Looking at the communist side, I sometimes see climate obstructionism too, opposing any plan that doesn’t also solve humanity’s millenia-old (albeit amplified in the industrial age) inequality issues. There was this anti geoengineering site that made the rounds a few months back that mixed some very good points vs some of the worst and least thought-through geoengineering proposals with a foundational opposition to all change that didn’t address inequality.
And I get it, I do want to address inequality and if the sweeping changes that fix CAGW also fixes inequality then that’s freaking baller and absolutely yay.
But if they don’t, then we need ‘em anyway.
Because I don’t wanna kill the Earth (that one should be a “duh”, but…)
We’ve seen centuries of delay and obstruct and deny from the capitalists who are clinging to their wealth (both absolute and relative). And I get that we all wanna put ‘em up against the wall when the revolution comes. But.
My number one goal is averting doomsday. If that means we have to end up with 10000 years of Mikael Wiehe lyrics then I can live with that if we saved the planet. Anyone pulling the breaks on averting the crisis from either side of the proverbial aisle, whether they’re Exxon or Bakunin, needs to sober up and start living their life right. When a stick destroys the Earth, we’re not much happier if it’s called the people’s stick.
Tug of war on the brink will lead to both falling over.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not calling for anti-communism either or for capitalism. You know I rant and rave against that dumdumdadadumdum on the daily. All I’m saying is that for me, the priority is pretty darn stark right now and it’s called Earth.
I sometimes see an idea on the left that I don’t fully vibe with:
That ecological == just. That climate change is this wonderful godsent opportunity to set things right.
My own view is that we’re juggling two separate chainsaws. And that’s not easy or a boon or a good thing. The unjust world is a problem. Climate change is a problem. If we can’t fix the first one, life sucks. If we can’t fix the second one, life will end.
Yes, the problems are connected. The unjust world is making it difficult to address climate change because the haves don’t wanna give up what they have (or, rather, what they think they have, since most of the world’s wealth is illusory, built on the sandcastle of unaccounted-for fossil externalities, on loan from our cinder wasteland future).
But the solutions are not necessarily as connected as the problems are. Having read a ton of Bakunin and Goldman and Marx and RMS and what have you, the leftist economics ususally don’t solve externalities either.
Climate change is a cruelly tightening vise, a runaway steamroller. It’s going to make treating each other humanely harder, not easier.
Let’s keep doing our best to stay human in the face of this calamity, and let’s keep trying to fight it. ♥︎
In my view it’s more important that the planet & humanity doesn’t die. There are many woes and injustices that we haven’t figured out a solution to for thousands of years. Let’s keep working on them 👍🏻 but let’s not make one calamity’s solution be contingent on the other.
We do need new modes of thinking and new ways to distribute resources & labor tasks given that market capitalism is a cruel and embarassing failure, so maybe the solutions will come hand in hand and if so that’s 💯 baller, I’ll be happy.
But I just don’t want us to try to solve these things on hard mode by overly tightly coupling them. 🤷🏻♀️
I didn’t try to uncouple climate change from capitalism. There are other injustices outside of workers rights issues (since the fascists have been intentionally driving wedge issues and bigotry in order to shift the discourse from workers vs owners to pluralists vs populists).
And it’s not just the richest 10% that are part of the consumption problem. Our entire society for the past three centuries have been built on that same unsustainable false foundation, that same fossil based faux-wealth.
I don’t drive cars, eat meat or cheese, or go on airplane rides, but I had takeout yesterday and it came in a styrofoam box. Ergo I’m also part of the problem. Everything is tangled up in the problem.
That’s not to say the private jets can stay. Of course not. Storm the palace.
I get the impression that we’re pretty much on the same page. It’s more a reaction to how I see people saying “no fighting climate change without also fighting this-or-that other injustice”—to an extent that would seem like a straw doll to you.*
Yes, capitalism needs to go, and I can’t wait to hear some more practical work in that vein, a gradual (yet rapid as heck) transition to new modes of resource distribution and rationing. Sustainability over hollowing faux growth.
*: And that said, I was talking to an old friend last month who was under the misconception that it’s the left that are driving the social justice issues (as opposed to just trying to stay alive and get out from under the stomping boot of the far right) and under the even bigger misconception that in order to unite the left, we need to drop those issues and get in with the bigots. He’s completely out to sea in that regard. He would throw away the justice questions for some nebulous hockey-team–politics goals (à la “the left must win even if it takes becoming exactly the right to do so”, which is wrong) with the end result that bigotry would be as tightly coupled with fighting climate change as anti-bigotry is today.
That’s not what I want. I’m not asking to drop either of the two juggled chainsaws. I just see the chainsaws as related-but-not-identical. As two related but separate problems that might (or mightn’t) end up needing very separate & different solutions & efforts.