The Existential Truth About Climate Change
A comprehensive legal and institutional framework and a social and moral infrastructure
You can lose the will to live trying to counter those who assert - all evidence to the contrary - that the Paris Accord imposes "unfair burdens" on the US people and economy. And I have every intention of carrying on living, and so cut short any engagement with those who show evidence of a wilful ignorance. They may be deaf and blind with respect to fact, reason and logic, but they are not dumb when it comes to expressing their views – and I don’t have the time to waste countering their bogus arguments, not any more. They can read the materials I provide, and are free to disagree – and move on. I won’t allow them to be free with my time.
I'm glad that Joseph Stiglitz has just written an article which makes the points I tried to make with respect to the charge that Paris imposes "unfair burdens" on the US.
"On the contrary, the Paris accord is very good for America, and it is the US that continues to impose an unfair burden on others."
“Historically, the US has added disproportionately to the rising concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and among large countries it remains the biggest per capita emitter of carbon dioxide by far – more than twice China’s rate and nearly 2.5 times more than Europe in 2013 (the latest year for which the World Bank has reported complete data). With its high income, the US is in a far better position to adapt to the challenges of climate change than poor countries like India and China, let alone a low-income country in Africa.
In fact, the major flaw in Trump’s reasoning is that combating climate change would strengthen the US, not weaken it.”
The fact that certain political forces in the US see it in precisely the opposite terms tells us that we are up against some very cold and calculating customers who will never be persuaded by appeals to scientific and moral truth - they are ideologues in the service of vested interests/new idols of money and power as Pope Francis calls them (correctly).
And it’s just rotten economics too. As I argued in The Climate Commitment, the transition to a zero-carbon economy would guarantee full employment for decades to come, giving working class people and communities a material interest in climate action and a very definite stake in the world. Socially, economically and ecologically, a just transition is possible, one that pieces together this dangerously fragmented, disoriented world. The ‘libertarian’ view is not just hopelessly mired in the past, it’s mired in stupid self-destructive selfish interest.
The global High-Level Commission on Carbon Prices which Stiglitz co-chaired with Nicholas Stern highlighted the potential of a green transition, showing that reducing CO2 emissions could result in an even stronger economy.
‘The logic is straightforward. A key problem holding back the global economy today is deficient aggregate demand. At the same time, many countries’ governments face revenue shortfalls. But we can address both issues simultaneously and reduce emissions by imposing a charge (a tax) for CO2 emissions.
It is always better to tax bad things than good things. By taxing CO2, firms and households would have an incentive to retrofit for the world of the future. The tax would also provide firms with incentives to innovate in ways that reduce energy usage and emissions – giving them a dynamic competitive advantage.
The Commission analyzed the level of carbon price that would be required to achieve the goals set forth in the Paris climate agreement – a far higher price than in most of Europe today, but still manageable. The commissioners pointed out that the appropriate price may differ across countries. In particular, they noted, a better regulatory system – one that restrains coal-fired power generation, for example – reduces the burden that must be placed on the tax system.’
The truth about climate change is not just a scientific truth, nor an economic truth, but a moral and political truth. In other words, we are not just talking about the field of theoretical reason here – let’s call it sound science and scientific knowledge – but of practical reason – politics and ethics (which, in ancient times, up to early modern times, encompassed economics and, in my book, still does). And it is this that I want to look at further.
Leaving aside the fact that Paris is voluntary, non-binding and, frankly, is weak in the letter precisely as a result of successful hardball US lobbying and negotiation. The fact that, despite all of this, the U.S. government still walks away from a climate agreement objecting to "unfair burdens" tells us all we need to know about the politics at play here. It's absolutely reprehensible behaviour, morally, of course, but the appeal to morals is as futile as the appeal to scientific evidence with people who recognise and respect neither. The science and the ethics on climate change are in place, so we need to pay more attention to the politics.
Plenty of people express a distaste for politics. And no wonder. But be aware of the deliberate and systematic assault that has been conducted upon politics and the public realm over the years on the part of ‘anti-government’ libertarians. This has been done deliberately to disable and devalue the political, and thereby stymie the democratic will and its expression. There has been a deliberate attempt to put people off politics, and thereby render private economic power safe from democratic inroads.
