Capitalism is incompatible with a safe climate. Our current economic system depends on capital's continuous and exponential expansion - without it there is no profit. And as capital grows so must we give up more of ourselves and our planet to serve this insatiable system.
Every year we are called to work longer, harder and for less. Every year we are called to let these demands eat up more of our services and take over more of our community spaces.
And so it goes with the planet. Every year we extract more from the earth and belch pollution back out into our world. As capital grows, the wellbeing of people and our home, the planet diminish.
Right now, we face an urgent choice. We need to choose between a safe climate or capitalism.
But this is not an easy choice.
We are living in an economy that resembles the bus in the 1994 Keanu Reeves classic Speed – it feels like we're trapped in a system that demands we drive faster and faster so some disgruntled old guy can get his money.
Each of us faces the desperate dilemma of Sandra Bullock, the hostage: we are the hostages. If you comply maybe, just maybe, you will be okay even if you know that bus is going to blow.
We have been held hostage since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Prior to then, we were told we needed to transfer power and control to the wielders of capital in order to guarantee our shared prosperity. Post the crash and the associated bailouts of the financial institutions, the message from these economic gatekeepers is much more direct - strip them of their privileges and they'll blow up the bus.
Of course, they frame it differently in the language of "market confidence" and "debt repayments". The Greek situation, however, educates us all as to the ruthless politics behind the pseudo-scientific rhetoric.
Before our very eyes in the last few months a whole population was subjected to a process of collective punishment. The Greek people were strangled as their short-term supply of currency was cut-off. We saw the images of desperate people queuing for ATMs fast running out of cash and pensioners crying in anguish.
The Greek people sought to renegotiate the terms of their own captivity, and European capital punished them for assuming a degree of agency. They wounded one hostage to teach the rest of us a lesson.
From Greece we learn that negotiations alone will not lead to capital's accommodation to people and planet. To end this hostage situation and escape from the bus, we'll have to decide to do it ourselves. Together, though, we can do it for we have strength in solidarity.
Globally, more and more of us are questioning capital's reign. Workers are struggling to build cooperative enterprises, communities are reclaiming control of their electricity assets to fund renewable energy and voters around the world are questioning the policy assumptions of the political establishment. These are but a few of the many inspiring flash points around the world.
This year we have an opportunity to link these movements into a larger network. In late November, the representatives of countries and corporations will come together in Paris to negotiate a mutually accepted cost towards mitigating climate change. When these representatives came together at the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen in 2009 we had faith they might act to ensure a safe climate for all of us.
This time is different. This time we have no such faith. This time we will act regardless of what they do. This time we have no time.
The appetite for change is unquestionable; Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything is not only a global best-seller, but has also provoked many different sorts of people into action to transform our economy and environment.
During the last weekend in November, we will hit the streets in every major city around the globe to send a message to Paris - we are already making the just transition to a fair and sustainable economy. It is up to the representatives in Paris to prove their commitment to a safe climate or it is they and their institutions which will fade into irrelevance.
In other words, they can now choose to get on our bus or get left behind.
When it comes to ensuring a safe climate, we've all been hostage to an economic system that at times shapes us to act as hypocrites. The last weekend in November, however, is a convergence in time where we can all make a meaningful choice for a safe climate. Each of us can pledge to turnout in November and encourage our family, friends and work mates to join us.
When the peoples of the world pour out onto the streets, it will not be as a plea to Paris to act for us.
It will be a signal to them of the ground shifting beneath their feet.
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This user is a New Matilda supporter. swarmi
Posted Sunday, August 30, 2015 - 21:00
I enjoyed your article. It really is just one minute to midnite.
But are you serious when you say "it's a safe planet or capitalism"? If so, making appeals to capitalism's warriors to move aside is likely to fall on death ears. I have no problem with rallying in the streets as I've been there a few times in my past life but exactly what is the big stick, the final ultimatum you hope to wield?
Or are we out to just build a mass movement and see where it takes us?
Don't get me wrong: I love your spirit. I'm just a bit underwhelmed by your strategy.
