Climate Crisis: Our Last Chance
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If all is lost and we are really doomed, then the purpose of the Party no longer exists – so let’s divvy out our funds and assets to the membership and let us indeed all party on in great style.
But what Sussex and i are saying is simply that there is an urgency now about establishing socialism before we are very much doomed by runaway climate change. This pressing necessity for immediate action to establish socialism should now be our primary message to fellow-workers “Act Now – Or It Will Be Too Late.” (i think i mentioned that our economic analysis of the LTV simply does not motivate workers.)
No more are we talking centuries and no more even in decades. The count-down has begun for real. But in my personal opinion there is a new denial arising by those who although they understand and accept climate change, it is a denial of the actual impact on their lives and of their own family’s lives right now and in the very near future. We are like rabbits in the middle of the road, frozen and paralysed by the head-lights of a speeding car.
We may make merry at the prospect of an impending catastrophe but as ALB says on the Brexit thread, we cannot take any satisfaction in the tragic consequences that will be inflicted upon our fellow-workers – even more so with the extreme weather events associated with climate change as well as the longer term suffering from global-warming on agriculture.
Our problem has always been making our object an immediacy for people, who found it easier to campaign for the immediate programme of reforms and leave socialism to some future generation. Now we can present fellow-workers with a simple choice in earnest – Socialism or Barbarism – and mean what we say. It will no longer be a banal, trite quote of some long-dead socialist but an honest statement of fact.
Upon reflection re-reading the above post, i acknowledge it seems i come across as some eschatological Old Testament prophet or millennialist cultist …”Repent or meet thy doom.”
But i rather see it asa modern doctor to a cancer patient, with surgery and chemo-radiation therapy we may stop cancer’s advance rather than some witch-doctor of capitalism saying, give us your poor and vulnerable to sacrifice on the altar of Mammon so that the kings and princes may go on living.
“The need for socialism is urgent.” – SPGB pamphlet 1980’s.
The pressing necessity for Socialism has always been urgent. It was true then – as plainly seen in climate change, the many genocides, wars, famines, etc, – all the countless, needless deaths, directly linked to capitalism’s insane pursuit of profit/profligate misuse and abuse of the earth and it’s resources (inc. Homo sapiens) since the ’80’s (18thC/19thC take your pick!?) and it’s still true now!
But…
That is exactly the point Alan, I think we could get a lot of mileage out of the imminent existential threat to ourselves and the environment/planet.
The extreme weather events we’ve witnessed with increasing frequency over the last… ?? decade/s? few years? insert favoured time period? …since the industrial revolution (😃) are only the tip of the iceberg:- about to ruin everyone’s party.
I doubt, Trump, Araújo, the naysayers, and their paymasters, will let a little thing like environmental degradation get in their way of making a fast buck. Or, of sending more working class cannon fodder, to fight wars for access to and control of the planets resources. Only one thing is certain -It’s gonna get worse.
It was always “for keeps” a game played in deadly earnest. (I’ve a granddaughter due any second now, I’d like her to live as full a life as possible.)
Socialism is still the only, truly viable, solution.
Call me an eternal pessimist but right now I think a snowball in hell has more chance.
(Mission Impossible- better start right away. )
As a newcomer to the thread, Malcolm, you may have not read all the messages posted on this and under other topics.
The many social ills of capitalism, even world war was not an existential threat until the invention of nuclear weapons but even with those, humans are still in charge (despite sci-fi scenarios of terminator computers). Not so with runaway climate change which is the point at which no remedial policy, even with socialism, is possible to stop it only to mitigate some of the effects.
I don’t see us disagreeing except perhaps in how we express ourselves. This is a moment in history when more than just socialists are saying change is imperative and we no longer have the luxury of thinking there is plenty of time to do it in.
We have more and more of the science backing us up. It is an opportunity to connect the dots. Perhaps not a 100% of our fellow-workers are receptive to the global warming warning but there are many.
That snowball in hell may well become an avalanche of socialist ideas. Who knows? I don’t but i along with the rest of us in the Party do the limited things we can in the hope we might not be the only ones who understand exactly who the real culprit is.
Nope. (Not been on here for years.) Have hardly read any of it. Dove in where angels fear to tread as usual.
Yes. Think we are in broad agreement, at least (and in my experience of the SPGB, it’s not often one member says that to another. 🙂 )
The imminent existential threat didn’t exist until the invention of the bomb. Quite a while after we began degrading our environment on the headlong rush to global environmental armageddon.
Morris, Engels, et al on smogbound industrial cities. Marx on all nations being compelled to become Bourgeois (ie Capitalist) the choking smog’s of modern China, Mexico, third world countries waiting to catch up etc -parts of a holistic whole, an ongoing process, we’re probably/definitely, already too late to stop.
Even a best case scenario i.e socialist revolution tomorrow, still leaves us stranded in a damaged, degraded environment, with a difficult present, and an uncertain future.
But at least we’ll have put a stop to all the attendent social evils of Kapital.