In this respect, the manner of the U.S. withdrawal from Paris is in keeping with the manner in which the U.S. has approached all climate talks – there is a determination to weaken common commitments, political actions and legal obligations as much as possible – so as to leave the principal economic agents as free as before to carry on pursuing self-interest free from moral, institutional, legal, social and democratic constraint.
Frankly, the resolution of the climate crisis enjoins us to reconstitute the public realm and thereby resolve the crisis in political representation and legitimacy that we are facing. Politics is thoroughly detached from realities, and that is suicidal in the long run.
The U.S. withdrawal from Paris represents a deliberate wrecking strategy aimed at undermining each, every and any common agreement and action, weakening collective action, encouraging free riding behaviour and splits, and wasting time - it all renders climate action ineffective at the top level, which is the intended result. It's the same 'anti-government' libertarian politics practised at national level extended to the international sphere. And the express aim is to disable and enfeeble the public realm, and to diminish the public imagination to such an extent that citizens cease to look to government to resolve their problems, realise collective purposes and manage their common affairs.
I see no option but see this as an opportunity to finally eliminate the passive-aggressive long resistance of the US federal government (working for economic interests) from climate politics, isolate them as free-riders, remove the permanent obstruction out of the way, and work with all willing partners at other levels, other nations, commerce, as well as US cities and states. In arguing against the U.S. withdrawal from Paris, I resisted all attempts – deliberate or unwitting – to fracture this issue into the U.S. against the world, and vice versa. That sharp opposition may be how Trump and his supporters may want to read the politics of this, but I made it clear that they do not represent America as such and that my criticisms of the U.S. federal government should not be construed as an anti-Americanism on my part. I noted the irony of erstwhile anti-government libertarians who are routinely leery of government now so keenly identifying the U.S. Federal government with the U.S.A. as such. It’s a strangely self-contradictory political ideology we are dealing with here, a mass of rationalisations and apologetics that cannot but betray any principles it claims to support. I delighted in citing those Americans in the field of science, ecology, education and politics who remain committed to global action on climate change, and who will continue to work for effective climate action. That’s the authentic America as far as I’m concerned, an America will brain cells and moral backbone in place. And it is this America which shows that Trump and this ill-assorted melange of nationalists, protectionists and libertarians are not as important as they think they are. They are very good at obstruction, but are capable of nothing by way of construction, and their days are over. Large numbers of states, cities and businesses have announced that they will carry on meeting their climate commitments, and the hope is that the manifest idiocy of libertarian politics will galvanise climate actors in going much further than the weak letter of Paris, and give some real oomph to the spirit and the principle of climate justice.
The figures on U.S. responsibility for climate change are clear. The fact that there is always an issue about the U.S. doing anything about assuming responsibility is indicative of a geopolitical reality that is still in kindergarten. There is always this geopolitical blame game that goes on – why should we do this when they are allowed to do that? Because you’ve done that in the past, and an awful lot more of it than anyone else! It doesn’t work, though, in a zero-sum world of economic and national rivalries, where one nations gain is another nations' loss. I remember the first days in Windleshaw Junior school St Helens. All the boys were swinging on the trees. I wasn’t much interested, but it seemed like the thing to do. So, out of interest, I had a swing too. Miss Hankinson the headmistress caught me, of course, and all the others quickly stopped. ‘What are you doing? she asked, ‘why are you doing this to the trees? Hurting them, hurting them!’ I detected from her anguished tones that she thought such mistreatment of God’s good earth for personal gratification to be a very bad thing indeed. I defended my actions with the reason that ‘All the others were doing it.’ It was considered a very lame excuse. I considered it all most unfair, as I received a well-earned smack (one that the others most certainly should have had) – and a lesson for life: ‘never follow a multitude to do evil.’
‘Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd.’ (Exodus 23:2).
