Gore and Volunteerism

This is a demonstration against the Clinton-Gore proposal for an incinerator in Ohio.

From Joel Kovel's critique of Al Gore in "A Really Inconvenient Truth"

While there is nothing wrong with any ecologically voluntarist act so long as it is done with a good heart and a mind toward restoring the earth, there is nothing inherent to it, either, that leads anywhere. Moral exhortations may feel as though they generate larger purposes, but this is an illusion. There is no solidarity inherent to the moral impulse; and unless that which makes for solidarity is added, voluntarism will stop at its own border.

Gore's Illusion

From the critique of Gore by Joel Kovel:
It is certainly the case that all measures of increasing the renewability and efficiency, and decreasing the pollution of energy sources--that is, all "soft-energy paths"--are to be endorsed, and for the same reason one endorses recycling. What cannot be supported is the illusion that these measures of themselves can do more than retard the slide toward ecocatastrophe under conditions of capitalist growth--a fall that may become precipitous once fossil fuels become uneconomical to extract, or the greenhouse effect becomes too catastrophic. Only a basic change in patterns of production and use can allow ecologically appropriate technologies to have their beneficial effect.