This user is a New Matilda supporter. drys
Posted Sunday, August 30, 2015 - 21:14
For starters: i do admire Naomi Klien's work, she is thorough and honest in her assessments, and her conclusions I can Identify with.
AND: I had been eagerly anticipating the publication of "This Canges Everything" since she first mentioned it on her website, tat when it was released I immediately ordered a copy.
Whilst I do agree generally with her analysis in this book, I did find parts of it disappointing. But I would and do recommend it to everybody who is concerned with the impact of present and future climate change.
The one book, for me, that continues to provide the benchmark for a more complete picture of ecological crises, of which climate change is merely one component, is
John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark and Richard York
The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth.
Monthly Review Press, New York, 2010.
There is a good review of this book on the "Climate & Capitalism" website;
http://climateandcapitalism.com/2011/05/04/review-the-ecological-rift-capitalisms-war-on-the-earth/
DrGideonPolya
Posted Monday, August 31, 2015 - 11:21
Excellent article by Godfrey Moase. The neoliberal One Percenter climate criminals are destroying the planet - we need a Climate Revolution NOW (see Climate Revolution Now": https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/climate-revolution ). In short,
(1) We must do everything we can to make the future “less bad” even though it is very likely that the world has run out of time to avoid a catastrophic plus 2C temperature rise, noting that the present plus 1C is already disastrous for millions throughout the world because of sea level rise, storm intensification and drought. The national promises for the 2015 Paris Climate Conferences predicate a plus 3C temperature rise and a sea level rise of about 2 metres this century.
(2) Already 0.5 million people die annually from climate change and 7 million die from air pollution from carbon fuel burning. The species extinction rate is 100-1,000 times higher than normal. About 17 million people die avoidably from deprivation each year but if climate change is not requisitely addressed, some 10 billion people will die as a result this century or an average of 100 million such deaths each year this century.
(3) Assuming a damage-related Carbon Price of US$200 per tonne CO2-e, the World has a Carbon Debt of $540 trillion that is increasing at about $20 trillion per year, Carbon Debt that must be inescapably be paid by future generations in an horrific example of climate criminality, intergenerational injustice, intergenerational inequity, climate racism, and climate injustice.
(4) Humanity, and especially young people, must demand radical economic restructuring on an emergency basis (as exampled by the US WW2 domestic war effort) to requisitely and rapidly deal with this climate emergency. Humanity can effect this revolutionary and implicitly social humanist change at the ballot box and by (a) informing everyone they can, (b) having zero tolerance for complicity in deadly and racist climate criminality and climate terrorism, and (c) urging and applying Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all people, politicians, parties, countries, companies, corporations and collectives disproportionately complicit in the worsening climate crisis.
(5) This science-informed Climate Revolution must be effected immediately without jeopardizing democracy or human rights and will involve a rapid shift to 100% renewable energy and energy efficiency, public transport, needs-based production, and re-afforestation with this coupled to rapid cessation of fossil fuel burning, deforestation, methanogenic livestock production and population growth with urgent reduction of atmospheric CO2 to a safe, pre-Industrial Revolution level of about 300 ppm CO2 (e.g. by biochar formation and sequestration).
animalogic
Posted Monday, August 31, 2015 - 19:03
Great article. Makes clear the explicit link between climate destruction and capitalism. It also touches on the general intransigence of capitalists today ( ie Greece)
However, two points:
1. Even IF climate destruction were not an issue, social and economic destruction would STILL be a catastrophic problem: see Naomi Klein's classic "Disaster Capitalism" for and indication of the lengths neoliberals will go to shape (mutate/abortion) the world for their profit snd convenience.
2. The article writer is good on the disease/ symptoms, however his treatment lacks ...the aggression adequate to the situation.
"To end this hostage
situation and escape from the
bus, we'll have to decide to do
it ourselves. Together, though,
we can do it for we have
strength in solidarity."
Yes, we need solidarity etc...but we'll need a lot - a LOT - more too...
We will NOT defeat the treasonous neoliberal criminals without vast sacrifice and...dare i say it ? ...militant progressive-socialist ideology.
Merely getting thousands onto the streets to aggitate for "Paris" is simply a BEGINNING.