China again: Poetics and practice of nature

May 11, 2021

I just want to quote some of the Remarks by Chinese President Xi Jinping at Leaders Summit on Climate, on the 22nd April 2021, because I doubt many people have seen them.

We must be committed to harmony between man and Nature. “All things that grow live in harmony and benefit from the nourishment of Nature.” Mother Nature is the cradle of all living beings, including humans. It provides everything essential for humanity to survive and thrive. Mother Nature has nourished us, and we must treat Nature as our root, respect it, protect it, and follow its laws. Failure to respect Nature or follow its laws will only invite its revenge. Systemic spoil of Nature will take away the foundation of human survival and development, and will leave us human beings like a river without a source and a tree without its roots. We should protect Nature and preserve the environment like we protect our eyes, and endeavor to foster a new relationship where man and Nature can both prosper and live in harmony.

That seems fairly straightforward and praiseworthy. It is certainly hard to imagine Australia’s Prime Minister saying anything like this…

We must be committed to green development. Green mountains are gold mountains. To protect the environment is to protect productivity, and to improve the environment is to boost productivity — the truth is as simple as that. We must abandon development models that harm or undermine the environment, and must say no to shortsighted approaches of going after near-term development gains at the expense of the environment. Much to the contrary, we need to ride the trend of technological revolution and industrial transformation, seize the enormous opportunity in green transition, and let the power of innovation drive us to upgrade our economic, energy and industrial structures, and make sure that a sound environment is there to buttress sustainable economic and social development worldwide.

Unfortunately this sounds a bit techno-hype, as if with the right tech we can do anything….. and this suggests a technocratic approach rather than a harmony with natural systems approach. But at least the environment continues to feature.

We must be committed to systemic governance. Mountains, rivers, forests as well as farmlands, lakes, grasslands and deserts all make indivisible parts of the ecosystem. Protecting the ecosystem requires more than a simplistic, palliative approach. We need to follow the innate laws of the ecosystem and properly balance all elements and aspects of Nature. This is a way that may take us where we want to be, an ecosystem in sound circulation and overall balance.

Yes! again. Although we need to recognise we don’t know everything about nature, so attempts to ‘rebalance’ will occasionally fail – and we must be ready to change our behaviour when it generates failure.

We must be committed to a people-centered approach. The environment concerns the well-being of people in all countries. We need to take into full account people’s longing for a better life and a good environment as well as our responsibility for future generations. We need to look for ways to protect the environment, grow the economy, create jobs and remove poverty all at the same time, so as to deliver social equity and justice in the course of green transition and increase people’s sense of benefit, happiness and security.

I’m not sure about this. We must help everyone, yes, but the problem is that ecologies are not people centred. They can survive without people, and possibly survive better? People cannot, as yet, survive without the world. Ultimately I think we have to shift to an eco-centred point of view, while retaining reverence and compassion for all people. We probably have to maintain a tolerance of ambiguity.

We must be committed to multilateralism. We need to work on the basis of international law, follow the principle of equity and justice, and focus on effective actions. We need to uphold the UN-centered international system, comply with the objectives and principles laid out in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Paris Agreement, and strive to deliver the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. We need to each take stronger actions, strengthen partnerships and cooperation, learn from each other and make common progress in the new journey toward global carbon neutrality. In this process, we must join hands, not point fingers at each other; we must maintain continuity, not reverse course easily; and we must honor commitments, not go back on promises.

The problem here is that while this is all accurate, but perhaps what it leads to is not quite so good, as with….

We must be committed to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities is the cornerstone of global climate governance. Developing countries now face multiple challenges to combat COVID-19, grow the economy, and address climate change. We need to give full recognition to developing countries’ contribution to climate action and accommodate their particular difficulties and concerns. Developed countries need to increase climate ambition and action. At the same time, they need to make concrete efforts to help developing countries strengthen the capacity and resilience against climate change, support them in financing, technology, and capacity building, and refrain from creating green trade barriers, so as to help developing countries accelerate the transition to green and low-carbon development.

Without care this can lead to a “this is not my responsibility” attitude. Sure developed countries have to take the lead, as they have the most slack, but China is pretty close to being in that category, and certainly wants the respect which goes with that category and which it deserves. This is one of those areas in which Buberian dialogue seems needed. Developed countries also need not to think they know everything, and allow other countries to try experiments…

Last year, I made the official announcement that China will strive to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. This major strategic decision is made based on our sense of responsibility to build a community with a shared future for mankind and our own need to secure sustainable development. China has committed to move from carbon peak to carbon neutrality in a much shorter time span than what might take many developed countries, and that requires extraordinarily hard efforts from China. The targets of carbon peak and carbon neutrality have been added to China’s overall plan for ecological conservation. We are now making an action plan and are already taking strong nationwide actions toward carbon peak. Support is being given to peaking pioneers from localities, sectors and companies. China will strictly control coal-fired power generation projects, and strictly limit the increase in coal consumption over the 14th Five-Year Plan period and phase it down in the 15th Five-Year Plan period. Moreover, China has decided to accept the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol and tighten regulations over non-carbon dioxide emissions. China’s national carbon market will also start trading.

The problem is that these and other promises have not been put into law. That is surprising. Given my government, I don’t trust promises which are not legislated – and even then they can be repealed if inconvenient.

As we say in China, “When people pull together, nothing is too heavy to be lifted.” Climate change poses pressing, formidable and long-term challenges to us all. Yet I am confident that as long as we unite in our purposes and efforts and work together with solidarity and mutual assistance, we will rise above the global climate and environment challenges and leave a clean and beautiful world to future generations.

Again we need more talk like this, but we also need the action, and building more coal fired energy is not the way to go, and does not demonstrate that all is on track.

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Buber and Binaries

May 8, 2021

First let me be clear I am no Buber expert, so everything I say may be wrong, but this is really a more general point.

I have in previous blogs said that I find the idea of binaries, over-common, and intellectually dangerous for several reasons.

1) Binaries tend to be conceived as opposites or negations,

However very few processes negate each other. Let us take a common binary: men and women. These categories are often conceived as opposites. Men are rational/women are emotional, men are aggressive/women are passive, men are tall/women are short. Whatever the level of plausibility here, there is lots of overlap, and the binary misses it, or even conceals it. For example while the ‘average man’ is taller than the ‘average woman’, it is not that difficult to find women taller than the average man, and men shorter than the average women. These short men or tall women are not, not-men, or not-women. The variation is not categorical but statistical. The same is almost certainly true of rational and emotive, or aggressive and passive.

Likewise the category of ‘not-woman’ contains a lot more creatures than just men: sharks, elephants, cows, bacteria, gum trees and so on. Men do not exhaust the entire category of not-women. So the category is not even logically sufficient or illuminating. Men are not the negation of women, or the opposite of women, or vice versa. The binary conceals a much more complex and shifting reality.

2) Binaries tend to have one pole made significant or dominant

This point was made by de Beauvoir although many people will attribute it to Derrida.

Using the man/woman binary again as an example, it has been standard practice to take the male as exemplary of the human, saying ‘Man’, ‘Mankind’, using the pronoun ‘he’ to include everyone, or using the term ‘the opposite sex’ to mean ‘female’, because male is supposedly the natural default sex. And of course, the male is supposed to dominate the female naturally. So the binary tends to inculcate, and indicate, dominance and passivity, or significance and lesser-significance. It lessens the chance of a mutual I-thou relationship.

Surprise?

The continual reduction to binaries, might be considered surprising when the dominant religion in the West supposedly believes that God is a trinity, and that its sacred text talks about the human triad of flesh, spirit (pneuma) and soul (psyche). Spirit and soul have been made the same, so we can have the binary of mind and body, spirit and body, mind/matter etc, with the mind/spirit dominant over, and more important than, the body, which can be dismissed and transcended.

This kind of binary might help people think their real life is in the spiritual world or ‘heaven’, and to dismiss the planet that they live on, as being inferior, and of little concern.

The solution?

Look for the third….. This is not the Hegelian or Marxist third which can be reduced to the synthesis of the original two, or a mediation between the two, but another factor altogether which co-exists with the original binary. Let’s be clear we are not limited to three, but the four tends to be reduced to binary oppositions again, so if we recognise a four, let us aim for a five…..

The Buber binary

The Buber binary is the two relations I-thou and I-it, of which the I-thou is primary.

The It-Authority relationship

I would suggest that there is at least one other possible relationship which adds to our understanding of human life. That is the It-Authority relationship. In which the ‘I’ becomes an ‘it’ in the face of authority, and there is no thou.

Before authority we are to quail, obey, stop thinking and side with the authority, or else we are to be crushed without remorse. We become instruments of the authority, without comment, or with only minor comment. The authority is not a subject and neither are we, there is no interaction other than authority’s instruction and our pleading or acquiescence.

