schekn_itrch
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Yes I do read the forum regularly even though I don’t often have time to contribute. Thank you for the suggestion, I’ll definitely give “Everything for Everyone” a try, I have never heard of this author before!
Voyage from Yesteryear is indeed a very notable mention, and I am grateful for the pointer. A really nice read with lots to think about. In fact, I found quite a lot of similarities between the Noon Universe and Chiron. The idea that you can only overcome the inertia of the continuity of generations by separating children from their parents while they grow up was developed in the Strugatsky bothers’ book “The Ugly Swans”. I was quite bemused reading about how chironians have multiple children though – leaving the whole “how does a robot raise a healthy baby” thing aside – it seems that the author has never had to seriously deal with either pregnancy (obviously) or childcare.
Generally, my biggest criticism of the majority of sci-fi is that authors fail to depict people and the general social organisation coherently different. In most cases, it is people’s character that are not presented as “believable”, and here ‘Voyage from Yesteryear’ really shines – people are shown quite different and I can imagine them. In contrast, the whole organisation of society was not thought through well: I would think that people who are interested in doing things well and showing off would have a different organisation of cafes and pubs, for instance. Here it seems that the author just slides into the “normal” Western reality.
So, ZJW, let me ask you in turn – how come you are able to make no mention of Strugatsky brothers in your comment? 😀Giant livestock farms and privatised water firms accused of polluting the nation’s waterways are to be named in what is thought to be the world’s first livestreamed investigative documentary.
The crowdfunded investigation Rivercide, which will be broadcast online at 7pm on Wednesday 14 July (TODAY – sorry for this short notice!), will be hosted by environmental journalist and Guardian columnist George Monbiot.
The “dystopian” “full-scale digitalization and automation of food systems” is one of the things we desperately need in order to reduce green house gas emissions. I work in this field and can see that there are some good experts working at IPES Food (who wrote the article) but I cannot see how “agroecology can help cut 75% of food systems’ GHG emissions” – not unless you murder all the cows. We need all technologies we can get our hands on, in addition to the full elimination of buying and selling – something the article sadly missed entirely.
There is a video of an XR leader explaining their strategy of attracting people. There he drew a scheme of 3 circles, small at the top, a bit bigger under it, and the biggest at the bottom. He said, “The top is us, highly political people who want to do something. The middle is the highly political left who don’t want to do anything because they are so hell-bent on their little differences (he meant us, along with some other left-leaning people). And the bottom is the non-political people who also want to do something. We need to skip the middle circle and work directly with the bottom one”.
Now, I will not comment on the general strategy here, this is beside the point. But I would just like to say that this description of the splintered left is rather accurate; and that this SPGB hostility towards anyone who expresses slight deviations from the “party line” is quite disheartening. That “clown”, as you put it, Bijou, that “No body’s driving” may not always hold this view – people change, and their views change. Yet we don’t want to give them a chance, do we? By taking this hard-line approach, we reject a possibility to start a conversation, to have a debate, to inspire, to unite, to make progress.
I acknowledge that a lot of people in XR probably do not have a vision of a money-less, border-less future we aspire to. A lot of them are not even politically active at all, or even well-informed, for that matter. But I believe that we should not condemn them for it; they might just not know how such a future is possible, not have enough information or faith. I am not saying we should immediately invite them to join the party. I merely suggest that instead of criticism and rejection, we might consider a dialog, an offer of a solution, an open hand.
I personally believe that socialism has a good chance of coming true. But I am not sure it will be established by the “purists”. Most likely, it will be a messy process with various groups of people having slightly differing views on the way to achieve it. And while they will be fighting for this future, we will be sitting in our armchairs and criticizing their imperfect views and pathetic struggles. I am no longer sure in which group I would rather be.
XR have pre-empted what a CA might decide by laying down 2025 as the date by which the government should achieve net zero carbon emissions, don’t you think?
I don’t think so. There is a problem that people don’t see because the government is not telling the truth, and it appears even many comrades here don’t have a clue about the scale of the problem 😉
Therefore, XR are demanding that the government solve this problem. Now, how to solve it, that will be up to the CA to decide, of course led by a panel of scientists and other experts.
James19, I am a member, and I do not support reformism. I do, however, think that the party should cooperate with fellow travelers.
Hi james19, you are describing why reformism is bad. I agree with that concept. Please reread my original post and try to understand what I am saying.
ALB, XR are not saying what exactly a CA would decide because this is up to citizens to decide it. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a CA, don’t you think so? Therefore writing now what conclusions XR expect or don’t expect the CA to come to, makes no sense whatsoever.
