Climate chaos and environmental social movements
Jun 8 2007 13:00
Following on from a comment on this thread here: http://libcom.org/forums/libcommunity/climate-activist-super-glued-door-lastminute-com
I have decided to post up this which is some new stuff and some things I wrote on one of the decadence theory threads, I’m sticking it up as the start of a new thread in the hope of starting some discussion around climate chaos, environmental social movements, and the like.
Following on from what I write below I read recently, in the Independent I think, of a new study which reckons the rate of greenhouse gas emissions has doubled in this decade over what it was in the 90s, if true this means that all recent predictions as to the impacts of climate change, eg the latest IPCC report, have to be revised in a bleaker direction.
Given that, and the situation outlined below, I think it would be a good thing to see the development of a social movement around climate chaos and at least something of the structural causes of it, hence I would be supportive, if critical, of things like Rising Tide, Plane Stupid, and the climate camp. I think such things can grow, see the anti-nuclear protests of the 70s and early 80s in Ireland, Germany, France, Spain. If nothing else something like that would at least spread the idea that vested interests are responsible for this (if not necessarily the existing form of social organisation) as opposed to the ’all humans’ line promoted by the state, media, et al. There are serious deficiencies in the politics, strategy and perspectives of your average eco-activist type, but as your average class struggle anarchist wouldn’t know an ecological analysis if it hit them over the head or much about the history of environmental conflicts, then it is a bit of a mote, beam and your brother’s eye case really.
Terry wrote previously:
Human induced climate change has been pretty much a 'mainstream' concept for 20 years now, the fact it hasn't been seriously addressed at all up to this point would suggest to me that perhaps the 'burden of proof' is on the heads of people who think capitalism can deal with it.
Throw into the pot the fact that at a certain point feedback mechanism's kick in - I don't think we really know when, and climate change becomes self-perpetuating, then frankly I wouldn't bet on capitalism's ability to manage this at all. Unless ‘management’ means a rise in the price of land at a high elevation in the more northerly parts of the northern hemisphere.
Or supposing we grant that there are capitalist ‘solutions’, we also have to consider the sustainability of the ’solutions’.
There is more that can be said on it. I’m not 100% convinced either way, but suffice to say the claim capitalism can manage* requires a case to be made for it.
* Manage meaning without wholesale destruction being visited upon a large slice of humanity and the ‘natural world‘. I’m sure some will do just fine, e.g. there is a crisis in Darfur, but I read the Sudanese and Chinese rulers are happy doing business.
I dunno why people are even mentioning ‘ethical consumerism’ - it bears no relationship to the issue what so ever, it is little more than a marketing strategy and ’environmentally friendly’ or otherwise is inherently the opposite of sustainability.
A state strategy for addressing climate chaos would look something like this carbon taxation, and subsidy for alternatives to fossil fuels, technical fixes like carbon sequestration, and a switch over to public transport. You can prefix all of those with massive, and none of that is sustainable either.
I see no evidence of any of this being seriously embarked on except perhaps in eccentric Scandinavian countries. In fact the exact policies which contribute to climate chaos are being implemented, eg new roads, subsidises for the airline industry, planning permission being granted to new fossil fuel extraction.
The only serious reduction in greenhouse gas emissions came about because of the economic collapse in the former Soviet Union.
A positive scenario would be that climate chaos itself causes such a social and economic impact as to reduce greenhouse gas emissions considerably before the feedback mechanisms become active and we have so-called run away climate change.
If some putative collapse happens after major feedback starts then well yeah actually that is a scenario capitalism cannot manage, in the sense that this does bring about a post-capitalist situation, there being no capitalism if earth is rendered inhospitable to human life.
Which is the scenario we forgot about above when saying that capitalism could continue even if there was some Mad Max ‘collapse of civilisation’ situation, cause all the cars in the world rusting into nothing, and all the coal burning power stations in the world falling silent, doesn’t matter so much if significant amounts of the carbon and methane stored in the Earth’s surface and oceans are released.
That kinda buggers things up for the survivors.
Jun 8 2007 16:34
#2
revol68 wrote:
yeah I think communists should be doing their best to locate the problem in individual consumption patterns and working class people taking advantage of cheap flights,
Spot on. Individualising issues like climate change is no way forward at all. Nor is identifying 'bad companies doing bad things' as anti-corporate campaigners like to do. I can understand what they're up to, but I think it just further obscures the real structural issues.
Jun 8 2007 16:50
#3
Quote:
as your average class struggle anarchist wouldn’t know an ecological analysis if it hit them over the head or much about the history of environmental conflicts
Oh really.
Quote:
hence I would be supportive, if critical, of things like Rising Tide, Plane Stupid
Have you read the first Plane Stupid thread? http://libcom.org/forums/thought/something-bothering-me-about-the-likes-of-http-www-planestupid-com
I may go through and quote highlights, just to put the more recent thread in context.