I don’t care much for the geo-political blame game. I do think we can produce the facts and figures which show where responsibility lies when it comes to climate pollution, and I think it is on the basis of that understanding that we can get the concerted global action we need. That said, drawing on key themes from political philosophy, I know that a common end or a common good can only be realised if there is a common force or common power. When people say that ‘we’ need to act and ‘we’ need to protect the planet, they are referring to an agent that does not exist – there is no ‘we’ as a political entity, only nation states in the context of a world divided between private economic interests. And that creates all manner of opportunities for continual fragmentation, rivalry, splitting and seeking of private advantage. Some boys, it seems, will carry on swinging on the trees, doing what they want to do for reasons of personal gratification, rationalising their selfish behaviour with the lame excuse that others are swinging away too. And the planet keeps on getting hurt. It’ll hurt us in the end too. Call me simple, but a lesson I learned at six was that the right thing to do is the right thing to do, and the wrong shouldn’t be done, for no better reason than it is wrong. But, of course, it’s not as simple as that. These behaviours are socially structured and bound up with social identities and interests locked within social systems. The great realists and analysts of the modern world, from Hobbes to Marx, have shown the basis for this relentless pursuit of private advantage – one accumulates and expropriates and expands one’s power, or gets accumulated and expropriated, thereby losing all power. So I’ll keep on insisting on system change uprooting the accumulative dynamic in economics and in social relations.
The fact that the Paris agreement was criticised as an unfair, 'draconian' (Trump) and 'enormous' (Pence) burden speaks volumes about the hardball politics being practised by these people - they really don't give a damn for anything but narrow self-interest. Liberty, they say, when they mean licence to pollute, emit, exploit and appropriate. That begs some very uncomfortable questions for those who believe in the power of reason to order our affairs in accordance with realities. Stiglitz puts this very question:
‘In the meantime, the world must protect itself against rogue states. Climate change poses an existential threat to the planet that is no less dire than that posed by North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. In both cases, the world cannot escape the inevitable question: what is to be done about countries that refuse to do their part in preserving our planet?’
That’s the central question we face. Because all our efforts risk being continually brought to ought by the machinations, obfuscations and obstructions of these self-serving rogues in our midst. I’m seeing people within the environmental camp beating each other up over the alleged failures of each other, I’m seeing environmentalists confess their own failures, I’m seeing despair and doom creeping in. And it’s all down to the real failure to identify, name, dislodge, isolate and marginalise the real climate culprits here – that minority of free-riders, polluters, emitters and exploiters who have succeeded in embedding and institutionalising their power. They cannot be persuaded by appeals to scientific and moral truth, their views of truth are determined by social positions and economic interests.
So what’s the answer? Naomi Klein recalls the way that the suggestion she made in the past that the U.S. should face tangible punishment for putting the rest of the rest of humanity at risk was laughed at in establishment circles. I wonder if they are still laughing now. All the trade deals in the world count for nothing in the absence of a liveable planet. And the message seems to be getting through. Writing in the Financial Times, Martin Wolf argues that the Paris climate change agreement of December 2015 ‘was at least a recognition that climate change is a real and pressing danger’, even if it was not the answer to that challenge. ‘Now may well be the last chance to head off the worst of it.’ He continues:
‘In agreement with many Republicans, Mr Trump refuses to recognise the threat. He finds it impossible to admit that strong and concerted government action might be required. So he rejects the very notion of environmental limits. An optimistic and self-confident US would embrace the challenge of overcoming such limits. Alas, Mr Trump does not speak for that US. If the US withdrew from the Paris accord, the rest of the world must consider sanctions.’
The American president seems to have little interest in preserving the postwar order
Is that where government, law and climate litigation will go? We know that free-riders free-ride and carry on free riding in the absence of sanctions against them. They can be encouraged into cooperation only through the application of sanctions. We know that we need concerted global action to deal effectively with climate change. Rogue behaviour cannot be allowed to go without sanctions, for fear common commitments will unravel. That’s one for government and law, and one for them to resolve quickly. And we know that moral appeal doesn’t work either with these people. The ethics here creates a coalition of the willing and unifies people of good will, and removes the cover from the free-riders. They have nowhere to hide when it comes to the science and ethics, their political motives are exposed plainly and publicly. And that’s what it comes down to – an effective politics that takes them out. Klein argues for popular movements to take action in the form of boycotts and divestment campaigns targeting governments and corporations. ‘Moral suasion doesn’t work on Trump. Economic pressure just might. It’s time for some people’s sanctions.’