Of course we can rebel, but we often rebel within the format of the It, just being resistant, not taking back our, or others’ ‘thouness’.

I would suggest that many people’s relationship to God is of the form It-Authority, were God is the authority, the rules, the punishments and blandishments, applied with no input from the human. This is the God who needs an eternal hell. I suspect that this is not a healthy relationship, or even a relationship at all – even if people pretend it is, so as to placate their God and hope to get on its good side, for fear of the alternative.

The It-Authority relationship seems common in sites of neoliberal employment, in which employees are an inconvenient cost centre, to be controlled, restructured and dismissed as ‘it’s, with little to no real valued input into the process….

I also suggest that the political response to ecological crisis is often conditioned by an It-Authority relationship to ‘the market’. This is the religion of the market, in which the market is neither recognised as being both made by humans, and made politically, but gets taken as a force in itself; an Authority, superior to the ecology in which it is actually immersed. The market is taken as an authority with which there is no appeal, and which will not be placated – unless it is to help out those who are already sanctified by the market, such as fossil fuel companies. This market reduces people and the world to ‘it’s, and treats them accordingly.

It makes the crisis even harder to deal with.

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Martin Buber: Psychoanalysis, Existentialism and ecology

May 7, 2021

Buber, the I, thou and it….

Martin Buber famously suggests that there are two main ways of relating: ‘I-thou’ and ‘I-it’; recognising that the ‘I’ exists within these relationships: “All real living is meeting”.

In the I-thou relationship we treat the other as an opening, a mystery, a being full of potential, full of value, which resists reduction to linguistic labels, which can modify us and be modified by us, which we have responsibility towards, offer respect towards, and so on. As we are open, we are vulnerable, so it involves a risk.

We attempt to encounter the other in their whole being; this may be impossible, but it is the aim. The relationship is mutual, possibly uncertain and ambiguous, because of its unpredictable and transformative possibilities.

In the I-it relationship the other is an object to be manipulated – the it is limited in its response, it rarely if ever opens us up, other than through what we do with it. It is an object, not another rich ‘subject’. We often tend to make our enemies its, then refuse to deal with them, and lock ourselves down. It is possible to suggest that the I becomes something of an impersonal it, when it treats an other as an it. However, much of life is easier if we treat some beings as ‘it’s, as when we build a lego object, change a light bulb, fill the car with petrol, and so on, so there is some ambiguity here – although perhaps all these it creations are forms of modern life.

This distinction seems a very simple point to make, but confusing the two, or extending the I-it relationship to situations in which it is not appropriate seems a major cultural flaw.

Psychoanalysis

You may think psychoanalysis is invalid for any number of reasons, but let us just look at one. Freud called unconscious processes the id, or the ‘it’. This automatically suggests unconscious processes are mechanical rather than subjects. The id is not something to be entered into relationship with, not something which can be plural or creative, but something repetitive to be manipulated, constrained, disciplined and brought under control. The best the ‘it’ can hope for is ‘sublimation’, or being bent to the will of the ego.

Jungians, to the extent they get Jung’s breakthrough, treat unconscious processes as a ‘thou’ another subject, with consciousness, wisdom, creativity. This may well be a difficult set of subjects to relate to, as it is made other by the ego’s suppression or misperception, but they can be respected, successfully dialogued with and lived with. They will never be exhausted, or made entirely clear; in short unconscious processes are thous.

Buber’s distinction helps us understand this difference, and it is irrelevant whether Buber and Jung got on, or understood each other, shadow processes happen to the best of us…

Without having done the research I would hypothesise that many (but not all) therapies treat internal processes as ‘it’s, to be mastered, released or accommodated to…

Existentialism: de Beauvoir

We can see a similar issue arise in de Beauvoirs ethics, and the distinction between the ‘free’ and the ‘determined’, or the ‘for-itself’ and ‘the in-itself’. Recognising oneself and the other as free opens the possibility of an I-thou relationship. To be ethical, one opens consciousness to open the freedom of the other. However, towards the determined, we appear to have no necessary care, no requirement to be open or to open, it is merely an ‘it’, something beyond relationship. It can be subject to instrumentalism, even as it escapes because of its complexity.

Where de Beauvoir adds to Buber is in asserting the ambiguities of response, of relationships, of situations, and the impossibility of always being able to produce the results we might desire, or of even deciding what is ethical in particular situations. But we can still ask, if we can behave ethically to an it? An it is not an equal. Therefore if there are defined its in the world we can attempt, but sometimes fail, to bend them to our wills. We may not have to respect their freedom or unknown way of operating.

An ethics may need to recognise that determining that something is determined it, is ambiguous at best.

Politics of Environmentalism

It seems obvious that, in Australia at least, the problems for the two main parties are that they are not able to conceive of ecology as a thou, which they can have a serious relationship with. For them ecology is an it, to be manipulated, exploited and subject to the will – or rather to the fantasies of will. Thus they fantasise, we can sell coal and gas and cut emissions. They fantasise that the world will not bite back and that they have plenty of time. They fantasise that Carbon Capture and Storage will have to work in time. They don’t really accept that the world could change – they fantasise they world is inert, a dead ‘it’, rather than a complex subject which responds to provocation in ways of which we are uncertain in advance. There is no sense, in our political discourse, that we need to establish a friendly relationship to ecology, an open relationship to ecology, or even a learning relationship with ecology. They act as if we should be the masters of it, and that ecology is an it. There is little recognition of mutuality.

With this view, we will never establish a mutually beneficial relationship. We can only head for disaster….

The tragedy is, that I doubt that any indigenous person, with their roots still in country, would need to be told any of this. They would already know much more, much better than me, and be able to ‘say’ much more if we could listen, or they might ask us to listen to the world as thou, because it seems obvious, it consists of many thous. That way we might come to learn.

****************

There are some subsequent comments in the next post Buber and binaries

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Will Covid-19 end the triumph of Neoliberalism?

May 5, 2021

Short answer: No.

Firstly, neoliberalism, its politics and economics are non-empirical – they are matters of faith and ‘logic’ from faulty premises. Their position seems impossible to falsify under any circumstances, and (in complex systems) what counts as facts can be made a matter of selection and interpretation, so they can always say ‘their facts’ support them.

Secondly, a totally free market society has never existed, and probably cannot exist, therefore neoliberal advocacy for a ‘free market’ cannot be said to have anything to do with Covid, or any other project. The fact that neoliberals only ever engineer corporately controlled markets, as opposed to free markets, makes them theoretically pure.

Thirdly, if anything goes wrong in a capitalist society, Neoliberals hold it is always the fault of government, and never the fault of capitalists, corporations, or wealthy people. If such people overtly do do anything wrong or stupid, then that is because of the government (even if it was they who bought the government’s actions). As capitalism requires regulations to function and protect property distribution, there will always be government involvement of some type in the economy and daily life which can be blamed for failure.

Fourthly, there is no explicit connection between neoliberalism and Covid. Trump, who can be held responsible for denying Covid was a problem and denying help to badly affected states, was not officially a neoliberal (he even restricted trade), other than in being a corporate supremacist who helped transfer massive amounts of taxpayers’ money to the wealthy – but his followers refuse to believe that. Likewise with Boris Johnson, and Narendra Modi. We can say that governments were influenced by neoliberal ideas and thought everyone should get back to work before the problem was solved. But again this was the fault of governments, not apparently of neoliberals.

Fifthly, because of the information confusion and the pro-corporate right’s promulgation of neoliberal propaganda, Neoliberals can if they wish embrace the confusion and say Covid was just a “summer flu” or the “common cold”, and not really that bad. They can also state that any attempt to control people or slow down transmission was faulty, badly designed or an imposition on liberty, which (of course) they officially monopolise. As many people did not die from Covid, and the death figures may confuse people (there are allegations that they are faked, presumably all over the world), then they are likely to succeed – particularly given the supposed ‘common sense’ of the neoliberal backing of the corporate economy above people, and people’s dislike of being told what to do.

Sixthly, If they can convince people that Covid was the fault of governments (which it was to an extent, when governments acted in a confused or negligent manner), that the economy was seriously hurt (because the economy is the only thing that matters), that poor people were freeloading (because poor people are evil or lazy, or poor voluntarily), that private enterprise could have solved the problem quicker (because it was supposedly in their interests to solve it), and that what action was taken was tyrannous and oppressive and so on…. then it is possible we will be even worse in our preparation for the next pandemic, and less able to respond.

And that will not be the fault of neoliberals either, because it never is…….

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De Beauvoir’s ethics??