Jun 8 2007 16:55
#4
Quote:
Revol wrote:
"yeah I think communists should be doing their best to locate the problem in individual consumption patterns"
Quote:
Climate camp website wrote:
“Almost everything we do produces carbon dioxide emissions: work, travel, housing. To cut emissions, as many scientists suggest, by 90%, means serious changes need to happen. Who is going to solve climate change? The usual answer is either governments and changes in regulations, or individuals affecting companies by changing the products and services we buy. This is not going to work for one simple reason: the world is geared towards the extraction of profit, and increasing economic growth, and not lives of dignity for all. Just ask any of the 800 million people who will go hungry today. Profits come first. With this reality in mind, it’s easy to understand why only the rhetoric changes. And emissions keep rising.”
From: [url=]http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/views.php[/url]
It is true that many of the eco direct action groups don’t expressly challenge the “individual consumption” line ( which I deal with here [url=]http://www.indymedia.ie/article/80959 [/url]), indeed listing under ’what you can do’ switching off light bulbs and the like, however by protesting against the state and companies they are at least practically challenging it, their focus being on state and industry policies, which suggests something quite different from everything will be grand if revol goes to Bundoran instead of Spain.
By contrast our communists…or most of them… don’t even attempt to challenge the ideology that holds individual consumer choice and technical fixes as the solution to climate chaos. Some have even endorsed this here on libcom.
Quote:
Revol wrote:
“infact the more capital forces the sacrifices on the working class the better, maybe we could even push for higher electricity prices and bin charges!”
Which is expressly rejected by the eco direct action groups such as Rising Tide:
Quote:
Rising Tide:
“We call for a rapid transition which does not fall hardest on low income communities, communities of colour or low income employees of fossil fuel industries”
Thing is I’m not actually a great fan of these groups, indeed I’m more of a critic of them than the libcom snipers are, because I’ll actually criticise what the groups in question do and say, not some caricature of them.
Anyone want to disagree with my actual argument…..
Quote:
Terry wrote earlier:
I think it would be a good thing to see the development of a social movement around climate chaos and at least something of the structural causes of it, hence I would be supportive, if critical, of things like Rising Tide, Plane Stupid, and the climate camp.
Jun 8 2007 17:03
#5
Here's a couple from "Plane Stupid":
Quote:
h, libcom.org. Good to see sectarianism is alive and well in anarchist forums.Firstly, thanks to those who supported our action. Good to know that not everyone has given in to the ease of keyboard warriorship.
Quote:
I'm not going to answer every point, but I do remember people talking about cheap flights being a panacea for the poor.
note, no one said this
Quote:
I, for instance, don't like the sound of 'mass organising'. Sounds like SWP to me...
Quote:
How do our actions fit into a wider strategy? We target the polluters to cause them economic damage and to raise the public's awareness of the issues surrounding flying. We explain to people that all the cuts in their annual consumption and changes to their journey patterns (modal shift from car to public transport or bike) are negated by a single return flight.We tell them that if they want to save the environment, then not flying is the single most important action they can take.
Quote:
Organising without action is like a bookfair without a riot...
Quote:
the poor
Quote:
the poor
Quote:
the working classes
In other words they only care about individual reduction of carbon emissions, and are entirely in line with how capital in general is trying to both push the costs of climate change onto working class people and blame them for it.
Jun 8 2007 17:04
#6
Quote:
Terry wrote earlier: as your average class struggle anarchist wouldn’t know an ecological analysis if it hit them over the head or much about the history of environmental conflicts
Quote:
Catch wrote in reply:
Oh really.
Well off the top of my head I have seen on these boards people thinking 'environmental racism' meant racist environmentalists...that technical fixs were a solution to climate chaos....that people opposing developments in their local area are just being sorta selfish. I have also met class struggle anarchists who reckoned climate change was a myth. Obviously there are exception to this. There is a whole lot of shite anaylsis among eco types. Snap. There is a whole lot of shite anaylsis among class struggle anarchists.
Jun 8 2007 17:15
#7
Quote:
I think it would be a good thing to see the development of a social movement around climate chaos and at least something of the structural causes of it, hence I would be supportive, if critical, of things like Rising Tide, Plane Stupid, and the climate camp.
Plane Stupid are not, and will not be, the basis of a social movement.
Rising Tide, I've heard the name mentioned often but didn't know much about, so I looked at their website. Their front page highlights 1. G8 (but actually about picketing a petrol station in Norwich and the lastminute thing) 2. adbusting and/or street theatre. In fact there's more about adbusting in their front page news than anything else, and on page two. A couple of protests by less than ten people at corporate headquarters by the time you get to page eight.
Sorry, no. This is not the anti-roads struggles, it's not the anti-nuclear protests, it's a very tiny number of people doing stuff that's absolutely been shown not to have any effect whatsoever.
Hopefully one of them will come on again so we can show them this: http://libcom.org/library/narita-airport-riots-video-clip
They'd probably complain about the carbon emissions from the petrol bombs though.
Jun 8 2007 17:19
#8
Catch re: plane stupid quotes.
