Wildfire
Two Roads Diverging in Burning Woods: The Climate Justice Revolution vs The Vulture Capitalists
D. H. Garrett, The Asia Institute, Dreamindustrees
“Capitalist production collects the population together in great centers, and causes the urban population to achieve an ever-growing preponderance. This has two results. On the one hand it concentrates the historical motive force of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth, i.e., it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; hence it hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for the lasting fertility of the soil….All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil.” Karl Marx
(Image: Horst Haitzinger)
Introduction and Statement of the Problem
We are consumed by wildfire. We are consumed by the wildfire of an economic system that depends on the uncontrolled consumption mostly of unnecessary things bought to satisfy fostered illusions, so as to enrich a very small percentage of humanity at the expense of the planet. It is a wildfire that depends on the consumption also of the life-support systems of the planet. It is a wildfire, moreover, that is about to over-run us and bring about a great collapse. Though I called this wildfire an “economic system”, it is not in fact a reality-based economic system, it is an economic system that is the greedy fantasy of the greedy, for it doesn’t even try and account for real costs, the costs to communities, to the environment, to the planet’s life support system. These are all “negative externalities” and no one pays for them except the poor, and future generations. No one pays for them until now that is, for now the damage from this carnival of covetousness is here to burn and drown and starve us us all, in the form of abrupt climate change.
You may say that this is a simple story that nature has told many times, that it naturally emerges from the very nature of evolutionary competition: in other words an aggressive successful species dominates and eventually overwhelms its sustaining environment so that with resource depletion, population collapse occurs. The species may recover, it may not. Our present situation has some other dangerous factors in addition to resource depletion, most pressing being climate change, followed by the lethal damage we may end up inflicting upon ourselves due to some combination of nuclear and/or biological warfare, or some other form of mass-produced stupidity.
But let us focus on climate change which in its incipient stages is already causing massive damage and considerable regime destabilization which needless to say, then heightens the possibility of those other horses of the Apocalypse chomping their way through what is left of humanity.
First, the level of danger posed by climate change cannot be overstated. Storms of intensity and type that have basically never been experienced by humanity in its time on the planet; storms of such violence that our infrastructure is inadequate to weather them; droughts and mega-droughts of such length and severity that our food systems collapse; killer heat waves of such length and intensity that people will try and survive indoors, but then may be forced into mass migrations as the high heat of the killer heat waves becomes the new normal average temperature; sea level rise of the multi-meter to hundred of feet level forcing the billions of humans living in the towns and cities and megacities on the oceans edges to relocate; ocean acidification proceeding to the point that the oceans approach Canfield ocean levels, ie., devoid of most of the life forms we know and in many ways depend on.
“We have dawdled for so long ignoring the warnings of top scientists that our current and near-term fossil-based energy infrastructure will, by itself, generate enough carbon pollution to take us to dangerous levels of warming. So if we are up to avert disaster, we not only need to keep speeding up the use of new clean energy, we also have to speed up the shut down of old dirty energy sources…. Here’s one way to frame the urgency: If the world does not make substantial and sustained progress in cutting total global warming emissions by 2030, then the window will be effectively closed for averting the catastrophic warming of 2°C or higher. Having lost the war to avoid catastrophic impacts, we will instead be fighting a war to save civilization itself.” -Joe Romm
1. On Your Marx, Get Set, Stop…
Sadly, goodness and a desire to survive do not seem to be sufficient motivating factors for solving the climate crisis. We have moreover run out of time. We are quite clearly and definitely going over the cliff to a different earth phase -a hot house state- and accompanying that plummet is the 6th great extinction, to which we, or at least a large number of us, will be both an instigator of and a party to. So given the intransigence of certain state and corporate (and indeed personal) actors, we need to look for models of bottom-up governance accelerant which will make it possible to at least give us a chance to teeter-totter at the edge of catastrophe, and perhaps, claw our way back if in fact we do topple over. Or, as is becoming increasingly likely, ensures that as many as possible survive the plunge through innovative, quickly put in place, adaptation measures. This is because -make no mistake about- as the “shit” of climate chaos increasingly hits the “fan” the tendency -already apparent- is for the rich to save the rich, and the rest be damned.
