Climate change implications indicate global rethink required

Peak Nature and the transformation of capitalism, by Timothy Morton, Adbusters.org

Nature is the featureless remainder at either end of the process of production. Either it’s exploitable stuff, or value-added stuff. Whatever: it’s basically featureless, abstract, gray. It has nothing to do with nematode worms and orangutans, organic chemicals in comets and rock strata. You can scour the Earth from mountaintop to Marianas Trench. You will never find Nature. That’s why I put it in capitals. I want the reader to see that it’s an empty category looking for something to fill it. Gray goo.

Capitalism did away with feudal and pre-feudal myths such as the divine hierarchy between classes of people. In so doing, however, it substituted one heck of a giant myth of its own: Nature. Nature is precisely the lump that preexists the capitalist labor process. Martin Heidegger has the best term for it: standing reserve, Bestand.

Bestand means “stuff,” as in the old ad from the 1990s, “Drink Pepsi: Get Stuff.” There is an ontology implicit in capitalist production, then, that is strictly materialism as defined by Aristotle. Funnily enough, however, this materialism is not fascinated with material objects in all their manifold specificity. It’s just stuff. This viewpoint is the basis of Aristotle’s problem with materialism. Have you ever seen or handled matter? Have you ever held a piece of “stuff”? Sure, I’ve seen lots of objects: Santa Claus in a department store, snowflakes and photographs of atoms. But have I ever seen matter or stuff as such? Aristotle says it’s a bit like searching through a zoo to find the “animal” rather than the various species such as monkeys and mynah birds. Marx says exactly the same thing regarding capital. “The ‘expanded’ form [of the commodity] passes into the ‘general’ form when some commodity is excluded, exempted from the collection of commodities, and thus appears as the general equivalent of all commodities, as the immediate embodiment of Commodity as such, as if, by the side of all real animals, there existed the Animal, the individual incarnation of the entire animal kingdom – or as if, to use an example from commercial capitalism, by the side of all real spices, there existed the Spice.” As Nature goes, so goes matter. The two most progressive physical theories of our age, ecology and quantum theory, need have nothing to do with it.


Research information on Peak Nature concept

Green Stocks to WATCH; Solar, Thorium, Clean Water

Here are a few green stocks worth keeping an eye on, and perhaps accumulating on any Autumn general market weakness (notes from company websites and Nick Hodge of Energy & Capital):


Amtech Systems (NASDAQ: ASYS), maker of the furnaces, cell transfer systems, and vapor deposition products necessary to produce today's solar panels. They win no matter which solar company wins: GE, First Solar, Sharp — it doesn't matter... They all need solar panel production equipment.


IBC Advanced Alloys (IB), is a leading manufacturer and developer of advanced alloys for the global market with a focus on specialty copper alloys and high performance beryllium aluminum castings. IBC’s engineered solutions are essential for many high technology products used in a broad range of market sectors including nuclear power, automotive, oil and gas, electronics and aerospace. Complementing the Company’s manufacturing operations are R&D programs and natural resource initiatives focused on enhancing and supporting IBC growing US manufacturing base.


Lightbridge Corp. (NASDAQ: LTBR), formerly known as Thorium Power Corp., researching thorium powered reactors, and possibly in the future, cars. According to the website txchnologist.com, owned by GE:

A 250-kilowatt unit (equivalent to about 335 horsepower) weighing about 500 pounds would be small and light enough to put under the hood of a car, Stevens claims. And because a gram of thorium has the equivalent potential energy content of 7,500 gallons of gasoline, LPS calculates that using just 8 grams of thorium in the unit could power an average car for 5,000 hours, or about 300,000 miles of normal driving.



Urban Barns (OTCBB: URBF) is the next generation of agriculture. We use advanced farming methods to grow fruits and vegetables in a controlled indoor environment, and our crop yields are much greater than a traditional greenhouse. We plan to put an Urban Barn in every major urban centre, so that our food can be on the shelf within 48 hours of being picked, for an unprecedented level of freshness and quality.


Seawater Greenhouse is a UK company not yet public, that builds greenhouses that use seawater and sunshine and produce vegetables and fresh water. A 2,000-square-meter version has already been completed in South Australia. It cost $2 million to build and will produce over 220,000 pounds of tomatoes per year. It needs no fossil fuels or pesticides, so its costs are up to 25% less than traditional greenhouses. Abu Dhabi, Oman, Jordan, and other arid countries by the sea are all in line to get them.