Quote:
Terry wrote earlier: "however by protesting against the state and companies they are at least practically challenging it, their focus being on state and industry policies, which suggests something quite different from everything will be grand if revol goes to Bundoran instead of Spain."
Secondly if you think that the development of a social movement around climate change which has some focus on the structual causes is possible, and would be a positive thing, do you not think that one of the origins of such a movement could be these activist groups?
Is it not also the case that the politics current in a movement develops and can start off relativly naff and improve greatly.
My case is not that eco-activist groups are wonderful, more that they should not simply be dismissed.
Jun 8 2007 17:23
#9
Terry wrote:
Well off the top of my head I have seen on these boards people thinking 'environmental racism' meant racist environmentalists..
Where?
Quote:
.that technical fixs were a solution to climate chaos....
I don't think they're "the solution", I don't think you'll see a solution to climate change that doesn't involve some technical fixes though, not without a massive, massive reduction in quality of life and probably hundreds of millions of deaths from water shortage, malnutrition etc.. For that matter, a massive reorganisation of production towards human need is a technical fix, as is a changeover from fossil fuels to solar/wind/geothermal/tidal, as is putting insulation in your loft, balloons in your toilet, extra trams/trains/buses/ferries. All technical fixes. I don't think it's limited to 10 million glass lenses being shot into space to deflect the sun's rays from the earth, or the cloud boats (although they looked cool and reversible), or the other pie in the sky technical stuff being put about.
Quote:
that people opposing developments in their local area are just being sorta selfish.
Links please?
Quote:
I have also met class struggle anarchists who reckoned climate change was a myth. Obviously there are exception to this. There is a whole lot of shite anaylsis among eco types. Snap. There is a whole lot of shite anaylsis among class struggle anarchists.
You said "average", not "I met one once".
Jun 8 2007 17:31
#10
Obviously we were both posting at the same time there with the last two post....
Quote:
Catch wrote:
"Sorry, no. This is not the anti-roads struggles, it's not the anti-nuclear protests, it's a very tiny number of people doing stuff that's absolutely been shown not to have any effect whatsoever."
You have to start somewhere. You cite the anti-roads struggles, as far as I know Earth First! (UK) played a significant role in that, having been started by two people. In the case of the anti-nuclear movement in Ireland AFAIK the Dublin branch of Friends of the Earth was instrumental in getting that going - that was a small, very fluffy group, with a lot of pacifist and Xian politics.
I would be interested in if you could point me to a superior class of activity around climate chaos - which is the kernel of my argument I suppose in many ways....it is obviously necessary as climate chaos will have impacts. I don't think a movement in the here and now will necessarily halt those impacts, in fact I find it very unlikely, but it might help shape the future popular response to those impacts.
Jun 8 2007 17:35
#11
Terry wrote:
Secondly if you think that the development of a social movement around climate change which has some focus on the structual causes is possible, and would be a positive thing
I think ecological crisis is one of the things that could push people towards an overall analysis of capitalism and class society - certainly when you see events like Hurricane Katrina/New Orleans (yes I know that wasn't about climate change, but it was about over development of flood plains and poorly built canals, and certainly about class and race), and the tsunami, it can bring the relationship between ecology and class home to people who might otherwise not think about it in that way.
Quote:
do you not think that one of the origins of such a movement could be these activist groups?
No I think they obfuscate the real issues, and tie into the 'liberal anti-working class' narrative which attempts to assign individual blame to overconsuming proles.
Quote:
Is it not also the case that the politics current in a movement develops and can start off relativly naff and improve greatly.
Well, I don't think those groups constitute a movement. I was about 13/14 when the roads protests really started (Twyford Down, Newbury, M11), and that was when I first started to hear about Schnews etc. I think it could be called a movement given the large numbers involved, and it pretty much started and ended within about four-six years. I don't think the politics in it got any better at all. Maybe some individuals looked into things seriously and move on afterwards, but certainly not as a whole. It's very, very clear that Plane Stupid haven't learned any of the lessons from those campaigns.
The anti-roads struggles had a tonne of limitations but people were very aware of it, and some of the protests had a lot of local support (esp. M11 iirc). Plane Stupid have been going a year, two years? with very little impact whatsoever.
Just so we're talking about the same thing, do you think there's an "anarchist movement" in the UK? I categorically don't.
Jun 8 2007 17:39
#12
Quote:
Catch wrote: "For that matter, a massive reorganisation of production towards human need is a technical fix"
Not it isn't. That is obviously a social solution, a social re-organisation, not a technical fix which means like once we all have wind turbines within the existing system it'll be grand.
On the links I have to stop posting now, so i don't not have time but I will get them.
On class struggle anarchists and ecology find me, in the english speaking world, a proportionatly significant body of writing on ecology published by any libertarian communist/class struggle anarchist group other than the AF or perhaps Subversion.
Jun 8 2007 17:42
#13
Indeed all you have to look at are the threads or library here - which would reflect the interests of the contributers to these forums....you cannot seriously argue that ecology is reflected in them to any great extent.
