely on political decisions to tackle complex problems (of which climate change is certainly part), given that the cognitive ability of decision-makers is fallacious by definition, then it is decision makers need to step back by abdicating their task and entrusting the market [12] – with a political decision! – the task of deciding which are the best solutions. But sometimes the problem is rather reluctant to be channeled casually into market mechanisms, and that of global warming is certainly part of this category. In these cases the strategy will have to follow a more complex plan and be unraveled according to various successive stages. Here we can identify a strategy composed of different stages characterized by different strategies of manipulation of public opinion: from the promotion of scientific "denial" to the creation of phenomena such as Greta Thurnberg or Friday for Future All sides of the same coin: the "neoliberal response" to climate changes. [13]

a) Scientific "denial"

The first stage generally consists of taking time to work out the next stages. In cases like this, the most effective technique is to instill doubt in public opinion that this type of problem is not related to the economic model of today's society (overconsumption, pollution, overexploitation of the biosphere, etc.), in a nutshell: that the market is never guilty (in this regard it is useful to point out that, for example, in the countries of the Soviet bloc the ecological problems were much more serious, etc.).

The purpose of what has been called scientific "denial", promoted mainly by the Global Climate Coalition and then by the Hearthland Foundation, which we have already mentioned, was to control public opinion which, alarmed by the problem of global warming could have put pressure on governments to face it with political decisions, or, as we said, to take time to develop appropriate solutions to bring the issue back into the market. The "denial" solution, albeit of a temporary nature, had the advantage of being quickly deployable and cheap and of diverting the public's attention from the appropriate arguments.

The strategy of the "neoliberal collective of thought" wants that the first response to a political challenge must always be epistemological: [14] it is necessary to question what constitutes the topic of this challenge, in this case, to deny the problem and delay indefinitely with sterile diatribes regarding merit (that is, whether or not there is global warming on an anthropogenic basis). The "market of ideas" must always be sprayed with doubt so that, as an effective herbicide, it can only develop the desired plants (ideas). This technique, described by the historian Robert Proctor under the name of "agnotology", [15] has proved very effective over time.

Neoliberal doctrine formally defends anyone's right to uphold any foolishness with equal right (the "wisdom of the masses") [16] because, ultimately, the realm in which truth is established is always the market. The latter, however, is never free as he is passed off, but is controlled by those to whom it is convenient that he is passed off as free (and certainly not by that group of experts who represents "official science"). In fact, the neoliberal doctrine coincides perfectly with that of Quelo: "the answer is within you, and yet it is sbajata [unless it coincides with ours]". [17]

This first stage, however, is far from sufficient to channel the problem into market mechanisms, therefore it is necessary to elaborate the subsequent stages making sure that they unfold through a product offering that is able to cover the entire spectrum of the " question "of" solutions ". It is also necessary that each of these implies the creation of a profit and, possibly, that extends the sphere of the market to areas never touched before.

b) The marketing of CO2 and accumulation by expropriation

After this first agnotological stage, the market has to enter at some point. In this case, market action unfolds along two main lines: the first is constituted by monetization and the consequent financialisation of ecosystem services, that is, by the creation of CO2 emission permits; the second, from what David Harvey called "accumulation by expropriation".

The establishment of emission permit markets constituted a clever strategy to build a new commodity and financial sector, but also to convince political actors that the answer to the problem of climate change, that is the decrease in the emission of greenhouse gases were to compete with markets instead of governments: something that should have been political was marketed . Of course, this "solution" did not lead to any result, for what was the stated purpose: in fact it did not prevent the emission of a single CO2 molecule. [18] On the other hand, this was certainly not the real purpose, which vice versa, was to use the excuse of global warming to create a new financial instrument out of nothing, a virtual commodity that commodifies a physical data, moreover virtualized, a new derivative to be introduced into the great forge of finance by providing operators with a further speculative instrument to be transformed into real currency.

The other arm of the medium-term strategy was that of accumulation by expropriation, which deserves a few words of explanation:

Marx's description of "primitive accumulation" includes phenomena such as the commodification and privatization of the land and the expulsion from it of the peasant population; the conversion of various forms of collective property into private property; the commodification of the workforce and the elimination of alternatives to it; colonial or neocolonial appropriation processes of natural goods and resources; monetization of trade and taxation of land; slave trade; usury; public debt and the credit system. [19]

One might think that these types of accumulation are a legacy of the past, of the times of nascent capitalism and of those in which it began to assert itself in an ever more extensive and widespread manner.

