Climate Crisis: Our Last Chance
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I said more than 50 years ago
Hi L B Neill
As someone living in Oz, but in NSW, I was very interested in your remarks on the Victorian Socialists and the recent Federal Election, where I see your candidates in the three seats contested each gained between 4 and 5 percent of votes cast. On a realist measure, this is a good result. But you say that those who voted for these candidates voted for socialism. I’ve just looked through VicSoc Federal Election policies and can find no reference whatever to socialism. There are policies re tax increases on the wealthy; nationalisation of mines and banks; aboriginal land rights; protection and support for asylum seekers; anti-racism; GBI for all; raise pensions; real climate action (100% renewables in 10 years); women’s rights; LGBTQI rights; free healthcare; increase funding for the national broadcaster (ABC); animal welfare, and more. This puts the Victorian Socialists in the Left of Labor spectrum, although many of its policies resonate with those of Labor and also the Greens. In the UK context, I guess these policies would be shared by many members of Momentum, although considering the structure of the Vic. Socialists perhaps a better comparison would be with the (now defunct) TUSC. Both were formed as alliances with existing left parties – in Australia, Socialist Alliance and Socialist Equality – and both have/had a strong TU component. Perhaps the only difference is the prominent “identity politics” element in the Vic Soc policy mix.
What I can’t understand is why you appear to identify your position as more or less consistent with the SPGB’s political aim of socialism. But they are light years apart. In the eyes of the SPGB, the Victorian Socialists is a reformist organisation. Reformism is the prime cardinal sin to the SPGB, and always has been. The SPGB would argue that the Victorian Socialists is a party supporting capitalism, albeit trying to make it kinder – which in the end serves the interests of capital, not the worker. You say that the workers who voted for your candidates in the recent election “intentionally, consciously deliberately” voted for socialism. In SPGB eyes, they were voting for capitalism. How do you square this with your obviously sincere and conscientious beliefs?
pgb
I will repeat it millions of times. The only organization advocating for socialism is the SPGB and the WSM. We don’t need a PHD degree to understand that. The rest are just a bunch of reformers of capitalism , and instead of helping socialism they are creating more confusions, with them socialism has not advanced for one single day
I think we have to differentiate between the demands of many environmentalists and the reforms we have been accustomed to opposing in the past.
Some activists (the paramedics on the scene) realise the planet is close to death and needs urgent treatment to save it.
So do we discourage them applying emergency first-aid to the patient so that the planet survives for a little bit longer in the hope that it gets to a hospital (socialism) for a full medical intervention to start the life-saving surgery and treatment and cure?
Do we accept the need for the first-aid to keep the planet alive until we can provide the ambulance (revolution) to take the patient to the hospital?
A poor analogy I grant you but I think it brings out our dilemma.
Socialists don’t want our world to be DOA, dead on arrival.
The pessimists among us contemplate a scenario that even if we get socialism, the climate crisis has reached the point of no return, those runaway tipping points that places civilization itself at risk have arrived and instead of a healthy world of plenty, we are not the hospital but rather the hospice administering palliative care to a dying planet.
I have referred to the constant bad news we get before. Here is another piece of depressing information.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48337629
“…The long-held view has been that the world’s seas would rise by a maximum of just under a metre by 2100. This new study, based on expert opinions, projects that the real level may be around double that figure. This could lead to the displacement of hundreds of millions of people, the authors say…To put this into perspective, the Syrian refugee crisis resulted in about a million refugees coming into Europe. That is about 200 times smaller than the number of people who would be displaced in a 2m sea-level rise.”
The silver lining in this dark cloud?
“…The authors emphasise that there is still time to avoid these type of scenarios, if major cuts in emissions take place over the coming decades…
It is back to gambling and the odds being given, once again
“They acknowledge that the chances of hitting the high end of this range are small, around 5%, but they should not be discounted, according to the lead author. “If I said to you that there was a one in 20 chance that if you crossed the road you would be squashed you wouldn’t go near it,” said Prof Bamber. “Even a 1% probability means that a one in a hundred year flood is something that could happen in your lifetime. I think that a 5% probability, crikey – I think that’s a serious risk.”
“A quarter of the UK’s land could be restored to nature, making a significant contribution towards cutting the nation’s carbon emissions to zero, under a new rewilding proposal.”
Rebecca Wrigley, the chief executive of Rewilding Britain, said, rewilding such a large proportion of the UK did not have to involve an overall reduction in food production. There are 1.8m hectares of deer stalking estates and 1.3m hectares of grouse moor estates, the report notes.
I recall during the foot and mouth epidemic when the rural farming economy was at a stand still, this proposal was already being given serious consideration albeit for a different motive.
pgb,
Thanks, I had to think about your question- and it still feels like any answer I give is incomplete.
There are so many Socialist expressions- like Linux forks, or like the improvements from Marx to Faircough.
I feel the end result should be the same for all these points.
Was there anything wrong with the end game I had said, or the common goal of socialism- a social mode. I am sincere about that.
The problem is: how do we deal with our circumstance until we vote the end goal in? I hate this division, and its effects on socialists. The end result should be the same.
I am new to this landscape- and now I realise all the divisions, factions and separations. We are the same, the same goal… what the hell happened before I got here!
I think this way, or that way. I should think that, or think this. Modernism or post modern.
I am told it by many groups- this is the the only one. Do I become a independent socialist again, and let that division go? I am not sure. All I feel is that there is so much division, but I share the end result with SP- a evolution toward a mode of socialism.
pgb, I am not sure if I could answer your question- but you researched the post. I hold the end goal of socialism, but how we get there is varied.
