And that is the moral conundrum. You are correct, there comes points where you do have to draw a hard line and do what must be done to protect nature, because the human capacity to destroy it and other living things has transcended nature’s ability to protect itself and all that stands between it’s exploitation by one set of tool wielding apes is a group of other tool wielding apes.
That’s a pretty extreme scenario. My critique of both ML and the China method is that it doesn’t contain, at its core, modern environmental philosophy. Not suprising, it was not a concern for the writers at the time. China’s revolution came after it had time to observe what capitalism and the rise of a middle class had done in the west, but it still chose to follow many of the same methods to speed run it’s growth, the creation of a middle class, and now has many of the same issues the west does when it comes to the consumerism of a middle class (and the gross excesses of a wealth class, whose singular habits can make the average annual footprint of thousands look like a drop in the ocean). I’d also point out that China’s economy is based on selling a lot of useless crap to western markets. It’s supply and demand, and it would appear that appealing to the nature of humans to not be wasteful is… futile? Our planet is changing rapidly but we are nowhere near hitting the point where the majority of humans will willingly limit their consumption for the greater good. There seems to be a strong belief in “consume now, pay whatever consequences later.
And I see that mentality strongly in China’s revolution. It didn’t happen in a bubble, they knew that there would be a price to pay but anthropocentrism is fundamental to ML. China got what it wanted, and now plays catch-up with environmentalism, just like the west. My struggle with trying to critique devotion to ML or the Chinese method often reaches an impasse because nobody has developed a popular environmental minded update and will continually point to the idea that protecting it for human use is good enough and that human progression is outweighed by environmental concerns. I disagree, humanity can progress but that doesn’t mean it always gets what it wants or thinks progress looks like.
I’m concerned that the rise of popular adoption of ML thought is so dismissive of environmental concerns, which have long been only addressed by leftists. The responses out of a lot of it’s supporters are becoming increasingly anthropocentric with an acceptance that a few green initiatives and climate pledges for the future are good enough, and had a dude over on Reddit basically state he didn’t give a fuck how bad factory farming was for the animals, humans deserve cheap meat. I don’t think the world is going to go vegan, but damn dude, won’t even criticize factory farming? What the hell is happening to the left?