All that is solid melts into air - and water
All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
Marx MCP Rev1848 1973:71
In this famous quote from the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx was referring to the speed with which the capital system dissolves social relationships, leaving nothing between individuals other than the nexus of callous cash payment.
Capitalist relations have ‘resolved personal worth into exchange value’ and set up the single, unconscionable freedom of free trade.
Clearly, Marx’s concern is with the capital system as a social and moral implosion. ‘In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.’ (Marx MCP Rev1848 1973).
However, the phrase ‘all that is solid melts into air’ is capable of wider application with respect to capital’s relation to Nature as a whole. Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic targeted the Lutheran and Calvinist work ethic as the mentality which disenchanted Nature, profaning what was once considered sacred in the natural environment. Marx’s career began with his article on the legal persecution of the theft of timber in Prussia. What had been a customary right of the people for centuries suddenly became a criminal offence through the private ownership of the forests. The global enclosure of the commons, land, sea and air, every resource that private commercial interests could acquire and commodify, is an example of all that is holy being profaned.
Weber linked the process to the Protestant work ethic. In a chapter entitled ‘The Spirit of Capitalism’, Weber writes of a ‘calculating sort of profit-seeking’.
The ability of mental concentration, as well as the absolutely essential feeling of obligation to one's job., are here most often combined with a strict economy which calculates the possibility of high earnings, and a cool self-control and frugality which enormously increase performance. This provides the most favourable foundation for the conception of labour as an end in itself, as a calling which is necessary to capitalism: the chances of overcoming traditionalism are greatest on account of the religious upbringing. (Weber 1985:62/3)
Similarly it is one of the fundamental characteristics of an individualistic capitalistic economy that it is rationalized on the basis of rigorous calculation, directed with foresight and caution toward the economic success which is sought in sharp contrast to the hand-to-mouth existence of the peasant, and to the privileged traditionalism of the guild craftsman and of the adventurers' capitalism, oriented to the exploitation of political opportunities and irrational speculation.
Weber 1985: 76
In the Manifesto, Marx refers directly to ‘the icy water of egotistical calculation.’ We are about to drown in it.
Weber argued that whereas ‘the Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so.’ The asceticism of the monastic cells became a worldly morality and helped build ‘the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order’ whose technical and economic conditions ‘to-day determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism … with irresistible force.’ But this economic order of the iron cage isn’t just built upon the calculating spirit, it is built upon the exploitation of Nature. ‘Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt.’ (Weber 1985: 181).
Capitalism is a carboniferous economy that has been powered by fossil fuels. That casts Marx’s quote ‘all that is solid melts into air’ into new light. The burning of fossil fuels since the industrial revolution has sent the world's temperatures hurtling upwards, threatening an unprecedented global catastrophe. There is a bitter irony here in that a capitalist economy, hailed as the most productive economic system in history, thrives only on ancient waste products that earlier generations, with a greater sense of the sacred, decided to leave sealed up beneath the Earth’s skin. Capitalism is cannibalistic, it is a necropolis that lives only on dead matter. The damage done to Nature’s life support systems as a result of the emission of carbon dioxide causing greenhouse gases is becoming increasingly apparent. But carbon emissions heating the planet and causing a global temperature rise are now causing the most drastic melt of all, that of Arctic ice sheets. All that was once the most solid form of all on Earth is rapidly melting into the water.
The problem with predictions is that many people, rather than treat them as prophetic warnings to act upon, thus changing the course of history in a more favourable direction, are inclined to postpone action until the dates get closer. With climate change, that attitude is fatal. The nightmare future arrives with alarming speed. The closer we get to the midnight hour, the less rational will our response be. The window of opportunity closes quicker than we think. Human reason shuts down quicker than political, institutional and technical possibilities.
We cannot say we haven’t been warned. Climate scientists have been warning since the 1990s that, unless clear and decisive action was taken, the Arctic Ocean could be ice free in the summer by the mid-twenty first century. The same warnings were issued after 2000. These warnings have not just been ignored by many, they have been openly rejected and ridiculed by those with a vested interest in the carbon economy. As recently as 2009 the printed and electronic media carried opinions which openly stated that the ice in the Arctic was thickening, not thinning, extending, not melting. It depends on what and where you measure and how you measure it. In 2009 Leo McKinstry repeated Christopher Booker’s claim that ‘there is no less ice at the poles than there was 30 years ago.’ The same year, Daily Mail journalist Stephen Glover referred to ‘bogus pictures of polar bears perched on lumps of ice’. Turning a particular into a universal is the local-global fallacy. It’s a neat trick if you want to deceive and misinform, but there is a price to be paid for believing such falsehood. It’s like measuring the little ice that is thickening in a certain place, at a certain time (winter), and then concluding that claims of a melt are a myth.
