Something bothering me about the likes of 'Plane Stupid'

Non of those things are going to happen, and definately not within the time frame needed to avert Climate Change.

The peak oil stuff is just going to be one more hammer blow. Removing oil inputs to agriculture leaves the UK with a carrying capacity of around 7 million people, and that depends on mass conversions of all available spare land to agricultural production.

link?

Just lost a long post , this might not be as well thought out.

No not at all. I think this boils down to about three different ways of causing pollution

1. stuff we don't want to do but have to (work, commuting)
2. Stuff that needs to be done, but is done inefficiently ("locally produced vegetables" travelling twice across the country due to supermarket distribution networks)
3. stuff we do for pleasure, that isn't particularly environmentally sustainable (fly, eat meat more than once or twice per week etc.).

3. is an easy target for groups like Plane Stupid, because it's "non-essential" (although I think we'd agree that holidays are psychologically very essential), and easy to play the guilt card. One and two are what cause the real problems, but to deal with them would require a fundamental change in social relationships, so that can be dismissed as pie in the sky or whatever. I did however try to propose something that'd deal with 1. a little bit pretty much immediately, and potentially on a class basis (although with plenty of managing capital, reduced congestion, less-tired-more-efficient workforce thrown in), and it's been ignored.

Good, because that's woeful. Mine, and I'd imagine many other people's response to that, is why the fuck bother with sustainable local commuting at all then.

No I think the number of short haul flights is a lot higher than it needs to be, but the way to combat that is to fight for more holiday time and cheaper fares on trains and ferries etc. etc. not trying to moralise people out of their holidays.

So do lots of vegans??? Massive consumption of animal protein is only a part of the problem with the food industry. Irrational production of foods, ridiculous transportation arrangements, monoculture etc. these apply just as much to vegetarian and vegan diets as they do to omniverous ones. Linda McCartney sausage vs. eel and mash. Tofurkey vs. Welsh lamb.

Yeah it might well be. Socialism or barbarism. Bookchin said it about ecology in the '60s, in their own way the ICC say it now. I'm not convinced, but neither do I think the progression goes "capitalism >> nicer capitalism >> communism".

No, carbon offsets are a myth - yet airlines and business are embracing them as they are another way of getting the consumer to pay guilt money.

basically.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6095680.stm

Oh OK, I thought you meant I thought that.

aye, but if you want to support reforestation programmes, you may as well anyway carbon offset or not. Carbon offsetting would only add like £8 on average european flight, so it would not break anyones bank who are going on a flight anyway.

so, whats our tally so far?

We have suggestions about helping people in disaster areas after thousands have died, homes and lives destroyed and stuff like that (madashell and ticking_fools suggestion).

We have suggestions on fighting any anti-consumption or carbin emission measures which would hurt working class (that meaning local working class here, no mention about solidarity with the tens of thousands already dying as a result of rapidly changing climate conditions because those are mostly elsewhere far away).

And we have a single concrete suggestion from catch about job swapping and a few woolly mentions about better public transport.

Anyone still suprised why climate campaigners dont bother with class struggle anarchist/lib com analysis?

Perhaps one problem is that since the userbase on this board is quite small we just dont have the expertese about the issues to come up with anything sensible, its just hard held theories mirrored to a problem which doesnt quite fit and as a result we get empty strategies and positions. No expertese about the issues, but plenty of expertese of shooting people down

This thread has motivated me to look more into the issue and i've been reading loads Rising Tide and other similar kind of stuff now, which looks pretty damn good.

This is cheap. How is it acting in solidarity to let yourself get fucked over for the benefit of existing institutions? In fact, more than this, this argument is the same liberal shit that drives Make Poverty History and all the rest of that crap. The 'west' should take its responsibilities seriously and start making sacrifices for the poor starving Africans. Ignoring the fact that the 'poor starving Africans' and the vast majority in the west are being fucked over by the same groups.

Look at the front page of the BBC website today and you get these three headlines:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6092564.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6093396.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6095680.stm

For the liberals it's feel guilty about 'the starving Africans', for the business types it's worry about the profit margin and maybe tighten our belts, and then government steps in to manage our behaviour by transferring wealth. All of this shit is being pushed by government and 'climate campaigners' at the same time.

Because they're campaigners. They have nothing to offer but asking nicely or not so nicely for government to 'do something'. And it will when it's in its interests, and that something will be to fuck us harder to preserve its position.

The first rule is always do no harm and I think it's pretty clear that most if not all existing environmental groups have been coopted to a reactionary agenda which is about transferring as many of the costs of tackling climate change to the people who are already suffering its worst effects. Unless these groups can break away from this agenda, which they don't seem to be showing any sign of doing, they have to be regarded as part of the problem. I personally don't think it's worth engaging with them, but try if you want and it'd be nice to be proved wrong.

We're also in no position as a class to make substantial changes to our economy through direct action. We can do a bit here and there in our workplaces (as you've talked about before), but 90% cuts are not something we can do.

