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Alternative Radio for June 18, 2012
1:00 PM - 1:58 PM
[Program Website]
Today's Highlight: "Ecology & Socialism," by Chris Williams
Fifty years ago Rachel Carson wrote “Silent Spring.” It gave birth to the environmental movement. Within a few years there was Earth Day, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Environmental Protection Agency. Those were heady days but that was then. Today, around the world the threat to our environment is acute and growing. The majority of solutions on offer, from driving a hybrid, to recycling plastic, to using efficient light bulbs, focus on individual lifestyle choices of mostly privileged people. Yet the scale of the crisis requires a far deeper and fundamental transformation. As global warming accelerates, carbon-fueled industrial capitalism is systemically incapable of making the necessary radical changes to protect the planet. Its insatiable appetite for profits precludes it from doing so. It is time to think about a different economic system.
Chris Williams is a longtime environmental activist, professor of physics and chemistry at Pace University, and chair of the science department at Packer Collegiate Institute. He is the author of "Ecology and Socialism."
Alternative Radio is a weekly one-hour public affairs program offered free to all public radio stations in the U.S., Canada, Europe, South Africa, Australia, and on short-wave on Radio for Peace International.
Established in 1986, AR is dedicated to the founding principles of public broadcasting, which urge that programming serve as "a forum for controversy and debate," be diverse and "provide a voice for groups that may otherwise be unheard." The project is entirely independent, sustained solely by individuals who buy transcripts and tapes of programs.
Its "headquarters" is situated to correspond with its position in the mainstream mass media: down an alley, behind a house, on top of a garage in Boulder, Colorado. From this rarefied location, AR's programs manage to reach over 125 radio stations and millions of listeners. AR is part of the non-profit Institute for Social and Cultural Change.
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