May 4, 2021

This is a very incomplete account of Ethics of Ambiguity, made because this writing of de Beauvoir’s is one of the few ethical texts that take ambiguity seriously, although perhaps not seriously enough. It may also be one of the most interesting ethical texts of the last century. I’m not going to claim that at this stage I’ve noticed everything and understood everything, so this account is likely to be incomplete or even incorrect.

Making an ambiguous binary: determination vs freedom

The book starts with the distinction between ‘determined’ and ‘free’ which is, for humans, ambiguous (and essential) because:

  • past actions to a large extent determine what we feel, experience and can choose (the affects of the past are largely unchangeable givens – although some psychotherapists insist not completely);
  • we live amidst what appear to be determined processes (or, perhaps more accurately, processes we do not appear to have direct influence upon, which can include world and bodily processes);
  • <I’d add that we also experience the affects of unconscious processes, which may influence our thinking and freedom – but existentialism seems to have a problem with recognising these>
  • while we experience some freedom of choice.

Or as she says, in the language of the translator, “[Man] asserts himself as a pure internality against which no external power can take hold, and he also experiences himself as a thing crushed by the dark weight of other things.” This ambiguity cannot be accurately removed. I would add that culture seems to be another source of ambiguity, it gives tools teaching us what, and how, to think and thus both restricts and enables freedom.

Humans are part of the world of which we are conscious (EA: 7) and so we cannot escape being ‘messed’ by the world. Indeed attempts to escape the world are possibly harmful or limiting to both ourselves and others.

De Beauvoir argues that people (“philosophers”) often try to “mask” this essential ambiguity, by reducing reality to one side of a binary such as ‘determination’ or ‘freedom’; ‘mind’ or ‘matter’ etc, and establish a hierarchy of dominance whereby one side of the binary is, or should be, more significant than the other (and dominant) – mind over matter etc.

Or as de Beauvoir says: “It has been a matter of eliminating the ambiguity by making oneself pure inwardness or pure externality, by escaping from the sensible world or by being engulfed in it, by yielding to eternity or enclosing oneself in the pure moment” (EA:8).

We might wonder if the idea of freedom may be ambiguous itself? I’d suggest that it is a significant reduction when “philosophers” reduce the world to a binary of freedom and determination rather than a possible plurality, or continuum. Seek the third to destabilise the binary – which in this case might be those necessary and responsive natural processes, which we need to take account of to live…

Freedom as source of value

Let us accept, for the moment, the binary, but be aware of its possible reductionism, then de Beauvoir asserts that freedom “is the source from which all significations and all values spring. It is the original condition of all justification of existence” (EA: 24). To “will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision” (EA: 24). There also seems to be an assumption that freedom and openness are morally related “My freedom must not seek to trap being but to disclose it” (EA: 30). I will later suggest that for de Beauvoir ‘disclosure of being’ does not seem to explicitly include the non-human world, and that further complexity and ambiguity would be recognised, if this was the case….

We have the usual problem of why we should select freedom as the basis of ethics, without a previous ethical assumption that freedom is good. We also know from de Beauvoir’s opening, that freedom is never total, we are splitting reality into a opposed binary of free and determined and making freedom the dominant and valued pole. We could imagine someone arguing that enthusiastically embracing our fate is the real basis of virtue, or that only certain people are entitled to be free and that virtue is about accepting, or earning, these limits.

However, it certainly appears that we seem free to make choices, and most people would agree that virtue and ethics have to do with choices, or argument over correct choices in particular situations, so let us assume that this freedom to choose, is one basis for ethics, and see what happens. What is the role of the ambiguity that de Beauvoir points to?

Freedom implies an ability (to some extent) to make ourselves up as we go along, so that we become the path of our choices, and that path is open to change as we are free to choose to go in a different direction at this moment, now. However, we are not free of the consequences of that choice. Or in existentialist lingo: “To will freedom and to will to disclose being are one and the same choice; hence, freedom takes a positive and constructive step which causes being to pass to existence in a movement which is constantly surpassed” (EA: 78-9). We make our being through our choices; perhaps it is better to say ‘in the interplay between choices and the world,’ to make the freedom less absolute, and to emphasise the relationships involved.

Moving into relationship

Given her position, de Beavoir can suggest:

Freedom is the source from which all significance and all values spring. It is the original condition of all justification of existence. The man who seeks to justify his life must want freedom itself absolutely and above everything else. At the same time that it requires the realization of concrete ends, of particular projects, it requires itself universally.

(EA: 24)

Or Freedom requires that others be free. And:

the constructive activities of man take on a valid meaning only when they are assumed as a movement toward freedom; and reciprocally, one sees that such a movement is concrete: discoveries, inventions, industries, culture, paintings, and books people the world concretely and open concrete possibilities to men.

(EA: 80)

So again, we have the moral proposition that freedom should lead to the opening of freedom for others.

There are several problems here. One is whether absolute freedom is required for this ethics, as opposed to a moderate level of freedom. The other problem is what is a “valid meaning”? The construction of forts and killing machines has a meaning, and what makes that meaning invalid? De Beauvoir’s answer might be that they limit freedom by violence, but they might aim to protect freedom as well. Surely they could have both meanings, or both functions simultaneously? The meaning could be ambiguous and difficult to resolve, and indeed this is implied in her accounts of communist revolution…

It seems important to recognise that freedom of choice does not mean we can achieve exactly what we choose to attempt in the world, because of complexity, epistemological insufficiency, and unintended consequences. In other words, perhaps success involves some restraint and ambiguity itself? Freedom may even achieve its undoing, for some people, because of such factors – especially if the supposedly free being operates without paying attention to the world.

Part of the answer to these questions are that, more or less by definition, while individuals’ have ontological freedom (ie some inherent apparent freedom of choice) they do not have moral freedom by themselves alone. While you cannot probably force freedom, ontological freedom leads to the possibility of plural social and moral freedom, and the possibility of working towards it or against it. As is being implied, freedom always occurs in relationship with other people and other beings, and this may attack freedom of oppression. This sets up the “the paradox that no action can be generated for man without its being immediately generated against men.”

Sometimes increase of freedom can result in loss of some levels of freedom for oppressors. “I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am kept from throwing my neighbor into prison.” But oppressors try to give up nothing.

To withdraw from this problem is “a way of fleeing the truth of the present” which is that we, by choice, are opening a future whatever we do. Acting now is not the same as contemplating what has already happened – “With regard to the past, no further action is possible”.

However, this misses the ambiguity of working towards freedom for, or better with, others, while perhaps undermining it, through lack of understanding etc., although she does discuss the ambiguities of Soviet Russia… A problem is that we cannot know the result of our actions until it arrives.

Some people try to will themselves unfree to justify their choices. ‘I could do no other’ and this could be their experience, even if it is ontologically incorrect. Death is always on the horizon. How would I know what they experienced without being in the same position? which is not something that I can do.

So freedom only occurs in relationship to other beings, and this relationship is not always easy.

Relationship occurs everywhere

Every human has to do with other humans. Consciousness itself is always about the act of being in relation to, or interaction with, something else – world, humans, non-humans. There is never a consciousness by itself. So we might again suggest that consciousness is not purely free but conditioned to a degree. Consciousness arises in complexity, and in a world with its own dynamics. Because of its origination in the world, human consciousness is never as we imagine pure consciousness to be, it is permeated by feeling, by understandings, by unrealities and so on.

While De Beauvoir recognises this fundamental existential issue that we are inevitably in relationship to other people and (we add) to the world by whether we help or hinder the freedom of other beings (and hence our selves), it is not clear she recognises the impurity of consciousness.

De Beauvoir argues that our freedom inherently involves an involvement with the freedom of others. Without the freedom of others we are unfree in the moral sense (and I suspect in the ontological sense as well, because we have made our being free in tandem with this lack of freedom in others). Again I suspect people could deny this, but we cannot live without interaction, and this interaction heavily influences our own capacities. Limits we impose on others (intentionally or otherwise) may impose on ourselves.

I concern others and they concern me. There we have an irreducible truth. The me-others relationship is as indissoluble as the subject-object relationship… To will oneself free is also to will others free. This will is not an abstract formula. It points out to each person concrete action to be achieved

(EA 72-3)

One must “act to defend and develop the moral freedom of oneself and others” (EA 98). The attainment of my “moral freedom depends on others being able to attain it.” (Arp: 3) A community of free people can help us be free.

freedom always appears as a movement of liberation. It is only by prolonging itself through the freedom of others that it manages to surpass death itself and to realize itself as an indefinite unity.

“[W]e say that freedom can not will itself without aiming at an open future,” as opposed to a future of constraint. This is a problem if an open future may lead to destruction of others.

This opening may imply some level of equality or sympathy with others, otherwise our freedom may seem to depend on harming the freedom, or existential process, of others.

