Posts Tagged ‘activism’

Introduction to the Introduction

November 3, 2022

I’m trying to write a book on problems with the energy transition and the use of ‘climate technologies’ such as carbon trading, carbon capture and storage, geoengineering, biofuels, nuclear, evs and so on.

This is kind of an introduction to the book’s introduction.

As well as being about the problems with the needed energy transition and the climate technologies we use to deal with climate change and ecological devastation, this book is also about some of my theoretical obsessions, such as:

  • The ways that attempts to order the world in a good way (however that is defined), generate the disorder that is feared.
  • The normality of unintended consequences, the lack of control over everything, and the need to look out for these normalities, in our lives and correct for them.
    • Despite everyone knowing about unintended consequences and their prevalence in life, this knowledge is not part of contemporary western social theory (including economics), or philosophy.
  • The realisation that everything is ecological, and interconnectedness, interdependency and lack of apparent harmony are fundamental to all life. No thing, and no one, exists by itself. Hence to perceive an action’s effects we have to look around widely.
  • This realisation implies the need for a politics which is experimental rather than dogmatic. We don’t know what a policy’s complete effects will be in advance – no matter how sensible and virtuous it appears to be.
  • The realisation that human conscious thinking is limited, and directed by the theories we have. This also tends to direct what we observe. We don’t perceive the world as it is, but through the tools we deploy.
  • To keep our modes of thinking and life, it is common for people to engage in defensive fantasy ‘solutions’ if the problem seems too big or overwhelming and potentially destructive of their ways of life. These solutions can even make the situation worse.
  • The need to listen to our unconscious awareness of patterning, and to be aware that processes which we cultivate unconsciousness of, sill exist and can harm us.
  • Forms of economic organisation can be destructive as well as productive, and we need to minimise destruction.
  • Wealth is not the same as riches.
  • Forms of economic organisation can lead to destructive power imbalances, and positive feedback loops, as the economy gets organised to feed the rich. The power and politics of neoliberalism is one of the fundamental problems of contemporary life, along with developmentalism.
  • Markets are subsidiary to ecologies, rather than ecology being submissive to markets. A market which destroys its ecology will almost certainly destroy itself.
  • Technologies involve social uses and social organisations, and they can also have harmful effects on people and ecologies if we ignore them.
  • Societies, and people, all face challenges and have to respond to them. How they succeed in this response, influences their future trajectory. Sometimes the challenges they face are self-generated and these challenges are particularly difficult to respond to, other than by avoidance of the problem. Climate change and eco-destruction are such challenges. The personal and social response are intertwined, hence they reinforce each other, either for success, avoidance or failure.
  • The obvious realisation that energy technologies, energy supply and its organisation are vital for forms of social life, what can be achieved and who is likely to dominate over others.

The energy transition is as much a matter of social and intellectual change as it is about technical phenomena. This is one reason why it can be scary. We don’t know the results.

While the book is sometimes bleak, and argues that many of the proposed technological solutions are fantasy avoidance solutions, it is also arguing that as many people as possible need to organise to face up to this problem, and this will bring some degree of personal and social health. We all have been waiting well over 40 years for governments and businesses to act, and they have delayed and prevaricated. We have tried the market for the last 40 years and it has not worked and it turns out that there are good reasons for this: markets cannot be separated from politics, corporate power or simply the power of established riches. Markets and Governments will not save us.

The problem also suggests we need a new way of thinking. This is implied in the theoretical outline above. To deal with the reality of eco-geo-social-technical problems, we have to be able to think, at nearly all times, in terms of: ecology, complexity, and unintended consequences; and be prepared to try processes out without prejudging.

We need a local action which helps us to build the communities we need to survive climate change, or uses the existing communities to build further resilience. There is an argument that local transition, is more likely to build appropriate local technologies, and that a clear local demonstration of concern is more likely to build political concern and emulation, than is a purely theoretical awareness of support.

The book attempts to draw attention to problems with the hope of advising action, and awareness of those problems. If people are forewarned, then people can act in more useful ways, and avoid distractions.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

George Marshall talk and comments

March 22, 2022

George Marshall (author of Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change [1], [2]) gave a really interesting talk/discussion to the Climate Psychology Alliance last night, and this is a two part summary and comments.

He opened by pointing out two things

  1. That we have already started to slip into probably irreversible climate change (not only the recent massively high Australian floods, but even more importantly the recent temperatures in the polar regions)
  2. We need to understand our possible psychological responses to this ongoing disaster.

He began by saying that psychologically, we have been guided by our approach to problems by a myth of the hero.

Essentially in that story, the hero (often with unexpected aid) faces up to the challenge (the monster, the wizard, the king, the enemy army etc) and defeats the challenge and all is restored to its right place, or a new piece of culture, picked up in the adventure, is added to the cultural repertoire (fire, iron, a magic weapon, some new understanding, a new god, etc). Essentially all is solved.

However, he went on to suggest that climate change is not a monster which can be slain, or an enemy which can be defeated anymore. We have left it too late. Climate change is now more like a terminal disease, which will keep getting worse, or an attack in which the missiles and bombs never stop and will never stop. The effects are out of control; in term of a human life time, they probably without end or resolution. The hero myth is not useful to us, and may even sabotage our responses.

I’d like to suggest that there are other hero myths which might be more useful. In these the hero makes a tragic mistake, or their strengths, successes and overconfidence lead to failure and death, while the rest of the world often carries on. We can think of the end of King Arthur and the Round Table, a burst of ‘civilisation’ comes to an end through Arthur’s attempts to keep himself safe. Oedipus’s valour leads to famine and shame. Hercules’ bravery and agression leads to an intensely painful death.

What we face seems more easily generalised into something like Toynbee’s challenge and response idea. Sometimes a culture succeeds and changes (or changes and succeeds), but people often fail to deal with the challenge. A recurring theme is that this happens because those in power keep the old and previously successful ways of functioning going despite the fact those ways of success are now deadly and destructive. Just as fossil fuel burning is now deadly and destructive and needs to be phased out.

The effects of a continual storm, or impossible to deal with disaster, is socially common. Many indigenous societies have withered for a long time under colonialism, and a violence which was inconceivable to them. Some of these societies have also survived under hideous conditions, and many are being brought back. This will probably not be exactly the same as what was lost, but the movements help restore something and to regain the fight for people’s lives and ways of being. This is success.

It may sound hideous but we, whose societies participated in this cruelty and destruction, may now be able to learn from these rebirths when we face up to the climate change we have also created. This could also be seen as part of the way that indigenous societies are succeeding. And it is interesting how many people in the climate movement, seem to have been influenced by directly received (public) indigenous teachings or been influenced by books written by indigenous authors. This appears to be part of the growing eco-consciousness.

Toynbee implies that successful responses to new challenges often involve a new religion or cosmology. In this sense a religion or cosmology is a way of understanding the world and perceiving the world, which has a large symbolic component.

I suspect that a religious response is extremely likely to result during climate change, as climate change has to be represented symbolically: its too big to perceive directly; it is way too complex to enumerate all the possible factors involved; it’s unpredictable; its not controllable, etc. Given this kind of state a response will have to involve a completely new (to capitalism) world view or religion. It’s clear enough that our current views will not work, and are not working to deal with the problem. It is also probable that the variant which arises will not be consciously designed, but emerge from unconscious processes of pattern seeking and symbolisation. This process does not have to result in a beneficial conception, we could argue that Nazism was an unconscious symbolic response to the crises of the post WW1 era, and it was not beneficial at all.