For this purpose both legal and illegal methods are adopted […] Among the legal means include the privatization of what were once considered common property resources (such as water and education), the use of the power of expropriation for public utility, the widespread use of acquisitions, mergers and so on that lead to the splitting of company activities, or, for example, the evasion of social security and health obligations through bankruptcy procedures. The capital losses suffered by many during the recent crisis can be considered a form of expropriation that could give rise to further accumulation, since speculators today buy undervalued assets with the aim of reselling them when the market improves, making a profit. [20]

One of the more subtle forms of accumulation by expropriation is to surreptitiously drain public money, or directly from the pockets of citizens, to generate a private profit through ad hoc taxation, or to oblige the population to consume through the imposition decreed by the power of the State.

An example of the first type of practice is, without a doubt, that of renewable energy production plants (wind, photovoltaic, hydroelectric etc.) which are cases in which the energy produced is remunerated at a price higher than the market price (otherwise not they would be economically viable). In this case, the surcharge is paid by general taxation or by an additional outlay in the electricity supply tariffs. Except for the low production (in terms of MW / h) of the plants for family use, most of the electricity generation from these sources comes from large plants for which the investment is supported by large investors, generally financial companies . [21] This is a case in which the State operates as the perfect market agent: instead of promoting, with direct action, the much-flagged "energy transition", it promotes a system in which the profits of financial companies are borne by citizens through an increase in energy costs or through general taxation.

Another example of this type of accumulation, even if a little more indirect, is that of vehicles used for road transport. In this case, the State intervenes by modifying the regulations that regulate the emissions of vehicles (especially those of CO2) and by inhibiting circulation for those vehicles that do not respect the imposed parameters. This marketing technique conducted through the force of the law currently forces users to change vehicles through a sort of programmed obsolescence de jure , and opens the way to new market niches (electric vehicles, hybrids, etc.). Obviously, this is another trick to force citizens to pay money in a certain sense forced, without any benefit as regards CO2 emissions as such, if we consider that the production process of a car, is responsible for a production of CO2 that is, on average, higher than that which the same car will produce in its cycle of use (probably, from this point of view, it would be more ecological to keep the same car for a few decades, but this does not help the market). [22]

Of course, to impose this vision on the population without too many accidents (which, for example, has not succeeded in France), [23] it is necessary to prepare public opinion with massive moralizing campaigns, such as the one for which they are using the girl who intimidates those "powerful of the earth" who have everything to gain from the creation of new market niches. However, the inexhaustible cornucopia of ideas of the collective of neoliberal thought does not end here, but is always launched towards new horizons.

c) Geoengineering and other neoliberal dystopias

Given that the emissions permit system and the myriad of renewable energy systems are now outdated solutions, even if they served the purpose very well, which was to extend the dominance of the market or extract money from the pockets of the population and governments , it is time to overcome these relics of the past with the long-term neoliberal solution: geoengineering. Here we come to the very core of the Doctrine, which postulates that entrepreneurial ingenuity, if left free to manifest its drives of "creative destruction", may be able to find market solutions to solve any problem . Ideas cannot be left unproductive. When there is a possibility, they should be included in the political discourse and pursued by all means. It is therefore time to open new and incredible opportunities (!) To transform parts of the globe into goods and markets that nobody thought could have this destiny – and this destination. Geoengineering represents the futuristic and science fiction face of neoliberalism and, together with the delusions on genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, its most dystopian face.

"Geoengineering" is a sort of collective definition that identifies a wide range of large-scale manipulations aimed at modifying the climate of the earth, to "correct" climate change. It includes "solutions" such as the artificial increase of the planet's albedo through various types of "management" of solar radiation (through the diffusion of reflective particles in the stratosphere, the installation of mirrors in the space orbit or the covering of deserts with reflective material); l'aumento del sequestro di CO2 da parte degli oceani tramite la stimolazione della crescita del fitoplancton (concimazione degli oceani con nutrienti, mescolamento degli strati) o della terraferma (seppellimento dei residui vegetali; introduzione di organismi geneticamente modificati, oppure, ancora, l'estrazione e il confinamento della CO2 direttamente al punto di emissione). Questa sorta di ideazione delirante ha connessioni piuttosto strette col «collettivo di pensiero neoliberale» in quanto diverse istituzioni che ne sono emanazione diretta, come L'American Enterprise Institute, Ii Cato Institute, la Hoover Institution e il Competititive Enterprise Institute si occupano in maniera assai attiva nella promozione della geoingegneria. Lo stesso tempio accademico del neoliberalismo, la Chicago School of Economics, ha pubblicamente appoggiato questo delirio [24] .

