How many warnings do a lot of people want out there?! Really!! I was brought up on Jacques Cousteau and his great work. It's not like we don't know the ecologically destructive consequences of certain actions within prevailing socio-economic systems. It really is a distressing time which, unless checked by effective political action, will get worse. It’s time for political and intellectual leadership, letting the public know with a force and vigour that cannot be overlooked that, without significant climate action, the basis of civilised life on earth will be destroyed.
I've been arguing - for the umpteenth time - for a concept of environmental security based on planetary realities and involving concerted action within a comprehensive global framework. Against this, ‘real politics’ remains mired in a military conception of security based on national rivalries. That kind of politics is outmoded, and so will we be if we don’t develop new forms of political expression. I may as well have written it all in hieroglyphs for what effect it has had on a lot of people. But, of course, as I’ve argued for years, moral and rational appeals to the common good lack critical and political purchase within asymmetrical social relations in which social identities make the satisfaction of immediate individual self-interest the dominant form of rational action, with notions of long range common good available only in abstract form.
I’ve been going down some titles on things I’ve written over the years on my Being and Place site. It makes for depressing reading, so many people issuing so many warnings, so many times, all those years ago: ‘50 Months Left to Tackle Climate Change’ (2012); ‘Countdown to 2017’ (2012); ‘Teetering on the Brink of Climate Catastrophe’ (2010); ‘Seven Years to Save the Planet’ (2008). I try to avoid the paralysing sin of deadline-ism, but here were three headlines I took from the work of others. There’s been action. But the clock has wound down. 2017 is here, and we are being told we have another three years to avoid runaway climate change.
The first entry on my blog is:
‘The Final Curtain, or the Need for a Biospheric Politics’ (2008)
We still need a politics that is fitted to planetary boundaries, a politics which supplies a principle of self-limitation through recognition of physical realities as revealed by good sound science. This is the subject of this piece.
I’m not sure that we have that ‘or’ any more. We should have long since shifted to a biospheric politics, and we would be better placed now had we done so. But instead, the same old greed and stupidity in the name of real politics. That’s a misleading way of phrasing the problem, mind, in that it gives the impression that the climate crisis is located in human nature. Old Adam gets the blame as usual. Actually, it is some human beings who are the cause of the problem, with behaviours and actions structured within certain social relations generating ecologically damaging consequences. If it is greed and stupidity that is the problem, then it is a greed and stupidity that is systemically structured and directed to produce environmental degradation and destruction. That’s where we need to focus when we write of the need for system change.
In terms of the state of play concerning climate science, I'm giving very short shrift now to those who are lagging behind. If they express doubt, I supply ample materials to fill any gaps in their knowledge. If they remain doubtful, I judge that they are choosing a state of doubt. The evidence is overwhelming, and scientists and climate communicators have done a good job in making the case for anthropogenic global warming crystal clear. It’s easy enough to get the message, and people have had long enough now to get the message.
Take a look at NASA’s pages on global climate change, giving evidence, causes, effects and solutions, with a wealth of resources and articles, and a Frequently Asked Questions page to satisfy anyone’s intellectual curiosity.
https://climate.nasa.gov/
There’s no excuse for ignorance. Anyone who doesn’t know simply doesn’t want to know. To those people I say, you have been unworthy of the gift of life. These people are acting to deny others the rightful fulfilment of that gift.
Is it "requiem for the human species", as Clive Hamilton put it in 2010? A failed experiment? I check this kind of thinking. It is not the ‘human species’ as such that is the cause of this problem, and it is not ‘humans’ as such standing in the way of solutions – it is particular humans defending particular positions and interests within the prevailing social system. We need to identify them and move them out of the way. Or, optimistically, encourage them into cooperation through a new public life and a positive-sum politics. We can design the institutions and relations of such a society.
A lot of people have some hard questions to answer - but they won't be bothered one way or another. As the UN Harmony with Nature puts it, living well, in fullness and harmony, with a new pact between humans and other beings and bodies on the planet, has always been the way forward.
http://www.harmonywithnatureun.org/
But too many vested interests have succeeded in embedding their power to pursue the immediate private gains at the expense of that wholeness and fullness – they have treated nature as a free lunch, and gorged themselves on it. And they don’t want to give up their top table at the feast. The despoliation of this beautiful gift of a green and blue earth through foul usury - all their much vaunted 'progress' - has been devoted to their pathetic and pointless existence.