Jun 8 2007 17:45
#14
Terry wrote:
Indeed all you have to look at are the threads or library here - which would reflect the interests of the contributers to these forums....you cannot seriously argue that ecology is reflected in them to any great extent.
Jun 8 2007 17:54
#15
Terry wrote:
Xian politics
? 
Jun 8 2007 17:59
#16
Quote:
I would be interested in if you could point me to a superior class of activity around climate chaos - which is the kernel of my argument I suppose in many ways....it is obviously necessary as climate chaos will have impacts. I don't think a movement in the here and now will necessarily halt those impacts, in fact I find it very unlikely, but it might help shape the future popular response to those impacts.
You want me to find something going on now that's better than Plane Stupid? Do you think this'll be hard?
Before I do that:
1. I don't think any action taken around climate chaos will be effective unless it's linked to an overall increase in working class militancy. The latter is a pre-requisite to an effective response to the former, and is lacking in most countries. So tube drivers striking over health and safety (which impacts the long term health of the tube network and public transport in general), I give lots of points to, people complaining about cheap flights, none. Therefore focussing always on people's immediate material and living conditions (which are often impacted by ecological change), on a collective basis, is better than either collective action against something remote (like picketing company headquarters, as if that'll do anything), or individualised stuff like switching lights off or buying a new DVD player which doesn't have a standby mode.
2. I think the immediate concern should be defending against the effects of climate change. a) things like bin charges, and other measures which obscure the real causes whilst impacting on working class communities b) a conscious effort to improve communication and support networks in workplaces and communities to prevent the complete atomisation and marginalisation which occurred during Katrina - both because I think there's a reasonable chance that something like a serious water shortage or flooding etc. will hit before any movement of any kind will effectively combat climate change
and sicne I know you'll complain about the first two:
c) combining both of those first two into an analysis of waste and ecological damage under capital - stuff around excess packaging, built-in obsolescence, long commutes, even stuff like 'safe routes to school' etc. which contribute plenty to carbon emissions and are of no use to anyone either within or without capitalism (unlike cheap holidays). This may not be enough, but action can actually be taken on them to an extent, and it'd have widespread support rather than simply pissing people off.
With that in mind, three examples of stuff going on in the past year or so that's considerably better than supergluing yourself to lastminute.com:
Chinese farmers rioting in the hundreds of thousands about land clearances to prevent industrial and urban expansion.
The various support groups in New Orleans which have tried to prevent bulldozing of working class neighbourhoods post-Katrina: http://libcom.org/news/new-orleans-residents-resist-bulldozers-16012006 for example. As far as I know much of this is still going on.
And a UK example, although you didn't specifiy one, Joseph K. mentioned this a while back:
Quote:
yeah there's actually a local campaign against a proposed waste processing depot down here, and part of that developed into a critique of superflouous packaging (they only picketed/petitioned supermarkets though; they seem a bit nimby). but cutting out pointless (well, marketing-related) superflous packaging cuts economic activity, whereas recycling boosts it.
http://www.dumpthedump.org.uk/news_index.html
Along with the myriad, non-sexy, campaigns against incinerators all over the UK.
Not saying it's great, or not Nimbyish, but it's a few thousand people as opposed to eight,and this is all just in Sussex.
Jun 8 2007 18:02
#17
Terry wrote:
Quote:
Catch wrote: "For that matter, a massive reorganisation of production towards human need is a technical fix"Not it isn't. That is obviously a social solution, a social re-organisation, not a technical fix which means like once we all have wind turbines within the existing system it'll be grand.
The use of technology is socially determined.
Quote:
On class struggle anarchists and ecology find me, in the english speaking world, a proportionatly significant body of writing on ecology published by any libertarian communist/class struggle anarchist group other than the AF or perhaps Subversion.
Not even a group, Murray Bookchin. And we have a decent selection of news, history and library articles on ecology on here as well, as madashell points out.
Jun 8 2007 21:12
#18
I personally am highly skeptical of the "global warming" theory and think Peak Oil is a load of bollocks propaganda by oil companies. I don't think you can organise around "climate change" - the Green Party slogan of "act local think global" is rubbish when it comes to this. We should be "thinking local" and that will "act global". the empowerment of ordinary people through decentralization and direct democracy eliminates the alienation and apathy that are now rampant in our modern world, so whil members of a community facing ecological and health problems from a dangerous nearby factory would act and solve the problem, in our hierarchical society only capitalist and (maybe) State bureaucrats have the power to do anything. For various reasons they may not feel inclined to do anything, and one of the obvious reasons is that they are sure to live far away in a posh neighborhood. There is a reason that wealthy areas of cities are cleaner, safer, and often less polluted than working class areas. 
Jun 8 2007 21:32
#19
Quote:
Catch wrote:
“In other words they only care about individual reduction of carbon emissions, and are entirely in line with how capital in general is trying to both push the costs of climate change onto working class people and blame them for it.”