In which case equality, sympathy or empathy or compassion, or the ability to imagine the sufferings and restrictions of others are also bases of virtue, not just freedom. De Beauvoir has over-simplified in making the original binary of freedom and determination, although she also says ““I concern others and they concern me. There we have an irreducible truth” (EA: 78) – but it is an irreducible truth which suggests that more than freedom could be at stake. Freedom is not the all, and not the only, basis of ethics.

This recognition leads to another problem. While we can extrapolate that humans individuals exist in a network of human consciousness and culture, de Beauvoir does fully open and extended this interrelationship to non-humans and non-human world processes, perhaps because she does not regard non-human beings as free. If so, this could be said to be the use of ‘freedom’ to perpetuate a form of domination and suppression of the non-human. Perhaps this is inherent in the imagined idea of absolute human freedom? She is, perhaps, not open to enough ambiguity as to what consciousness involves?

It seems that if we recognise we live in interaction, then we probably have to recognise that we live in interaction with the sun, the planet, and all beings or processes on the planet. We may have to respect their ‘freedom’ to continue to exist. Forests may have to exist, to not be clear felled, not only to preserve human freedom, but to preserve the world. Water cycles have to exist, and not be dried out by boosting deglaciation or drainage, and so on. This too may be ambiguous, forests may be felled to make space for humans or feed humans, but at the same time we are endangering humans and their freedom. The ambiguity is huge…. and the temptation is to reduce that ambiguity by making humans, or some form of social system, more significant than the ‘other’ of the world, and to imply these humans should dominate, rather than respect the way the world’s ecologies work.

In other words, freedom (if limited to humans), can lead to the destruction of co-existing interactions and lessen the possibilities of human freedom…

I’ve argued elsewhere that ethics is primarily situational. It is a response to events, as well as an attempt to rectify, or improve those events, by some kind of measure. As people may interpret situations differently, then this also leads to ambiguity.

Moral development and conflict

De Beauvoir notes that people are not born with an innate moral sense which will lead them to agreement. This seems obvious. De Beauvoir tries to specify some kind of moral ‘styles’ and to show their inadequacies.

Children tend to take the world as they find it. Adults tell them what is moral and punish or reward is taken as being the nature of the world. “This means that the world in which [the child] lives is a serious world, since the characteristic of the spirit of seriousness is to consider values as ready-made things.”

Through social oppression some adults are forced into remaining children. “This is also the situation of women in many civilizations; they can only submit to the laws, the gods, the customs, and the truths created by the males.” This is ambiguous, as we can be complicit in our own oppression. We can try to make the oppression comfortable for ourselves, or even call it freedom. Similarly, as ‘freedom’ can be culturally defined then our views may be incompatible to begin with and without working together remain so. For example is it freedom to have to choose between working for a boss or starving, dying of easily preventable or treatable diseases, being shot or beaten by police for protesting against police violence, have homelessness thrust upon you, have the dominant classes be free to ruin your ecology and poison your air? It looks as if for many people in the US, this is the case.

Therefore it could be that working for others’ freedom might seem to be an imposition in a way that working with others for their own version of freedom might avoid. The difficulty of defining a common version of freedom, and the difficulties of arbitrating between different freedoms, adds to the ambiguities, uncertainties and negotiations we face in creating an open future.

If there is little oppression then: “With astonishment, revolt and disrespect the child little by little asks…, “Why must I act that way? What good is it? And what will happen if I act in another way?” Although there are people who are filled with such horror at the idea of a defeat that they keep themselves from ever doing anything.

Moral growth involves becoming aware that acts have consequences for others, as well as ourselves – and the skills to relate to those other beings and processes, which is why (for me) empathy, compassion, imagination etc seem as important for ethics as freedom.

Yet accepting that we bear the responsibility for exerting our freedom can be frightening, anxiety producing etc. and this can lead us away. Some people “have eyes and ears, but from their childhood on they make themselves blind and deaf, without love and without desire. This apathy manifests a fundamental fear in the face of existence, in the face of the risks and tensions which it implies.”

People can attempt to remove this fear by arguing that they are compelled, or should be compelled to behave in a certain way to be moral. In this way the freedom of others is a threat. Their acts “are never positive choices, only flights.” This reduces ambiguity, but crushes morality, empathy, imagination and freedom.

The ‘sub-man’ (and the ‘serious person’) want to reduce ethics, and the world, to the static or ‘unconditioned’. They want a guarantee. They refuse to engage with ambiguity, flux and uncertainty, and suffer a “fundamental fear in the face of existence” (EA: 42). They do not want choice, but instructions/programs, and take orders and values from authority. As such people don’t have to think, or relate carefully, they can be dangerous.

In lynchings, in pogroms, in all the great bloody movements organized by the fanaticism of seriousness and passion, movements where there is no risk, those who do the actual dirty work are recruited from the sub-men. (EA 44)

(EA: 44)

The sub-man is not very clear about what he has to lose, since he has nothing, but this very uncertainty re-enforces his terror. Indeed, what he fears is that the shock of the unforeseen may remind him of the agonizing consciousness of himself.

The serious person “gets rid of his freedom by claiming to subordinate it to values which would be unconditioned. He imagines that the accession to [agreement with] these values likewise permanently confers value upon himself.” Such a person fulfils a social role or persona: “no longer a man, but a father, a boss, a member of the Christian Church or the Communist Party.” The serious person loses all meaning if cut off from these enforced social placements, they fail to recognise their freedom, or the responsibility of that freedom; they follow the rules.

Other more ‘advanced’ types include the nihilist, the adventurer, the passionate man and so on.

“The nihilist is right in thinking that the world possesses no justification and that he himself is nothing. But he forgets that it is up to him to justify the world and make himself exist validly” (EA: 57). The nihilist flies from life into nothingness, perhaps longing for something new to fill themselves with, and become serious.

The adventurer takes “delight in living” (EA: 58) but is insensitive to needs of others, or the freedom of others. They remain “indifferent to the content, that is, to the human meaning of his action, [and] thinks he can assert his own existence without taking into account that of others.” Even ‘worse:’ “He carries the seed of [a tyrant] within him, since he regards mankind as indifferent matter destined to support the game of his existence.” He “will enclose himself in a false independence which will indeed be servitude.”

The adventurer is like the passionate man, but de Beauvoir asks, in regard to the disposition of the passionate man, “why not betray, kill, grow violent?” (EA 66).

It seems to me, that all of these deficient types are deficient primarily in their ability to empathise with others, have compassion for others, or ability to imagine what it is to be another. They also do not move beyond themselves, into their mutuality with the world. They interact with others, but these others are source of authority, or objects for their own actions. If these ways are freely chosen then it takes other processes than freedom to lift the person into another choice. And it seems that an ethics should recognise it cannot be completely driven by one ultimate alone…

Precarity of morals

As implied morality is both ambiguous and precarious. It requires work, and attention to what is happening and likely to happen. “[C]oming to recognise and accept oneself in one’s ambiguity is the necessary pre-condition of the moral life” (EA: 81).

The notion of ambiguity must not be confused with that of absurdity. To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won.

Why can’t ambiguity remain without being fixed or won?

Partly this had to do with inevitable insufficiencies: “man does not create the world. He succeeds in disclosing it only through the resistance which the world opposes to him”

“There is an ethics only if there is a problem to solve” and we might add, disagreement on solving the problem – ethics is also political – ‘what should we do, in this situation?’. Given different views and complexity, there is likely to be failure: “the freedom of man is infinite, but his power is limited” (EA 28), “ “without failure, no ethics.”

“moral consciousness can exist only to the extent that there is a disagreement between nature and morality” (EA 10)

From my point of view, ethics tends to be revealed in these conflicts and problems. Conflicts produces the ethical justifications, and the attempts at persuasion. Ethics is social, and ethical ambiguity and uncertainty cannot be escaped, as every situation and every problem is slightly different.

Because of complexity moral actions are always ambiguous and uncertain, we can never know whether our choice and actions are the best ones possible. There is no unambiguous guide to correct choice. every attempt in some way is a failure “Art and science do not establish themselves despite failure but through it”, the same is true of ethics.

Ethics is open to the constant tension inherent in the “perpetual contestation of means by the end and the end by the means” (EA 155).

People have to confront the contradictions: “what distinguishes the tyrant from the man of good will is that the first rests in the certainty of his aims, whereas the second keeps asking himself, “Am I really working for the liberation of men? Isn’t this end contested by the sacrifices through which I aim at it?” In other words it is the ambiguity, uncertainty, struggle and unfinished nature that makes ethical thought ethical. Because situations are ambiguous, and non-repeated, and escape understanding there are not guaranteed ethical formulas. “The movement of the mind, whether it be called thought or will, always starts up in the darkness… at each particular moment we must… maneuver in a state of doubt” or recognised uncertainty, and we cannot see what results, whether we did the right things, until afterwards.

