Climate Crisis: Our Last Chance
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Marcos, you are right on the point!
It is that simple. And complicating it just makes it seem more difficult to change. Direct action should be so simple
Activism will not resolve the problem. The world working class must take class consciousness and stop supporting their own enemies and their ideas, and stop supporting capitalists leaders from the right or from the left. It is not climate change, it is economic system change for a new society, and the so called Green deal will not resolve the problem either. We are going to get up to a situation where socialism is going to be impossible to be established
What convinced people was not the claims made by the environmentalists but the hard scientific evidence that could not be refuted by the denialists. People began to trust the research which reflected their own anecdotal experience. Gardeners, I knew, began to take notice of the change in weather patterns and growing seasons.
My point is that to convince people of the socialist remedy, will not be the claims of an insignificant socialist party but when they have the technocrats confirm that things cannot be fixed within capitalism and the alternative is a more pragmatic option.
People are reluctant to take great leaps of faith and that is the only thing we at the moment offer. Our word against the “experts”.
Our case has not been corroborated by the science community. And I doubt it ever will be since who pays the piper calls the tune and we do not finance our own technical research institutes or have PhD students to concentrate on the issue.
Scientists asks the wrong questions because of what LBird would put down to ideology. I think Marx or Engels says something like a problem doesn’t arise until the solution arrives. Somebody can correct me on this
But there are things we can do and that is to rebut the carrying capacity of the planet concept with statistics that are available if we collect the available data.
As for the future, many on this forum know my gloom and doom prognosis…if it comes to a gamble between socialism and barbarism, my money will be on the latter.
This one ?
…Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation…..
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
“People are reluctant to take great leaps of faith and that is the only thing we at the moment offer. Our word against the “experts”.
Our case has not been corroborated by the science community. And I doubt it ever will be since who pays the piper calls the tune and we do not finance our own technical research institutes or have PhD students to concentrate on the issue.”
By unmasking the ideology of ‘clean coal’ and the carbon credit- or climate denial, we can shine a spotlight on the capital, and the apex powers, system and point to the socialist mode. So researchers (socialist centred) are thin, but they are there- and the current reports can be used within a socialist narrative. A meta analysis is possible of any data, according to the right research question. The science is there but we need to leap to that faith, in the socialist imaginary.
What kind of questions: socialism does not produce rampant waste/ but capital oversupply does?
Maybe I am naive- but locating the experience effects or peoples lived experience of climate change is crucial.
I started working on a vineyard with a friend, producing pinot noir- the first advice from other workers was “in 5 years time we may not be able to grow it here- the summers have become too hot”. Local producers are aware of the environment, and of climate change- and their concerns are dismissed. They are told by the advisor state boards to adapt, grow something else more ‘sustainable’ and amenable to the market. Right there is conscious awakening- capital will not respond, but adapt, letting others simply ‘go to the wall’-
There has to be a way to connect the data (not the tune) to socialist modes of production- I cannot believe any major research has not been made available- most of it focuses on the impact to the economy… A market eye produces market concerns- it is time for the socialist eye, and a call out for socialist research into productive modes and the environment…
Be kind to you,
L.B
Alan: socialism or barbarism.
My life is on socialism- the latter will not prevail, for on the basic level- we are programmed to help one another, and if things get worse, we will spot the sociopathic tendencies of apex predators. The survival of the fittest is a vain, capital ideation, and once the real conditions are seen for what they are, people will awake to it.
I am and will, remain positive.
We all write on this forum, and partake in action- it means something. I have just helped out at an election day for the socialist candidate amid right wing parties daring their numbers- I do it for hope, and for that basic social scientific premise: we are social beings.
It is about time we see climate vandalism as anti-social, pathologise it- it is a different science to climatology, but a science in support of it in relation to behaviours and the environment.
Why do it- well, why not- be positive, we are many but out voice is often ignored- but the active- we are many!
But the reality is that we are not the many.
Australia votes into power again, a climate change denying (or at least apathetic) government
And this forum is not even of the many of the Socialist Party, who persist in non-participation so I am unable to even gauge the sentiment of socialists.
I admire your optimism as I enter my twilight years seeing the socialist vision no nearer than when I entered the socialist movement in my youth.
Why do I persist? Because it is the right thing to do.
I suppose the problem from a narrow capitalist perspective is that fossil fuel is to cheap, abundant and easy or profitable to extract.