The process is dangerous, but it will happen, and in processes like Q, and ‘Trumpism’ you can see the delusional versions occurring, in some forms of eco-consciousness you might see the constructive forms emerging. The point is to be aware it is happening, and that it has both good and bad sides.

The next article in this series will discuss Marshall’s list of psychological states.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

“Behavioural Realism: Neoliberal ‘Human Nature’ and Climate action

March 14, 2022

Steve Westlake on twitter points to an ideological hypothesis about human nature which is used to justify not doing anything about climate change. He calls it “behavioural realism” based on Mark Fisher’s idea of ‘Capitalist Realism.’ I’m not keen on this term, as it implies the idea about human behaviour, which it is criticising, is real. I’d prefer something like “neoliberal realism”, because putting the emphasis on the social part of the expression suggests that the problem is social and political rather than behavioural, but let’s stay with what we have, as it nicely clarifies and names an identifiable issue.

Westlake defines behavioural realism as:

the doctrine that people won’t change their behaviour to tackle the climate crisis, so existing activities must be swapped with low-carbon duplicates, eg. EVs, flying.

This ideology about human nature “props up power structures and protects high-emitters and elites” who don’t want to change, or whose profits, status or power, would be threatened by change; such as the fossil fuel industry or the standard automobile industry.

As seems clear: the major polluters are the wealth elites. So, if we were to be fair, then they should change first – which would also set a good example that people could follow. But neoliberalism’s view of human nature also assures us people are selfish, and thus the neoliberal elites seem unlikely to change.

Obviously the ideology works by suggesting that significant, profit affecting, behavioural change is impossible, and should not even be considered – “nobody wants to change”. What’s more by suggesting that change is unnatural and impossible, the ideology allows people in favour of change to be dismissed as “virtue signallers,” “politically correct” “wanting us all to live in caves,” “communists” or whatever the corporate establishment’s call for silence is dressed up as this month.

However, as another reader of the thread points out, almost all the behaviours which require massive pollution and energy usage are recent behaviours. They are not native to humanity, as such. Furthermore, continuing with the present day “behavioural realism” will eventually deliver a crisis that will disrupt that “realism”, because the climate will not allow it to happen, and will force behavioural change on all of us except, perhaps, for the real wealth elites who can stay safe.

Even ideas of change can be caught in this paradox, as sometimes the idea of change refers to behaving in a way which keeps contemporary life and social structure functioning for a bit longer.

Westlake remarks: “maybe [it] just needs pointing out when [the idea of change is] not really referring to actual change, or [is referring] to counterproductive change.”

I would say behavioural change not only requires a vision of something better to strive towards, but a change in social patterns and organisation, which requires civil disobedience and political participation.

So perhaps the first behavioural/conceptual change is to convince people they can and should participate in local politics to make things better, and then increase that participation to the national and world stage, however much the elites try and convince you that politics should be left to them as it is dirty and corrupt.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Climate change in the Marshall Islands

July 20, 2021

Recently a colleague suggested I read Peter Rudiak-Gould’s article published in 2014. “Climate Change and Accusation: Global Warming and Local Blame in a Small Island State”. Current Anthropology 55(4): 365-386.

This is a wonderful article. It might be out of date now but it suggests how we can learn from the inhabitants of the Marshall Islands in terms of their response to Climate Change. There is far more to the article than I am going to cover, so read it yourselves if you can…

Rudiak-Gould begins by pointing out there are two traditions of climate change blame in the West:

  1. Some are more at fault than others, usually the industrialised or industrialising world
  2. Everyone is to blame. Humanity is self-destructive. With the implication there is not much we can do alone.

The Marshall Islanders are clearly not to blame for Climate Change. They contributed 0.0002% of world CO2 emissions in 2008. Yet it is (was?) common for the Islanders to clearly take on the blame. People rarely mention the culpability of other nations for their severe climate problems, and insist they have to do something about their own problems before facing the world. One person, for example, says

“How can we ask the bigger nations for help, when we are [also] a contributor to climate change?”

p.368

While they agree they make a contribution to climate change, they don’t think they have much ability to affect climate change in total. Rudiak-Gould writes:

“It is never suggested that Marshall Islanders can stop climate change, only that they contribute to it…”

p.371

They don’t have delusions of grandeur, and the idea is not a defense, against action.

Rudiak-Gould explains this situation, by seeing it as related to a wide spread realisation of a decay in traditional life, which they see as the fault of the Islanders themselves: “We follow American culture;” “we have too many things from outsiders… We don’t grow our food anymore.”

RG writes, that for the Islanders Climate change is “the final proof of modernity’s folly, [and] a powerful inspiration to revitalize older ways.” By saying they are responsible, they reassert cultural continuity and distinctiveness, and a course of action.

They are using recognition of their responsibility for climate change to help themselves, not just trying to solve the problem.

Taking responsibility is not an “empty performance.” Islanders try to reduce dependency on foreign oil through solar; restart traditional shoreline management practices; stop throwing plastic onto the beaches and into the sea, and aim to take control over their society’s cultural future.

Taking responsibility says they have a right to speak to each other and to the world. It champions local citizen action, and challenges the dominance of the state, high tech and elite high science, all of which assume people know little and cannot act by themselves.

Taking responsibility also undermines assumptions that a nation cannot act, through ‘people power’. It shows even a small nation can act for itself, and by itself, without any constricting fear that action will ruin the economy or destroy a people’s way of life – it even assumes that a way of real and desirable social life can be revitalised and improved by climate action.

Finally, it challenges common ideas in the rest of the world that pacific islanders are the victims of others. They assert they can help the world and themselves, even if they cannot solve the problem completely, and their action sets an example others might follow.

Taking responsibility and acting the best we can casts doubt on the supposed necessity for a top down solution driven by State or business occurring first. It asserts climate change can be affected by people taking on their own responsibility in a practical way. We do not have to wait for the State or for business to get on board and act.

In a relatively large State, like the ones most of the people reading this will live, this local responsibility and action is possibly the only way that the State will get the message that the people care enough for it to take on the forces that oppose action.

The Marshall Islanders set forth an agenda we can all learn from.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

An Ignorant Summary of an idea by Martin Hagglund and its relation to ecology and climate action

May 12, 2020

Hagglund develops the idea that religious life is a mode of alienation, but this rather mundane idea has interesting consequences…

If we live life as if our real life was somewhere else after we are dead, we suffer from “a devaluation of our finite lives as a lower form of being.” We tend to assume that “finite life is not enough, that there has to be something beyond it.” Even the potential destruction of everything is trivial compared to eternal life. As St Paul says:

Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

With this attitude, there is no way of relating to the world, to people, or to animals and plants as they really are. Hagglund claims that:

To be invulnerable to grief is not to be consummated; it is to be deprived of the capacity to care.

This is the way the Christian Religion (not alone) has tended to argue – our concentration should be on the eternal not the passing. This focus is magnified because the stakes are so high – either death and/or eternal pain, or eternal life free of misery. A case could be made that this is a Christian innovation, ‘Old Testament’ Judaism is not the same – there seems to be no inherent transcendent immortality project).