“Ethics does not furnish recipes any more than do science and art.’ It is the failure of this realisation that ethics is never complete, never avoids risks or failures, that is one cause leading to tyranny over others (human and non human) and harm.

Conclusion

Main points of contention are:

  • The freedom/determination distinction sets up a false binary, and leads to the imposition of human freedom as the valued part. This leads to the implied value that human freedom involves domination over the world.
  • The reduction of the non-human to an inherent, pre-determined essence, rather than to independent processes, or apparent passivity before humans, essentially puts the world into the devalued pole.
  • For freedom to be any basic part of ethics, we may need to encourage the cultivation of empathy, compassion, sympathy and imagination. By itself freedom leads to a temptation to dominance, even when people recognise that the freedom of others is valuable for their own freedom.
  • Freedom is ambiguous. What is it? Does it have limits? What influences our conceptions of freedom?
  • Freedom needs to be able to enter into dialogue, and is thus not the entire basis of ethics.
  • We need to recognise the consciousness and freedom are not transcendent, they emerge out of interaction in the world. Hence we may need to recognise the nature of that world and its importance, and the importance of ethically oriented relationships with it.
  • We still do not have a basis for ethics, even though it is a useful position.
  • Ethics is difficult, and political.
  • Ethics occurs within dispute, uncertain and ambiguous situations and with uncertain and ambiguous outcomes.
  • It appears that we cannot escape these realisations without losing ethical awareness.

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Covid Conspiracies??????

April 29, 2021

To assume that Covid was fakery produced by government conspiracy, or that scientists were paid to fake data, you might have to make a lot of assumptions.

You would have to assume: a) that Donald Trump had approved the payments to scientists in the USA and b) that his government was exaggerating the dangers of Covid, rather than playing them down and telling people it would pass. This seems somewhat contradictory.

You would have to assume that Russia, the UK, France, Australia, Iran, Brazil, China and India (amongst others) also conspired together to lie about Covid, even when their governments were pretending there was not much of a problem. This also seems improbable, especially given they rarely can agree to do anything together.

That does not mean there could have been no conspiracies.

It seems more likely that some governments conspired to pretend that covid was not a big deal to keep the economy going, and keep the people docile at work, and were annoyed when scientists would not all go along with this.

It may also be the case that some governments, through intermediaries, publicised fake information about covid in the hope that people in other countries would take their advice and do nothing, or people would refuse to accept the quarantines, and those other countries would be ravaged by the disease and destroyed.

Did some governments try to shut down dissent? Well they certainly used the virus to shut down climate protests, school strikes, and some BLM events… So possibly they did. But I don’t see any really huge differences in the US, UK etc…. produced by Covid. Of course I could be wrong.

The virus appears to be unlike the flu or the common cold, although it is often alleged by politicians that it is similar. It has different effects on the body, can affect livers, hearts, brains etc…. For some people it continues for months. It seems to have killed as many people in the US in a year, than about 10 years worth of flu.

Of course the death figures could be all faked, but again it seems improbable, especially given that many governments wanted everyone to get back to work and suppressed figures, and its easy to under-find deaths from Covid, because Covid can have consequences for a business (such as a retirement home), or the Covid death looks like stroke, or heart attack or lung embolism etc….

If the Vaccine is a mind control device, as some people allege, then we have heaps of secret tech knocking around that most scientists seem unable to understand, or explain. If the tech was that advanced you probably would not need to pretend there was a deadly virus to spread it. You could just put it in people’s food, or in normal vaccines or normal medicines – that way it would be much easier to hide.

One thing you might notice, if “you did the research”, was the amount of taxpayers’ money going to help the wealthy, in terms of subsidies and tax breaks, or used to shore up companies dying from other causes, but that is pretty normal nowadays, and is rarely commented upon.

I’d suggest that there may already be a conspiracy to turn the US into a dictatorship, or a form of corporate plutocracy. Republicans seem to have been running this conspiracy since the 1980s, and have won over much of the supposed opposition. This conspiracy is generally known as ‘neoliberalism’ or ‘free market economics,’ and seems designed to benefit established corporations and wealth, at the expense of everyone else.

I’d be much more concerned about that conspiracy than about a Covid conspiracy, but somehow that idea gets far less publicity than the fake news around Covid.

Oh and those neoliberal free market supporters, just seem to be the ones promoting the idea that covid is fake and being used to increase government tyranny. Wonder if that is a distraction, from what they are doing?

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Cambridge Sustainability Commission Report – some comments

April 23, 2021

This is a summary of a report that already has a summary website, but hopefully this summary might get some more recognition for the report. The ‘Executive Summary’ and the Report itself, are both linked on that site.

The initial point is similar to ones that have been made repeatedly:

Over the period 1990–2015, nearly half of the growth in absolute global emissions was due to the richest 10%, with the wealthiest 5% alone contributing over a third (37%).

Action targeted to change the behaviour of these people will be more effective, than action that targets poorer parts of society, even if as many people as possible need to be engaged.

To come anywhere near meeting the target of peaking at 1.5 degrees C.:

the richest 1% of the global population needs to reduce their emissions by a factor of at least 30 by 2030, while the poorest 50% of humanity could increase their emissions by three-times their current level.

An Oxfam report says something similar:

From 1990 to 2015, a critical period in which annual emissions grew 60% and cumulative emissions doubled, <despite knowledge of the dangers> we estimate that:

The richest 10% of the world’s population (c.630 million people) were responsible for 52% of the cumulative carbon emissions – depleting the global carbon budget by nearly a third (31%) in those 25 years alone

The poorest 50% (c.3.1 billion people) were responsible for just 7% of cumulative emissions, and used just 4% of the available carbon budget

The richest 1% (c.63 million people) alone were responsible for 15% of cumulative emissions, and 9% of the carbon budget – twice as much as the poorest half of the world’s population

The richest 5% (c.315 million people) were responsible for over a third (37%) of the total growth in emissions, while the total growth in emissions of the richest 1% was three times that of the poorest 50%.

Oxfam. Confronting Carbon Inequality. 21 September 2020

In terms of global wealth, most (but not all) middle class people in the West, and often elsewhere, probably count as in that wealthiest 10-20% of the world population. In other words, almost anyone who is living a comfortable material lifestyle could help reduce emissions directly by cutting their own emissions, and teaming up with others to reduce emissions and eco-destruction in their local areas. The more that wealthier people end excess carbon emissions, then the more the transition is likely to be welcomed by those who are poorer and help boost their sense of agency and participation. The process could become a circular, with one group of people encouraging another and this coming back to encourage the original people. This is part of “just transitions” theory, in which everyone participates, people who loose livelihoods are compensated and few suffer, as opposed to neoliberal transitions theory in which sacrifice is extracted from poorer people.

This means “sustainable behaviour change” is an essential element of any attempt to reach useful climate targets. Social and cultural involvement is vital for success, and we may need to help cultivate a real and accurate sense that this movement is a collective effort to deal with an urgent existential threat. There is a risk that with massively divergent carbon emissions, people might think that their emissions are unimportant, that those at the top are doing nothing, or that it should be someone else who is doing the work.

If poorer people want to emulate the producers of massive pollution then everyone is sunk. If poorer people start to find new (or old ways) ways of organising and looking after the world without destructive lock-in, and assert their authority in the world, then that will absolutely help. While the movement does not have to be led by richer people, and indeed it may be more successful if it is not, wealthier people do have to change as well. We need climate generosity. We need people to start reducing their own emissions without waiting for others, and without waiting for fairness. We need people to organise themselves with others to reduce their emissions, as much as we may need to help wealthier people lower their emissions and eco-destruction.

It is even possible that with leadership from the poor, the wealthier may start to come along. Through the interlinks of complexity, even small local changes to reduce emissions and eco-destruction can be emulated and spread, and have large effects.

[W]e need both individual and systemic change, and the key challenge is to ensure that they reinforce one another”

Executive Summary

Wider social action means dealing with the causes of over-consumption of carbon. Which they say includes:

excessive working,…. [and] the bombardment of advertising glamourising frequent air travel, large cars and large houses.

Which really comes down to changing consumerist capitalism, and the pursuit of happiness, contentment, wisdom, love and so on, through earning money and purchasing largely pointless items on a market. We may need to change the economic system, so as to enhance survival, rather than simply carry on defending a system which is not delivering, and not helping that survival. This could involve “embracing ideas of wellbeing and sufficiency” instead of attempts to produce wellbeing through over-consumption. But it can also involve simple measures such as buying less, changing buying patterns, and using any shareholdings to support those who are arguing for an end to corporate destruction of ecologies.

