Waiting for Godot part 3

On a hike up the canyon yesterday my old friend asked me what was going on in the "climate movement". A good liberal who is "concerned", he depends on me to be his conduit to the latest activity, as a way to stay in touch with the collapse. All I could really tell him was that there are some trials going on for the "Valve Turners" and a trial in Oregon where Our Children's Trust is suing the US government. So activists can have "support" roles, sending money, advocating blah blah.

The other "activity" I mentioned was a group going from Missoula to Spokane on Wednesday to comment on some proposed rule change involving the Colstrip coal fire power plant. All of these approaches involve working through the regulatory, bureaucratic state and none are very inspiring. None are how you build a mass social movement for transformative system change. And what about "Blockadia", the Naomi Klein militant wing?

Very very quiet. There is another COP in Bonn Germany so we can assume there will be some puppets and loud young people making the familiar demands but the delegates know the reality by now. Post-Standing Rock, culturally sensitive people seem to be waiting for the indigenous people to lead. Which is not a plan or strategy really. There is some "activity" around stopping the Keystone XL (Lazarus, zombie?) which I have always thought was a good point to concentrate on but again the strategy is murky; court battles? resistance camp? wait for solar and wind "price" to come down?

I am going to ride over to Spokane and give my comments, probably something around the diminished stream flows and heightened water temperatures on the rivers I guide on. The "economic" argument. How much work (productivity) was lost, cost to economy, etc... the language that has "currency", that all seem to understand. But it is also problematic. Using the same market logic that caused the crisis to try to solve it only lends legitimacy to that logic.

If we get the power plant to shut down soon there is a possibility some momentum could be built, some shift in the narrative around "energy dependency" but that is still a long way from talking about growth or climate justice.