That’s an uncomfortable conclusion for all those who think we can gain common agreement on climate solutions that work for everyone. I love that argument, I see its logic. That rationale is as true today as it was decades ago when the likes of Lovins and Hawken presented it. If it were enough, I’d support it. I’d just ask people to check out the work of economist Michal Kalecki, particularly where he writes on political cycles as well as economic cycles. Kalecki’s challenging thesis with respect to political cycles is that the ruling class will deliberately crash an economy and harm their economic self-interest, and will do so for political reasons, in order to keep control and undermine the social positions and material interests of their political enemies. There’s nothing new about disaster capitalism and there’s nothing surprising about the idea of business interests profiting from social and environmental crisis. Naomi Klein (No is Not Enough) is doing a good job publicising something of long standing in the capital system. I am reminded of a comment attributed to 1920s free marketeer Andrew Mellon: 'In a depression assets return to their rightful owners.'
pp 31-34
I'm afraid, for all those who believe in reason, science, law and the common good, we are facing a clear case of political ideology trumping all fact and value, private interests and their rationalisation turning them against both science and ethics/religion. There’s nothing here that would surprise Marx. It’s a shocking, even sad, experience for anyone who believes in the possibility of settling human affairs by reason. If only reason were enough …. we wouldn’t have these problems in the first place. It’s an education, like the education that Marx received as a young Hegelian who thought the state to be the embodiment of reason and freedom - only to find that it was a surrogate of private economic interests. Let’s treat this in terms of the ideal and the real and the gap between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought-to-be’, with the ideal existing as an objective critical standard or transcendent truth/norm, in accordance with which we evaluate and assess and orient the real. I used to argue that Marx sought the realisation of the truths and values of philosophy, a realisation that was also the abolition of philosophy – as philosophy becomes worldly, the world becomes philosophical, and the transition from theoretical to practical reason is thus effected. It’s a heady notion. I continue to affirm a position on knowing and being that is beyond false antitheses of subject and object, knower and known. But I’m more cautious of notions of abolition. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. If we keep the cake, we can carry on eating. I retain a commitment to transcendent truths/norms because I want to carry on eating.
The state as ethical agency embodying and articulating rational freedom is the actual incarnation of the ideal, but a politics that is in tune with planetary realities requires an expansive ecological notion of ‘rational freedom.’ We require a biospheric politics. To achieve this biospheric transformation of ‘the political’ we will need
(1) to translate the bedrock first order truth yielded by the rational appreciation of reality (scientific, yes, but reason with its moral component in place), into
(2) the realm of political deliberation, agreement and decision (citizens not just being given the truth, but coming to recognize and will the truth, thus creating the political will and legitimacy for climate action),
(3) a climate action that is grounded in sound science/objective morality/transcendent norms (fact and value together) and which can, therefore, be legally defined, binding, enforceable and enforced. It's a notion of some vintage: "Law; an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community." (St Thomas Aquinas).
Dante denounced the sin of avarice as a greed for money and possessions which endangers and destroys individual lives, cities, and regions, continually inciting desires for greater and greater material riches, desires which - and this is the key point – are incapable of being satisfied and which, in their pursuit, cause harm to others. It is now the planet that is endangered.
I refer to ‘rational freedom’ above, an idea that is central to my philosophical view. I discuss the various incarnations of the idea in history, from a legal-institutional expression to a socio-relational conception that embeds commonality and universality in social relationships. First and foremost, though, the idea is founded upon a bedrock ‘objective’ truth, which we access through our concepts and theories and investigations, a reality check which furnishes material informing the way we organise our practical affairs – the way we bridge the gap between theoretical reason (knowledge of the ‘objective’ world) and practical reason (the world of politics and ethics, the way we organise our common affairs, including economics as the interchange with nature and system of needs). In other words, an approach that brings together the two great wings on philosophy, nature and reason (objectivity, contemplation, disclosure) on the one side, will and artifice (subjectivity, praxis, imposure) on the other.
As for ‘rational freedom’, the legal-institutional aspect seeks to embody and express that objective truth – call it sound science, I would also describe it in terms of transcendent norms to bring in the ethical dimension (justice as a standard outside of time and place, by which to judge, criticise, inform, inspire, orient and obligate institutions, laws and people in time and place).
Dante denounced the greed for money and possessions as the most dangerous and destructive of evils that 'endangers and kills cities, countrysides and individuals'. We now see that this greed endangers planetary health and, as a result, all prospects of civilised life. Dante found the safeguard against the sin of avarice plainly stated in the texts of canon and civil law:
“[F]or what else were they designed to remedy so much as that cupidity which grows by the amassing of riches? Certainly both branches of the law make this sufficiently plain when we read their origins, that is, the origins of their written record.”