As Ban-Ki Moon says elsewhere:

…our current economic model has been an enabler of catastrophic climate change and equally catastrophic inequality. The COVID-19 pandemic provides an incontestable imperative to rebuild better and place the global economy on a more sustainable, resilient and fairer footing. Addressing the disproportionate carbon emissions from the wealthiest in society must be a key priority as part of this collective commitment.’

Oxfam. Confronting Carbon Inequality. 21 September 2020

The Cambridge report adds the possibility of restricting the availability of high carbon products and services, but recognises that undoing unsustainable behaviours is much harder than preventing unsustainable products from coming to market in the first place (Executive Summary). But if we don’t manage to change our attitudes at the same time, then people are likely to think that they are being restricted, rather than freed, and companies will object because they (and their shareholders) may see themselves as coming to a dreadful end.

This is why there needs to be research into “key points of leverage and traction that bring about shifts of the scale (as well as speed) now required to tackle the climate emergency” (Executive Summary).

On the positive side the report recognises that this movement involves developing new infrastructure to make low-carbon choices easier for poor households, particularly through measures around travel, energy, housing and food.

They further suggest:

Attitude Change:

  • embracing ideas of wellbeing and sufficiency, rather than consumption as an end in itself
  • recognising that what works in one place may not work in another, without being caught in the trap of thinking everyone else has to change but not us.
  • Help people to participate in creative problem solving.

Restrictions:

  • frequent flyer levies – flying frequently should not be encouraged
  • bans on selling and promoting SUVs and other high polluting vehicles
  • dietary shifts away from destructive foods to more sustainable foods
  • abolishing tax credits for those who pollute and destroy ecologies

Support:

  • increasing green grants for homes and electric cars
  • electric public transport and other forms of low-cost electric transport,
  • community energy schemes,
  • insulating homes to address energy poverty and reduce emissions.
  • rewiring the economy [although they don’t mean this, we also need to change and extending the grid]
  • lowering working hours (redistributing wealth back to producers)

Political Change:

  • severing ties between polluting and destructive industries and the political system. Perhaps finding a way to prevent politicians from lobbying for big companies after they have finished their political careers
  • control the process through Citizen Assemblies and democratic engagement – protecting and expanding spaces of social and citizen innovation

I would add we probably need to:

  • Stop non-local biofuels,
  • End fantasies about Carbon Capture and Storage, although greenhouse gas drawdown is worth pursuing.
  • Stop subsidies (tax and environmental) for fossil fuels.
  • Phase out fossil fuel drilling and mining.
  • Lower ecological damage and pollution of all types.
  • Support regenerative agriculture.
  • Restore the oceans, by ceasing over-fishing, bottom trawling, and enforcing world national parks in oceans so fish can come to flourish again.
  • Help people to recognise complexity, the primacy of functional ecologies and the existence of planetary boundaries.
  • Be careful with changes in land use, and reduce rates of dispossession of people from their land or traditional land.
  • Increase the input of citizens into corporate governance.
  • Revoke neoliberalism.
  • Recognise the problems of using corporately owned, and corporately sponsored, media to try and promulgate the solutions, and find other ways of communicating, as well.

They conclude:

We need an account of the role of behaviour change that is more political and social, that brings questions of power and social justice to the fore in order to appreciate how questions of responsibility and agency are unevenly distributed within and between societies….

social mobilisation is crucial to pressuring governments and businesses to show leadership and accountability for major decisions that lock-in carbon-intensive behaviours. Examples include the divestment movement and community energy programmes, as well as pressure for pedestrianisation and car-free cities, and against airport <and highway> expansion….

Harnessing… social innovation and mobilisation towards the goal of scaling behaviour change is vital to the success of collective efforts.

The goals of the Paris Agreement… cannot be achieved without radical changes to lifestyles and shifts in behaviour, especially among the wealthiest members of society, and on the part not just of individuals, but all actors in society.

(Executive Summary)

We don’t have to wait for governments and others to act. We can act now, we can act with others, we can try and do local research as to what involves other people, and we can support the change that is happening.

Change is difficult but it is not impossible.

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Three Periods of Globalisation??

April 20, 2021

World societies, especially large scale societies, have almost always been global to some extent, with people trading and interacting over most of the globe for a long time. So any kind of modern periodisation is bound to be inaccurate. Think of this post as an experiment, and please offer corrections.

One set of modern periodisations can be described as Colonisation, Post Colonial and Neoliberal:

First Period: Colonisation and Imperialism from about the 16th Century.

In this period, globalisation largely exists in terms of benefit for the coloniser/conqueror, and depends on the relative military strength and fast transport developed in the West, and a ruthless and expansionary politics, brought about by an apparent need to increase access to resources, and a relative peace and stability amongst the dominant groups in European countries (particularly after the mid 17th Century) which helped reduce the internal feudal battles for land.

This form of globalisation involves mass movements of people both forced and relatively voluntary. First there is the collaboration of European merchants and Islamic slavers boosting the African slave trade, at the demand of the Europeans, almost unimaginably and, at a lesser level, Europeans using transported convicts and indentured labour to work ‘new’ conquered lands. Consequently, there is massive dispossession of people from their traditional lands, both in the Europe (particularly the UK with the enclosure movement dispossessing traditional farmers into the cities) and much more harshly in the Americas with the destruction and plunder of South and North American Civilisations. Many of the people dispossessed in Europe moved to the conquered lands, as there seemed only a miserable future at home, and further occupy or steal those lands. Some suggest this era sees the birth of ‘white racism’, as the conquerors needed a justification for the theft, and to prevent conversion of slaves meaning they were now part of Christendom and no longer slaves.

In summary, this period is fueled by violent theft, dispossession, slavery, plunder of gold, silver and land in the Americas, eventually moving on to theft elsewhere such as in Africa, or India, in the latter case, largely through the depredations of the East India Company and the British Government, officially trying to reign in the company. The period ends in the First World War, some suggest because the European powers had run out of planet to despoil, and is largely destroyed by the Second World War.

Second Period: post-Colonialism, post-WWII globalism

This short period is entwined with the ‘Cold War’, ‘developmentalism’, ‘modernisation’, and ‘socialism’ with developmentalism being welcomed on all sides of politics, and begins to come to an end with the oil shock and stagflation in the 1970s. This can also be considered to be the post-colonial period with many places regaining independence, while still being overshadowed by the effects of the previous period.

Basically, throughout the world, the Western US model dominated, even the communist states seemed to think that American life was worthy of emulation. This was the era of ‘scientific management’, which led in some cases to ‘accidental’ disasters such as the ‘green revolution’ or the growing of monocrops with artificial fertilisers, insecticides, and dispossession of small farmers in favour of industrial agriculture. The era consolidates progress towards the contemporary ecological crisis, but at the same raised considerable opposition and popular left wing movements against corporate domination, which had to be stopped before they threatened dominant interests. The new post-colonial states also sought to become a movement independent of the West and the oil shock can be seen as partly about showing the West it did not run everything any more. There were relatively large scale movements of colonised people into the the colonising states, which slowly began to be used to provoke internal tensions, and slow down socialism.

Third Period: The Triumph of Neoliberalism,

During the 1980s, neoliberalism began to become dominant, mostly as a solution to popular radicalism, with a kind of leave-it-to-efficient-markets globalism or the ‘Washington consensus’. However, this consensus was rejected by some successful Asian States such as Singapore. This third stage resulted in the return of financial instability, growing national inequality and increasing power for large scale business. Most places were now trapped in a global market run for business, and held to strict rules of expenditure (especially if they had debt). Sovereignty of small states was precarious because of these rules. Popular socialism was suppressed and effectively died. Mainstream left wing political parties moved to the right, to gain corporate funding. Despite growing knowledge of the ecological and climate crisis and agreements aimed at stopping the destruction, companies and governments continued the practices that boosted destruction and profit.

A left-wing anti-globalist movement developed which was opposed to the corporate and market dominance of the world, and the apparent inability of democratic states to curtail corporate power. This later mutated into the Global Justice Movement, which largely collapsed in the 2000s.

The power of globalism may well have led into a boosting of national social categories as a form of defense mechanism. Fundamentalist Islam became global (partly in response to western warfare in the middle east), as did growing nationalism and purity movements, and right-wing Christian evangelism. Right wing anti-globalisation took off in the 2010s – the popular forms aiming to boost national sovereignty, tighten borders and defend nationalist social categories, in a form of retreat or defense of the home from global pressures. The more elite forms of right wing anti-globalisation take advantage of this movement with the aim of removing any democratic governance of corporations, allocation of responsibility to corporations, remove countries from international agreements and responsibilities (such as preventing US citizens for being tried for war crimes), and to weaken national sovereignty through agreements like the Energy Charter Treaty, except when nationalism acts to get people supporting them.