This spiritual tradition is probably why it has been so easy for the west to dismiss animals as if they were empty (soulless) machines, and the world as if it was dirt, while simultaneously trying to prevent change and freeze the ideal, when change is the way of natural processes. The world we live in is not a being (or beings) in its own right, with its own necessary imperatives, but something to be abandoned, or bent into the unchanging image of the eternal. Hence, to the religious, action to preserve the world in its fluxing imperfections can seem ridiculous – God will end the world sometime anyway, so what’s the point of trying to preserving the non-eternal.

We can have people assuring us, that the world cannot pass away without God requiring it to be so, when the question is whether a livable world can pass away, and what do we do to prevent this.

He says:

I’m trying to show that it’s not just that eternal life is unattainable. It’s actually undesirable, because if you remove the possibility of death you also remove life, if you remove the possibility of grief you also remove joy. These things go together.

Nietzsche, if I remember correctly, argued that in a religion of omnipotency there can be no tragedy, because everything has to end up as God wills, and that must be good, no matter how much suffering there is – we ultimately loose our ability to relate to others because suffering fits into that demanded good. If people die horribly then God has either taken them to heaven, or damned them to hell. In either case feeling upset, in itself, is an expression of disloyalty to God’s omnipotence and peace. And this is a point made repeatedly by theologians from Augustine to Luther and Lewis.

Hagglund suggests that, in practice, many religious people do care about daily life, and are distressed by the loss of those they love (even if they are supposedly eternal) and, to that extent, they are either non-religious or their religion is undermined by necessity of living and their humanity. Similarly ‘secular’ people undermine their secularity by attempting to deny or avoid finitude and death as is argued by Ernest Becker’s denial of death thesis.

Religious people often suggest that atheism is a religion; here Hagglund is returning the favour and arguing that religious people are really secular to the extent that they are human and not what we might call ‘spiritual cybermen’ – all human imperfections removed.

However, if our finite lives are all we have, then time is the basis of all experiential value – “and the best form of society is the one that maximises our freedom to use that time as we wish…,” “everything depends on what we do with our time together.” There is a sense in which ‘time is life’ as there is no known life without time, and without that life occurring through events. The search for a society which allows maximum free time availability and usage, is part of our way of relating to the world.

Whatever its strengths, Hagglund, argues that capitalism can never be a system which maximises free time and hence freedom, since the system will always tend to enforce the use of whatever time ‘surplus’ you can generate in its service. That is, in service of further growth, more consumption, and further job-work. We can add that your survival, both moral and practical, depends on working at the commands of a boss, or an organisation. Capitalism is a system which is anti-democratic at its heart, although you can be taught to believe freedom involves flitting from one boss to another, and buying products you don’t need.

When we sell our labour, or thoughts, or commitment, for a wage so as to survive in the only way allowed to those who are not independently wealthy, we are selling away our lives. “Capitalism, even if it rewards you with great wealth, will always want more of your life.”

We can notice that despite attempts in the socialist 20th century to reduce working hours and ensure that workers earned enough to feed and house their families and spend time each week off work, that since the triumph of neoliberalism from the 1980s onwards, work hours have increased, many people need to work in more than one job to survive, and in the US people may work and need food stamps to survive. All the “labour-saving devices” we own tend to just free us for more job-work – and this is despite consistent promises during the last 100 years that constructive leisure for ordinary people would increase through free markets and mechanisation.

Given the demands of capitalism, people in our everyday world tend never have any time and feel overwhelmed and empty, even while they are working away their lives in the hope of eventually having free time – which, for most of us, will never eventuate, or eventuate only briefly in our old age, when we probably cannot use it any more, or are saving for our increasingly time starved children.

To lead a free life, it’s not enough that we have formal rights to freedom. We must also have access to the material resources and the forms of education that allow us to own and engage the question of what we ought to do with our time together. What really is our own is not property or goods, it’s the time of our lives.

Capitalism, as an ideal and as a practice, may also be based a need to engage in ecological destruction of the ‘dirt world’ to make cheap goods, and these destructions will eventually end the possibility of free time. It has probably inherited this contempt for ‘material nature’ through our spiritual traditions.

My love remarked the other day that with the COVID quarantine, that as well as us having lower pollution and poisoning, it seemed that people were walking and engaging with their local world and even their children. With some control over their work, or lack of work, they were in some moments, relating to the real world again. She wondered if this might lead to a change of attitude, that could translate into a reluctance to meekly go along with eco-destruction.

I, being a pessimist, think it more likely that once they get submerged in the endless demands of job-work, that they will stop feeling the world, and feel harassed again. Indeed one function of a job, is to fill up your time, stop you from thinking and feeling, and help to allow the system to keep on grinding to destruction, and others to make a profit.

Perhaps people become so miserable in their jobs, that it helps global destruction. People come to want it all to end, as destruction is the only freedom they can see as ever arriving, and hence they ignore the signs, or welcome them….

Freedom in capitalism can also be constrained, because of the apparent ultimate need to make a monetary profit. We cannot engage in the discussion of what we value apart from this need for (powerful people to) profit. So we are inherently limited in our response and our values and driven by the need to cut what may be important away to decrease cost and increase profit.

We have to hold open our understanding of the deeper problems with how we measure value in our society in general… we ultimately need a revaluation of value rather than a mere redistribution of wealth

This is similar to Ruskin’s criticism of capitalism’s destruction of ethics, relationship and beauty. Capitalism cannot be the answer to a question it cannot ask.

Haaglund apparently concludes that democratic socialism is the answer, but this assumes that capitalism has only one “opposite” when there have been many different systems of governance and organisation, although not many geared to maximising free time since we retreated from hunting, gathering and casual cultivating.

The harm is not just in capitalism, it is, for example, clearly possible to have a military society in which your time is totally consumed by training and by war, and you never have time for life.

In any case, the building of possible new ways of life do not “exist independently of the way we are sustaining and devoting ourselves to them.” Which to me is another way of saying the means must be in harmony with the ends – wherever possible.

The ends are also finite ends – there is no theocratic paradise here or elsewhere. The fragility of what we aim for is intrinsic and valuable. Indeed value can depend on the fragility. If we aim at the eternal, there may be no value as it cannot be lost and reality is elsewhere. Perhaps only by knowing we could destroy the world can we come to not take it for granted.

Even if we achieve an emancipated society, we’re always going to have to sustain the forms of justice to which we are committed at the risk of failing to do that, and that’s part of what makes it a living project.

Whatever you think of all this, it seems to me me the question of how we work towards a society which enables us the maximum time to devote to lives that give us meaning, without deflecting the meaning to the transcendental and away from the earth, is perhaps one of the most important questions there is.

Quotations:

From this review:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/02/this-life-martin-hagglund-outgrowing-god-richard-dawkins-review

and this interview:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/05/this-life-martin-hagglund-review-interview

Tags:, ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Bjorn Lomborg again

April 14, 2020

Revised 8 May 2020

I’ve been reading quite a bit of Bjorn Lomborg recently, for my research on climate technologies and their social consequences – and I’ve been reasonably critical of some of his writing and mode of argument (see [1], [2]). However, somewhat to my surprise I found it possible to extract an interesting, and relatively consistent position on climate and ecological problems from his work.

The main problem with Lomborg is that he almost always seizes on the most optimistic figures for the economic and other consequences of climate change, and never questions the consequences of current economic structures and drives. He is similarly cheery about the consequences of the current pandemic and the ways to deal with it. He always appears to try and diminish the problems. This ‘optimism complex’ (found in those supporters of renewables as well, who think transition is inevitable and easy) is a problem when the situation seems a lot worse than most people realise.