“tie into the 'liberal anti-working class' narrative which attempts to assign individual blame to overconsuming proles.”
Catch you have to address this what I posted earlier:
Quote:
Climate camp website wrote:
“Almost everything we do produces carbon dioxide emissions: work, travel, housing. To cut emissions, as many scientists suggest, by 90%, means serious changes need to happen. Who is going to solve climate change? The usual answer is either governments and changes in regulations, or individuals affecting companies by changing the products and services we buy. This is not going to work for one simple reason: the world is geared towards the extraction of profit, and increasing economic growth, and not lives of dignity for all. Just ask any of the 800 million people who will go hungry today. Profits come first. With this reality in mind, it’s easy to understand why only the rhetoric changes. And emissions keep rising.”
And my argument earlier:
Quote:
Terry wrote earlier:“It is true that many of the eco direct action groups don’t expressly challenge the “individual consumption” line ( which I deal with here [url=]http://www.indymedia.ie/article/80959 [/url]), indeed listing under ’what you can do’ switching off light bulbs and the like, however by protesting against the state and companies they are at least practically challenging it, their focus being on state and industry policies, which suggests something quite different from everything will be grand if revol goes to Bundoran instead of Spain.”
My question was:
Quote:
Terry wrote earlier:“I would be interested in if you could point me to a superior class of activity around climate chaos - which is the kernel of my argument I suppose in many ways....it is obviously necessary as climate chaos will have impacts. I don't think a movement in the here and now will necessarily halt those impacts, in fact I find it very unlikely, but it might help shape the future popular response to those impacts.”
Not:
Quote:
Catch wrote:“You want me to find something going on now that's better than Plane Stupid? Do you think this'll be hard?”
No it wouldn’t be hard to find something better than Plane Stupid, or Rising Tide, or the climate camp.
The question was however “superior class of activity around climate chaos” in relation to “might help shape the future popular response to those impacts”.
I think everything you list is sound and I was particularly interested in the information contained in the last section. However the question wasn’t something better. To expound….
Quote:
Catch wrote:
“I think ecological crisis is one of the things that could push people towards an overall analysis of capitalism and class society - certainly when you see events like Hurricane Katrina/New Orleans”
- I think this is where I disagree I don’t think a deepening crisis will automatically produce positive results, I think peoples’ reactions to a crisis are formed by the ideas, attitudes and previous experience they hold. Included in this is ideas about what causes environmental problems. Hence the development in the here and now of a social movement around climate chaos is important. The state/media promotion of the notion of “individual consumption” isn’t something accidental I think.
On whether a groups politics can change and develop are you arguing that this cannot happen and the outlook of a group will and must always and inherently remain static?
No you are not clearly then such groups can develop. In fact a group I was involved in went from having, for the most part, a far more liberal environmentalist perspective than the eco direct action groups, to some vague class of libertarian socialism.
I also think you are applying one criteria to “ordinary people” and another criteria to “hippies”. “Ordinary peoples‘” ideas change through struggle, and the struggle helps build up a counter-power or a culture of resistance etc….doesn’t the same thing apply to the “hippies“?
BTW what are the thousands of people in Sussex; dump the dump mentions 50 people at a meeting and the Argus 30 cars and six bikes in a car cavalcade protest?
- incidentally you should write up an article about myriad anti-incinerator campaigns and so forth in England.
Ecology and Class Struggle Anarchism.
The libcom homepage says….
“The libcom library contains several thousand articles covering a wide variety of subjects.”
There are 32 tagged as ‘environment’. Not sure exactly what several thousand means let us take for arguments sake it means 3,000, ok? That comes out at around 1% of articles in the library being on an ’environmental’ topic. Unless my maths is well skewed which is in fairness possible.
Like this isn’t a blanket condemnation of the libcom library, which I think is a great resource, or these boards which obviously have interesting discussions or else I wouldn’t be here. It is simply pointing out that this is a mote, beam, and brother’s eye issue. In other words rip into dodgy analysis of eco-activists AFTER you get your own house in order.
- yes I know I can contribute articles, or start threads, the point isn’t the amount that is there, the point is that this illustrates where most of the site’s users or active participants are at.
Whereas the discussion about the possibilities of the development of a social movement around climate chaos and eco-direct actions groups is a debate, the lack of interest in matters ecological by much of the class struggle anarchist movement isn’t. It just isn’t debatable. If necessary I can search through other sites or publications but I don’t expect to find a proportion better than the libcom one in most of them.
Finally we have Murray Bookchin. Not a class struggle anarchist. Specifically rejected the idea of the working class as the agency of revolutionary change. If you do that you do not have a class struggle perspective.
In any case Bookchin proves my point here we have someone very close to the politics of your class struggle anarchist, who was very prominent in the green movement, well decades ago, and yet it is almost like ships passing in the night.
And the question was group, and you will not find one, for instance I think Red and Black Revolution has carried three articles on environmental issues.
And all this is simply counting the number of articles in publications or websites.