Is that the remedy? I’d suggest not. No one in this tradition of rational freedom, from Plato himself to Rousseau and beyond, ever made the mistake of arguing that good laws would be enough. All of them argue the case for law in the context of character formation and the creation of an appropriate moral infrastructure. I’d go on from here to social formation and the creation of the form/s of the common life, the appropriate habitus for the acquisition and exercise of virtues and habits, creating capacities and capabilities in individuals and communities, and the transformation of the social metabolic order of social control and economic exchange. [gee, I just need to stop mithering points to death and just finish my book on this … At the moment, it’s the best book never written …)
I argue for concerted action within a comprehensive framework – an institutional framework and ethico-social infrastructure for common agreement and action. To those who have accused me of being a ‘globalist’, I can only repeat that I argue for a multi-layered and scaled approach which argues that large scale ambitious projects need to be grounded in small-scale practical reasoning and action and love of place, both bottom-up and top-down together.
Dante is an imperialist, and I take him to be arguing for that comprehensive framework in which the order and orientation of diverse parts is informed and organised by the unity of the single principle, issuing in a ‘sweet harmony’ of an integrated whole. In the fourth section of Il Convivio, Dante argued that imperial authority, invested in a single monarch, was the only remedy for the problems of wars and their causes. The archaic nature of the terms is much less important than the principle that Dante was highlighting. The single monarch who, in
‘possessing everything, and having nothing left to desire, would keep kings confined within the borders of their kingdoms, so that peace would reign between them, and cities would rest in peace, and while they so rest neighbourhoods would love each other, and in this mutual love families would satisfy all their wants; and when these are satisfied, a man would live happily, which is the end for which he is born.’
Il Convivio, Section IV, Chapter 4
Dante thus found a structure for the well-being of society in the texts of canon and civil law Avarice could be checked and the dangers to individuals, cities and regions could be averted through an imperial authority capable of declaring and enforcing such law. By a law that is binding, obligatory, enforceable and enforced, evil could be eliminated from the world.
I would add, here, in light of the modern democratic revolution I am loathe to discard, that such law is also legitimate in being recognised, willed and self-assumed by the citizens. Citizens are not just subject to law, but come to choose to subject themselves to it. That view combines objectivity and subjectivity, it is not merely involuntary but is voluntary – it possesses democratic legitimacy through the active consent of the people – citizens are not just given the truth, they come to recognise and will it. That, I take also to be law as an educative purpose and a political inspiration, embodying ideals and values concerning the common good that individuals want to and choose to live up to.
That’s quite a hope. But I stand by it. I agree, with the moderns, that human beings are rational enough to live up to the promise of democracy, and come to join together to lead themselves internally by the nous, rather than passively allowing private interests and systemic forces to lead them externally by the nose. ‘All men desire to know’, Aristotle declared in the opening of his Metaphysics. There’s a quest for meaning too, I say. I believe with Dante in an ultimate good. And that the highest desire of every soul is to return to God who created it. We may take the wrong path. I remember Rousseau stating that his Social Contract is about putting people on the right road. Dante compares the soul to a traveler:
‘who takes a road along which he has never gone before and thinks that every house he sees in the distance is an inn and, finding he is mistaken, fixes his eyes trustfully on another and so on from house to house until he arrives at the inn he is seeking.’
As we proceed through life we desire more and more things but may stray as a result of being led by the wrong desire, since 'the path is lost in error like the roads on earth' (questo cammino siperdeper errore come le strade della terra):
‘[I]n human life there are diverse paths, one of which above all is the right road, and another the wrong, and certain other paths which are more or less wrong or right.’
Il Convivio, Section IV, Chapter 12
A legal and institutional framework and a social and moral infrastructure go together in putting us on and keeping us on the right road. The bedrock first order truth and its expression – Nature/sound science/reason/God/ultimate goodness/faith leading to laws, forms of the common life, social practices, virtuous action, generating a material sufficiency leading to flourishing.