A significant technological change in this era, building upon colonialism, was speed of transport. At the beginning of the second period, most people still moved across the globe by ship, by the third period, this moved into air transport. Electronic communication began in the second period, but came into popular usage in this period, linking people all over the globe, building new alliances, new conflicts, and furthering both new forms of knowledge and ignorance, while allowing the quick global transfer of money – which fostered new forms of speculative trading, and new forms of financial peril. The speed of transport boosted the likelihood of pandemic explosions, but this was largely held in check until COVID-19.

The era muddied on through completely unnecessary wars such as GW Bush’s war on Iraq – supposedly in response to the 9/11 attacks, and against truly massive popular opposition which was completely ignored. This war did not bring glory as intended, but (as predicted by many) massively destabilised the “Middle East,” as large numbers of people (possibly millions) living in the area were maimed or killed and societies rendered precarious and vulnerable to fundamentalist warfare. The war lost the USA much power and status, as well as costing billions of dollars and distracting from its real challenges. The wars overlapped with the financial crisis, dispossession of US home owners, and the taxpayer rescue of inefficient and corrupt companies, adding further stress and weakness to the USA as well, which helped compound the destabilisation.

We are still in this third phase, but it is changing with the growing dominance of China, and the growing decay of stability and consensus in the US, the apparent running down of the EU with Brexit, and the failure by anyone in the world to deal with Climate Change, Covid or economic instability.

Conclusion

Whatever the violence of the causes, and whatever happens in the future, we are now in a thoroughly global word. Wherever we humans live, we cannot be isolated from what happens in the rest of the world, and so need to pay attention to it, whether we wish to withdraw into our own borders and cultures, as a form of security, or not. The world stands together or falls apart.

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Energy Charter Treaty

April 20, 2021

Introduction

As part of the general neoliberal thrust, resources companies, especially oil companies, were worried that that governments might ‘interfere’ in the market and cost them profits. In particular, former colonies might nationalise resources, weaken the companies’ control over these resources, increase royalty demands, or otherwise hurt corporate business models. Decolonization was a risk. The idea was to team up with banks, who would presumably have their income streams threatened if the companies were unable to pay off loans, and construct a international legal regime to protect their interests. Western governments also supported this movement, which helped come into being, but they ‘forgot’ (?) that it could apply to them as well. The eventual solution became known as ‘investor-state dispute settlements’, or ISDS. [1]

Energy Charter Treaty

The Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) is one such ISDS treaty. It is:

an international agreement from the mid-1990s. Investor rights apply to 53 countries stretching from Western Europe through Central Asia to Japan, plus the EU and the European Atomic Energy Community. It grants corporations in the energy sector enormous power to sue states at international investment tribunals for billions of dollars, for example, if a government decides to stop new oil or gas pipelines or to phase out coal.

ECT’s Dirty Secrets

Another account:

The ECT gives sweeping powers to foreign investors in the energy sector, including the peculiar privilege to directly sue states in international tribunals consisting of three private lawyers, the arbitrators. In these tribunals companies can claim dizzying sums in compensation for government actions that have allegedly damaged their investments, either directly through expropriation or indirectly through regulations of virtually any kind….

This investor-state dispute settlement system – also known under the acronym ISDS – can be used to dispute any action by a nation state that could affect an investment: laws and regulations from parliaments, measures by governments and their agencies, and even court decisions, no matter whether they are taken at the local, regional, or national level. ‘Investment’ is interpreted so broadly that mere shareholders can sue and corporations can claim not just for the money invested, but for future anticipated earnings as well.

One Treaty to Rule Them All. p.13 emphasis added.

The treaty is sometimes defended as it means that States have to continue to support any renewable energy provisions they made to attract investors, but it would also apply to any rules that had encouraged or allowed dangerous or ecologically destructive fossil fuel developments and investments, and this is more likely to be an issue as fossil fuel exploitation has gone on much longer (One Treaty to Rule Them All. p.77).

As Secretary General of the ECT Urban Rusnák has said: “The ECT is technologically neutral…. We have to use the entire variety of energy sources available and the ECT is friendly to all of them.”

One Treaty to Rule Them All. p.78

This treaty sets up “Investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS) mechanisms which are common in most ‘free trade’ treaties. Chris Hamby on Buzzfeed (not the most respectable news source) writes of ISDS in general.

An 18-month BuzzFeed News investigation into ISDS for the first time casts a bright light on the use of these threats. Based on reporting from Asia, Africa, Central America, and the US; interviews with more than 200 people; and inspection of tens of thousands of pages of documents, many of which have never before been made public, the series has already exposed how executives accused or convicted of crimes have turned to ISDS to help them get off the hook…. Today’s story reveals how corporations have turned the threat of ISDS legal action into a fearsome weapon, one that all but forces some of the countries where these corporations operate to give in to their demands….

Only companies can bring suit. A country can only defend itself; it cannot sue a company. Arbitrators who decide the cases are often drawn from the ranks of the same highly paid corporate lawyers who argue ISDS cases. These arbitrators have broad authority to interpret the rules however they want, without regard to precedent and with almost no public oversight. Their decisions carry extraordinary power. Often, countries are obligated to obey ISDS judgments as if they came from their own highest courts. And there is no meaningful appeal.

ISDS is so tilted and unpredictable, and the fines the arbitrators can impose are so catastrophically large, that bowing to a company’s demands, however extreme they may be, can look like the prudent choice. Especially for nations struggling to emerge from corrupt dictatorships or to lift their people from decades of poverty, the mere threat of an ISDS claim triggers alarm. A single decision by a panel of three unaccountable, private lawyers, meeting in a conference room on some other continent, could gut national budgets and shake economies to the core.

Hamby. The Secret Threat That Makes Corporations More Powerful Than Countries. Buzzfeed, 30 August 2016

Lets summarise this:

  • Any action which might cause a foreign company to lose money is a target of the ISDS.
  • Executives convicted of crimes in a country can use ISDS mechanisms to intimidate that country.
  • Companies can sue countries, but countries cannot sue companies.
  • The justice of the cases is decided by a tribunal of lawyers who use the system to make money by suing countries under ISDS.
  • These lawyers apparently have the power to decide how the agreements work, and so are likely to oblige fellow lawyers who might be sitting on a case they are participating in, later on.
  • The fines are punitive, often making it a good strategy to yield when such a case is brought..

The buzzfeed article goes on to detail several cases, which are relevant to mining.

Australian response

The Australian Government remarks that such an agreement does not prevent the Government from:

  • changing its policies;
  • regulating in the public interest;
  • regulating in the interests of the environment;
  • regulating in the interests of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme or health system.

ISDS does not freeze existing policy settings. ISDS claims must be based on breach of an investment obligation. It is not enough that an investor does not agree with a new policy or that a policy affects its profits.

Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS)

It points out that:

there has been just one ISDS tribunal hearing against Australia. The dispute was brought by Philip Morris Asia challenging Australia’s tobacco plain packaging legislation. On 18 December 2015, the tribunal issued a unanimous decision agreeing with Australia’s position that the tribunal had no jurisdiction to hear Philip Morris Asia’s claim. More information on this case is available at Tobacco plain packaging – investor-state arbitration.

Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS)

Perhaps the ECT is one reason why most Australian political parties seem to shy away from any restrictions on gas and coal, and they do not wish to admit there lack of sovereignty, which is usually such a big trigger for them.

A Boon to Fossil Fuel Companies

Paul de Clerck, the economic justice coordinator at Friends of the Earth claimed that:

the treaty was outdated and “a boon to dirty fossil fuel companies”…. “As soon as people hear about this obscure pact undermining the public interest and the fight against climate change, they will be outraged. Either the EU and member states fundamentally revise it, or pull out,”…

Friends of the Earth Europe is one of 260 civil society organisations and trade unions that have warned the ECT is incompatible with climate action because it contains measures to protect energy investments even where they contradict climate goals.

Ambrose Energy treaty ‘risks undermining EU’s green new deal’. The Guardian 9 December 2019

Activists tell us that the treaty has already been used to extract compensation for government action:

The risk is illustrated by Vattenfall’s €4.3 billion lawsuit against Germany over the shut down of two nuclear power plants. The ECT can also be used to put significant pressure on governments to allow new projects which would accelerate climate change and further lock-in fossil fuel dependence. This is illustrated by Rockhopper’s ECT challenge to Italy’s ban on new off-shore oil drilling projects….. as well as ECT litigation threats against laws to put an end to fossil fuel extraction (in France), and to ban the use of coal for electricity production (in the Netherlands)…. Also, When in 2019 the opposition British Labour Party planned to take the energy industry back under public control, arbitration lawyers predicted a “flood of claims” under the ECT and other investment deals. [for the Labour Party see also [1], [2]]

ECT’s Dirty Secrets (ECT power #2) & (ECT accession risk 3) & (ECT accession risk 4) cf One Treaty to Rule Them All p.80-81.