Jun 8 2007 22:04
#20
Terry wrote:
Catch you have to address this what I posted earlier:Quote:
Climate camp website wrote:
“Almost everything we do produces carbon dioxide emissions: work, travel, housing. To cut emissions, as many scientists suggest, by 90%, means serious changes need to happen. Who is going to solve climate change? The usual answer is either governments and changes in regulations, or individuals affecting companies by changing the products and services we buy. This is not going to work for one simple reason: the world is geared towards the extraction of profit, and increasing economic growth, and not lives of dignity for all. Just ask any of the 800 million people who will go hungry today. Profits come first. With this reality in mind, it’s easy to understand why only the rhetoric changes. And emissions keep rising.”
climate change website again wrote:
Yes we need to change light bulbs and stop flying to Spain for the weekend, but we also need to act collectively.
Not convinced, sorry. Even the Green Party says all this stuff, and they go on TVtalking about the commercial opportunities and benefits to business of carbon trading etc.
Quote:
by protesting against the state and companies they are at least practically challenging it
Well I don't think "protesting against the state and companies" is practically challenging climate change much at all, in the same way protesting against the G8 doesn't challenge capitalism much at all. It might be better than ethical shopping (which let's face it, even TESCO promotes now with their double organic points or whatever it is), but it's still a dead end.
Quote:
No it wouldn’t be hard to find something better than Plane Stupid, or Rising Tide, or the climate camp.
The question was however “superior class of activity around climate chaos” in relation to “might help shape the future popular response to those impacts”.
Quote:
Quote:
Catch wrote:
“I think ecological crisis is one of the things that could push people towards an overall analysis of capitalism and class society - certainly when you see events like Hurricane Katrina/New Orleans”- I think this is where I disagree I don’t think a deepening crisis will automatically produce positive results, I think peoples’ reactions to a crisis are formed by the ideas, attitudes and previous experience they hold. Included in this is ideas about what causes environmental problems. Hence the development in the here and now of a social movement around climate chaos is important. The state/media promotion of the notion of “individual consumption” isn’t something accidental I think.
Well I don't think it will produce good results if there's more 'natural disasters', I'm not an immiserationist, however I think there's the potential for mass/flash flooding in parts of the UK, water shortages, stuff like that, over the next ten years, the massive overdevelopment of the Thames estuary is a good example, and there was even one of those 'what if' documentaries about the Thames flood barrier failing recently. In that sense I'm more interested in community self-defense against this kind of event - which would entail some kind of organisation on an immediate level beforehand, than I am in worrying about carbon footprints etc. Compulsory water metering, standpipes for weeks - this kind of thing was on the cards last year, and I'd rather people were thinking about ways of resisting that than glueing themselves to doors to stop people going on holiday. My point was if the Thames and Lea river flood and East London becomes an archipegalo, it could end up with the same repression and lack of self-organisation that made Katrina such a catastrophic event for the residents of New Orleans. I don't think telling people not to go on holiday is going to do much to avoid a situation like that, organising at a large employer in East London hopefuly might.
Quote:
On whether a groups politics can change and develop are you arguing that this cannot happen and the outlook of a group will and must always and inherently remain static?
No I'm saying a coherent analysis of class will move any group like this away from eco-direct action -so they might as well not be the same group, but it's clear that Plane Stupid etc. don't have anything like one, and they seemed pretty resistant to even the idea of one.
Quote:
No you are not clearly then such groups can develop. In fact a group I was involved in went from having, for the most part, a far more liberal environmentalist perspective than the eco direct action groups, to some vague class of libertarian socialism.
Look, I considered myself 'green' when I was a teenager, but the Green Party, Friends of the Earth etc. are still around and doing much the same stuff, in fact they've got a lot worse IMO. Just because your small group changed it's mind on a few things didn't mean that the liberal environmental groups became a 'social movement'.
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I also think you are applying one criteria to “ordinary people” and another criteria to “hippies”. “Ordinary peoples‘” ideas change through struggle, and the struggle helps build up a counter-power or a culture of resistance etc….doesn’t the same thing apply to the “hippies“?
Supergluing yourself to a door isn't struggle, it's a substitute for struggle.
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BTW what are the thousands of people in Sussex; dump the dump mentions 50 people at a meeting and the Argus 30 cars and six bikes in a car cavalcade protest?
The Argus wrote:
The demonstration yesterday afternoon was part of a long-running campaign involving thousands of people.
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- incidentally you should write up an article about myriad anti-incinerator campaigns and so forth in England.
Well if I do it'll have to be after I've written up an article about the 1918 rice riots in Japan which is way overdue, and my experiences organising at work, feel free to tell me my priorities are out of whack. I think that article would be better from someone involved, I've no first hand experience of the anti-incinerator stuff, but I know that people involved in campaigns turned up to the community organising meeting and bookfair etc. so they must be around somewhere.
Jun 8 2007 22:45
#21
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Ecology and Class Struggle Anarchism.The libcom homepage says….