Frankly, this world is in an even deeper mess than anyone could have imagined. It will be hard to stave off despair. The hard facts alone make it difficult to make the case for hope. I'm looking at positive feedback. I’ve spent years warning on how carbon sinks are going to turn into carbon sources - positive feedback, increasing CO2 -> increasing global heating -> increasing CO2 -> increasing global warming. I'm doing my best to maintain a silent contempt for those that have brought us to this – it really is more profitable to analyse problems and identify solutions and highlight transitions, implementations and actions. There is, however, real tragedy in the fact that this could all have been avoided, with more good will and less hardball politics and greed. I'm not sure where solace is to be found. There is some dignity and self-respect in knowing you have lived right and spoken up and acted in the Last Great Cause. It's going to be difficult not to become embittered at the level of environmental destruction to come. I don’t want to suffer the sight of those who have delayed the longest being the ones squealing the loudest as to why something wasn't done to avert disaster - I'm afraid we'll have to call it for what it is, infantilism, spoiled individuals pursuing their wants and desires without any thought of restraint or genuine happiness. I think the architects of this are already planning to insulate themselves as best they can from the whirlwind to come. It is the passive mass of voters and citizens who will be most shocked, I think, demanding to know why governments who knew the truth failed to act on it with force and vigour. Climate litigation may well be the way to get governments to start acting effectively now. It’s about time.
With respect to climate denial with respect to both problems and solutions, I am having to give up.
I give ample materials concerning the science of climate change, I show why it matters, I present the likely consequences of failure to take effective action in time, I make the moral appeal, I present the case in terms of agreement and consensus and the creation of political will from below, I emphasise the need for concerted action within a comprehensive framework, I argue that such large scale projects need to be set within small scale practical reasoning, local actions and love of place, I present practical solutions that are available and transitions that are underway, I emphasise the ways in which climate action is not imposed from outside of communities but owned by people. I could go on. There is more than enough here to satisfy anyone who has a genuine interest and concern.
I have had to answer a few people out there who still stand in need of persuasion on environmental action. How dispiriting it is to be met with the objections – and insults - I have heard too many times over a period of too many years. ‘Alarmists’, the ice is thickening not melting, the oceans are not acidifying … the same rubbish I heard years ago, which tells me immediately I am in the presence of hardball climate deniers who are out to waste time and sap energies. The planet is out of time and I am out of patience. Only knaves and fools are not heeding the all hands on deck call, and I have no time for them. I move quickly past them now. They can waste their own time. They are clearly living to no great purpose beyond their own oafish physical selves.
We need real commitment now and real participation at multiple levels from various partners in the ecological transformation of ‘the political’, and no slacking and compromising for political reasons. Politics is said to be the art of the possible – but when we see the need to fit politics to environmental realities, we are charged with doing the political impossible. Looking at this (with an optimistic spin), this is a line drawn in the sand moment, with only those committed to the real and substantial changes we need stepping up to the task in hand. Paris was only a start, it has weaknesses, plus we cannot engineer our way out of this problem - we have always needed more than institutional and technological measures - if it is going to be war with free riders, exploiters, emitters and polluters on the planet, then so be it, we have needed system change for a long time. If they step over the line in order to obstruct, we push them out. They are not interested in dialogue, only destruction.
I make a point of never letting negative forces and people set the agenda of my life (it's getting more and more difficult). I see Trump as a symptom of greater institutional failures rather than their cause – he is exploiting the problems at the heart of the system, and his supporters are responding to his promises, but he has no solution and his promises are bogus. He is selling snake oil, and behind the sales-pitch is the extension and entrenchment of corporate power. In this, he is exposing normally concealed power relations to public light and controversy. He may now be forcing us to ask the difficult questions concerning dominant political and economic paradigms that have been avoided for too long - he may thus, unwittingly, catalyse the system change we need.
Over the years, I’ve written a lot on the anti-government ideology behind the denial of climate problems and solutions. It is this political ideology allied to economic interests that lies behind the rejection of science. And the rejection of religion, too, I would add. How utterly pathetic it is to read reactionary Catholics accusing those urging action with respect to the Pope’s encyclical Laudato Si of being ‘bullies for Francis’. I can take this back to Pope John Paul II if they like, and Peace with God the Creator, Peace with All of Creation.
http://ecologicalconversionlg.weebly.com/john-paul-ii-peace-with-god-the-creator-peace-with-all-of-creation.html
‘John Paul II says there is growing awareness today that world peace is threatened by lack of respect for nature, using up too many natural resources and a constant decrease in quality of life. This also leads to selfishness, disregard for others and dishonesty. Now that we have destroyed the environment people have realised that we can’t continue to use up the earth’s resources. An ecological awareness is beginning to spread throughout the public as well as political leaders, which should be encouraged. Many of the challenges throughout the earth depend on each other; this means that solutions need to be logical and useable around the whole world.’