Another problem is that he appears to not ‘think ecologically’ ie in terms of complex systems. Thus he appears to argue that a few degrees cannot make that much difference – we can all survive 2 degrees no real problem. However, a minor change in one part of the systems can make massive amounts of difference as it courses through the systems, triggering other effects and compounding crises. For example, global warming will probably not just mean our highest temperatures are one or two degrees (the average) higher but much higher, and the high temperatures will not be separated out into single days which might not be too harmful, but over continuous days or even weeks. This significantly magnifies human and animal deaths, water and crop problems, so that they can become catastrophic. These failures then add to other stresses (say pandemic, flood, fire etc) on what should be manageable days. The more stressed the society, the more vulnerable it becomes, and the more catastrophic minor incidents become.

Finally he does not seem interested in any action which restricts air pollution, or emissions. It is probably right to be cynical about the bone fides of any position which claims to be about benefiting human life and which does not recognise air pollution as important harm.

However, this post is an attempt to summarise what I believe to be the strongest points of his underlying argument. The result may not be exactly what he would put forward himself, but seems worth considering. While I don’t agree with all aspects of this argument, and would be far more intense about the problems we face, it does seem to be a useful position, and I have put it as strongly as I can.

  1. At the moment, the whole world faces a set of interlinked problems that cannot be solved by a narrow focus on just one or two of these problems. We have to approach these problems from many directions, and be generalists.
  2. There is a climate crisis which needs to be fixed. It may not be immediate, and it may not be the primary problem we face today, but we do need to fix it. Now, I do think it is an immediate problem, but Lomborg tends to postpone it, as part of his optimism complex. However, let’s begin with it.
  3. The current systems of climate talks, agreements and targets are not working. The Paris targets are costly and nowhere near strong enough, and we are failing to achieve them anyway. There is little point continuing on in the same way and keep failing.
  4. We do not have anything like the amount of green energy we need. We may be increasing green energy enormously, but we have been increasing fossil fuels even faster, so the percentage of truly green energy remains tiny. According to the IEA, the OECD has 2.3% hydro and 2.6% of “geothermal, solar, wind, tide/wave/ocean, heat and other.” To this we can add 9.6% Nuclear and 6.1% of Biofuels and waste, if you really wish to classify these other sources as clean (IEA 2019 Key World Energy Statistics, p7.)
  5. Governments should immediately stop subsidising fossil fuels, at all stages of production. This is a complete waste of money and time. It helps make the situation worse. If companies go bust, then they go bust; that is the market in action. Established companies which depend on bailouts and subsidy should not be supported, as their weakness indicates either bad management, poor financial choices, unwanted products, or some combination of the three.
  6. Pollution and ecological destruction should not be free. At the very least, we need a mechanism to establish a carbon price to help fund research. Lomborg’s position is inconsistent and it’s easy to find counter examples, but I think his position moves towards this over time. I’d add that other ecological destructions should not go uncharged, and uncurtailed, either..
  7. Green energy should not be subsidised. This might result from good intentions, but it is distorting and, according to the IEA, governments are spending way too much for the observable results. Strangely, while Lomborg questions calculations for fossil fuel subsidies he does not seem to question the figures he objects to for renewable subsidies. For example, does the IEA count feed-in-tariffs as subsidies when these could be considered the price paid for electricity generation? We need to be sure what is a subsidy.
  8. Some of the processes receiving subsidy are not that green to begin with. For example, carbon capture and storage is a waste of money. It has no hope of solving the problem, and merely prolongs fossil fuels use.
  9. In the US and Europe, wood burning is classified as green or renewable. This is also deceptive. Burning wood emits more CO2 than coal, and destroys forests and wildlife. The forests may not be replanted, either and it is dubious planted forests have the bio-complexity and resilience of natural growth in any case. Biofuels take away land from agriculture, especially from poorer farmers, and they are largely energy inefficient with low EREI.
  10. Green energy’ should mean every energy source without GHG emissions after set up, including small scale nuclear.
  11. Currently, research into green energy does not receive anything like the money needed.
  12. Instead of subsidising renewables, governments should put at least half that money (or “an annual global commitment of some $100 billion”), into research into green energy [1], [2], [3]. This could be funded from abolished fossil fuel subsidies, so it is not an extra cost. Government led research is effective, and stripped of commercial bias. It can also lead to ‘public domain’ patents, available to all, thus increasing economic productivity.
  13. As we are on track for climate or ecological devastation in the long term, we also need to increase societal resilience.
  14. Poverty and disease are major causes of suffering and decrease societal resilience Removal of poverty also increases life-span and productivity.
  15. Most people who suffer badly from disasters [and climate change] are the poor. The better off people are the better able they can handle, or negotiate, disaster.
  16. Poor people tend to be less worried about climate than about day to day survival. Action on climate often may not seem to benefit, or engage, them but action on their immediate problems can be embraced enthusiastically. However, it can be added, that given that some problems are already coming from climate change, we should not ignore this either.
  17. One reason for massive fossil fuel use is that this easily available, well understood, and centralised form of energy is promoted as helping to lower poverty in the developing world. Without solving the poverty problem, we will not solve the pollution and ecological destruction problems.
  18. There is little point having green energy if it seems to be as harmful to people in poverty, as fossil fuel energy generation and mining can be. We should probably stop coal mining were it hurts, or displaces, poor locals.
  19. We need to keep the economy strong enough and organised enough to lift people out of poverty.
  20. It is notable that Lomborg does not ask whether the current structure of the global economy enables a general lifting out of poverty without harmful consequences. For example does the increase in living standards in the ‘third world’ or ‘the South’ come at the cost of increasing inequality of wealth and power in ‘the North’, along with the decline of the ‘first world’ working and middle classes? Do current methods of raising living standards destroy ‘community’ and mutual aid? Yet the general idea of raising living standards and prosperity, as a help towards problem solving, increasing political participation and resilience, is important and requires more investigation.
  21. These problems also stretch to his support for ‘Free Trade’. The problem is we don’t get really free trade. Neoliberal free trade, has tended to suppress government programmes aimed at providing the social amenities and common good which was not provided by ‘the market’ in the vague hope that they would be provided by the market. This amounts to a suppression of democracy in the corporate interest. Free trade negotiations also seem to have allowed the market to be regulated by the major players in the market to benefit, and protect, themselves. So care is needed here.
  22. Another cause of instability and suffering is disease. TB, for example, is debilitating, and could apparently be eliminated with enough spending. The same is true of Malaria.
  23. Governments also need to protect water and its flows. Improved sanitation and latrine technology help reduce disease, and no one can live without drinkable water. Convenient water also frees up time from collecting it. At the moment we seem to be damaging water at an increasing rate. In dry countries, like Australia, it seems obvious to me that projects which could harm, or restrict, the water supply, even in 200 years or more, should not be considered. It is easier to damage than to protect water supply, in particular underground water.
  24. Research is needed into improving agriculture and food supply in the long-term. It is obvious that short term improvements should not be at the expense of long term sustainability. Although Lomborg does not seem to mention it, this may require research into regenerative agriculture. At the least we need to lower the emissions from agriculture and stop leeching soils of nutrients, salt rising, topsoil loss, and deforestation to provide new fields because old fields are exhausted.
  25. Indoor air pollution from cooking, needs reducing. I would suggest solar cookers, where possible, as this allows wood to remain uncut and dung to fertilise the soil, but Lomborg goes for ventilation – this is also useful and cheap addition. Outside air pollution is also a problem. The World Health Organisation estimates 3.8 million people die per year from household pollution and 4.2 million people die from outdoor pollution. This requires reduction of burning, of coal, gas, oil and so on, but Lomborg seems largely uninterested in lowering this cause of death.
  26. Another source of instability and poverty is the lack of effective birth control, [1], together with the lack of educational and economic opportunities for women. Again it is relatively easy and cheap to fix this – although it will encounter a lot of religious opposition and the amounts being spent seem to be declining.
  27. By reducing the number of children, birth control helps provide better nutrition for existing children and this renders them more physically and mentally capable of education and resilience.
  28. Education needs improvement and more accessibility, especially pre-school – but this is difficult as some dominant groups don’t want people to be well informed, or able to think critically or creatively; they just want them accepting and obedient. A critical and creative population is dangerous for incompetent, or unjust rulers.
  29. It also needs to be added to this summary of Lomborg’s remarks, that any reform program that is actually going to deal with this whole series of problems which interact with each other and magnify each other, may involve a disruptive politics. Particularly when one of those serious problems, is the structure of power relations themselves, and those power relations will affect all attempts at reform.