Nor does it make sense to write what I assume because you don’t know that, either. It doesn’t matter what the population may want in principle. When people are confronted with the fact that we are going to exterminate ourselves if we go the way of business as usual, they will change their mind, and very likely come to realize that common resource ownership is the only way out.
robbo203, it may or may not be realistic to expect capitalist government to abolish capitalism, but we will think about that later, when people realize that their capitalist government is betraying them. This is why XR’s 1st demand is for the government to tell the truth. At some point there will be a clash between citizens (and there are now more and more climate conscious citizens) and the government. This is only a beginning of the battle. But this is a way into solving this. Sitting on your behind, criticizing active movements that are actively convincing people that capitalism is destroying Earth, and doing nothing to help them is a morally bankrupt strategy.
You say, “I strongly suspect most members of XR think capitalism equates with the free market or neoliberalism”. In fact, many people on this forum assume things and start criticizing, without knowing. Have you been to XR meetings? How many forum discussions from the XR have you read? Why don’t you, instead of “assuming”, simply ask people who have read a lot, and do know? No, most XR members do not equate capitalism with free market, they realize that capitalism must go. But instead of trying to convince people through political discussions, they took the road of convincing people through showing them the facts about how capitalism is destroying our planet, and then by allowing them to come to this conclusion on their own.
What the article is saying is “pure reformism” is the demand mentioned in the preceeding paragraph that the aim of blocking some road was to “force the government to pay attention to the issue of climate change and take urgent and decisive action”.
The demand to “force the government to pay attention” is the demand for Citizen’s Assemblies (see XR website). The way you present it does not reflect this fact. Therefore, your claim that this is reformist is factually incorrect.
I was just suggesting that it would probably not be possible to achieve this by 2025, i.e in only 5 years (climate change is not the only problem facing humanity, there’s also world poverty which could be considered a greater, immediate priority). You want another date?
I don’t want another date, it seems to be you who is not OK with this date. I am fine with demanding 2025 because it makes sense: it is very early and does not allow the government to kick the can down the road. It may be difficult to achieve, but this is not the point: we need to demand action as soon as possible, and this is what this date would require.
By the way, the XR movement is worldwide and not just in the UK, therefore the push is for most government to start acting at the same time, which again you do not write, whether on purpose or because you simply do not know. I suggest acquiring information prior to writing.
I have read through this and note that it is pretty tentative and full of “coulds”, “mays”, “ifs” and “potentially”.
Yes, scientists do not like to make sweeping statements. However, imagine a scenario: your child is playing by a precipice. It is a very deep precipice, falling off it MAY be lethal. The child is playing not too close, and there is actually little probability that they will fall down. But they COULD. What are you going to do? Keep saying that the fall is not definite? Or come and take the child away?
Now, this is not even our situation. In our situation, the child is very slowly crawling in the direction of the precipice, and unless we do something, the fall is inevitable. And you just say, Let’s not be alarmist! What an irresponsible behavior.
The IPCC states that “a ‘runaway greenhouse effect’—analogous to [that of] Venus—appears to have virtually no chance of being induced by anthropogenic activities.”
We are not talking about Venus here, it is enough to disrupt the climate on a much smaller scale to lead to widespread death and suffering. “While a runaway greenhouse effect on Earth is virtually impossible, there are indications that Earth could enter a <i>moist greenhouse</i> state that renders large parts of Earth uninhabitable if the climate forcing is large enough to make water vapour (H<sub>2</sub>O) a major atmospheric constituent.”
In any event, you can’t legitimately read into the paper that it is saying that 6 out of the current 7 million humans on Earth will perish.
I am not trying to do that. First of all, it’s billions, not millions. Second, it’s already 7.5. Third, climate is only half of the problem, and is only responsible for ~7% of the biodiversity loss, which is the second half of the problem. The article was just to show an example. IPCC tries to only present very solid science, and so does not include into their calculations things like methane from permafrost or melting of Antarctic ice. Therefore, their assessment of tipping points is very conservative. As scientific consensus I would take the Scientists’ Warning to Humanity. The 2nd one was released in 2017 and it has more scientist cosigners and formal supporters than any other journal article ever published. It clearly points out that we are in the middle of the 6th mass extinction which we may not survive. It says, “A damaged Nature will survive. We may not.
We must change course to avert an ecological disaster.” https://www.scientistswarning.org/We already have 70% less insects than just half a century ago. Do you realize how important they are in the food chain? Do you know how pollinator insects are important for plants? The mass extinction crisis is a crisis of biodiversity loss, a threat to a web of life that includes our own, from our food system(s) to over 50% of pharmaceuticals in active clinical use, none of which have replaceable natural sources.