Let us reflect for a moment on how fast things can spread and change when they truly infect the body populace. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began as an informal study group that met in Shanghai starting in 1921. The first Party Congress was held in Shanghai in July 1921. Some 57 members, including Mao Zedong, attended the meeting. By 1949 they had won the civil war and announced the start of the People’s Republic. In other words, in 28 years they went from having about 57 members, to running the most populous country on Earth. This is on the scale and speed of what we must accomplish if we are to have a chance of avoiding total climate catastrophe. We need a bottom-up Green Revolution that over the course of 10 years or so if not less, moves us from our current greenhouse gas emission trajectory to one not just of zero emissions but of negative emissions. This is the physical reality of what the earth system requires for us to maintain a supportive biosphere for humanity.
“Softer aims might be politically realistic, but they are physically unrealistic. Only shifts commensurate with the scale of our existential crisis have any prospect of averting them. Hopeless realism, tinkering at the edges of the problem, got us into this mess. It will not get us out.” George Monbiot
2. Time is of the Essence and We are Out of Essence
Did I say ten years for radical decarbonization? A more careful incorporation of real earth system risks would say (would raise its hand politely and then shriek) five years. Why? Although the dangers of the climate change tipping points are fairly well understood, modeling of their reaction has been inadequate in terms of understanding that they are inter-connected, that when one one goes, we should not be surprised that more, or even all go in a devastating display of cascading dominos on a global level. We know that this is the way that the earth system has reacted in paleoclimatic abrupt climate changer events. There are other reasons to think we have about half the carbon budget that we think we have. These include “global dimming” and probable under-calculation of the effects of overshoot. None of this matters of course as emissions went up last year and are expected to go up again this year, all of this precisely at the best time for radically reducing emissions. So of course the choice we have made, or rather the choice our leaders and captains of industry have made, is to try and eke out a few more years of “growth” even though it is suicidal.
“Observations of past warming periods suggest that a number of amplifying mechanisms, which are poorly represented in climate models, increase long-term warming beyond climate model projections. This suggests the carbon budget to avoid 2°C of global warming may be far smaller than estimated, leaving very little margin for error to meet the Paris targets.” Prof Hubertus Fischer of the University of Bern, from “Palaeoclimate constraints on the impact of 2 °C anthropogenic warming and beyond.”
3. Let Them Eat Pixels
The irony in all of this, is that there is a very simple non-technological solution to the problem. Geoengineering is not required. The mass production of Negative Emission Technologies is not required. All we have to do is recognize that we are now in a war for our own survival, and recognizing that we declare a Global Climate Emergency. Ideally we get the Security Council to declare it -oh wait, Russia wants to continue enriching its oligarchs with oil and gas and be able down the road to sunbathe on the Arctic Ocean-, and 30 million or so Americans want to deny the reality of science so as to usher in “Armageddon” and be taken up in the “Second Coming.” So OK, forget the Security Council, but there is still a simple solution. Immediate carbon rationing commensurate in scale to buy us enough time to make a transition to a sustainable way of living on the planet. Yes of course, people in the wealthy carbon polluting countries would have to ride their bicycle more and give up meat on a daily basis, and there would be a temporary dip in economic growth until the green technologies take their place. But hey, we would live! The developing world would hardly feel a thing since their per-capita carbon output is so low.
We should also locally, nationally, and internationally target the real culprits: the 100 or so companies responsible for 71% of all carbon emissions, and the 26 or so billionaires who control half the world’s wealth. There is more than enough money tin those two sources to fund a fast, decent, fair transition to a sustainable and equitable global system of energy, food, water, health, shelter, and education provisioning. See! That was easy! But ah you say, the powers that be will not give up their ill-gotten dirty gains so easily. Well yes, that is why a revolution is coming. Now it could be that long, sustained, mass non-violent protests, will be enough to force leadership to do what needs to be done. We are already seeing many of these civil disturbances taking place, particularly in Europe, but elsewhere as well. On the other hand, as the situation gets worse -climate-wise, survivability-wise- the gloves will come off and we can anticipate mass upheaval with the concomitant discord misery and death that accompanies it. Vast armies of climate-change driven refugees will try to tear down internally and externally the players that destroyed their homes. We will not be able to blame them. They literally will have nothing else left to lose.