I’ll just end by adding a crucial rider. Marx began his intellectual career as a thoroughgoing Hegelian. Marx’s first contributions to the Rheinische Zeitung are infused with Hegelian idealism concerning reason and freedom: ‘A state which is not the realization of rational freedom is a bad state’ (Marx and Engels Historische Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Frankfurt, Berlin and Moscow 1927, vol. I, i (i), p. 247). That view presumes a conception of the good and true state as a state that is the embodiment and expression of ‘rational freedom’ – the idea that the freedom of each is conditional upon and coexistent with the freedom of all. In his economic journalism, Marx came to understand that the state as an ethical agency is an ideological project, an illusory general interest that operates as a surrogate for private interests. There is a considerable tension, then, between the philosophical principle of the ethical state and the actual political functions of the state within determinate social relations. We are between ideals and reality. Marx came later to argue that law, politics and the state are part of the ideological superstructure of capitalist society, and will be implicated in the divisions and inequalities of that society. I use the ideal as a critical yardstick – a transcendent norm – by which to evaluate the adequacy or otherwise of governments, laws and institutions, seeking to orient their character and actions accordingly. For law to embody and express the common good, we need a common good that is available within social relations and forms of the common life.
As I write this I am learning that the Campaign Against the Arms Trade has lost its fight to stop sales to Saudi Arabia over claims that weapons may have been used to kill civilians in Yemen.
The law as the embodiment of objective facts and moral truths? Think on, and ponder why Marx went from affirming the state as the embodiment of rational freedom to criticising law as part of the ideological superstructure of capitalist society. And ponder how ideals are turned into their opposite under specific social relations.
In The German Ideology of 1845-6, Marx posed this question:
‘Individuals always proceeded, and always proceed, from themselves. Their relations are the relations of their real life-process. How does it happen that their relations assume an independent existence over against them? and that the forces of their own life become superior to them?’
He spent the rest of his intellectual life answering that question. The specific social relations accompanying the capital system are a vital part of that answer, explaining how reason turns into its opposite, how all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, how we come to be estranged from each other, from the world, and from our own selves. And Marx shows what it will take to bring us back to our senses. To resolidify. I think Marx’s answers should be taken seriously by all who are out not merely to interpret the world, but change it, and change it for the better. Because whatever reality we talk about, ‘Nature’ or ‘God’ or ‘Man’, these are but abstractions apart from human practices within specific social relations. In the end, we are really dealing with our own forms of subjectivity and sociality and how these mediate our practical exchange with reality. It’s those forms and that interchange we need to get right.
As I consistently argue, it is not enough to argue for common agreement around a common good. Right-wing ‘sceptics’ of global action and agreement on climate change strike hard at this point, portraying climateers as idealists wedded to big government and indulging political wishful thinking at the expense of realities. It’s this point I have tried hard to establish over the years, hence the emphasis on form/s of the common life, character and social formation, the creation of social identities and of a social and moral infrastructure building communities of practice engaging in small scale reasoning. That is all an essential part of reclaiming the public realm, making the common good available in more than abstract forms, generating a public good that is something more than the sum of self-interested parts. A common end (climate action with a view to climate justice) is not enough to establish a unity of purpose and commitment among associating parties. For a common end to have practical reality, we also need a common power - a genuine public realm, something much more than an association of interests, whether these be mutual competition or, even, mutual help. Without that common power, forged in the social and moral fabric of community life, the danger is that global cooperation and mutuality will remain abstract, an illusory general interest that is an ideological cover for contending private economic interests and national rivalries. Think on, we have been seeking perpetual peace at the international level since Dante, Grotius, Pufendorf, Kant – it isn’t for the asking, no matter how beautifully we define the common good.
In the 1930s, with fascism on the rise and war approaching, theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote: ‘The prestige of the international community is not great enough to achieve a communal spirit sufficiently unified to discipline recalcitrant nations.’ He cautioned against ‘a too uncritical glorification of co-operation and mutuality’ between powers with opposing national interests. So I set my views on common agreement and action on climate change in the context of widespread social transformation and system change. In other words, the climate action I advocate presupposes that the concomitant transformation of the nature of ‘the political’ so that the global co-operation and mutuality that so climate activists and environmentalists advocate ceases to be ideal and abstract, but is equipped with real material and institutional force and builds the structural and moral capacity to make action effective.