We can now see these standard claims made in the newspapers as the vicious, death-dealing, self-serving stupidity it is. The journalists, of course, are merely serving and reinforcing the prejudices of their readers. H.L. Mencken defined democracy as the worship of jackals by jackasses, and some such relation prevails between the press and the public. Oscar Wilde quipped that whilst good literature is unread, newspapers are unreadable. The human species is defined as homo sapiens, rational man. Reading the newspapers and the human race looks more like the missing link between Australopithecus and homo sapiens. It is about time we started living up to our billing and responding to reason rather than prejudice and desire. Now that would be a true democracy, as against the idiocracy we now have.
The melting of the Arctic ice makes it clear that we need to leave the cave of illusion and start living by the light of natural reason.
In August 2012 researchers analysing data from the European Space Agency's observation satellite CryoSat-2 found that the loss of sea ice had proceeded much further than their own forecasts had predicted. Measuring sea ice by both depth and area, the scientists claim that the Arctic could be an open sea in summer within a decade.
Arctic sea ice shrinks to smallest extent ever recorded
Rate of summer ice melt smashes two previous record lows and prompts warnings of accelerated climate change
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/sep/14/arctic-sea-ice-smallest-extent
Arctic expert predicts final collapse of sea ice within four years
As sea ice shrinks to record lows, Prof Peter Wadhams warns a 'global disaster' is now unfolding in northern latitudes
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/sep/17/arctic-collapse-sea-ice
The cries of ‘eco-alarmism’ will sound less and less convincing the more the evidence of our senses confirms the researches of the scientists, but here is the bitter irony – by the time sufficient numbers realise that there really is a problem and urgent action is required, it will be too late.
Why are melting ice caps so important? The ice cap keeps the Arctic cold. Rather than being absorbed and warming the planet, sunlight hits the white ice and reflects back into space. Dark ocean absorbs sunlight and generates warmth, starting a positive feedback that destroys the finely balanced eco-system. As sunlight is absorbed and warms the area, next winter's ice pack becomes thinner and less enduring, meaning that in turn more light is absorbed and the area becomes even warmer. And so on it goes.
Weather patterns in the northern hemisphere are governed by the dynamics between the heat of the tropics and the cold of the Arctic governs. The frozen ocean and permafrost in the Arctic prevents a melting in which ground methane escapes into the atmosphere, thus accelerating global warming. The polar seas are crucial to the health of the marine ecosystem upon which north Atlantic fish stocks depend. The consequences of ice loss are nothing short of calamitous. Some have sounded the alarm, and been denigrated as ‘eco-alarmists’ as a reward. Governments and governed have united in an ecology of fear with respect to state engineered and fuelled war and terrorism, frittering away liberties earned by common struggle over centuries. Panicky in the extreme with respect to the illusory enemies invented by governments, the public response when confronted by a problem that threatens the whole natural basis of life has been indifferent at best. Many seem to agree with the likes of geologist Ian Plimer when he says ‘Climates always change. They always have and they always will.’ And you always have the weather with you. It is such a trite observation that we need to understand why some people invest it with great significance. It’s like saying that water is wet and the sun is hot and the Daily Express is mindless, boring and mean. No-one disagrees. That’s not what the controversy is about. It’s seems as though the human race at this stage of its evolution is just tired and has given up thinking of a future that is anything other than the present enlarged. It is the end of history, the end of ‘rational man’. The warnings have been many and are now being delivered with a force and clarity only those bent on ecocide could ignore. Too few in government and too few amongst the governed have shown sufficient concern thus far. Politicians the world over are in bad odour, seemingly incapable of resolving the myriad problems besetting the global community. Yet voters keep voting the same faces with the same tired, cliché ridden slogans and sound bites back in. There is a joke about the woman who has lost the keys to her house. She spends ages walking round and round a lamppost and is asked by a passer-by what she is doing. ‘I’m looking for my keys’, she replies. ‘Is this where you lost them?’ she is asked. ‘No’, she replies, ‘but it is the easiest place to look’. Albert Einstein said that stupidity is doing the same thing time and again and yet expecting different results. The kind of thinking that got us into the mess in the first place is not going to get us out of that mess. But governments keep doing the same thing. Politics the world over is government and governed walking round and round in ever decreasing circles, incapable of making a game-changing breakthrough. And they do it because it is the easiest thing to do. And it’s stupid.
The bleak news from the Arctic has been accompanied by a dire warning from the tropics. Nature Climate Change carries a report from scientific researchers that the double menace of increasing greenhouse gas emissions and rising ocean acidity threaten the end for most of the world's coral reefs. Coral reefs are remarkable but delicate structures and flourish at the limits of their tolerance. They like it hot, but tend to ‘bleach’ and even die quickly when temperatures rise and it gets just a little too hot. In the exceptional tropic summer of 1998, some 16% of all living corals perished. Coral reefs are important for reasons of coastal protection, tourism and fishing. Not only livelihoods but life of infinite variety depend upon coral reefs; they are home, habitat and hunting territory for some quarter of all marine species. Yet warnings of their demise are met with a suicidal indifference. A species so ignorant of the conditions of its own health and well-being will not last long, at least not in this form.