Therefore the priority has to be self-defence. It's not fucking pretty, but that's where we are. No matter how much you might not like that, no matter how much you might want to 'do something', we face the situation as it is, not as we'd like it to be. That means we're looking at a continuum of actions from fighting bin taxes and things like that, old style environmental direct action where appropriate (Rossport for example), and the high profile Common Ground style things when the shit really hits the fan. Alongside that we carry on doing what we always do and hope we can be part of building up enough power in the class to go on the offensive. I don't see anything else that doesn't play straight into the hands of the ruling class and do far more harm than good.

if my comment was cheap, so is yours, c'moon man, who are feeling the effects at the moment? Are they the same people using the short haul flights, use private transport and enjoy cheap consumables? I think you got the groups mixed up, or trying to build a massive bridge between UK working class and where the climate change is killing tens of thousands (new orleans was an exception on this).

By opposing carbon emission controls as a matter or principle without any idea of alternatives you are getting with some seriously strange bedfellows, yet you are arguing that mine and similar positions are somehow compromised because it is similar to some liberal greenie folks - thats a contradiction.

maybe we should talk about more concrete issues because i feel that the differences in politics are highlighted here only because we talk in such abstract terms, as in non-existant collective action? I mean would there be any real differences in the way we act at workplace to reduce energy consumption and waste, or in our personal life?

Solidarity with the third world, higher gas bills NOW!

how about better housing, efficient heating, insulation and so on leading to reduced heating costs and energy consumption? Would you be against those as well?

New Orleans wasn't a one of exception though, it's something that's going to become increasingly common as the effects of climate change become more severe. Climate change isn't some far off, emphereal phenomenon that will only hurt some liberal humanist conception of 'the poor'.

Of course I wouldn't, but I happen to think it is a mistake for class struggle anarchists to piggy back on this green liberal agenda of higher and higher 'green taxes'. Whether you accept it or not, this is the very essence of the ruling class passing along the consequences of it's actions to us, they fuck up the environment, we pay to clean it up. Fuck that.

so wait a minute, we have been at eachothers throaths about this, and now you are saying that ok, those measures which are the most efficient ways of cutting emissions in housing are something you would support.

So why not say it? Thats exactly the type of things i have been fishing for here.

now what you are doing is positioning yourself as someone with absolutely no ideas, suggestions or strategy apart from opposing measures and then cleaning up the mess after the fact.

All I've said is that I'm opposed to any measure that attempts to pass the cost of climate change along to us. I don't see what's so objectionable about that.

and that all we can do is fight these measures or organise response after disasters (which by the way is a wrong way to look at climate change because the biggest death toll doesnt come from spectacular disasters). It has taken me two days to fish any concrete suggestions on what kinds of measures you would support

We could also struggle for the kind of things you're talking about, but I'm skeptical of the likelihood of success in the current climate (no pun intended) of low struggle.

And I never said that we should limit ourselves to responding to "spectacular disasters", by the way.

These differences are fundamental though. As I say, I really do not think that there's a compromise here.

All the people where I used to live in Wales who weren't insured during the floods six years ago and are now refused insurance on the grounds that they're a flood risk. There are still people I know stuck in B&Bs. It's not on the same scale as your island disappearing under water or a six year drought, but it's on the same continuum. More than that, I live in Liverpool. It's a low lying city with no flood defences and a reputation for a restive working class surrounded by TA bases and police weapons caches (seriously, I'm sure there's way more here than anywhere else). The New Orleans scenario doesn't look too far off from where I'm sitting within fifteen minutes walk of a huge police station, two TA bases and a tidal river (probably take me a bit longer to get to the river, actually).

Even if no one in Europe had been hit by the direct effects and it was all people in Africa, I still don't see why solidarity with them would mean lining up with the fuckers that did the damage in the first place, to our own detriment.

No it's not. My position is that both the right and left wings of the ruling class are using climate change as a way to attack us - either through increased militarisation in pursuit of 'energy security' or through shifting the cost of any economic changes to the the working class. I'm saying that we shouldn't be lining up with any of them and instead looking to our own interests, which at the moment are primarily about defending ourselves. It's similar to the arguments about Lebanon from a while ago. You don't cheerlead for the lesser evil, there's going to be plenty of people doing that already.

Not in loads of detail no. I read a few things about fishing reserves (which aren't really happening properly, but there was one set up that worked well), where stocks improved quite quickly, and which had a knock-on effect on areas outside the reserve. I know things are awful and unlikely to change, but JDMF was talking about a libertarian communist society being able to reverse the trend of reduced biodiversity or not. The rapid improvement in areas where there was a moratorium on fishing is encouraging.

JDMF, I don't know if you've ever read urban much, but some of the best stuff I've seen around this was by Bernie Gunther. A few threads, some of them here:http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/search.php?searchid=1276847

He's very interested in both peak oil and climate change, and has done a fair bit of research into food production - looking at low-petroleum dependent methods, trying to update some of Kropotkin's research in FFW and tCoB and Bookchin's Social Ecology/Post Scarcity stuff etc.