Here, Pope John Paul II describes the ecological crisis as a common responsibility:
‘The ecological crisis is the responsibility of everyone. It also proves the need for collaborations between countries, states, communities and individuals. We also need to preserve the environment for future generations. Even people who are not religious realise their duty to the contribution of restoring the environment to a healthy state; so those who believe in God and his plan for creation and believe in the unity and order in the world, should especially be ready to contribute to the cause. For Christians this is an important part of their faith.
Catholics should be particularly committed to helping the earth through their belief in God the Creator, their recognition of sin, both the sin original sin of Adam and Eve and also personal sin, and finally from the knowledge that they were reconciled by Jesus Christ.
In 1979, St Francis of Assisi was declared patron of those promoting ecology because of his genuine respect for nature. He was a friend to the poor and loved by all of creation and tells us that when we are at peace with God we can devote ourselves to creating peace between creation. Pope John Paul II hopes that St Francis will inspire us to keep a sense of brotherhood and harmony between all of God’s creation and also that it is our duty to respect and look after it, just in the way that exists within our human family.’
And Pope John Paul II describes the ecological crisis as ‘a moral problem.’
Elsewhere, he calls for an ‘ecological conversion’, arguing that God had a plan that we would live in harmony with our fellow creatures, with creation and with God. Now, however, the human ecology is in danger as well as the physical ecology and humans must consider the fact that there are other creatures that we have to protect. We must also protect the environment for future generations and live closer to the plan of God.
John Paul II: The Ecological Conversion
http://ecologicalconversionlg.weebly.com/john-paul-ii-ecological-conversion.html
I have friends who don’t believe in God, but who are acting to preserve the health of the ecological fabric of the planet. I have friends who do believe in God, and are also acting to protect the environment. The reasons may differ, but those practising Creation Care and Earthcare are at one on this. I can only say this, that if you do believe in a Creator God, it would seem obvious that such a God would require that his or her or its Creation to be valued, respected and loved, as God so loved the world …
I refuse to dignify the case of those who indulge in abusive rhetoric such as ‘bullies for Francis’ by naming them or citing their arguments. They are out there, for anyone concerned to investigate. In word and deed, they contradict the teachings of the Church.
“All cultures value truth, equity and the Golden Rule. Societies who stray from these principles ultimately rot from within and die unmourned.”
It’s the highly political anti-political, anti-government aspect of climate denial that is my concern here, the strenuous efforts that are made to undermine each, every and any effort at collective restraint, action and responsibility through the public realm.
I say that libertarianism departs from these principles, and the influence of this pernicious creed is rotting the political system and preventing the emergence of a public community capable of acting upon principles of climate justice. Unchecked, that politics will bring about a political and planetary unravelling.
Misinforming the Majority: A Deliberate Strategy of Right-Wing Libertarians
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/41206-misinforming-the-majority-a-deliberate-strategy-of-right-wing-libertarians
Nancy MacLean details the deliberate and concerted assault upon public conceptions of freedom and happiness, upon the collective and associative forms of law, life and action which are essential to human beings as social beings.
‘The modern extreme right wing I'm talking about, just to be clear, is the libertarian movement that now sails under the Republican flag, particularly but not only the Freedom Caucus, yet goes back to the 1950s in both parties. President Eisenhower called them "stupid" and fashioned his approach -- calling it modern Republicanism -- as an antidote to them. Goldwater was their first presidential candidate. He bombed. Reagan, they believed, was going to enact their agenda. He didn't. But beginning in the early 2000s, they became a force to be reckoned with. What had changed? The discovery by their chief funder, Charles Koch, of the approach developed by James McGill Buchanan for how to take apart the liberal state.
Buchanan studied economics at the University of Chicago and belonged to the same milieu as F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises, but he used his training to analyze public life. And he supplied what no one else had: an operational strategy to vanquish the model of government they had been criticizing for decades -- and prevent it from being recreated. It was Buchanan who taught Koch that for capitalism to thrive, democracy must be enchained.’
In a nutshell, he studied the workings of the political process to figure out what was needed to deny ordinary people -- white and Black -- the ability to make claims on government at the expense of private property rights and the wishes of capitalists. And then he identified how to rejigger that political process not only to reverse the gains but also to prevent the system from ever reverting back. He sought, in his words, to "enchain Leviathan."’
MacLean calls this Democracy in Chains.
She is right. I am currently working on Rousseau, who saw man in chains everywhere. Rousseau did not make the mistake of equating freedom with liberation from all chains. He was decidedly not a libertarian in this sense. Instead, he saw freedom as a civic freedom constituted by human beings coming together as a matter of conscious choice to subject themselves to the legitimate chains of law and public institutions, living by ends that they have set themselves. In other words, an internal moral-legal self-constraint through common force takes the place of an external systemic constraint through alien force – the very opposite of the iniquitous and untrammelled private economic force imposed by the so-called libertarians.