Ultimately, you may be right, it might not be 6 billion, it may just be 1 billion. In which case, it is morally admissible to say, “let’s not be alarmist, everything is alright!” – is this what you are saying? This position is morally bankrupt and you should be ashamed of yourself.
There was an article about the XR (Extinction Rebellion) in the last issue of Socialist Standard, written by Adam Buick. It is great that he informs comrades of this important movement and some issues it raises. However, as usual, like a broken record, the rhetoric of the article was, “everything everyone offers is reformism, hence against the SPGB principles, hence bad”.
This representation of material is really not helpful. It does not stimulate thought, it strangles hope, it is counterproductive in terms of uniting with the aim of changing the status quo.
Moreover, the author makes several factual mistakes, a lot of assumptions, and shows general ignorance of the subject of the article, even when there are members of the party a lot more knowledgeable and available for consultation. Let’s see what Adam misrepresented.
“At this level, this (Citizens Assemblies) is pure reformism, calling on a capitalist government to implement some desirable measure within capitalism.” – this is wrong. In fact, most of the movement’s participants recognize that implementing the “net Zero by 2025” is not realistic within the capitalist framework, and therefore expect Citizens Assemblies to advise government to “Change System”- their common slogan. If abolishing capitalism is a reform – I am all for such reformism! In which case, we should be standing with the XR, not criticize their approach.
“So the question arises: how could a minority of 3.5 percent bring about a participatory democracy (let alone the common ownership of the Earth’s resources that socialists want in addition)?” – well, that’s very simple, really. 3.5% force the government to establish CAs. Citizens Assemblies (CAs) are meant to do just that, to allow participatory democracy, and to establish the common ownership of the Earth’s resources that socialists want in addition. Somehow the author completely missed this point, or maybe is simply not sufficiently informed.
Next, let’s see how much the authors knows about the climate science. “Such an increase (4.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels) would certainly cause problems, especially under capitalism, with the flooding of low-lying land, mass population movements, and more extreme weather. But it would not mean that six out of every seven humans will perish.” Exactly what qualifications or expertise allow the author to make such claims? From the text of the notorious “Hothouse Earth” article published by Harvard scientists a year ago in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (https://www.pnas.org/content/115/33/8252#sec-4), “Collective human action is required to steer the Earth System away from a potential threshold (of around 2 (!) degrees above the pre-industrial levels) and stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state.” Habitable is a strong word scientists rarely use. I don’t think this is so far-fetched to assume that an IN-habitable Earth would result in every 6 out 7 people perished. But of course the author knows better than the climate scientists! Please follow the link and read the article, don’t just take my word for it.
“Although this (net zero carbon emissions by 2025) does seem to offer hope amongst their doom and gloom, it doesn’t really as it’s not realisable (not even if socialism were to be established tomorrow).” – well, I suppose the author knows a better proposed date? What would it be? Suppose, we are driving a car that is headed for a cliff. When would you say is the best time to slam on the brake? When you are at the edge? According to Adam, yes, because then it would be “realisable”. Very clever indeed. It is just common sense that with all of the government inertia we know of, we should demand the start of the action as soon as imaginably possible, with the hope to hasten the process as much as we can.
I welcome the information on activities of XR and thus a possibility of discussion. However, I am strongly against, first of all, false information misrepresenting the current scientific consensus on the topic, and second, the stance of some comrades who would criticize and thus not stand side by side with those in our society who are the most likely to bring about the change we all so passionately desire.
There was an article about the XR (Extinction Rebellion) in the last issue of Socialist Standard, written by Adam Buick. It is great that he informs comrades of this important movement and some issues it raises. However, as usual, like a broken record, the rhetoric of the article was, “everything everyone offers is reformism, hence against the SPGB principles, hence bad”.
This representation of material is really not helpful. It does not stimulate thought, it strangles hope, it is counterproductive in terms of uniting with the aim of changing the status quo.
Moreover, the author makes several factual mistakes, a lot of assumptions, and shows general ignorance of the subject of the article, even when there are members of the party a lot more knowledgeable and available for consultation. Let’s see what Adam misrepresented.
“At this level, this (Citizens Assemblies) is pure reformism, calling on a capitalist government to implement some desirable measure within capitalism.” – this is wrong. In fact, most of the movement’s participants recognize that implementing the “net Zero by 2025” is not realistic within the capitalist framework, and therefore expect Citizens Assemblies to advise government to “Change System”- their common slogan. If abolishing capitalism is a reform – I am all for such reformism! In which case, we should be standing with the XR, not criticize their approach.