“The libcom library contains several thousand articles covering a wide variety of subjects.”
There are 32 tagged as ‘environment’. Not sure exactly what several thousand means let us take for arguments sake it means 3,000, ok? That comes out at around 1% of articles in the library being on an ’environmental’ topic. Unless my maths is well skewed which is in fairness possible.
It's probably close to 3,000 yeah, I don't think half the stuff that involves ecology/environment has been tagged as such though, for instance none of these Hurricane Katrina articles are tagged with environment: http://libcom.org/tags/hurricane-katrina although they all could be.
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In other words rip into dodgy analysis of eco-activists AFTER you get your own house in order.
No, do an actual search of the site before you try to play a stupid numbers game on us. Also it's not necessary for us to systematically collect articles about ecology/climate change because there's plenty of material out there from all kinds of sources, and just about everyone is aware of the arguments now. We try to do stuff that isn't duplicated on a thousand different sites.
What's important is to find examples of people approaching these questions from a class basis, and doing things which actually have some hope to change them - unfortunately there's not so much of that, which is reflected in the amount of material on the site. John's done a good job of collecting information about Green Bans recently though, then sphinx found the Narita airport riots video within the past month or so which is hardly known inside Japan, let alone anywhere else, as evidenced by this google search. You're constructing a very hollow strawman which doesn't stand up to even mild scrutiny. Or we could have 1,000 shit articles about how pollution is bad if you like instead?
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- yes I know I can contribute articles, or start threads, the point isn’t the amount that is there,
Which is why you counted the number of articles in one tag of over 2,000 tags, and used that to suggest
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rip into dodgy analysis of eco-activists AFTER you get your own house in order.
You can't have it both ways.
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the point is that this illustrates where most of the site’s users or active participants are at.
Which is what exactly?
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Whereas the discussion about the possibilities of the development of a social movement around climate chaos and eco-direct actions groups is a debate, the lack of interest in matters ecological by much of the class struggle anarchist movement isn’t. It just isn’t debatable. If necessary I can search through other sites or publications but I don’t expect to find a proportion better than the libcom one in most of them.
Again, this is just a straw man. I don't think it's necessary for communist publications to rehash arguments about climate change that are available elsewhere - that argument's been won just about everywhere by now. The hard thing, as I've said before, is actually proposing something which might deal with both the causes of and effects of climate change, on a broad, class basis. I note you've not put anything forward yourself yet in this discussion.
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Finally we have Murray Bookchin. Not a class struggle anarchist. Specifically rejected the idea of the working class as the agency of revolutionary change. If you do that you do not have a class struggle perspective.
Actually I think Bookchin just used the really shitty terminology of the people he was around - some of his writings in the '80s/'90s both attempt to clarify some of his over-egged polemic, and restate his overall agreement with both much of Marx and the importance of class struggle in general (particularly in Anarchism, Marxism and the Future of the Left, where he quotes Dauve positively for example). I think he rejected the industrial proletariat as the agent of revolutionary change in the strict uber-workerist+third worldist sense of '60s maoist and Trot groups (as would most sensible people), but not the working class in general as an agent of revolutionary change. I might disagree with the direction he took sometimes, and the way he put some things, but it wasn't an explicit break I don't think.
It's true that he thought the potential for ecological collapse had the potential to reach a lot of people who weren't interested in struggles around wages etc. - and therefore offered another pole around which a revolutionary movement might coalesce, but he had to spend about 30 years slagging off hippies of various stripes due to his association with the 'Green movement', and would've had zero time for Plane Stupid. So regardless, I'd definitely describe him as a libertarian, and usually a communist despite some verbal gymnastics trying not to use the word itself. I don't think I've ever described myself as a 'class struggle anarchist', it's a shit term.
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In any case Bookchin proves my point here we have someone very close to the politics of your class struggle anarchist, who was very prominent in the green movement, well decades ago, and yet it is almost like ships passing in the night.
Yeah that'll be why there were so many positive mentions of him when he died on here, and a good 4 years or so of threads discussing his ideas. 
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And all this is simply counting the number of articles in publications or websites.
There's 16,000 posts (about half forum topics), and nearly 200,000 comments on here. Happy counting. You can go through articles chronologically by submitted date by visiting http://libcom.org/node/1 http://libcom.org/node/2 etc. You'll get to a Bookchin article before you hit 50.
Jun 9 2007 08:48
#22
Just a note on things that are going on now I would like to mention the campaign against the LNG pipeline in south Wales. Though I don't live in Wales anymore I was at the occupation of the pipeline last year and again earlier this year and I believe this campaign has a lot more value than the actions of groups like Plane Stupid. For one thing the campaign is led by local people who have campaigned for many years about the risks involved and are now taking action to try to prevent the disaster that is sure to come. I don'think that there is one of these pipes that hasn't exploded at some point, I could be wrong though.