I bought Ralph Miliband’s book Divided Societies when it first came out in 1989. That seems like yesterday to me. The conclusion intrigued me with its promises of better things to come:
‘the conditions do not at present exist – and will not exist for some time to come in any advanced capitalist country – for the coming to power of the kind of government that would seek to bring about the radical transformation of the existing social order. But … it is quite realistic to think that these conditions will come into being within the next ten, twenty or thirty years – a long time in the life of an individual, but a mere moment in historical time. In this perspective, class struggle for the creation of democratic, egalitarian, co-operative and classless societies, far from coming to an end, has barely begun.’
Miliband, 1989 p. 234
Incredible to think, but here I am, twenty eight years on, reading those same words. And wondering about the realisation of the promise contained in that conclusion. I felt the conditions were right then for this radical transformation. And I would strongly argue that had we engaged in precisely that kind of struggle back then, we would have been spared economic crises, financial crashes, illegal and immoral wars, invasions, state-sponsored terror, privatisation and corporatisation of public business, trickle-down ignorance and immorality, creeping barbarism and festering hatred, bigotry and prejudice – and had we acted to address climate change with force and vigour, we wouldn’t be standing on the threshold of eco-catastrophe. So forgive me if I am not too cautious as to whether conditions are ripe or people are ready for radical politics – I am explicitly arguing the case for radicalism. If we are going down on this planet, then I am going down as a God-bothering, Goddess-worshipping, Hobbit-loving Platonic, Aristotelian, Thomist, Hegelian, Marxist, anarchist, Mumfordian, Heideggerian/‘only a god can save us now’, Starhawkian, Gimbutas confederalist Eco-Socialist Catholic Earthling bent on Dante’s ‘sweet symphony of Paradise’. I hope that makes my position clear. There’s an anarchic excess to this life that evades all naming and framing. And that’s where you’ll live your lives, if you have the sense. Love, and you will know.
And here’s the contemptuous voice of the right wing ideologues (I refuse to call them conservatives).
Global Warming became Climate Change became Climate Politics
I can multiply examples of this a million fold. There are plenty of Rick Fischer’s in the world. However you establish the argument in terms of fact and value, these people come along with sweeping generalisations, distortion, caricature, labels and abuse. I don’t let them waste my time; don’t let them waste yours. I certainly don’t take their abuse. I don’t want to know anyone who thinks like this. The idea that climate change is really ‘climate politics’ and a part of ‘the Left’s Utopian agenda.’ Really! Every scientific body on the planet and the Pope to boot (and I can add the supposed anti-Communist Pope John Paul II too, with his Peace with God the Creator, Peace with all of Creation
But I’ll not protest too much and be forced into denying any political implications. On the contrary, I will affirm the dignity and worth of politics and identify politics as central to creative human self-actualisation, as the public life that human beings require in order to flourish. And if any right-wing ideology objects to that as ‘left wing utopianism’ or communism, I’ll simply point out that that view is central to Plato and Aristotle, impeccably conservative sources. Right-wing ideologues consistently pillory ‘the Left’ on account of its relativism and atheism/humanism, and claim to defend transcendent and objective truths against modern day sophists. Here is an example from Stephen M Krason in Crisis Magazine:
Read this for a balanced and tempered opening:
‘I’ve argued in previous columns that at bottom the problem of the left is a lack of integrity and that it’s hard to find a prominent leftist who truly exhibits integrity—at least in his assessments of politics and public affairs. I’ve also mentioned the obvious inconsistencies in the positions taken by the left, and the persistent pattern of the left of avoiding debate by simply demonizing its opponents.’
‘Should one be surprised at such a sense of arrogance and political infallibility when, at bottom, leftist ideology is rankly secular and relativistic—grounded in the sophistic view that man is that measure of all things, and that “we are all gods”?’
It’s accusations like that that help me justify my approach to my leftist and progressive friends – because I have been concerned to argue for years now that we need transcendent norms and objective standards to give us a bedrock moral foundation to our pursuit of truth and justice in the world. And I have written at length denouncing the ‘men as gods’ thesis and the idea that a self-legislating reason is the author of human freedom and happiness.
‘As mentioned, instead of debating and engaging their opponents the left demonizes them. The only evil the secularist left seems to recognize is what they accuse their opponents of—which, of course, seldom rises to the level of truly bad action. What are typically involved are policy disagreements and contingent matters—which the left absolutizes.’
Again, I have argued that once one relativizes the absolute, we end up absolutizing the relative. The difference is is that I was concerned to make that point not to take sides between left and right, but to establish first principles and, from there, proceed to truth and justice.