That is progressively changing but probably just too late.
https://www.offgridenergyindependence.com/articles/13703/renewable-power-generation-costs-in-2017
We accept predictions are tricky things but the consensus of them give us a fairly accurate picture of what to expect. Perhaps this article’s projections are on the more pessimistic end but personally I still don’t think it conveys the human costs sufficiently.
“…A four-degree-warmer world is the stuff of nightmares and yet that’s where we’re heading in just decades.
While governments mull various carbon targets aimed at keeping human-induced global heating within safe levels – including new ambitions to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 – it’s worth looking ahead pragmatically at what happens if we fail. After all, many scientists think it’s highly unlikely that we will stay below 2C (above pre-industrial levels) by the end of the century, let alone 1.5C. Most countries are not making anywhere near enough progress to meet these internationally agreed targets.
Climate models predict we’re currently on track for a heating of somewhere between 3C and 4C for 2100, although bear in mind that these are global average temperatures – at the poles and over land (where people live), the increase may be double that…a whole new set of models to be published in 2021 finds much greater sensitivity. They put heating at around 5C by the end of the century, meaning people could be experiencing as much as 10C of heating over land…”4C rise
The good news is that humans won’t become extinct – the species can survive with just a few hundred individuals; the bad news is, we risk great loss of life and perhaps the end of our civilisations. Many of the places where people live and grow food will no longer be suitable for either. Higher sea levels will make today’s low-lying islands and many coastal regions, where nearly half the global population live, uninhabitable, generating an estimated 2 billion refugees by 2100. Bangladesh alone will lose one-third of its land area, including its main breadbasket.
From 2030, more than half the population will live in the tropics, an area that makes up a third of the planet and already struggles with climate impacts. Yet by 2100, most of the high and mid latitudes will be uninhabitable because of heat stress or drought; despite stronger precipitation, the hotter soils will lead to faster evaporation and most populations will struggle for fresh water. We will have to live on a smaller land surface with a larger population.
Indeed, the consequences of a 4C warmer world are so terrifying that most scientists would rather not contemplate them, let alone work out a survival strategy.
Rockström director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, doesn’t like our chances. “It’s difficult to see how we could accommodate a billion people or even half of that,” he says. “There will be a rich minority of people who survive with modern lifestyles, no doubt, but it will be a turbulent, conflict-ridden world.” He points out that we already use nearly half the world’s ice-free surface to produce food for 7 billion people and thinks meeting the needs of 11 billion in such hostile conditions would be impossible. “The reason is primarily making enough food, but also we would have lost the biodiversity we’re dependent on and be facing a cocktail of negative shocks all the time, from fires to droughts.”But other scientists are less panicked
“I don’t think that humans as a species or even industrial civilisation is seriously threatened,” says Ken Caldeira, climatologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in California. “People live in Houston, Miami and Atlanta because they live in air conditioning through the hot summers. If people are rich enough to air-condition their lives, they can watch whatever is the successor to Game of Thrones on TV, as the natural world decays around them,” he says. But he points out that while richer people risk a loss to their quality of life, the poorer risk their actual lives.
How humanity will survive
Our best hope lies in cooperating as never before to radically reorganise our world: decoupling the political map from geography. However unrealistic it sounds, we’d need to look at the world afresh and see it in terms of where the resources are and then plan the population, food and energy production around that. It would mean abandoning huge tracts of the globe and moving Earth’s human population to the high latitudes: Canada, Siberia, Scandinavia, parts of Greenland, Patagonia, Tasmania, New Zealand and perhaps newly ice-free parts of the western Antarctic coast. If we allow 20 sq m of space per person – more than double the minimum habitable space allowed per person under English planning regulations – 11 billion people would need 220,000 sq km of land to live on. The area of Canada alone is 9.9m sq km and, combined with all the other high-latitude areas, such as Alaska, Britain, Russia and Scandinavia, there should be plenty of room for everyone. These precious lands, with tolerable temperatures and access to water, would also be valuable food-growing areas, as well as the last oases for many species, so people would need to be housed in compact, efficient high-rise cities with reflective roofs and resource-recycling systems. That risks raising local temperatures to intolerable levels, because compact cities function as heat islands, so solar-powered cooling or even artificial winds would be needed to counteract this. There is also an increased risk of epidemics in such densely populated spaces.
Full article here and a must read
We will not witness this but some of our children and grand-children will, and they will be as powerless as ever to influence the events. Notice how those scientists all expect the system to be business as usual and they should be the ones who in their modelling should be including an end of capitalism scenario to give real hope.