These ideas seem to be worth considering, wherever they come from, as increasing disasters point to global systemic causes and effects, and they demand systemic strategies in response.

One final addenda. It seems common for people supporting Lomborg to say that:

Spending on green tech research,
Fighting poverty,
Doing our best to end TB, Malaria and other health issues,
Improving food and agriculture,
Improving access to drinkable water and protecting water supplies,
Lowering indoor pollution and
Boosting education, particularly for women,

is somehow incompatible with lowering emissions and pollution and reducing ecological destruction. They repeatedly imply it’s one or the other. However it is probably more accurate to say we cannot carry out Lomborg’s plans, unless we reduce pollution and ecological destruction. The poor end up with the harmful consequences of pollution and eco-destruction and usually live in the places which are most badly affected. We cannot, for example, reduce poverty when corporate or government interests are destroying local agriculture, and poisoning the water and air.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Pandemic and Climate Action

April 1, 2020

The pandemic has shown the world is quickly able to organise against crisis. Charles Eisenstein claims the pandemic “breaks the addictive hold of normality.” Others propose that the coronavirus has “killed neoliberalism,” changed the practical ideology of neoliberal governments, or changed the world. Neoliberal governments have decided to support workers laid off during the pandemic, even casual workers. Retired politicians in Australia, such as ex-state premier Bob Carr, and ex-leader of the opposition, John Hewson, have been agitating for climate action following the response to the virus. George Monbiot points to the growth of bottom up, and often localised, support actions by ordinary people, as showing that communal processes are not dead. Electricity consumption is going down in some places, air flights have been cancelled, oil remains unburnt despite its low price, CO2 emissions are falling, showing what a low carbon future might look like and so on – although it is not certain that it will be long term.

Many are asking whether these systemic changes can be carried into action on climate. To explore this question we must look at the differences between pandemic, and climate, action.  Some of this may sound cynical, but it is also plausible, and given we do not (and cannot) have full knowledge of what is happening, plausibility may act as a tool to help us uncover the problems we face.

Differences

Monetary

Firstly, few organisations stand to make billions out of ignoring the virus. Cruise ships and airlines are losing money, and therefore could downplay the crisis, but they are fighting against fears that the virus comes from outside (encouraged by right wing politicians and media – the “Chinese virus” etc.), and from travellers being easily identified by authorities as infection vectors, so this is difficult. In Australia, Virgin air, despite not being profitable for seven years, is requesting a $1.4 billion government loan to get it through the pandemic. Qantas has argued that if Virgin receives this money it should “get A$4.2 billion in funds because its revenue is three times larger”. In the US, the government has offered airlines $US29 billion in payroll grants, $US3 billion to contractors and 29 billion in loans. Tony Webber, the former chief economist of Qantas, said “Every airline around the world needs help, it’s not just Qantas and it’s not just Virgin, they will run out of cash eventually.” So airlines have an interest in supporting recognition of the pandemic as it will help keep them in business 

On the other hand, many powerful, wealthy and socially central organisations (fossil fuel, mining and energy companies, car manufacturers, etc.) profit out of downplaying the climate crisis, and may lose financially from recognising it (for instance subsidising fossil fuels would look odd, if governments recognised these fuels are destroying us).

Disruption and pollution

The pandemic disrupts ordinary life styles, while pollution, ecological destruction and fossil fuels help to continue these modes of living, until it’s too late. Pollution and ecological destruction are also frequently less visible, or easier to hide away, than sickness. It is common for pollution and destruction to primarily affect the poor or be located away from large influential populations who might notice it. Coal mines are rarely in central public parks.

Escape

Wealthy and powerful people are less likely to think that they can completely escape the pandemic through their wealth and power; they may even say coronavirus does not care about wealth from within a bathtub with floating rose petals. Well-known people like Prince Charles, Boris Johnson and Australian politician Peter Dutton have caught the disease (as have presumably some of those close to them), although, as none of them have apparently died, they might come to think it has been exaggerated. Doctors have died. Even if you can escape to the high-seas in a well-armed private yacht, you still have to come to land to take in food, water and possibly disease, and you may need treatment.

While the wealthy cannot escape completely the disease will affect poorer people more severely. In the US because they cannot afford health care, or time off, and elsewhere because the essential services workers have to interact with other people and live in more crowded conditions. The rich can isolate much easier.

Precedent

We have dealt with pandemics before, the historical guidelines for action are quite clear, and we know how bad they can get. We have precedents for action on disease, but we only have recent, largely unfamiliar, models for climate change and no heritage of action. Action on disease is habitual and uncontroversial, action on climate is not, as there is no routine.

The timeline and future of a pandemic is pressing and short. Intense immediate action is required, but will probably, although not certainly, be over in a year or less. The timeline within which climate change will become an ongoing crisis is absolutely uncertain, and is not marked by a brief agreed upon period of transition from good to bad, and back again. Most people are able to behave as if climate crisis will be at least 50 years away (rather than that we may have already passed, or be passing, the tipping points), so there is apparently no reason to discomfort ourselves or engage in major political struggles against power and wealth elites now. It is easy, and less painful, to postpone action.

Command and Control

As Charles Eisenstein points out, pandemics can be handled within a ‘command and control’ power structure. Violence and penalties are implemented mainly against the general populace rather than the power elites themselves. Again this is a familiar route and, for some politicians, suspending parliament or democratic process presents them with an opportunity to extend their power, as in Hungary, decrease opposition and bring in business as in Australia, or delay elections and hinder public protests [1], [2], [3],[4] – it is hard to protest if people cannot gather in groups larger than two as in NSW. The chances of absolutely unexpected or unknown consequences from these authoritarian actions seem relatively low. With climate change, the elites resist, the chance of unintended consequences is high, and we are not sure how to proceed, or even if we can proceed, without long term disruption. Command and control is not always the best way of dealing with complex or ‘wicked’ problems, so we would have to develop new modes of acting, which adds to the difficulty of agreement.