‘We see the extent to which leftists’ ill will has gone ….’ Demonization, no?
You can read the rest of the article for yourselves. Me, I’m sick to the back teeth of left-right accusation and counter-accusation, each accusing the other of the very same thing, and choosing sides and cheering or booing according to prejudice. The whole point of getting to a bedrock first order truth for me is to be able to stay well out of this endless ‘yes/no’ cycle of assertion and counter-assertion in politics. Because once you enter that cycle, your argument is certain to be tarnished in one way or another – it is a cess pit full of some very nasty people. The first hint of being drawn into that world, and I am gone.
And I don’t like misrepresentation either, a misrepresentation that is designed to fit positions within familiar left-right parameters. It doesn’t quite work with me. I rather like the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity in Catholic social ethics, and the way that these are key in constituting justice. (I love Maritain on this). So imagine how utterly frustrating it is when right-wing libertarians accuse me, along with others who advocate climate action, of being a 'big government' globalist. They are ideologues who are blind to the nuanced arguments I make (large scale projects succeed when grounded in small scale reasoning, communities of practice, and love of place, participatory structures below, representative institutions at higher levels etc). And they don’t see them arguments because they don't want to see them – because they don’t fit their simple categories. It's easier for them to pose as libertarians on the side of freedom when they can portray all collective action for the common good as an interference in individual liberty. My advice is that it is best to identify the right principles and cleave to them, avoiding being drawn into the endless cycle of 'yes/no' assertion and counter-assertion. I am sure there is a deliberate strategy to draw those with a positive and expansive view of the world into hate-filled ‘debates’, wasting their time and energies correcting distortions and misrepresentations and responding to abuse. They are plain wrong, and it’s best to move them on.
(Even better is to get myself back into the country, walking miles and immersing myself in the lovely green oceans of woods and forests. Oikophilia - love of place - we protect what we love, and this world was made to be loved. Now then, back to my nature rambles. It's like a pilgrimage, knowing the world on foot. It's a good world.)
I just love the response to this article in the comments below. Krason consistently accuses the Left of demonising its opponents, and in praise someone writes: ‘Excellent column Stephen. This quote comes to mind: “Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad”. Leftists are at the service of the devil. They reject reality and rational arguments. They are all of what you said they are.’
Enough. Read too much of this kind of stuff, and you really will go mad. I put it here to give some indication of the kind of nasty stuff that can come your way in politics. It doesn’t wash with me. I consistently argue for objective standards, and argue for God too, for a transcendent principle and hope with which to judge and orient the institutions, laws and practices of time and place. I don’t know if this makes me right or left. If, by definition, anyone arguing for climate action is a leftist utopian, then I must be Left. If, by definition, anyone arguing for God and transcendent norms, is right-wing, then I must … be wasting my time with drivel.
I will tell environmentalists this, though, don’t be shy of politics and don’t let the pejorative tones which right-wing ideologues use with respect to politics put you off. Remember, it is these ideologues who have systematically abused and denigrated the science, their assertions that they stand on reason and evidence are precisely that, mere assertions. They are playing hardball politics. But the solution to bad politics is not no politics – which is precisely what these characters want – but good politics. And, again, I have no problem of bringing in the authority of the conservative Aristotle or St Thomas Aquinas to back that claim up.
Whether you come at the reality of climate change from a scientific or moral angle – there is no avoiding climate politics, and it is about time we acknowledged this and fought this out politically, and fought it to the death – either of civilisation, or of the class of free-riding miscreants and their ideological lickspittles whose existence is parasitic on people, places and planet.
Go to the science, identify the problems, understand the ethics of the common good, create the solutions, and get involved in implementations and transitions. And leave the abuse and name-calling to the abusers who mistake the names of things for the nature of things.
Climate change is an existential crisis that threatens civilised life on earth. The problem is a big one, but so too are the tools we have available to deal with it. If we can harness the resources that are available to us and mobilize people all over this planet, then we could be on the brink of a golden age, the Age of Ecology. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking of.
‘Combating climate change, the existential threat of our time, will take heroic effort on the part of many people and many nations. Make no mistake, climate change is real.’
Gov. Jerry Brown
Yup. And water is wet. And the Pope is a Catholic – and says climate action is a moral imperative. He’s right.