If I mimed the only way to get there- challenge me. But it is the same end goal, and I am trying to work it out.
pgp- let me know your socialist expression in Oz, so I can get an understanding of the critique. But I will say, there is more than one road that leads to Rome- and it has the same ends. This should be a point of conversation, and of action.
Please, In your answer, don’t shout at me in words- I am trying- but I feel I will avoid all this division, and become a solitary socialist again, for any expression that is different is frowned upon.
This should be about socialism and the climate, sorry I had to respond in this way to a question.
L.B.
Marcos. It has advanced. It will continue to do so. The tendency it takes has re-articulated itself since it had to deal with the ‘Third Wave of Capitalism’
Newer mutations of capital expression have peculated into so many industries- even welfare has been marketised. There is profit in poverty as liberal governments decentre the state- government to governance, and from traditional welfare agency to private individuals seeking profit from government spending. It is not new, but it is a model taken from private health, and being introduced into welfare.
It is a model being rolled out in the green economy and we are interpolated into liberal/capital ideology: Carbon credits- pay to pollute. It is not in societal control, but Establishment control, and many buy into it.Any alternative is shut out- the capital narrative seeks to eliminate any signifiers or protest.
But, for the want of a better word-left narrations are joining up and moving closer to socialism. Most people operate from taken for granted ideas, limiting or limiting their ability to think outside of capital modes and social relations… yet there is an increase in people being drawn to socialism- from a soft, to a hard left; and then to possibly think- socialism.
I do realise now the ‘cardinal sin’ of reformism in SPGB. Yet there is a movement, seen as reformist at first, yet not quite: it can consider protecting the worker in a hostile capital environment. I would wish that it would join up in the last instance, with no partisan ideations, to form an achievable and socialist totality.
This is what some socialist tendencies seek, or some say limits it. If I could attend a meeting of SP in person, I would have jumped at the chance- but I am too far away.
I don’t think most socialist groups want a power under worker/power over capital version of reformed capitalism that stops at the ability to just live- but a socialism that says power-with, and we all thrive.
The socialist idea is increasing, protecting our position is not reformism: it is stopping the severity of a sociopathic class from harming the survival of our position and of our people.
May you be well,
L.B.
Meanwhile, Springwatch is on air again. Never an episode goes by without an impassioned plea for us all to do something about the impending loss of one endangered species or another. Surveys are launched. Wildlife activity is monitored. We can like them on Facebook and engage with them on Twitter. The point is made over and over again that ‘we’ are spoiling the planet. These are very learned, well-meaning and enthusiastic people who can’t be faulted for effort. Do any of them even have the vaguest idea that it’s capitalism that’s the problem, not ‘us’? Even if they did, would they be allowed to say so on the BBC?
There are more peoples following the claims of the presidents and rulers than the claim of the scientists. In Brasil peoples voted for a reactionary grou of capitalists who are going to produce more destructions in the Amazon, and the possible death of thousands of animal species and the tribes that have lived in that area for many years
From the horses mouth about the economic consequences of climate change
Rostin Behnam is part of the five-member Commodities Futures Trading Commission, an independent federal agency and of CFTC’s Market Risk Advisory Committee.
“If climate change causes more volatile frequent and extreme weather events, you’re going to have a scenario where these large providers of financial products—mortgages, home insurance, pensions—cannot shift risk away from their portfolios,” Behnam told the New York Times. “It’s abundantly clear that climate change poses financial risk to the stability of the financial system.”
“The impacts of climate change affect every aspect of the American economy—from production agriculture to commercial manufacturing and the financing of every step in each process,” he continued. “Any solutions seeking to address and mitigate climate risk must be equally focused on ensuring the safety and continued prosperity of our urban cores and rural communities. Failing to address financial market risks associated with climate change will impede economic growth, and most likely hit rural communities the hardest.”
Permafrost has begun thawing in the Canadian Arctic more than 70 years early because of climate change, according to new research.
A “series of anomalously warm summers” has dramatically accelerated melting rates at three sites despite average annual ground temperatures remaining low. Ponds and hillocks have formed as a result.When permafrost thaws, it releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases stored in or beneath it into the atmosphere. There in turn, cause temperatures to rise and create a perpetual cycle where more permafrost melts.
More evidence that the scientific projections were on the conservative side?
Bad news for Africa…more droughts, more floods
“It’s the climate crisis you haven’t heard of”
Crucial to providing water to India and Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Himalayan glaciers are disappearing.
The melting of Himalayan glaciers has doubled since the turn of the century
” ‘For the wellbeing of the people there, our results are of course the worst possible. But it is what it is, and now we have to prepare for that scenario. We have to worry a lot, because so many people are affected. To stop the temperature rises, we have to cool the planet,” he said. “We have to not only slow down greenhouse gas emissions, we have to reverse them. That is the challenge for the next 20 years’ ”
Does anybody really believe that is going to happen when we are not even going to achieve the present very moderate goal of either 1.5 or 2.0 C ?
G20 nations have almost tripled the subsidies they give to coal-fired power plants in recent years, despite the urgent need to cut the carbon emissions driving the climate crisis. The bloc of major economies pledged a decade ago to phase out all fossil fuel subsidies.
China and India give the biggest subsidies to coal, with Japan third, followed by South Africa, South Korea, Indonesia and the US. While the UK frequently runs its own electricity grid without any coal power at all, a parliamentary report in June criticised the billions of pounds used to help to build fossil fuel power plants overseas.
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