Dear SS: Here is two-dimensional set of ideas about how to teach
environmental marxism to students whom, I would presume don't want
to hear too much critique of capitalism...especially from a Marxist
perspective:

Teaching Outline:

1. Start off listing the many benefits of capitalism as economic system:
        a. it is the most productive in human history
        b. it is the most flexible
        c. it is the most innovative
        d. it drives the best knowledge system ever seen
        e. it tends to destroy ancient systems of privilege:
            ethnic, racial, gender and religious...when it cannot
            use such divisions for lower wages and political legitimacy.
        f...and more if you use an Handout...

2. Show how each of these advantages is matched with problems for
    the environment...make the general point that all environmental
    questions are mediated by the quest for profit...this means that:

        a. air, water and soil is used as a dump for waste materials
            of factories, plants, agro-business, energy, mining and
            mills as costs of production are transferred to the
            environment

        b. raw materials: lumber, oil, metals and minerals are extracted
            in the fastest, least costly, most aggressive ways possible.
            The very productivity of capitalism requires super-exploit-
            ation of resources.

        c. in Authoritarian states, pollution is absorbed by the bodies
            of the poor; especially nursing women and their infant
            children.

        in Democratic states, costs of pollution control and clean-up
        is transferred...via taxes...to workers, consumers and future
            tax payers via state debt.
   
        d. in Core Democratic countries, environmental groups tend to
            transfer pollution to 3rd World countries as environmental
            laws protect more and more land, more and more people and
            more and more products in Core Capitalist Countries.

        e. in all countries, capitalists try to buy the political
            process; this subverts all efforts to protect the environ-
            ment.

        f. the knowledge process tends to be organized to seek low-cost
            and technical solutions to environmental problems after the
            fact rather than re-organizing production to prevent pollution.

2. Teaching devices:

    1. Ask five students to bring trash to class; define the last three
        rows as the under-class and dump the trash where they sit.

        tie this to the export of enironmental problems from the rich
        to the poor; from rich countries to poor countries.

    2. give Handouts on Controlling Pollution to and only to the first
        two rows...after you define them as Consultants to Corporations

        tie this to the distortion of the knowledge process and the
        creation of an army of intellectuals on the payroll of capital.

    3. Ask students how many have five or more:
            a. radios in their home
            b. television sets in their home
            c. cars in their family
           
        how many have:
            a. more than 10 pairs of shoes
            b. more than 5 pair of jeans
            c. more than 10 tee-shirts.

        tie all this to the Colonization of Desire and the creation
        of False Needs after Marcuse.

    4. Be creative, have fun and clean up after your self.

                                and let me know what you do, TR

Note on this mini-syllabus:  Samatha Speaks posted the following note on the socgrad
network...the outline above is my reply:

>Hello, I'm guest teaching a one-hour class of environmental marxism.
>Does anyone have any good examples of how they get students interested and
>involved in the topic?
>
>
>Thank you for the assistance
>
>Samantha Speaks