The technology for pandemics is generally clear. Quarantine, medical treatment and working on vaccines. We do not have to hope for major breakthroughs to deal with the problem. Climate technologies are new and expensive substitutes for already functional technologies which are strongly tied into modernist power, wealth and energy structures. Climate technologies are resisted by those tied to established technologies, and are not always easy to implement without disrupting more people, as when agricultural land is taken for solar panels. The unintended consequences of these technologies are largely unknown, even if the dire unintended consequences of established technologies are known.

Mess of Information

While lots of disinformation and misinformation circulates about the pandemic, with a possible tendency to wander off into political polarisation, or even US vs China slugfests (apparently to diffuse blame for one’s own group’s, or President’s failings), there are currently no major media organisations, or corporately sponsored think-tanks, promoting an anti-medical agenda. They may want to distract from any role they played in helping the initial situation get out of hand, agitate for special compensation or make political capital out of the aspects of the response, but they are not banking on building a political alliance out of pretending the pandemic is unreal (at least not yet). Even Fox News changed its initial tune, possibly after people in the organisation became ill – although it now seems to be trying to exonerate Trump by implying China is the real source of the US’s problems [1], [2], [3], even if other countries are doing much better in the same situation.

One of the main ways of making money from the pandemic, or attempting to lower fear, is through promoting fake or untested medicines [1], [2], [3], but most large businesses are aware that this could lead them into financial, or legal, trouble. So it is mainly small concerns that benefit from this, but they gain no benefit in denying the pandemic.

An interesting perspective on disinformation is visible through the way that President Trump has changed his stance. His initial reaction was to deny there was a problem, state that it would be over quickly, that criticism of him (or alarm at the virus) was a hoax by the Democratic Party, that it was no worse than the flu, and that everything would be over by Easter. Now he is claiming that “I’ve always known this is a real — this is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic”, and if there are less than 200,000 deaths he will have done a good job. “The president repeatedly asserted that millions would have died if he hadn’t stepped in.” He may have made this change by seeing the effects of the virus on hospitals in Queens NY, and infecting people he knows, or because people from Fox told him that there was a problem. This does indicate importance of personal reference, and the vague possibility that he might be able to change track on climate change with equal speed.

Ecological Disruption and Economics

A major problem revealed by the pandemic is how important ecological destruction is to the workings of our system, despite talk of nature sending us a message. In the US the Environmental Protection Authority has announced it will not be policing pollution because of the outbreak (but see this), and rules for fuel efficient vehicles are to be scrapped. The crisis has not stopped, or slowed, the taking away of Native American land, or stopped Amazon’s anti-union, anti-worker’s rights activity [and 1]. “America’s wind and solar industries have been left out of a $US2 trillion economic stimulus package released by the federal government” leading to job losses. Various companies see the pandemic as an excuse to bring back ‘one-use’ plastic bags. Kentucky, South Dakota and West Virginia have taken the opportunity to outlaw disruptions of ‘critical’ infrastructure‘, which includes oil and gas fields, through protest or ‘riot’. Building the Keystone pipeline will begin, despite the dangers of pandemic, with massive investments and loans from the Alberta government, and was welcomed in Montana as bringing jobs shut down by the pandemic, as if contagion did not apply to construction work. One paper claimed that “

The construction of the pipeline is deemed critical infrastructure by the US Department of Homeland Security and therefore is allowed to continue as planned provided measures are implemented and followed for safety under current orders.

Other promotions of US fossil fuel continued.

[T]he Interior Department wrapped up an auction to sell oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico, offering up some 78 million offshore acres ― an area roughly the size of New Mexico. It proved to be a bust, bringing in approximately $93 million for just shy of 400,000 acres, the smallest total for an offshore auction since 2016…..

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a panel voted 2-1 to rubber-stamp construction of both the Jordan Cove liquefied natural gas export terminal in Oregon’s already-polluted Coos Bay, and the 230-mile Pacific Connector Pipeline. The decision, The Oregonian reported, stunned Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D), who warned that the state had not yet approved permitting in the midst of a national emergency.

Huffington Post 21st March 2020

Former US Energy Secretary Rick Perry warned that warned that US fossil fuel companies were under threat of collapse due to lack of demand and flooding of cheap oil imports.

I’m telling you, we are on the verge of a massive collapse of an industry that we worked awfully hard over the course of the last three or four years to build up to the number one oil and gas producing country in the world, giving Americans some affordable energy resources

Fox News 1 April 2020

Perry also warned of the collapse of the shale gas industry, and suggested government intervention. Other commentators say that the shale gas and fracking industry in the US has never made a profit: “companies spent $189 billion more on drilling and other capital expenses over the past decade than they generated from selling oil and gas.” Fox news reports that the fossil fuel industry and “our energy workers” are supporting the fight against the pandemic by providing energy, and they are threatened by ingratitude and any Green New Deal. So it is conceivable crisis money may be used to defend established corporations against the consequences of destructive and foolish investments, or their refusal to branch out into new forms of energy or more environmentally friendly business. Below-cost oil could also undermine energy transitions.

A $2tn US coronavirus relief package will dole out billions…. and offer low-interest loans that fossil fuel companies could compete for – without requiring any action to stem the climate crisis.

The Guardian 27 March 2020

Despite the ideology that the free market comes first, neoliberals have always been prepared to bail out and support or build up, established, and well connected, wealthy companies, and it seems like the justification for a intensification of that process is beginning. Therefore, we should probably check all the spending of taxpayers’ money to make sure it is not just the normal transfer from ordinary taxpayers upwards.

The trend of defending the past is not just manifested in the US under Trump. China issued permits for more new coal-fired energy stations in the first three weeks of March 2020 than for all of 2019 and has halved subsidies for renewables to balance the budget. The virus has slowed solar installation in Australia’s Victoria. In NSW, an Independent Planning Commission inquiry into the Narrabri gas fields will be launched despite difficulties for audiences or public participation. Coal mining has been approved under Sydney’s reservoirs. So far in NSW, building of toll-roads does not seem to have been affected by quarantine restrictions. The Federal Government is “agreeing to stimulate demand for a fossil fuel” to keep the price stable. The International Energy Agency has warned that political action to deal with the virus could derail the energy transition.

Perhaps the pandemic has been used to cover these economic actions, perhaps they are seen as necessary to recover ‘ordinary destructive order’ after the pandemic. Whatever the case, it does seem that without a lot of political pressure and action from ordinary people, the historical devotion to environmental destruction will continue, even though the pandemic has demonstrated the possibility of enacting radical and rapid social and economic change, largely for the public good.

Conclusion

So we know the modern neoliberal state can act swiftly and intervene in the Economy and life, but what have we learnt of the difficulties of acting on climate?

We have to be prepared for resistance from wealthy and powerful elites, who can pretend that their mode of destruction is necessary for the continuance of contemporary life and its improvement. For them, postponing the appearance of crisis is important for contemporary life to continue, as is postponing the realisation that climate change and ecological destruction affect everyone. If the economy is destroyed through environmental destruction, there is little in the way of further wealth production.

Bringing realisation of the crisis into the lives of the power and wealth elites is important, as they generally see prosperity as arising from their actions rather than destruction, and the media tends to reinforce this, only partially accurate, attitude. The crisis affects them, and their businesses, and they should not expect to be bailed out, when they fail.

Everyone, even the wealthy, is vulnerable to this ecological destruction. This is an important message. It is also important to make people aware of the harsh normality of this irreparable destruction rather than to participate in its cover-up. People should be encouraged to keep protesting against things like the Sydney coal mines and the destruction of water tables, online and through letters, even if they cannot gather safely together. They need to keep trying to hold governments and businesses, accountable for their actions and their spending, whatever is happening elsewhere, and to keep organising themselves to provide support for each other, both physical and emotional. We cannot assume that money will be spent primarily to defend people rather than big business.

