De Politiek van de identiteit in de Hel van de Verandering van het Klimaat
Door George Monbiot |
Als u een glimp wilt van hoe de beweging tegen klimaatverandering sneller kon afbrokkelen dan een de zomersneeuwvlok, lees het artikel van Ewa Jasiewicz, gisteren gepubliceerd op de Beschermer is de Commentaar Vrije plaats (1). Het is een fijn voorbeeld van de identiteitspolitiek die directe actiebewegingen tijdens de jaren '90 teisterde, en waarvan de nieuwe generatie van activisten tot dusver mild vrij is geweest.
Ewa viert terecht het leaderless, autonome model van zich het organiseren dat deze beweging zo efficiënt heeft gemaakt. Klimaat twee kampeert ik is aanwezig geweest - dit jaar en duurt - was onder de meest inspirerende gebeurtenissen die ik ooit heb getuigd. Ik ben awed door de mensen die hen organiseerden, die erin slaagden te leiden tot, onder buitengewone druk, brandkast, het functioneren, verrukkelijke ruimten waarin wij de kwesties konden debatteren en de acties plannen die Heathrow en Kingsnorth in het openbare oog duwden. Het kamp van het klimaat is een hulde aan de anarchistenpolitiek die Jasiewicz steunt.
Maar in het willen vanuit deze ervaring aan een breder sociaal plan extrapoleren, maakt zij twee ernstige fouten. De eerste moet einden en middelen verwarren. Zij eist het globale verwarmen willen tegenhouden, maar zij maakt die taak 100 keer harder door alle staat en collectieve oplossingen te verwerpen. Het schijnt aan me dat wat zij werkelijk wil doen een anarchist utopie, en de verandering van het gebruiksklimaat als verontschuldiging te creëren in ingenieur het is.
Het tegenhouden van de verandering van het vluchtelingsklimaat moet belangrijkheid over elk ander doel nemen. Iedereen in deze beweging weet dat er zeer weinig tijd is: de kans waarin wij twee graden kunnen verhinderen van het verwarmen sluit snel. Wij moeten alle middelen gebruiken wij handen kunnen leggen, en deze moeten zowel overheden als bedrijven omvatten. Of misschien is zij van plan de installaties te bouwen die worden vereist om de energieeconomie te veranderen - windlandbouwbedrijven, golfmachines, zonne thermische installaties in de Sahara, nieuwe netverbindingen en openbaar vervoersystemen - zelf?
Haar artikel is een terryifying voorbeeld van de capaciteit sommige mensen politiek moeten eerst zetten en de feiten tweede wanneer het confronteren van het grootste uitdagingsmensdom ziet nu onder ogen. De feiten zijn als volgt. De het klimaatverandering van de vluchteling draagt snel neer op ons. Wij vereisen een massieve politieke en economische reactie om het te verhinderen. Governments and corporations, whether we like it or not, currently control both money and power. Unless we manage to mobilise them, we stand a snowball’s chance in climate hell of stopping the collapse of the biosphere. Jasiewicz would ignore all these inconvenient truths because they conflict with her politics.
“Changing our sources of energy without changing our sources of economic and political power”, she asserts, “will not make a difference. Neither coal nor nuclear are the “solution”, we need a revolution.” So before we are allowed to begin cutting greenhouse gas emissions, we must first overthrow all political structures and replace them with autonomous communities of happy campers. All this must take place within a couple of months, as there is so little time in which we could prevent two degrees of warming. This is magical thinking of the most desperate kind. If I were an executive of E.On or Exxon, I would be delighted by this political posturing, as it provides a marvellous distraction from our real aims.
To support her argument, Jasiewicz misrepresents what I said at climate camp. She claims that I “confessed not knowing where to turn next to solve the issues of how to generate the changes necessary to shift our sources of energy, production and consumption”. I confessed nothing of the kind. In my book Heat I spell out what is required to bring about a 90% cut in emissions by 2030. Instead I confessed that I don’t know how to solve the problem of capitalism without resorting to totalitarianism.
The issue is that capitalism involves lending money at interest. If you lend at 5%, then one of two things must happen. Either the money supply must increase by 5% or the velocity of circulation must increase by 5%. In either case, if this growth is not met by a concomitant increase in the supply of goods and services, it becomes inflationary and the system collapses. But a perpetual increase in the supply of goods and services will eventually destroy the biosphere. So how do we stall this process? Even when usurers were put to death and condemned to perpetual damnation, the practice couldn’t be stamped out. Only the communist states managed it, through the extreme use of the state control Ewa professes to hate. I don’t yet have an answer to this conundrum. Does she?
Yes, let us fight both corporate power and the undemocratic tendencies of the state. Yes, let us try to crack the problem of capitalism and then fight for a different system. But let us not confuse this task with the immediate need to stop two degrees of warming, or allow it to interfere with the carbon cuts that have to begin now.
Ewa’s second grave error is to imagine that society could be turned into a giant climate camp. Anarchism is a great means of organising a self-elected community of like-minded people. It is a disastrous means of organising a planet. Most anarchists envisage their system as the means by which the oppressed can free themselves from persecution. But if everyone is to be free from the coercive power of the state, this must apply to the oppressors as well as the oppressed. The richest and most powerful communities on earth – be they geographical communities or communities of interest – will be as unrestrained by external forces as the poorest and weakest. As a friend of mine put it, “when the anarchist utopia arrives, the first thing that will happen is that every Daily Mail reader in the country will pick up a gun and go and kill the nearest hippy.”
This is why, though both sides furiously deny it, the outcome of both market fundamentalism and anarchism, if applied universally, is identical. The anarchists associate with the oppressed, the market fundamentalists with the oppressors. But by eliminating the state, both remove such restraints as prevent the strong from crushing the weak. Ours is not a choice between government and no government. It is a choice between government and the mafia.
Over the past year I have been working with groups of climate protesters who have changed my view of what could be achieved. Most of them are under 30, and they bring to this issue a clear-headedness and pragmatism that I have never encountered in direct action movements before. They are prepared to take extraordinary risks to try to defend the biosphere from the corporations, governments and social trends which threaten to make it uninhabitable. They do so for one reason only: that they love the world and fear for its future. It would be a tragedy if, through the efforts of people like Ewa, they were to be diverted from this urgent task into the identity politics that have wrecked so many movements.
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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 24th, 2008 at 3:25 pm and is filed under Environmental News, Political News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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