Could quite easily envision a worst case scenario involving, ever quickening, ever increasing, environmental degradation, with the added bonus of an increasing likelihood of nuclear armageddon, oh wait, that’s capitalism! 🙁
Worse scenario is I think has only been mentioned in passing but along with climate change, the conditions for the breeding of bacteria also evolves and so comes the spread of new diseases and new epidemic plagues (and recall the failing efficiency of anti-biotics). Just what is the population required to keep things going. I recall a flu outbreak some years and a lot of necessary infrastructure began to crack when staff called in sick.
Climate Change Hunger and the Black Death along with desperate Climate Change Refugee invasions. Sounds like a return to the Middle Ages. Let us recall also that when Europeans arrived in the Americas there were over a 100 million reduced to half-a-dozen million. Wherever white explorers tread, smallpox, measles had got there before them and they found empty cities and towns. Even the Amazon had large populations and vibrant civilisations.
Is it no wonder that the rich are building bunkers and choosing island sanctuary New Zealand as their refuge of choice.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-rich-new-zealand-doomsday-preppers/
So if the real culprits suddenly leave home, we’ll know they’re in New Zealand, somewhere. 👍🏼
In California, a new factor has been added to fire produced by climate change and it is the negligence of the utility company which did not upgrade their infrastructure and it could have provoked a spark that creates the fire
In California, a new factor has been added to the fire produced by climate change, and it is the negligence of the utility company which did not upgrade their infrastructure and it could have provoked a spark that creates the fire
Capitalism says it can fix it
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46263770
The Energy Transitions Commission (ETC), says it is both practical and affordable to get their emissions down to virtually zero by the middle of the next century. It calculates that industrial emissions can be eradicated a cost of less than 1% of global GDP, with a marginal impact on living standards.
The focus of the report is on the tough nuts of climate change: cement, steel, chemicals, trucking and aviation. These sectors account for close to a third of total global carbon dioxide emissions, but on current trends that is likely to increase just as the rest of the economy is cleaning up. The report says it is technically possible to decarbonise all of them by the middle of the next century at costs per tonne of carbon dioxide saved of $60 or less for steel, $120 or less in cement, and $270 or less in the case of plastics.
The chair of the ETC, Adair Turner, said there was an “incredible disconnect” between the urgency of the climate problem and the “glacial” pace of technologies such as carbon capture and storage, where emissions are captured then pumped underground.
“Making the transition involves a step change in the way we do things,” said the former CBI chief. “It can be done and it won’t break the bank … but it will require real urgency from policy-makers, from business leaders and from investors and financiers.”
See !! Nothing to worry about, after all, comrades. I’ve over-reacted to the hype. Capitalists know best and have everything in hand. Let’s just trust them and have faith in them, they’ll bring us through with some Churchillian determination.
Ooops…
Kevin Anderson, a professor of economics at Manchester University, points out that the UK’s proud record of carbon emission cuts does not count statistics on key polluting sectors.
“If we include CO2 from international aviation; shipping; imports and exports – then UK plc has made no real dent in CO2 since 1990, nor have the other climate-progressive EU nations. Until we dispense with our rose-tinted specs we’ll not even recognise the problem – let alone the solutions. No nation is even approaching doing what ‘they feasibly can’ – and we will continue to fail whilst we worship the god of Mammon and ephemeral economics.”
So now there are two. Private Frasers, that is. And what’s the betting that the new one is from Scotland too ! No wonder they had to invent a new word up there that doesn’t exist in English English: dour (pronounced do-er, I think).
But seriously, last night’s discussion brings out the advisability of not projecting a doom scenario to get our case across. The reaction might not be a spur to action but, as was suggested, to party on. “Let’s eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die”. What would be more constructive would be to offer hope, the hope of a solution. I wonder if our Extinction friends have thought of what hope to offer (their main aim seems to be to pressure governments into doing something now within capitalism). Of course they show by their attempt to change things that they don’t really think we’re all doomed. That human action can intervene in the course of events.
It is true, though, that “we’re all going to die”.
Not sure about the correct pronunciation – i say dower.
This is a discussion forum and we are debating mostly ourselves.
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2018/11/how-to-save-world.html
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2018/11/capitalism-is-our-real-enemy.html
Oh, i omitted this recent blog
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2018/11/socialism-is-green.html
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2018/11/how-to-save-world.html
last paragraph, should there be a ‘be’?
If socialists are not to marginalised
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2018/11/socialism-is-green.html
Good use of graphic illustration.
So now there are two. Private Frasers, that is. And what’s the betting that the new one is from Scotland too !
Well spotted Adam.
Yes. Think we are in broad agreement, at least (and in my experience of the SPGB, it’s not often one member says that to another. )
That is one reason why I stopped going to the pub after meetings.
Not sure about the correct pronunciation – I say dower.
That is an Edinburgh or posh Glasgow Kelvinside pronunciation.
I say doo-ur for dour.
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