Personal experience seems able to change misinformation. When the problem hits misinformers and the problem affects them, their associates or their local areas, then change can come. From Trump and Fox, we know people can do a u-turn while pretending otherwise. There is no point berating them for their previous misinformation, but there is a point to encouraging the spread of reality and accurate information. This does not stop overseas interests from trying to interfere and disrupt connective action, but it will lessen their impact.

There is a romantic glory in fighting against established power. This is the case with fighting for climate action and needs to be made more of. At the moment, the romantic vision is commandeered by the power and wealth elites, in an unlikely pretense of fighting against all powerful science and socialism.

We need to explore how previous civilisations fought against ecological destructions and learn from them, whether they failed or not. This gives us experience we don’t have.

Managerial theory is finally trying to get beyond command and control, to encourage bottom up organisation of the kind that is occurring spontaneously in the pandemic. People naturally function in co-operation as well as competition, but our neoliberal societies discourage co-operation unless it is organised from above, probably because of the fear of revolution or loss of elite property – after all property is a fiction usually imposed by violence and the right to exclude others, and if people refuse to co-operate with the violence and exclusion, then property could get shared and the profit appropriated be diminished.

Community democracy and self-organisation is important to fighting environmental destruction. Few people want their own living spaces to be poisoned. Neoliberalism dismisses this resistance out of hand as NIMBYism (unless it is a new industry like windfarms), in effect saying that corporate profit justifies the destruction. But if you can’t object to your own way of life and your environment being destroyed, when can you object? and if you can collectively organise your environment to be more pleasant and liveable and sustainable, and safe from corporate exploitation and destruction, is that not good?

Finally, most people do not realise the ways that contemporary forms of economic activity destroy their home. This, to me, seems a major point of understanding. Once people get this reality, and it is a reality, then they can truly start to wonder if there is another way of conduct manufacture and trade, which retains freedom to trade with lack of permission to destroy and imperil everyone. Human logic, and civilisational experience, implies there is. So we need to discover the rules by which this new game can be played – and it probably comes down to fluid democracy again, rather than to command and control businesses devoted to authoritarian ways of proceeding.

So climate action is connected to freedom to live, and to freedom to act with others, and by oneself, without being imperiled by corporate power, or by the governments that support that power over the people.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

The old just die out…. and things get better

March 27, 2020

There is an argument going around that all we have to do to solve the climate problem is to wait for all the old people to die off.

Most versions of the theory just assume this is completely obvious and needs no justification, however, one version of it goes something like this: Thomas Kuhn in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions shows that arguments and experiments by new scientists never produce a paradigm shift, or a shift in world view, but the old scientists just die off, and as they die the new view takes over. (I’m not actually sure that is an entirely accurate way of summarising Kuhn’s work, but it is a possible way of summarising parts of it).

The position assumes that all old people are the problem, not some older people, and that the only important factor is age, not social patterning, technological positioning and lock-in, power and class, ideologies, economic hierarchies etc. Just old people.

In reality, only particular powerful and probably wealthy older people are a problem, and they are generally representatives of groups of people, both old and young, and that group benefits from generating the climate problem, sees themselves as benefiting from what causes the climate problem, cannot see how to live without generating climate change, or thinks change is more costly than non-change like Bjorn Lomborg does. So this idea deletes a lot of social and political reality, and that is never good.

This generation war meme, is nowadays, used to explain almost anything, from crap jobs, to lack of housing, to broadcast music, and it is distracting people from other social dynamics which are probably more important. That is probably why it is encouraged; just as ‘progressives’ in the US are being taught to focus on Joe Biden’s weaknesses rather than Trump’s massive failures.

It works, without having to be thought about, because most spirited young people have problems with their parents and parental restrictions, and it can easily feel like their parents, and old people in general, are the cause of many of their problems, so why not add a few more to the list?

As well as cultivating unconsciousness, and misdirecting anger, the meme acts to prevent alliances and all of this benefits the established groups with wealth and power. We can observe that many climate protests are full of older people and quite young people.

As far as the power hierarchy goes these young and old people, must be prevented from allying, after all experienced demonstrators could probably teach a few effective tactics and give a few cautions, like taking heroin is not radical :).

There don’t seem to me many middle period people at demonstrations, and these people are the next generation to come to power, and if this problem is all about generational movement, you could expect things to get worse rather than better, because of this apparent disinterest. But I suspect many midlife people are busy with children and other stuff, and they are as varied as anyone else, and as open to alliances as everyone else. So they should not be ignored – and they vote.

Anyway, even if dying off, bought positive changes on some occasions, it does not mean it is beneficial all the time. The changes from die off could also be negative. When the old union-based democratic socialists died off you got the neoliberals, stagnant wages, lowered conditions of labour, political exclusion and heightened environmental destruction. Not necessarily an improvement for everyone.

As far as I can tell one of the problems with the youth rebellion of the 60s was precisely that they thought that they would inevitably win, as the old faded away to almost quote The Who. The problem was that real hippies and revolutionaries, although they represented the image of a generation, were probably at the most, 10% of the population. Other people their age, where roughly carrying on previous traditions and views, so no radical change in general could be expected (although feminism and anti-racism became relatively mainstream despite the recent fight backs), and the right found the way of splitting the radicals through libertarianism and anti-Statism, which seamlessly merged into neoliberalism and environmental destruction…. and led to where we are now.

In summary: Youth movements cannot assume they can win simply by old people dying off. They can lose a large number of supporters through those deaths, and the struggle continues anyway against their own generation, because they cannot assume that their own voices and beliefs are those of the majority of that generation. And the fight may really be against social processes, destructive economics, and power/energy relations, and those are what have to change.

Tags:,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Current Republican Election Strategy and Climate

February 5, 2020

Apparent Republican strategy for the US elections, based on what has happened so far.

1) Both sides are equally bad.

Therefore, it is not really that bad if the Republicans win, because after all the Democrats are equally bad. Whether you are a old-style Conservative Republican, or Leftish, and Trump wins, well the other side would be as bad as he is. So be happy.

Unfortunately, while the ‘other side’ may not be perfect, they are not as corrupt as Trump. They are not encouraging destruction of people’s lives and environment. They are not in favour of people dying because they are poor. They don’t encourage poisoning by manufacture. They are not destroying established procedure and convention.

2) Tell Democrats if we can’t have Bernie or Tulsi we might as well have Trump.

There is certainly no reason to vote for someone else who might have a chance of defeating Trump. Remember, both sides are equally bad, and stay pure.

3) Criticise Democrats more than Republicans.

This reminds people of how bad the Democrats are, and skates over how bad the Republicans are. If people criticised both equally then people might come to realise both sides are not equally bad.

4) Discuss Foreign Policy Endlessly.

Because on this issue both sides are closest to being equally bad, and you can berate the Democrats endlessly about warmongering. People can also ignore Republican warmongering, despite the fact that the last 15 years of US wars were started by the President Bush and his allies against all the evidence, and because they wanted a war against Iraq before they were elected and long before 9/11 which was their excuse. Forget also that the media at that time ran extensively with the “if you oppose the war you are anti-American” and pretend Trump was opposed to the War before it started…. 

5) Repeat the idea that Democrats are warmongers.