Naturalmente, questi progetti sono solamente allucinazioni lisergiche portate ad un livello istituzionalmente riconosciuto : vedi alla voce: «lo dice Lascienza». Ma questa mirabolante scienza, in questi casi, può solo asserire ipotesi che non hanno alcuna possibilità di essere provate sperimentalmente. Non vi è alcun modo di verificare ex ante gli assunti ipotizzati né, tanto meno, gli effetti indesiderati. Qui il laboratorio è costituito dall'intero mondo e l' ex post potrebbe essere una catastrofe di proporzioni inimmaginabili . Ma evidentemente queste considerazioni non hanno il potere di scalfire l'adamantina determinazione dei nostri apprendisti stregoni arsi dal sacro fuoco di Prometeo. Ça va sans dire che queste mirabolanti proposte agirebbero solo sugli effetti e non certo sulle cause del problema. D'altronde, agire sulle cause significherebbe mettere in discussione le basi sulle quali poggia il capitalismo stesso mentre secondo l'epistème neoliberale. Se il capitalismo ha causato dei problemi, la soluzione è: più capitalismo!

Quindi, le soluzioni geoingegneristiche apportano enormi vantaggi secondo i criteri neoliberali, perché non limitano mercati consolidati (non sia mai che, nel mondo, si producano meno pezzi di Hallo Kitty o di cheeseburger, o che a Dubai non si possa più sciare al coperto!), ma espande gli ambiti del mercato verso nuovi orizzonti: niente di meno che la privatizzazione dell'atmosfera e del clima. Perché, qualora non si fosse compreso, lo scopo è questo, nonché porre il pianeta in ostaggio di alcune entità private (quelle che mettono a punto le «soluzioni» protette da brevetto), [25] affinché possano trarre profitto da qualcosa che, magicamente, può diventare merce con pochi tratti di penna, con la scusa di un «fate presto!» globale perché «ce lo chiedono le prossime generazioni».

***

Con questo si chiude il cerchio. Nel mirabolante mondo di Quelo e Greta, la teknè viene politificata mediante l'ennesimo ragionamento circolare, perché i problemi sono troppo complessi per poter essere affrontati con soluzioni che non siano tecniche (la risposta è dentro di voi, epperò è sbajata), fino ad obliterare interamente lo spazio della politica che non sia quello di mero «comitato d'affari della borghesia». Perché non vi è alternativa alle verità di una scienza che è divenuta dogma e di una società che ha abbandonato ogni dogma che sia non sia quello dell'ordine del mercato, quella secondo cui la «provedenza che governa il mondo» agisce con mano invisibile affinché si possa manifestare il mistero della creazione.

La stessa scienza, ha abbandonato qualsivoglia funzione epistemica per divenire un mero paradigma gestionale e non ha maggior significato, per ciò che riguarda la conoscenza del mondo, di quanto ne abbiano le regole del Monopoli. L'ordine del mercato è rimasto l'unica praxis che orienti le azioni umane e l'unico tèlos , autotelico e perpetuamente progressivo, al quale si volge lo sguardo di quella che un tempo usavamo chiamare civiltà.


  1. Gli studi più rilevanti furono condotti da Hans Suess, Gilbert Plass, Roger Revelle e Charles Keeling.

  2. Lista dei membri della Global Climate Coalition: American Electric Power, American Farm Bureau Federation, American Highway Users Alliance, American Iron and Steel Institute, American Forest & Paper Association, American Petroleum Institute, Amoco, ARCO, Association of American Railroads, Association of International Automobile Manufacturers, British Petroleum, American Chemistry Council, Chevron, DaimlerChrysler, Dow Chemical Company, DuPont, Edison Electric Institute, Enron, ExxonMobil, Ford Motor Company, General Motors Corporation, Illinois Power, Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association, National Association of Manufacturers, National Coal Association, National Mining Association, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, Ohio Edison, Phillips Petroleum, Shell Oil, Southern Company, Texaco, Union Electric Company, United States Chamber of Commerce. Fonte: K. Brill, "Your meeting with members of the Global Climate Coalition", United States Department of State, 2001.

  3. Almeno dall'uscita del libro di Rachel Carson, Primavera silenziosa (1962).

  4. A sua volta influenzato dagli studi di Frederick Soddy.

  5. In P. Mirowski, Never let a serious crisis go to waste , Verso, London-New York, 2013; P. Mirowski, D. Plehwe, The Road from Monte Pelerin , Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2009.

  6. In M. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics. Lectures at the Collège de France 1978–79 , Palgrave McMillan, Basingstoke, 2008.

  7. In P. Mirowski, D. Plehwe, cit., p. 4 sgg.; 417 sgg.

  8. In L. Fleck, The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact , University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1979.

  9. Residuo linguistico della sterile diatriba tra Benedetto Croce e Luigi Einaudi, che data alla fine degli anni '20 del secolo scorso.

  10. In P. Mirowski, Never let a serious crisis go to waste , cit., cap. 6.

  11. In P. Mirowski, "Naturalizing the market on the road to revisionism: Bruce Caldwell's Hayek's challenge and the challenge of Hayek interpretation", in Journal of Institutional Economics , 2007.

  12. Che include anche quella scienza che ha dimostrato il proprio successo nel «mercato delle idee», anch'esso spontaneo come lo spacciatore alla dogana di cui sopra.

  13. In P. Mirowski, Never let a serious crisis go to waste , cit.

  14. Ibid.

  15. In RN Proctor, L. Schiebinger, Agnotology. The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance , Stanford University Press, 2008.

  16. Cfr. FA Hayek, "The use of knowledge in society", in American Economic Review , XXXV, No. 4, September 1945, pp. 519-30.

  17. «First and foremost, neoliberalism masquerades as a radically populist philosophy, which begins with a set of philosophical theses about knowledge and its relationship to society. It seems to be a radical leveling philosophy, denigrating expertise and elite pretensions to hard-won knowledge, instead praising the “wisdom of crowds.” It appeals to the vanity of every self-absorbed narcissist, who would be glad to ridicule intellectuals as “professional secondhand dealers in ideas.” In Hayekian language, it elevates a “cosmos”—a supposed spontaneous order that no one has intentionally designed or structured—over a “taxis”—rationally constructed orders designed to achieve intentional ends. But the second, and linked lesson, is that neoliberals are simultaneously elitists: they do not in fact practice what they preach. When it comes to actually organizing something, almost anything, from a Wiki to the Mont Pèlerin Society, suddenly the cosmos collapses to a taxis. In Wikipedia, what looks like a libertarian paradise is in fact a thinly disguised totalitarian hierarchy» (in P. Mirowski, D. Plehwe, The Road from Monte Pelerin , cit., pp. 425-426).

  18. La stima è dell'ufficio studi della banca svizzera UBS, in una relazione ai clienti del novembre 2011 (cfr. https://www.thegwpf.com/europes-287-billion-carbon-waste-ubs-report).

  19. In D. Harvey, "The 'new' imperialism: accumulation by dispossession", in Socialist Register , No. 40, p. 74.

  20. In D. Harvey, L'enigma del Capitale , Feltrinelli, Milano, 2011, pp. 60-61.

  21. Tipicamente con sede all'estero, se ci riferiamo all'Italia o anche ai cosiddetti Paesi in via di sviluppo.

  22. Cfr. S. Kagawa, K. Hubacek, K. Nansai, M. Kataoka, S. Managi, S. Suh, Y. Kudoh, "Better cars or older cars?: Assessing CO2 emission reduction potential of passenger vehicle replacement programs", in Global Environmental Change , Volume 23, Issue 6, December 2013, pp. 1807-1818; M. Messagie, "Life Cycle Analysis of the Climate Impact of Electric Vehicles", in Transport and enviroment , 2014; H. Helms, M. Pehnt, U. Lambrecht, A. Liebich, "Electric vehicle and plug-in hybrid energy efficiency and life cycle emissions", 18th International Symposium Transport and Air Pollution, 2010.

  23. Ricordiamo che il fattore che ha innescato la rivolta dei Gilet Jaunes è stata proprio l'inasprimento dei parametri per le emissioni veicolari. Naturalmente queste riguardavano soprattutto I veicoli di una certa età, che sono quelli che garantivano la mobilità della fascia di popolazione meno abbiente (in presenza di concomitante smantellamento delle reti di trasporto pubblico di prossimità).

  24. Cfr. P. Mirowski, Never let a serious crisis go to waste, cit.

  25. Cfr. D. Cressy, "Geoengineering Experiment Cancelled Amid Patent Row", in Nature , No. 15, May 2012; M. Specter, "The Climate Fixers", in The New Yorker , May, 2012.


This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Il Pedante at the URL http://ilpedante.org/post/quelo-greta-e-la-dottrina-neoliberale-della-verita-multipla on Wed, 22 Jan 2020 07:39:32 PST.