“So the question arises: how could a minority of 3.5 percent bring about a participatory democracy (let alone the common ownership of the Earth’s resources that socialists want in addition)?” – well, that’s very simple, really. 3.5% force the government to establish CAs. Citizens Assemblies (CAs) are meant to do just that, to allow participatory democracy, and to establish the common ownership of the Earth’s resources that socialists want in addition. Somehow the author completely missed this point, or maybe is simply not sufficiently informed.
Next, let’s see how much the authors knows about the climate science. “Such an increase (4.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels) would certainly cause problems, especially under capitalism, with the flooding of low-lying land, mass population movements, and more extreme weather. But it would not mean that six out of every seven humans will perish.” Exactly what qualifications or expertise allow the author to make such claims? From the text of the notorious “Hothouse Earth” article published by Harvard scientists a year ago in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (https://www.pnas.org/content/115/33/8252#sec-4), “Collective human action is required to steer the Earth System away from a potential threshold (of around 2 (!) degrees above the pre-industrial levels) and stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state.” Habitable is a strong word scientists rarely use. I don’t think this is so far-fetched to assume that an IN-habitable Earth would result in every 6 out 7 people perished. But of course the author knows better than the climate scientists! Please follow the link and read the article, don’t just take my word for it.
“Although this (net zero carbon emissions by 2025) does seem to offer hope amongst their doom and gloom, it doesn’t really as it’s not realisable (not even if socialism were to be established tomorrow).” – well, I suppose the author knows a better proposed date? What would it be? Suppose, we are driving a car that is headed for a cliff. When would you say is the best time to slam on the brake? When you are at the edge? According to Adam, yes, because then it would be “realisable”. Very clever indeed. It is just common sense that with all of the government inertia we know of, we should demand the start of the action as soon as imaginably possible, with the hope to hasten the process as much as we can.
I welcome the information on activities of XR and thus a possibility of discussion. However, I am strongly against, first of all, false information misrepresenting the current scientific consensus on the topic, and second, the stance of some comrades who would criticize and thus not stand side by side with those in our society who are the most likely to bring about the change we all so passionately desire.
“OK, I’m well and truly focussed: now what?”
Great! Now, let’s go to London on September 20th for the Earth Strike, and give people leaflets about the SPGB! There will be a lot of activists there who may join us, as they are actively seeking answers to their environmental concerns. Will you come?
Alan, I agree with you about mass participation, and so does XR. Please read here the statement from Extinction Rebellion UK on the ‘Heathrow Pause’ action (this is how this splinter group people call themselves). In the statement they say, “If such an action takes place at this time, it will be independent of Extinction Rebellion UK.” The Heathrow Pause website makes no references to XR whatsoever.
Alan, what Roger did was not part of XR, they are a “splinter group”, not affiliated.
And speaking of numbers, we should perhaps rather focus on ours.
Trillions of dollars needed to avoid ‘climate apartheid’ but this is less than cost of inaction
Wow, I am speechless after reading this article in The Guardian: “World ‘gravely’ unprepared for effects of climate crisis – report”:
“The report has been produced by the Global Commission on Adaptation(GCA), convened by 18 nations including the UK. It has contributions from the former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, the Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, environment ministers from China, India and Canada, the heads of the World Bank and the UN climate and environment divisions, and others.”
“The lack of <world> preparedness will result in poverty, water shortages and levels of migration soaring, with an “irrefutable toll on human life”, the report warns.
Trillion-dollar investment is needed to avert “climate apartheid”, where the rich escape the effects and the poor do not…”
Now even THEY present the climate emergency as class struggle. Read the full article.
ALB, you seem to assume that XR are counting on the present government to solve the problem. In fact, one of their 3 main demands is to establish Citizens’ Assembly, which would work
instead ofalongside the government. I am now trying to talk to them and convince to make a better, more detailed plan, but even this is already quite good (maybe precisely because it’s so simplistic). What if a Citizens’ Assembly decides we need to change our economic system? Apparently, it would depend on the advice they would get from “the specialists”.Scientists are starting to join Extinction Rebellion. Paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution from Sept. 2
Scientists must act on our own warnings to humanity
“We face the complete loss of sea ice, tropical rainforests and coral reefs, and will suffer heatwaves, droughts and storms that may render much of the planet uninhabitable and cause devastating human suffering and conflict.”
Maybe we should stop using the word “alarmism”, and actually start taking seriously what climate and ecology scientists are saying.