Scientific illiterates like Christopher Booker like to sneer at computer modelling, arguing that these computer models are ‘programmed to assume the chief cause of global warming is the rise in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.’ It’s a familiar charge and it gains it’s power from the appeal to the laypersons sense of reality as against the supposedly rarefied abstractions of computer models. There’s only thing wrong with that charge – it’s rot from first to last. Leaving aside the fact that the scientists rely on more than computer modelling and engage in every variety of field research for evidence, the computer modelling looks at every scenario, isolating each factor in attempt to determine its influence on known results. And the modelling is based on solid empirical evidence. Booker recognises none of this. He doesn’t seem to know. Which begs the question of just what the nature of Booker’s expertise is.
Paul N Edwards, associate professor in the School of Information at Michigan University has subjected the claim that man made global warming is based on narrow and faulty computer modelling to close analysis. In A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press 2011), Edwards presents a meticulously detailed argument, setting the problem of global warming in the context of the history and development of climate science. In chapter after chapter, with a wealth of detail to support his case, Edwards exposes the complete vacuity of the computer modelling objection. Edwards emphasises the painstaking and complex nature of the data gathering process, showing the necessary role that evaluation plays at every stage, from the placement and functioning of the hundreds of thousands of primary data sensors, to their final integration after some 10 or 20 steps, into a usable result. Set against the millions of pieces of data manipulation that go to form the global climate picture, the issues that deniers raise with respect to so-called 'Climategate' are utterly inconsequential. The deniers are simply inflating the importance of supposed anomalies so as to discredit climate science as such. And computer modelling is such an easy target for no other reason than people understand intuitively that a computer is not the real world. Edwards shows how intricate and painstaking the steps are in computer modelling. In referring in the blandest terms to computer modelling, Christopher Booker and his likes merely reveal the extent of their ignorance.
The scientists publishing in Nature Climate Change used not one but nineteen different climate models in an attempt to predict the effects of a 2C increase in global average temperatures. Their findings point to some 70% of the reefs suffering "long-term degradation" by 2030.
Far from being ‘eco-alarmist’, scientific conclusions like this relay the facts coldly and clinically. A phrase like ‘long-term degradation’ pulls its punches. It is an eco-catastrophe, but it is probably wise not to say so bluntly, lest alarm cloud the scientific reason. Panic will help no-one. Only cool heads and strategic thinking will get the human race out of this mess brought to us by carboniferous capitalism and a free market individualism that has unleashed a self-destructive egoism, desire and inclination.
In fact, those who think that the temperature rise could be stabilised at 2C are working at the optimistic end of the spectrum. Rational pessimists in the climate change community think that a 6C rise in global mean temperatures is more likely within the next century.
And still, the denial, it’s natural, it’s not happening, nothing can be done, we prefer the licence of egoism to the genuine freedom that balances the claims of each and all, we refuse to be taxed, regulated, constrained – except by capitalism’s iron cage of material, mechanistic determinism. Amazing how many libertarians amongst the general public unthinkingly drone their lives away, doing work they do not like in order to buy consumer tat they do not need. And they flatter themselves that they are free and happy. Idiots, in the Greek sense of idiotes, individuals concerned only with their private affairs.
The time for predictions is past. Ecocide is underway. A fierce heatwave in the USA has resulted in 170 all-time US heat records being broken in June alone, with thousands of excess deaths reported. A sustained drought and crop failure has already damaged world food stocks to a significant degree. Yet the political response to these clear signals of potential catastrophe have been feeble. This suggests that the problem is not one of reason and knowledge – many may well understand the warnings – but of political institutions and social relations – how to translate knowledge and evidence into practical effect. It is time that individuals stopped walking round and round the lamppost and started to look elsewhere for solutions. Governments, subject to the systemic need to facilitate private accumulation – economic growth – as well as corporate capture, continue to squander the time available to make a difference. Unfortunately, too many amongst the governed think that the charade of party politics and parliamentary elections is real politics, politics in the Greek sense of polites, those interested in public affairs. We need what the ancient Greeks called a politikon bion, a new public life, one in which the governed come together to constitute the government.
The debacle of the last Earth summit in Rio was a defining moment in politics. George Monbiot in The Guardian described the Rio summit as a collapse and a wave goodbye. It was, of official politics, whose moral and intellectual bankruptcy was laid bare. Frankly, actress Lucy Lawless, Xena the Warrior Princess herself, is a much better bet than government. In a Guardian article she slams the debacle of the Earth summit, where the governments revealed the extent of their impotence and cowardice: ‘the overwhelming message that came out of this was that we’re on our own, and governments are rubbish’. (The Saturday Interview by Susanna Rustin, The Guardian 30 June 2012).
The only thing to add here is that it is easy to scapegoat governments and let the governed themselves off the hook. Too many voters are little more than hedonistic egoists so consumed by their own desires and so submissive to a prevailing ‘economic necessity’ that they lack the will, the wit and the imagination to engage with others in collective endeavours for the greater good. Well, that’s the end of them, then. Without a change in behaviour, the outlook is bleak for so-called homo sapiens. I think I’ve found the missing link – it’s us.