In passing, I’ll note the nasty connotations that MacLean identifies with respect to libertarianism:
‘White southerners who opposed racial equality and economic justice knew from their own region's long history that the only way they could protect their desired way of life was to keep federal power at bay, so that majoritarian democracy could not reach into the region. The causes of Calhoun, Buchanan and Koch-style economic liberty and white supremacy were historically twined at the roots, which makes them very hard to separate, regardless of the subjective intentions of today's libertarians.’
I have come across the ‘anti-government’ ideologues and I have criticised them for their attempts to devalue and disable government and the public realm so as to atomise and disempower the citizen body and leave them as passive individuals confronting the unrestrained collective force of private property, economic imperatives and untrammelled markets – the anonymous, irresponsible power of the rich and powerful within the corporate form takes the place of a genuine public life constituted on the basis of the principle of self-assumed principle. That’s my focus, pointing to a systematic denial and destruction of popular sovereignty, law as embodiment of the common good and political legitimacy. MacLean here exposes another aspect, and a very ugly one too. From top to bottom, ‘libertarianism’ is about entrenching and extending iniquitous power within asymmetrical social relations.
We know this game now, and I’ve spent a lifetime trying to bring it out into the open. It’s in the open now. We don’t need any liberal side debates concerning divisions between left and right, radical and moderate. First and foremost, this is about recovering and reconstituting the public realm and, in light of the above analysis, this cannot but involve a critique of political economy and a commitment to transform asymmetries in power and resources. And if people are so timid as to reject that as too radical, then the case is clearly made in both Plato and Aristotle, the two key conservative voices of ancient Greece. I have made the case in terms of objective standards and transcendent norms, grounds that conservative critics of the left and its supposed relativism claim to stand upon. I have no time for sophists either, and I’m finding that it is the extreme right, selling out every principle to private power and interest, who are the biggest sophists on the planet now, the true heirs of Thrasymachus’ ‘might is right’. I’ll stand with the true conservative Plato against them any day. And I’ll stand with the transcendent truths of God and religious values against their vision of a world divided between rich and poor, winners and losers, every time too.
It’s a time to be effective in problem-solving and institution building, not frightened by political ghosts and shadows. The real enemy is clear and in public view now. Let’s put this failed political and economic model in the bin of history where it belongs. Reclaim public life and reconstitute the body politic around notions of popular sovereignty. And in the process save the planet from becoming a rubbish heap.
As regards the politics of climate change, the way ahead is clear:
The science is settled. ‘Debates’ over the science of climate change are irrelevant – anyone who needs to be informed with respect to the climate crisis has ample resources to draw upon. There is no ‘debate’, and to the extent that there is, shows clear evidence of deliberate political diversion. The science is clear and, without significant challenge based on solid evidence and research, establishes the grounds for climate action. So we move the issue directly onto political grounds to seek effective institutional and legal action with respect to climate change.
Common agreement, creating will and legitimacy amongst citizens with respect to the action taken, and the political action which follows, needs to be efficient, equitable and effective. Here, debate is perfectly legitimate. The science gives us the objective foundation of the true and the good, but these cannot just be given passively or in authoritarian manner, they must be willed. Here is where we build a climate constituency, giving people the democratic and material interest in climate action. Here we close any democratic gaps and deficits that ‘populist’ and ‘libertarian’ political movements seek to open and exploit.
To be efficient, equitable and effective, political needs to be in tune with planetary realities as indicated by the science. Here, we bring objective and subjective together, putting the science in touch with the politics so that knowledge, values, will and motivations are integrated.
Governments charged with securing the public good thus undertake scientifically grounded measures that are legally binding, enacted, and enforced. That requires the reconstitution of public life around a common power that is capable of exercising a common force that is legitimate and just. Here, we establish the case for government and law as the public expression of the common good, not merely a condition of freedom, but as a dimension of that freedom, embodying and articulating the sovereign will of the people, a will that has come to have active relation to and common recognition of the true and the good.
That’s a world beyond divisions between rich and poor, strong and weak, a world of justice in which the freedom and happiness of each individual is conditional upon and coexistent with the freedom and happiness of all individuals. That’s a world quite distinct from ‘libertarianism’ as the anarchy of the rich and the powerful. It’s called a public realm. It is the public life that human beings, as social beings, require in order to flourish. Zero-sum politics splits public community up into winners and losers. It is sociologically and anthropologically illiterate as well as being morally bankrupt – we need each other in order to be ourselves.