Glasgow COP26
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https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-scotland-59298344
Greta on Cop26
“Unfortunately it turned out just the way as I had expected, and that many others had also expected, they even succeeded in watering down the blah, blah, blah, which is quite an achievement…“There is still no guarantee that we will reach the Paris Agreement. The text that it is now, as a document, you can interpret it in many, many different ways. We can still expand fossil fuel infrastructure, we can still increase the global emissions. It’s very, very vague.”
Sadly, that’s probably the truth of the matter. This was supposed to be our last, great hope of solving climate change – but in the end COP26 was likely a net-loss to the fight against global warming, what with all the flights and hot air from politicians… The fact that so many people were discussing “system change not climate change” is heartening, but you can bet that system change won’t come from the likes of the SWP.
I’m told to think of COP26 as the glass half-full. But if the Glasgow Climate Pact is the best that can be achieved, I still remain the eternal pessimist.
Are we seriously considering that COP27 in Egypt or COP28 in Dubai are really going to prove to be transformative?
Yes, people are calling for system change but their definition of the system and ours diverge. We aren’t talking about the same system.
Did we manage to get our message across to those in Glasgow? Or once again were we for all practical purposes invisible?
I’m not disparaging the efforts of comrades as we do the best we can, but can we say it is going to be sufficient?
Homo sapiens will survive but what type of world will it be that we will live in?
I’m more and more inclined that the world will stumble into socialism unintentionally by accident but at a date when it is too late to avoid unnecessary catastrophes and disasters.
For the time being, our priority cannot be saving the planet but instead we should be set upon saving the Party from extinction.
I’m not exactly an active member of the Party, but do you think extinction is a realistic possibility?
My hope is that as the more mainstream left wing parties continue to be ineffective, the SPGB’s brand of socialism will show itself to be the alternative. Perhaps that’s a bit optimistic!
I see that the outcome of COP26 has sent Monbiot completely off the rails. Instead of moving on to becoming a socialist he has regressed to supporting XR tactics.
Here he is in yesterday’s Guardian:
“Our survival depends on raising the scale of civil disobedience until we build the greatest mass movement in history, mobilising the 25% who can flip the system.”
Granted, he doesn’t agree with XR that 3.5% is enough to flip the system but it’s the same idea of a movement to bring pressure on governments to do more to combat global overwarming, especially as he is not saying what he thinks the system should be “flipped” into.
It will of course take the “greatest mass movement in history” to create the framework within which the problem of global warming (and many other problems) can be effectively and lastingly tackled — the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s productive resources.
But that needs to be a conscious movement for that, not a movement to bring pressure to bear on “world leaders” to try to get them to do something that the capitalist economic system won’t allow them to do.
Or maybe he is thinking like a Trotskyist — that you mobilise people to demand something that is impossible under capitalism, banking on them turning against capitalism when the demand is not granted?
Anyway, he is all over the place.
JH – do you think extinction is a realistic possibility?
Each party poll has fewer members voting in it.
But also look at our demographics.
If we had a youth wing it would be anybody under the age of 50.
If the mainstream left-wing parties continue to be ineffective – can you say that our fellow workers won’t swing to the right as a response and begin reflecting right-populist ideologies.
Religion and nationalism remain strong in the minds of fellow workers. We can identify some weakening of their hold over fellow workers but we can also recognise that they are strengthening.
In the USA they have coalesced into Christian Nationalism.
The Party is on life support and it is only because of the legacies bequeathed to us that keep us functioning as a political party.
I drew attention to Monbiot at page/6/#post-224308, ALB
I think another poster also previously drew attention to Monbiot believing a wealth tax can be the answer.
If Monbiot is the best the politically progressive can offer, we are deep in dire straits.
Has there been a discussion about why the party is in such a poor state, even compared to other leftist organisations? If COP26 achieved anything, it showed that there’s definitely a good number of young people in this country who think capitalism sucks. And considering that the average church has worse demographics than the SPGB, it’s not like that’s keeping people away.
Let us please not divert the thread from COP26.
1. The general topic of each forum is given by the posted forum description. Do not start a thread in a forum unless it matches the given topic, and do not derail existing threads with off-topic posts.
It wasn’t your bad but please start any new thread under the World Socialist Movement section as the appropriate place.
ALB – and then the Trots will infiltrate it and give the membership another reason to disassociate themselves from ‘socialism’. This was a response to what ALB was saying about the call for a mass-movement’ of environmentalists which now seems to have disappeared! Oh,and now it’s returned below this response!!
Still thinking about Monbiot and his call to “build the greatest mass movement in history” to deal with climate change, it’s going to take as much time and energy to do that as to build up a mass movement to make the Earth’s productive resources common property. So why not concentrate on that?
However, I suspect that he is seeking to provide a justification for climate activists (his audience) to carry on what they doing, only more.
This won’t make any difference as actions for something as vague as “climate justice” or to get “world leaders” to do more than they can are ultimately futile. As long as capitalism lasts there will always be an opportunity for this sort of thing, allowing participants to think they are doing “something now” while in reality wasting time that could be better employed.
Meanwhile the problem continues.
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