You laugh of course at the idea of carbon rationing, and you laugh at the idea that wealthy companies and individuals (and countries) will share their wealth so as to avoid calamity. But enough people in the streets, soon enough, and long enough, have a way of making the people watching them from their penthouse suites, nervous. Let us hope the wildfire of non-violent climate action protest spreads quickly enough so that we still have time to act.
"Our world is richer than ever before, but virtually all of it is being captured by a small elite. Only five percent of all new income from global growth trickles down to the poorest 60 percent—and yet they are the people who produce most of the food and goods that the world consumes, toiling away in those factories, plantations and mines to which they were condemned 200 years ago. It is madness—and no amount of mansplaining from billionaires will be adequate to justify it.” Jason Hickels
4. The Long and the Very Short of It: Enlisting Both the Vultures of Capitalism and Our Better Angels
So what is going to happen is this: we are most probably not going to get our shit together in time to avoid going over the abrupt climate change cliff. We just don’t seem to be able to respond to a danger moving at this speed (instantaneously in terms of geological time, but hypnotically too slow to trigger our flight or fight response). The money makers who control the world want to go on making money as long as possible. And the lumpen masses are too beguiled by the gaudy but fake jewels the rich dangle in front of them for them to stop shopping and go out into the streets and save the world. But we will react. We will react when things get so bad that we finally get it. Then we will throw everything we have at it. Negative Emission Gadgets will be mass produced like Sherman tanks from a GM factory.
We will do our best through geoengineering or mega-engineering to refreeze the arctic and antarctic. This will be the best way to stabilize weather extremes and prevent the inconvenience of relocating billions from our coastal cities. It will also be the cheapest alternative. A carbon price will finally be put in place. Radical reforestation and afforestation coupled with a radical re-thinking of our industrial farming practices will be attempted as a way of restoring traditional carbon sinks. Water from air technologies will become widespread both as a way of maintaining the new forests, and making it through droughts and mega-droughts. All of us, in way, will become refugees on a new planet, until we patiently and over the course of decades and centuries, repair the damage we have done and bring back as much as Earth’s verdant, impossibly beautiful and varied life, as we can.
“The year 2020 is crucially important for another reason, one that has more to do with physics than politics. When it comes to climate, timing is everything. According to an April report (prepared by Carbon Tracker in London, the Climate Action Tracker consortium, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut), should emissions continue to rise beyond 2020, or even remain level, the temperature goals set in Paris become almost unattainable. The UN Sustainable Development Goals that were agreed in 2015 would also be at grave risk.” https://www.nature.com/news/three-years-to-safeguard-our-climate-1.22201
“…the extent, severity, pace and closing window of opportunity to avoid potentially catastrophic outcomes has led many scientists to conclude we have entered a new era of rapid environmental change. We define this as the ‘age of environmental breakdown’ to better highlight the severity of the scale, pace and implication.” Juan Cole introducing the IPPR Report “This is a Crisis, Facing Up to the Age of Environmental Breakdown”
“I am deeply pessimistic. I really see no path to success on climate change. … To mobilize people, this has to become an emotional issue. It has to have immediacy and salience. A distant abstract and disputed threat doesn’t have the necessary characteristics for seriously mobilizing public opinion.” George Marshall
5. Some Hopefully Not Final Tossed-Off Ideas for Cannibalizing What is Left Into Something Beautiful
Just as the horrors of World War II gave birth to a few ideas -like the United Nations- seeming to indicate that humanity might yet have some redeeming value, so the Times of Climate Chaos can be expected to usher in much that will be new, and some that will be valuable. In no particular order or in any semblance of levels of practicality or lack thereof, here are a few:
World People’s Bank: flipping the fact that 26 billionaires own as much as half of all humanity, we empower half of humanity with their own people-owned savings and loan. Combining their assets lifts them to powerhouse status and allows them to chart their own destiny (instead of being indebted for generations to the IMF and various lender countries…).