A very short summary would be: micro-industry, market/urban gardening/permaculture etc., energy-efficient housing, district heating - all of which he reckons could be started by communities now and as well as ameliorating carbon emissions, would massively reduce dependence on fossil fuels for energy and increase independence. He'd be the first to say it'd require a social revolution to be implemented though, due to the massive resistance from capital it'd come up against even at the first baby steps.

For example - replace individual combi-boilers/immersion heaters with communal heating systems. Either big municipal boilers, or to almost eliminate carbon emissions - geo-thermal heating with pipes placed a few metres below ground in order to take advantage of surface heat differentials; or biomass heating with the pipes going through massive communal compost bins. Or more likely a combination of those and other things.

Again, fuck all chance of this happening unless:

1. There's communal ownership of all the housing which is going to be converted. This means either entire blocks on estates, or entire rows of terraces at a minimum. The prerequisite to that is kicking out ALMOs, Wimpeys, slumlords etc. etc. whereas we all know they're making massive advances at the moment.

2. Enough skilled labour to convert dozens of homes at the same time, and to build those heating systems - ideally pre-fab/mass produced to reduce wastage. At the moment we have housing stock falling apart, new housing built cheap, cheerful, overpriced and generally self-contained apart from "service charges", and the only capital investment in social housing coming from privatisation and enforced debt (the 90 million loan ALMOs get if they get a 2* rating, that for some reason is never called a loan).

Any of these measures are simply not going to be possible without a massive change in social relations. Like Ticking Fool says, the best we can do is try to find strategies for self-defense against the worst effects when they come - which might involve trying to reduce energy dependency in our communities but that is a fuck of a long way off.

Apart from all the recent flooding in low-lying areas of the UK, we also have Canvey Island which was under-water in the '70s iirc. Also worth pointing out that New Orleans was on a flood plain that had been over-developed - a big reason why the effects of the flood were so serious, since there was no drain-off. On a much smaller scale, the Lea Valley - including Hackney Marshes, are about to be massively over-developed for the Olympics, and happen to be in a similar demographic area to those who were left for dead in New Orleans. Whether it's particularly dangerous or not I dunno, but there's a big number of "luxury"/shared ownership riverside/canalside developments on brownfield sites that alongside the existing housing estates would be the first to get hit if the whole area flooded.

Speaking of bernie gunther, he posted this on urban, which is interesting, to say the least.

good stuff catch - one comment though, many of the things you listed are already in use in scandinavian countries (communal heating systems, often using cooling water from power stations piped to urban areas heating system), ground heating has been in use for decades, and of course houses and much better built, insulated and in most new houses even the heat from extracted air is utilised and used to heat houses, triple glazing with special gas insulation between two layers and so on and so on.

And all this without any real change in social relations, just a bit more collectively thinking culture.

I dunno if you've noticed JDMF but this ain't Scandinavia and for various historical reasons we aren't as advanced in such effiencent heating and insulating (i'd say our temperate clime might play a large role in that).

I agree all those things could be implemented under capitalism just i don't think a strong welfare system would be impossible in capitalism, but the point is how to be strive to implement such systems? The UK government is pushing Nuclear Power and running small moralistic campaigns about home heating and power saving but this reduces the issue to atomised actions and it seems that it's the middle class who can afford the iniatial outlay on most of these technologies, as such it's a niche market and not a mass solution at present.

I'd love to see mass campaigns that demand the implementations of such technologies for everyone and i think the best hope we have to developing this is the inevitable resistance to new Nuclear Power stations, however such campaigns will only be possible with an intensification of class fight back, when we have some sort of social solidarity that can resist government and capitals manoveuring and divisive tactics eg jobs versus environment, higher taxation on commodities and an increase in cost of living.

To say nothing about all the Prescottvilles upriver from the Thames Barrier!

regards,

Martin

Yep! Was going to mention Essex, but I only know the non-Thames bit really. Could easily be a real mess, in say, 2013 onwards

In the '70s with big increases in energy prices people refused to pay energy bills. What's the chance of this kind of thing nowadays given the high "cost" of fossil fuel energy? Basically hold out 'till they start building renewable energy plants, etc. Is it possible/probable? Would it keep both the immediate action and the social movement camps happy?

hay U lot, U want a plan-neat 4 future generations of workers 2 work on oar knot? individualizing problems really aint gonna work atmo, we aint got time 4 that, we have been slumbering 4 too long.
and by the way, can the concept of syndicalism be stretched to include the idea of freely associating around other interests apart from straight WORK?

Hello caitlin.

1. Please don't write in that way, it makes me want to stab someone
2. Yes, syndicalism generally does mean organising around communities (therefore environmental concerns included) as well as workplaces- this is a common myth that anarchosyndicalists often have to displel.

¿Habla inglés? :?