I believe that some of the south Wales Anarchists have been involved in the campaign and could likely tell us more.
http://southwalesanarchists.org
http://www.fightthepipe.co.uk/
Jun 9 2007 10:07
#23
Well in fairness Catch what I quoted there from the climate camp website directly disproves the claim “they only care about individual reduction of carbon emissions”, it doesn’t make the claim they have coherent sensible politics, or that they don’t care about individual reductions, because I’m not saying that.
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Catch wrote:
“I don't think telling people not to go on holiday is going to do much to avoid a situation like that.”
Sorry I don’t seem to be explaining myself well…I’m not arguing for the development of a movement which sees “individual consumption” as the cause of and solution to climate chaos. I’m arguing for something which goes against that.
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Terry wrote previously:
“If nothing else something like that would at least spread the idea that vested interests are responsible for this (if not necessarily the existing form of social organisation) as opposed to the ’all humans’ line promoted by the state, media, et al.”
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Catch wrote:
“Well I don't think "protesting against the state and companies" is practically challenging climate change much at all”
Good. That is why what I said was:
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Terry wrote previously:
“It is true that many of the eco direct action groups don’t expressly challenge the “individual consumption” line ( which I deal with here [url=]http://www.indymedia.ie/article/80959 [/url]), indeed listing under ’what you can do’ switching off light bulbs and the like, however by protesting against the state and companies they are at least practically challenging it, their focus being on state and industry policies, which suggests something quite different from everything will be grand if revol goes to Bundoran instead of Spain.”
That is their practical activity goes beyond and challenges the “individual consumption” line even if some of their rhetoric follows it.
I didn’t mention practically challenging climate change, in fact I think there is little that can be done about it in the immediate here and now.
I do think in the event of crisis it will make a difference if there has been a largish movement linking climate chaos with the policies of the state and individual companies, if not capitalism, I cannot see where that is going to come out of except the likes of the climate camp and maybe residents groups opposing airport expansion, or such.
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Catch wrote:
“Supergluing yourself to a door isn't struggle, it's a substitute for struggle.”
What is the determining criteria? What makes the 30 car cavalcade struggle and say the climate camp not?
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Catch wrote:
“What's important is to find examples of people approaching these questions from a class basis, and doing things which actually have some hope to change them - unfortunately there's not so much of that, which is reflected in the amount of material on the site.”
Grand…”so there’s not so much of that”. A relative absence of libertarian communist theoretical writings on matters ecological you might say.
Jun 9 2007 10:32
#24
That is a good point Welshboy, however, looking at that situation from the outside, it seems “groups like Plane Stupid”, if that includes Rising Tide and ‘people inspired by the climate camp’, are involved in the campaign around the LNG pipeline in Wales.
https://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/01/359523.html
Jun 9 2007 11:58
#25
Terry wrote:
Sorry I don’t seem to be explaining myself well…I’m not arguing for the development of a movement which sees “individual consumption” as the cause of and solution to climate chaos. I’m arguing for something which goes against that.
I know you're not arguing for that, but your saying these groups might lead towhat you want, and implying no interest in ecology on the part of any users of this site or the people that run it. Both are wrongheaded, and as I've said, I think Plane Stupid etc. are counterproductive towards what you'd like to see, hence my confusion regarding your defence of them.
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I do think in the event of crisis it will make a difference if there has been a largish movement linking climate chaos with the policies of the state and individual companies, if not capitalism, I cannot see where that is going to come out of except the likes of the climate camp and maybe residents groups opposing airport expansion, or such.
My point is I don't see it coming out of the climate camp or similar - it hasn't done so in the past 40 years of the green movement and despite climate change and ecology being higher in public consciousness than any point in the past there's no sign of this now. I don't think residents groups opposing airport expansion/pipelines/incinerators will necessarily either but those activities, where done on a class basis, have value in themselves. Camps and stunts don't.
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What is the determining criteria? What makes the 30 car cavalcade struggle and say the climate camp not?
I didn't say the cavalcade was a struggle, could you quote where I did please? However you have variously described these groups as both struggles and part of 'a movement'.
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Grand…”so there’s not so much of that”. A relative absence of libertarian communist theoretical writings on matters ecological you might say.
The primary focus of this site, at least in terms of news, is actual working class struggles - strikes etc. - there's plenty of other sites where you can see all kinds of crappy statements or reports from activists, like infoshop and indymedia masquerading as news. Similarly history and much of the library is focused to a large extent on the lessons learned from similar events in the past, rather than a million articles saying like capitalism and the state are really bad yeah.
What in particular do you think is missing? Bernie Gunther on Urban75 spent a lot of time working out things like petroleum expenditure on food, trying to do a Fields, Factories and Workshops/Conquest of Bread for the 21st Century, I think there's some value in that but never persuaded him to write it up.
yeah I think communists should be doing their best to locate the problem in individual consumption patterns and working class people taking advantage of cheap flights, infact the more capital forces the sacrifices on the working class the better, maybe we could even push for higher electricity prices and bin charges!
p.s. I hope you forgive me my cheap flight to Spain I just had last week.