The One Treaty to Rule them All site adds

Another telling example comes from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the US, Canada, and Mexico, which includes investor rights similar to the ECT’s. In 2013 oil and gas company Lone Pine sued Canada under NAFTA for US$118.9 million due to a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing…

TransCanada sued the US for a stunning US$15 billion in damages over the Obama administration’s rejection of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would have increased CO2 emissions by up to 110 million tons per year. While the company withdrew the lawsuit when the Trump administration approved the project, it is worth noting legal experts thought that TransCanada had a good chance of winning

One Treaty to Rule Them All p.80

In a similar manner:

foreign investors can bring ISDS cases against states without exhausting local remedies – a privilege exclusive to foreign investors. Further, international arbitrators protect foreign investors’ expectations, but not the expectations of states or local communities. This legal regime also allows oil companies to strike back after local courts find them responsible for environmental degradation, like Chevron did in the Lago Agrio (Ecuador) case. A few weeks ago, Shell did the same thing. It launched an ISDS case against Nigeria after a domestic court ordered the multinational giant to compensate the Ejama-Ebubu community.

Perrone. Oil companies don’t deserve reparations for fossil fuel bans. They’ll still want them. The Guardian 19 April 2021

The Dutch government could be taken to court by German fossil fuel company Uniper if it goes ahead with plans to phase out coal-fired energy generation by 2030.

The activists also suggest that:

Cutbacks to state support for fossil fuels would likely trigger expensive investor lawsuits under the ECT. 

ECT’s Dirty Secrets (ECT power #3)

Equally worrying is the assertion that:

Today no other trade and investment agreement has triggered more investor-state lawsuits than the ECT. By October 2020 a total of 134 ECT investor lawsuits were listed on the website of the ECT Secretariat. Both the number of cases and the amount of money at stake for public budgets and taxpayers is on the rise.

ECT’s Dirty Secrets (ECT accession risk 1)

Another important claim they make is:

More than 80 per cent of the companies on the ECT’s Industry Advisory Panel make money with oil, gas, and coal.

ECT’s Dirty Secrets (Putting polluters in the driving seat)

Another cause for concern is that the possibility of such action against States, not just from the Energy Charter Treaty but other trade agreements, is now considered a potential corporate asset

The sums awarded in damages are so vast that investment funds have taken notice: corporations’ claims against states are now seen as assets that can be invested in or used as leverage to secure multimillion-dollar loans. Increasingly, companies are using the threat of a lawsuit at the ICSID to exert pressure on governments not to challenge investors’ actions…..

There is no appeals process – only an annulment option that can be used on very limited grounds. If states do not pay up after the decision, their assets are subject to seizure in almost every country in the world (the company can apply to local courts for an enforcement order). While a tribunal cannot force a country to change its laws, or give a company a permit, the risk of massive damages may in some cases be enough to persuade a government to reconsider its actions.

Provost & Kennard The obscure legal system that lets corporations sue countries. The Guardian, 10 June 2015

These laws, aimed at protecting companies and investments, help to discourage energy transitions, and recompense the fossil fuel companies for no longer being able to destroy the world.

Looking at the Treaty itself UNFINISHED

The Section of the Treaty most relevant to our consideration is “Article 19: Environmental Aspects”.

each Contracting Party shall strive to minimise in an economically efficient manner harmful Environmental Impacts occurring either within or outside its Area from all operations within the Energy Cycle in its Area, taking proper account of safety.

In doing so each Contracting Party shall act in a Cost-Effective manner.

In its policies and actions each Contracting Party shall strive to take precautionary measures to prevent or minimise environmental degradation.

The Contracting Parties agree that the polluter in the Areas of Contracting Parties, should, in principle, bear the cost of pollution

The International Energy Charter: Consolidated Energy Charter Treaty with Related Documents 15 Jan 2016

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More on Australian Labor and Climate Change

April 19, 2021

I’ve complained a bit that Labor’s climate policy seems an incoherent mess. We now have some clarification points from Chris Bowen, on the 14th April? as described in an article in Renew Economy and described on his own website, which seems to be this talk/interview on youtube.

He starts saying “good climate policy is good jobs policy” and that the Government’s policy, driven by a fear of what they call “Negative globalism,” is “a sell out of our national interest.”

Australia is now operating and trading in a mid-century net zero environment. With over 120 countries, and 70% of our trading partners committed, that is just a fact.
 
Australia is the only developed country not committed to reaching net zero by 2050

This lack of framework will cost Australians jobs <especially if Mathias Corman cannot stop carbon tarifs>. But if we take the rest of the world seriously, then “Deloitte estimates over 250, 000 Australian jobs can be created.”

There are three ways to generate jobs “Energy generation, resources and manufacturing”. Climate change is not, as the government wants to portray it, and austerity measure. <We might note that the Coalition are often keen on austerity, when it affects the lowest income earners>

We don’t need less economic growth. 
 
What we do need to do is cut the cord between economic growth and emissions….

we are going to need to generate a lot more electricity, not less. 

We need to electrify our passenger transport, and basically anything else capable of sensibly being transferred to electric power.   

He then suggests that the areas which provided Australia with fossil fuels and electricity are the very areas which can take advantage of this situation and export clean energy. We can also export the minerals used in solar generation and battery storage.

To do this they propose $15 billion for a National Reconstruction Fund, and Rewiring the Nation (in partnership with the private sector).

And we’ve just announced a $200 million investment in 400 community batteries around the country, as well as providing tax cuts to incentivise electric vehicles and a commitment to develop Australia’s first electric vehicle strategy.

<So that problem is solved, it exists>

^^^

According to RenewEconomy he also said of the gas led recovery that: “It’s a slogan, it’s not a policy. It’s simply a fraud,… There’s not been one job created, and there won’t be a job created of this alleged gas fired recovery.” He also tried to reassure the gas industry:

Gas will continue to play a role in firming and peeking our grid as we transition to renewable energy. We need to massively increase the storage in our grid through batteries, pumped hydro and hydrogen, which have various levels of development… But that’s going to take time. And there’s varying views are around about how long that will take or indeed what role gas will play as we do that, but that is the role of gas

While Labor saw a continued role for gas, he said he would need to be “very convinced” on the need for taxpayer subsidies for new gas infrastructure.

I think you’ll see a much stronger emphasis from the Labor Party on the economic opportunities of climate change. I refuse to accept this false trade-off that the conservatives peddle at every election that somehow ambitious action on climate change comes at a cost to the economy… We don’t win that argument during an election campaign. We’ve got to win that argument now and every day between the election and including the election campaign

The only targets discussed were 2050 targets.

I could announce wonderful targets for 2030. But unless we have outlined policies underneath it to get there, it’s going to be pretty meaningless. So we need to be doing the roadmap, the strong roadmap, and I am committed to providing that to Australian people before the next election, as well as the policy levers which underpin that roadmap

I don’t know if he said anything about continuing coal exports and opening new mines, which seems so important to their electoral ambitions in the Upper Hunter….

This talk was to people attending an Australia Institute forum. So may be he was tempted to be a bit more explicit than normal, or perhaps he was just speaking to his audience.

In an article predicting a speech by Labor leader Anthony Albanese, The Guardian reports that Albanese ‘will say’:

For more than 20 years, the Liberals and Nationals have rejected scientific advice and chosen to portray the rise of clean energy as a threat to jobs and exports… At their worst, they have deliberately misled Australians, pretending we can ignore change, even as it happens right before our eyes….

Murphy Australia must stop wasting time and shift to renewable energy to spark job creation, Albanese says. The Guardian 14 April 2021

He will argue that Australia cannot afford to keep delaying a transition with “huge potential” to create hundreds of thousands of secure, well-paid jobs for “today’s Australians and for future generations.” ““Low-cost renewable electricity looms as the key to unlocking jobs growth for decades to come,” and this will require new grids.

“We have the technology. We have the best natural resources in the world. We have an opportunity to act now to secure a better future for ourselves and our children. We must seize the day.”

Murphy Australia must stop wasting time and shift to renewable energy to spark job creation, Albanese says. The Guardian 14 April 2021

However,

The Labor leader will say Australia will continue to export carbon-intensive commodities such as coal “based on global demand” and that the opposition “respects” traditional industries for the jobs they create.

Murphy Australia must stop wasting time and shift to renewable energy to spark job creation, Albanese says. The Guardian 14 April 2021

This is better than saying they will expand coal and gas…. but it seems clear that they will help satisfy global demand, rather than get out of the market.

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