I don’t think that Marx and Engels never thought that the working class was going to support its own class enemies in the way they are doing it now, and that workers were going to go against workers in the massive way that it is being done at the present time. During the XVIII century workers used to say: Their capitalism, our socialism, and now they say: Our capitalism, and anti-communism is evolving again
Workers are electing reactionaries and backward gangsters to run the countries, reactionary militaries are criminals are being elected by them, racist presidents are being elected by the same peoples that are being affected by them, they are electing climate change denier, and they are against sciences, and scientific education, any asshole can be a president now and they are electing them.
In prior years there were more workers supporting progressive ideas than at the present time, the visions of a new society is too far away at the present time, instead of moving forward, it is moving backyard, if workers continue supporting climate change denier, it is going to be impossible to establish a new society because the whole earth is going to be destroyed, unless the crude reality motivate them to change their minds
In my youth, young peoples were the vanguard of the working class struggles, instead they are supporting backward conceptions, because several young peoples are supporting medicine for everyone, it does not mean that socialism is moving forward, they just want to reform this stupid system. Drums of wars are being beating all over and there is not an anti-war movement like in prior years, on the contrary, millions of workers are supporting the killing of others workers.
I have been in this movement since I was very young, and I will continue in this movement, because this is the only viable solution, but socialism is not moving forward, on the contrary, it is moving back, for the reformists is at their doorstep, but that is only a mental lie, without the working class, socialism can not be established.
The right of women are going to be eliminated little by little thru legal coups, and in the case of the USA women voted against themselves, and now they are going to reverse the right for abortion, and religious fanatics are evolving like wild flowers in the garden, and they are denying are the progress made by medicine and embryology, and they want to eliminate the cure of many diseases because they are not in accordance with god design, and millions of workers are supporting those backward ideas which will reflect against them,
I stood handing out leaflets: in an electorate in Australia- knowing we would also wake up to a liberal government… but we did not despair.
In the seat where we had rallied for a Victorian Socialist candidate we obtained 4.8%- that is between 3000- 4000 people in one area who intentionally and consciously voted for socialism.
socialism counts. Yes we have climate denying ruling parties on the right.
There is a gradual growth in socialism- and it was maybe double the number of Clive Palmer’ s Australian Party (a affluent right winger figure) in this one electorate alone.
This was an election on the right that called to ‘save petrol cars for the tradie’, clean energy mix coal, and so on. But this narrative may be challenged post election.
The positive thing is: thousands in an electorate made the vote for socialism- so I am optimistic.
Regarding research on climate change- I believe there is enough expertise on this forum and on many others, to use social science modelling on future social predictions, and to unpack the capital/socialism and dire warnings against capitalism in the mix. Perhaps the Socialist Standard could promote a section(s) to predictions, not just climate, but societal predictions and harms of capitalist modes.
Stay optimistic, I have tired legs today from standing up handing out pamphlets, 🙂
L.B
Neill
Do not confuse or mix reformism, social democracy and state capitalism with socialism. The SPGB is the only, and the only one who is advocating for socialism. There is not such thing as a socialist movement at the present time, the vast majority of the workers around the world are supporting capitalism and its leaders
Hi Marcos,
You have encouraged me recently, sharing the fact you had been in my position over 5-6 years ago.
I see the end game: socialism is a mode of production, and it is the key mode, the true finish line, and one that is kindest to the ecosystem, and all who travel on its surface. That sounds positive.
I mentioned socialism in a local election- as a very large group of people identified and deliberately voted for Socialism. They did not vote, liberal, labor nor green, but Socialism. They disregarded the capitalist ideology that provokes the notion of socialism with anxiety, dangerous, or something bad will happen. They developed a common political association, a community- and with intentional consciousness, decided.
I know there is a way to go, but for a moment, I saw a glimpse of that ‘in the last instance’: a majority, a socialist democratic majority is possible. It will take a while: conflating time with numbers and the democratic will can blossom into a socialist reality.
The environment and all of us need it- but I hope that antagonistic point of transition is deep democracy.
Marcos, thank you for your guidance, and cautions- I still may need it!
Comrades, be well,
L.B Neill
An add on to the last comment:
I see that capitalism will not reform itself. The dizzy rule of its apex structure is an addiction- one that cannot let go of its self harm, and the significant harm to the vast majority.
It is sad to see. But if it continues I think it might preempt its own antagonism, it will have to simply concede its own end- and let the majority have its society, like what the world socialism official blog says: Socialism or your money back. After trying it, I don’t think anyone will want their money back, not a soul!
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