Extinction Rebellion must decide if it is anti-capitalist – and this greenwashing mining company shows us why by Amardeep Dhillon @amardeepsinghd
One of the big slogans of the new wave of climate activism is “tell the truth.” The truth this slogan refers to is the climate truth, the truth about greenhouse gas emissions, carbon budgets, and how much time we have left. Purely physical, natural facts and figures. This is not the whole truth. In fact, it is not even the principal truth. The principal truth is that climate change is not the problem we need to address, it is the symptom of a much deeper problem, the problem of the capital system as the socio-economic driver of environmental degradation in all aspects, social, moral, and ecological.
I shall limit myself to quotes from this article and brief comments, because I have spent a lot of time on this issue in recent posts. All I can say here is "about time!" The fact that an article like this needs to be written, and be taken as radical and bold thought and challenge, indicates how politically incoherent and inept the environmental movement is. The truths in this article are simple and obvious, answering the kinds of questions any serious political movement asks at the beginning, not after so many decades of struggle.
“The movement has gathered widespread support by being an a-political broad church, but the logical inconsistencies are building up.”
I have spilled a lot of words in recent weeks not merely exposing the logical inconsistencies of the environmental movement, but indicating a highly political intent behind the apparent apoliticism. It’s the kind of clever strategy only intellects armed with truth and knowledge but utterly divorced from ‘ordinary’ people could devise. Instead of a genuine politics powered by active, informed, engaged citizens in control of their own material counter-organisations, there has been the engineering of a ‘mass’ as a glorified pressure group or lobby. The use of general slogans, emergency appeals, and appeals to “the truth” of “the science” may work to build mass agreement and conformity, but it doesn’t even begin to address, let alone answer, the serious questions of politics, economics, and social relations. There have been times these past few months when I have been driven to distraction at the sight of so many following so blithely what has had all the hallmarks of a cult. The serious questions of politics have been not so much ignored as systematically excised from a decidedly “non-political politics.” I shall not retread old ground here, my criticisms of that “apolitical” approach are long-standing. But now, at last, more politically aware and radical people are beginning to notice anomalies and are demanding greater clarity and coherence. Not before time, and maybe much too late to actually make any difference now.
“Extinction Rebellion is facing a crunch point. If it is serious about addressing the root causes of environmental crises, it must either concede that some (indigenous, poor, black) lives are disposable – or else adopt an explicitly anti-capitalist stance. Only when it does the latter will the struggle begin in earnest.”
It’s about time that the environmental mainstream caught on to this. The fact that it has been so slow and, in fact, deliberately evaded questions of politics and political economy, material relations and class dynamics should have been enough to tell us that we are in the presence of an ideological project. At last, some on the inside are waking up to this. I’ve been utterly sidelined in raising this issue and I have taken my leave of this movement until it starts to show some signs of being serious in a political and socio-economic sense. Whilst I agree with this above quote, it is imprecise. Instead of references to “poor”, we need a class analysis.
The absence of this critique of political economy gives the clear impression that environmentalism is being engineered to reboot and refuel capital, saving the capital economy rather than preserving planetary boundaries. I refer people to my recent posts on this. In those posts I speculated that at some point in this social engineering, the genuine radicals among the mass mobilization would find their critical and autonomous voice and start to demand greater political and economic clarity from those demanding ‘climate action’ in the blandest of terms from an untransformed government.
Well here, at last, is someone putting the questions I was concerned to put. Now, let us see the movement change in radical direction towards substantial social transformation. Until that change in direction comes, the evidence is that environmentalism is being positioned to boost a flagging global capitalist economy.
“In the meantime, the climate justice movement is being used for greenwashing, and indigenous people are facing serious repercussions.”
We will all face these repercussions. Amardeep Dhillon gives the example of mining company BHP Billiton, which this month announced it had a new purpose: to “bring people and resources together to build a better world.” The brief mentioned BHP’s “strong record” on responsible business practice, the “billions of dollars” spent on social investment, its status as the only company in its sector with an “A” rating for climate disclosures. BHP also emphasised “respecting indigenous peoples” as a renewed priority. Of course, that is not the true story, and Dhillon goes on to give evidence of forcible displacement, destruction of subsistence agriculture, pollution of rivers, disruption of communities, drought and a “humanitarian crisis” whose case is laid squarely at the feet of the multinationals. He quotes an activist who says that “Their concept of development isn’t functional for indigenous communities.” Multinationals have their own priorities and a global reach to impose them,
“This explanation cuts to the core of an emerging tension in the rejuvenated climate justice movement. While Extinction Rebellion’s focus on net zero carbon emissions is understandable, it ignores extractivism – the large-scale exploitation of natural resources for export – which often makes up the core of “green infrastructure” projects. This has fatal consequences.”
Amardeep Dhillon is focusing on one aspect of a problem of class, development, and global political economy. Issues like this are raised all over the environmental crisis in relation to transnational monopoly capitalism. The fact that this has dropped off the radar has had politically debilitating consequences which will prove fatal to environmentalism as a radical movement, with all that that entails.
“Now BHP wants to wear the clothes of the climate activists.” Amardeep Dhillon is concerned with a specific instance of greenwashing. These plans for large-scale “greening” projects are everywhere, and they are all based upon the continued, and intensified, exploitation of nature and of people.
“As Extinction Rebellion protests drew headlines, Ipuana joined activists from Chile and Brazil in protest at that AGM in Westminster. The Latin-American representatives accuse the multinational of “greenwashing” – plastering over its exploitation of people and resources with buzzwords and empty gestures.”
Branding, marketing, mobilization, buzzwords and generalizations, the cultivation of loyalty and conformity and a cult of authority. The politics of emergency is not a politics at all, it reeks of a rogue trading operation exploiting a desperate wish and need.
Amardeep Dhillon gives evidence of companies responding to the need to placate investor concerns around climate breakdown, rebranding themselves as ethical companies committed to a transition towards green industry. And he makes this serious point that has been so casually cast aside in the recent, predominantly white, middle class, liberal burst of environmental activism: “it doesn’t seem to matter that black and brown communities have been fighting this battle for generations with their bodies on the line.” Thankfully, this point is now being increasingly made, and it may at last lead us beyond the issue of race and western imperialism to the question of class, uniting black and white together.
The initial “apolitical” appeal makes sense only in the first stages. How, after decades of fighting environmental issues, we can still be considered only at a first stage should tell us that environmentalism has been politically inept and should take a good long hard look at why that is. I would suggest this “apolitical” trademark liberal evasion of being “neither left nor right” has much to do with it. Climate change is a ‘global’ problem requiring collectivist modes of solution. Instead of this, the issue has been fought on liberalism’s individualist premises, entailing institutional incrementalism above and personal lifestyle changes below. Such changes as may issue this way fall woefully short of the systemic changes needed. It is now or never for the necessary radicalization.
Across Europe, Extinction Rebellion has succeeded against the odds in making climate breakdown a public priority. Its broad-church approach of remaining avowedly “apolitical” (i.e. not anti-capitalist) made sense initially, bringing together a wide coalition from across the political spectrum. As the national conversation begins to move towards specific policy and infrastructure objectives, however, what I see as XR’s reluctance to tackle extractivism threatens to give carte blanche to governments and corporations who are happy to shift the burden of climate destruction onto poor and indigenous communities of colour in the global South.
Er, yes, at last some signs that the mainstream – the article is in The Independent – are catching on to the patently politically obvious. I’ve been saying this and so much more and getting absolutely nowhere for so long now that I have given this movement up for utterly hopeless. Apoliticism gives untransformed governments and corporations a blank cheque to save the capital system in the name of being ‘green.’