International Environmental Court: Because so much of climate justice involves recognizing that much of the earth system functions as a commons, the International Environmental Court will address those issues which national legal systems do not.
Global Green Alliance: Just in case there are some recalcitrant countries in terms of a rapid transition to an ecocivilizational approach to living on the planet, the Global Green Alliance will offer favorable deals to its members and not such favorable deals to the despoilers of the planet. Gradually everyone will belong!
Blockchain Based Climate Participation/Climate Justice Mechanisms: This requires a more in depth explanation than I can give here, but suffice it to say, coupled with the Internet of Things, true ownership of the means of production can be shared more equitably than at present (in which it isn’t equitably shared at all).
Water from Air Generators will be the water supply equivalent of cell phones in obviating the need for traditional types of water infrastructure. This will free the rivers, among other things, to be rivers again.
Vertical Farming: remove the parasitical exploitation of Earth’s natural ecosystems that the current forms of human agriculture are. We will be able to make more with less, at less toil.
Recognition for the Sovereignty of the Refugee: New Refugee Eco-Civilizational Cities: With some 67 million refugees now, and climate change refugee projection figures in the 100’s of million to the several billions, it is time to recognize the sovereignty of the worlds refugees. Let’s give them a real home. Beautiful visionary eco-civilizational cities on for example the North American Great Plains would do wonders for the economy.
Smart Skins: instead of heating buildings, homes and our local environment, etc., mass production of smart -temperature adjusting skins- will save a lot of energy and give us the freedom of animals again, I mean for those who want the freedom of animals.
Geneto-architecture: let’s design our homes and structures at the genetic level and just plant them and water them and let them grow. Soil, water, and light are enough to make a good pumpkin, why not an adequate single family home?
That’s all for now!
“The stunning price drops in wind and solar power have continued. No longer are U.S. solar and wind plants merely cheaper than coal plants — they are also more affordable than new natural gas plants. And this is without subsidies or a price on carbon. Indeed, according to the financial firm Lazard Ltd, in many areas, building and running new renewables is now cheaper than just running old coal and nuclear plants.” Joe Romm, Think Progress
Question: “Will we be the first species we know that precipitated its own extinction as well as the extinction of however much of the biosphere we take with us – and watched it happen before our eyes and continued to do exactly what we know was causing it?” -Anonymous-
Answer: No!
References
- “Radical Transformation: Oligarchy, Collapse, and the Crisis of Civilization” Kevin MacKay, Kindle 2018.https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-09-25/the-ecological-crisis-is-a-political-crisis/
- Hubertus Fischer, Katrin J. Meissner, Alan C. Mix, Nerilie J. Abram, Jacqueline Austermann, Victor Brovkin, Emilie Capron, Daniele Colombaroli, Anne-Laure Daniau, Kelsey A. Dyez, Thomas Felis, Sarah A. Finkelstein, Samuel L. Jaccard, Erin L. McClymont, Alessio Rovere, Johannes Sutter, Eric W. Wolff, Stéphane Affolter, Pepijn Bakker, Juan Antonio Ballesteros-Cánovas, Carlo Barbante, Thibaut Caley, Anders E. Carlson, Olga Churakova, Giuseppe Cortese, Brian F. Cumming, Basil A. S. Davis, Anne de Vernal, Julien Emile-Geay, Sherilyn C. Fritz, Paul Gierz, Julia Gottschalk, Max D. Holloway, Fortunat Joos, Michal Kucera, Marie-France Loutre, Daniel J. Lunt, Katarzyna Marcisz, Jennifer R. Marlon, Philippe Martinez, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, Christoph Nehrbass-Ahles, Bette L. Otto-Bliesner, Christoph C. Raible, Bjørg Risebrobakken, María F. Sánchez Goñi, Jennifer Saleem Arrigo, Michael Sarnthein, Jesper Sjolte, Thomas F. Stocker, Patricio A. Velasquez Alvárez, Willy Tinner, Paul J. Valdes, Hendrik Vogel, Heinz Wanner, Qing Yan, Zicheng Yu, Martin Ziegler, Liping Zhou.
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