While telling Righteous audiences, you are spending more on the military than anyone has ever done, and that you support ‘our troops’, and US military strength and the other side does not. Never mention that most spending on the military goes to corporate players who object to government support for unworthy poorer people.

6) Support free markets.

Economic problems are always the fault of the Governments interfering with the free market, not because of the ‘free market’ itself, or the ways that corporations take over both markets and politicians, for their own benefit. Keep those corporate donations coming.

7) Tell Right Audiences the Democrats are unreconstructed Communists and Socialists, while telling Left Audiences the Democrats are Pro-Capitalist Neoliberals.

No one will notice the contradiction.

8) Persuade people that Trump is a victim of the ‘Deep State.’

As many people are suspicious of the State and business, this has wide appeal, and it distracts from Republican tactics in the impeachment. Don’t point out how Trump is enforcing parts of the Deep State to make them stronger and more corrupt, and to destroy any checks on his power.

9) Use the State to suppress dissent, and stack electoral procedures.

Exclude people from voting, if you think they may not vote for you. Make it hard for people you think won’t vote for you to vote. Define climate protestors and anti-fascists as terrorists. Have them under constant surveillance. Make sure the voting machines can be hacked and don’t have a non-electronic back up. Complain the other side is equally bad. Complain the Russians are supporting the Democrats, but don’t check Russian activities, because they are not supporting Democrats.

10) Climate is irrelevant

Don’t ever point out that if we don’t do something about climate change now, we are probably stuffed. We cannot wait another 5 years to start action, or to stop making it worse. Compared to Trump, all Democrats have a climate change policy. More to the point, non of them have a “make climate change worse” policy like Trump. Pretend fossil fuels generate jobs, and any Climate policy would be an impingement on people’s declining liberty.

Summary

Alarm people about irrelevancies, and don’t ever talk about their real worries or the likely corporate causes of those worries, and pretend to the Left there is no real difference to the two sides, and to the Right the Democrats are really socialist.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

More than just ideas….

February 3, 2020

While changes in our ideas, and our systems of ideas, are essential for transition to a new ecological society; by themselves new ideas will not be enough. We need to build practices and institutions that will support, encourage and house those ideas. This post suggests some of what may be needed beyond the change in ideas.

New practices and institutions need:

a) Non-destructive economic power and self-sufficiency. While organisations can accept donations from other institutions, they cannot depend upon them, as that tends to direct efforts to keeping sponsors on side. Economic power and practice should be exemplary. That is, it should show people the way forward. It should demonstrate that economic activity does not have to involve ecological destruction and pollution, and that it can promote ecological health and regeneration. It should be attractive.

b) To develop cosmologies more useful and appealing than the ‘profit is the only good’ command of neoliberalism (‘interconnection’, ‘complexity’, ‘surprise’, ‘co-operation and competition’, are useful terms in this venture). Cosmologies should make neoliberal cosmologies seem obviously idiotic – which they are, so this is not hard.

Understandings and cosmologies always have to be tested through interaction with the world. We cannot understand things completely in advance of such interaction. We have to be prepared to modify our understanding to accord with our experience. We learn through experience. It is easy to be mislead by desires, hopes and the agreement of valued others. This contrasts with neoliberal understandings which are supposed to be certain, are imposed upon the world, and are held to be ‘true’ despite experience to the contrary.

Any cosmology will face problems, and these problems should not be suppressed, they need to be recognized and explored, and people be open to solutions, if possible. In a complex system, politics should be largely experimental.

c) Ethics is an important part of cosmology. It demonstrates how we think the universe works and should work. The ethics of the new ecological co-operation should probably promote freedom, equitability, and recognition of interdependence and the strength we gain from other beings (human and non-human). We may need to promote the idea of ethical complexity, and of ethical guidelines rather than rules in order to deal with the complexity of reality, and of our lack of complete predictivity. An Action can be good, but we need to check its results, rather than assume they are good in advance, and modify accordingly. Ethics needs to make clear what is wrong with the neoliberal establishment and its hangers on, more than it needs absolute agreement on anything. Ethical dispute is a sign of ethical awareness.

d) We need to be able to promulgate these ideas and help communication between interested people. We cannot expect the mainstream media to do this. We have to set up communication networks. The Right underground has done this, we can use what is useful and transform it – although we probably won’t get billionaires, or intelligence agencies, sinking money and activity into helping the project.

Communication always faces problems of interpretation and power (that is the message may not be intended to mean what I think it means). While it is sometimes difficult to determine if a disruptive message is informative or a troll, it is important to know about messages, as they are feedback and possibly useful. At the least they might tell you how you are perceived, or what you are being made to look like. It is however, impossible to listen to everything, and so people evaluate importance, so this is an intrinsic problem.

Hierarchy disrupts communication. The more punitive the hierarchy the more disruption. Hierarchies need to be kept gentle and shallow in terms of power.

People at the front line often know more about what is done and what should be done, than those co-ordinating actions elsewhere. This is the management paradox. This needs to be born in mind at all times.

e) The new institutions and practices need forms of organisation. Organisation is a form of power, and competence. However, this organisation does not have to be uniform, or hierarchical. Local groups can choose their modes of organization, furthering conviviality, and meeting objectives. The main point is that they can work together, and that we recognize the power of sociality. Successful groups are often groups which have social payoffs; support, care, friendships and so on. People look after each other. Psychological support will be needed for those challenging established patterns of behaviour.

We may not be able to specify the types of organisation that are needed in advance. We can follow guidelines, but we need to be aware that organisational  forms will be emergent; they will emerge as people learn and face problems, especially the problems generated by their own actions and organisation. Organisation should only rarely, if ever, be imposed from outside. Not all groups in the organisation of organisations needs to have the same focus, and that is fine.

Rather than specifying what the organisation should be, it may be more useful to say what should be avoided.

f) Cooperation is needed, but harmony and absolute agreement is not. Indeed, absolute agreement will not happen, unless you aim for dictatorship and support of an ideal over reality, and these will fail in the long term. Absolute agreement can prevent learning, and adaptation. Variety can promulgate evolutionary success. Friction can show creativity. The problem is getting the balance between cooperation and disharmony right. But disagreement is not an automatic sign of failure.

Sometimes sub-organisations may need to split off if the disagreement is strong enough. This is quite natural. With care, the organisations still may be able to talk to each other, carry out exchange, and come together for common purposes. These latter points are more important than the split.

g) The organisations should have a way of rewarding members’ effort through status, respect and sometimes responsibility, without letting status differentials become stultified hierarchies. Status achievement must be open, and not restricted to particular social categories. The organisations will need to be “societies organised against becoming mini-states” and with formal mechanisms for halting, or undermining, the accumulation of power by individuals or groups.

h) Hierarchies will develop, but they should be relatively shallow, and not protect those at the top from risk. Risk should be more or less equally distributed amongst the active. Although there is something to be said for higher status accruing risk. Your recognised ‘warriors’ are those who take risks, rather than who allocate risks to uninvolved others…

i) The aim is to win over ‘the enemy,’ as much as possible, rather than destroy them, while recognising that the enemy is more than likely willing to destroy you. The enemy is to some extent conceptual more than personal; it is the neoliberal death machine, which is wired into destruction. If this death machine can openly destroy the planet it depends upon for survival, it will have little problem with trying to destroy obstacles such as rebels.

j) If possible all these points should reinforce each other.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »