All In

If, as the authors of All In: A Revolutionary Theory to Stop Climate Collapse tell us, it is time for revolution, the question is how to kick-start the process. We don't want to wait for another world war or global depression. We want folks to understand what those in power are doing to our world. But how? My idea is mass, militant, non-violent civil disobedience. Militant in the sense of filling the jails till those in power cede it. Globally. Nobody knows exactly how that works, but we know we have to get there. Here is how the scholars put it: "It is also evident, however, that as they are observed through the rearview mirror, disobedience and movement-generated social turbulence have defined the zeitgeist of the most storied periods of American history." Social turbulence. That's not easy to define in these days of Trumpism, when turbulence is the point, the new ambient modus operendi. What a poisoned atmosphere and ecosystem breakdown will bring is a turbulence that will be hard to structure into socialist revolution but what other options exist? The point of NVCD is moral suasion. We assume there still exists some sense of morality and that if the action is scaled up to the point where people feel compelled to get off the sidelines and join in, if it can start to feel like a duty to one's conscience, it can trigger a cascading effect. It is "all in" in both senses; risk everything and everybody doing it. Then comes the tricky part. Like the dog who actually catches the car, what is to be done with the power once you have achieved it? Vacuumes get filled qand these outcomes are dependent on many factors. My question for the authors and folks at Climaximo is whatthe world looks like the day after you have stopped all new fossil fuel projects and all those assets are stranded. Turbulence and then some.

Red Sea

Those of us in the comfortable, priviledged part of the world would prefer not to know how bad it is for those on the outside. At the moment it is Gaza that is intruding on our tranquility but if you just travel on down the Red Sea, towards the Horn of Africa, you find it is grim and grimmer. Luckily our media spares us these unpleasantries. You have to want to know about places like Eritrea and do some digging. While those few who care focus on starvation and genocide in Palestine, there are horrors and atrocities occurring throughout the region as tribal factions splinter off and take up arms, as they all scramble for gold or other precious resources, as outside powers like the Saudis, Egyptians, UAE and Turks fight proxy wars using corrupt elites and ambitious warlords. As the U.S. "superpower" trys to "manage" the conflicts, in other words, making sure proxy wars weaken our enemies and strengthen our allies. Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Syria. Tigrays, Houthis, Druze - who can really keep up? Who recalls the devastating 2020–22 war between the Ethiopian federal government in Addis Ababa and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front which cost as many as 600,000 lives, including hundreds of thousands of civilians? How about the ongoing civil war in the Darfur region of Sudan? The army and a rebel group clashed in 2023 and now more than 150,000 people have died in the conflict across the country, and about 12 million have fled their homes in what the United Nations has called the world's largest humanitarian crisis. There are other conflicts in the region ( Niger, Syria, etc..) and plenty of corrupt regimes, but the point is that the architecture of the so-called global order doesn't work for a vast part of the population. We sit happily in our Western bubble, raking in the wealth and resources from around the globe to support a comfortable, relatively secure lifestyle. Just don't look behind the curtain. Now That Trump has declared the U.S. the number 1 global power and Russia number 2, we Americans can feel that surge of pride that goes along with being on top, being the alpha. This is what capitalism creates; a competitive hierarcy of power. What could possibly go wrong?

Gaia

I don't know if, as some suggest, the planet has a form of consciousness. But reading that forecasters are expecting up to nine hurricanes to form in the Atlantic between now and the end of November, I hope Gaia decides to make a statement about global heating. It would be particularly instructive if all nine were cat.6 and they all landed in major metro areas along the gulf coast. It is long past time for the kind of wake-up call even the most oblivious humans can't ignore, say, all the refineries shut down, tankers washed ashore, Corpus Christie under ten feet of water. I suspect that is what it is going to take. Barring a major, major catastrophe, the only way this juggernaut is slowed and eventually stopped is when the insurance industry collapses. As with so much of the economy, soon only the very wealthy will be able to afford insurance but it's hard to imagine that can last for very long. If ten thousand Los Angeles homes, all worth three quarters to a million dollars, all burn to the ground, there goes all the profit, right? The planet will be increasingly hostile as it rejects all of humanities big plans for a modern world of unlimted energy use. Sorry kids. Remember your physics. In the novel All The Water In the World, the Atlantic coast begins to experience what they call hypercains, mega-storms which drown all the lowlands. Its very ugly. And avoidable until it isn't.

Blind

In an interview in the NYTImes, an Israeli journalist describes how a small section of Israeli society is suddenly willing to look at images of Gaza. This is described as a positive development. Till now, there has been a general avoidance, a willed "looking away" at the horror inflicted on the civilian population because, according to the journalist, Oct.7. This is the way the so-called "war" in Gaza/genocide is framed; everything begins on Oct.7. All references to the decades of occupation and repression areswept away. The history around the formation of Hamas is swept away. Of course, this is not just an Israeli phenomena. Recall the American reaction to 9/11. History begins at the moment of exception. But Israel and Israelis have additional layers of trauma and neurosis, which this ethnic cleansing will only add to. I am reading South To America by Imani Perry, where she describes the legacy of slavery and the civil war on various southern cities. And all the ways that historical trauma manifests today. Very striking similarities and there dfoes seem to be some correspondence with this new conservative focus on anti-semitism and the desire to erase the white supremacy that is still so prevelant. And on the topic of blindness, two headlines, side by side in the NYTimes, says it all. First one describes torrential downpours and flooding in Tokyo. Next to it an article saying Norway wants to pump CO2 into wells deep underground. Except doing so is very "expensive". Yeah. So it goes.

The Each Small Reduction Matters Movement

In direct contrast to the All IN revolutionaries we have the Climate Wonks interviewed by Ezra Klein in todays Times. They are classic examples of the "four-point-four-degrees-of-warming-is-better-than-four-point-five-degrees-of-warming movement. According to the wonk: "Climate has been framed as a physical, scientific problem where there are hard limits: If we do not fully solve the problem and get to net zero emissions by some deadline, or if in the next 10 years we don’t keep to 1.5 degrees, the planet is going to fall off a cliff." Roll of the eyes at these crazy "maximalists". Don't they know we can overshoot these...targets..and still be fine? When new technologies save us? Perfect example of what Mark Fisher termed capitalist realism. It is the wonks only horizon, they can imagine nothing else. Therefor it must work. We just need another Biden and IRA and we can achieve "net-zero". The wonk goes on to say: "every degree of warming, every fraction of a degree of warming, that we don’t cause matters." She claims to be rigorously following the science but she is obfuscating. The science gives us odds on avoiding outcomes (extremely lousy odds!) based on various "pathways". All those pathways include both stopping emissions quickly AND pulling immense quantities of CO2 out of the atmosphere. Yeah, right. To his credit, Klein remembers the millions already dying or displaced and says: "the scientific community, however you want to define that, has looked at all of its models, looked at all of its research and described zones that are of really frightening levels of climate risk." The wonk then claims that is not what the science says and defends the every degree matters movement. He seems fine with four point five. Then they talk about the uncertainty around tipping points and feedback loops and finally settle on "the Market will fix it." If we get environmentalists and their pesky regulations out of the way. This is their real agenda. Grow. Build. Develop. Accumulate. Increase all the processes that got us into this fix. According to Klein and the liberalism, abundance will save us. As Doomberg says about all this "climate nonsense", we will burn all those hydrocarbons, one way or the other.

All In for Revolution

In a stark example of "optimism of the will" (a Gramscian term), a group called Climaximo has published a book titled All In: A Revolutionary Theory to Stop Climate Collapse. True to its title, the program they put forward does not mess around with the usual "non-reformist reforms" nor mitigation, much less adaptation strategies.No.They go straight to the crux of the bisquit, stating clearly that there isn't time for tinkering around the edges and anything less than replacing capitalism will fail to save us. This truth is glaringly obvious, necessary and impossible, leaving us torn between hope and "pessimism of the intellect". Even the term "all in" challenges our post-post-modern sensiblities, our jaded cynicism and claims on capitalist realism. Who goes "all in" in these times of grim grotesqueries and moronic masquerades? Immersed in the farcicle, we cringe with embarrassment at the true believers... We know perfectly well but act as if we don't in order to protect ourselves from further trauma. And yet the case for revolution now is incredibly evident. Every plea for working from "inside the system" is laughably hollow as every "progressive" reform is demolished with reactionary glee. The authors recognize these social frictions to be part of the "State of Emergency", along with ecological collapse. It is noteworthy that they look to Naomi Klein's seminal work, This Changes Everything, as a founding document. Everything means everything, and yes, the ruling class also noticed that book. Hence, the prolonged, all out attack on all things Marx, Left, Woke or sustainable. Or Just. Where All In falters, in terms of theory, is the place where so much modern theory falters; trying to identify the revolutionary agent. Based in a Marxian understanding of class, they turn to the forces of production and find an uncooperative subject. Why don't they recognize their exploitation? Why don't they have a sense of class belonging? Why is alienation expressed in reactionary complicity and a hegemonic consent? Climaximo admits to this failure to link up with labor and build the solidarity Leftists find so crucial to success. I admire their willingness to admit failure and re-evaluate theory based on experience. And I admire their tenacity in the face of daunting odds, this optimism of the will.I wonder if they might consider the ecological class? Fortunately, Climaximo's praxis demonstrates an ability to foment radical change without perfect class alignment. They count as a success "normalizing civil disobedience in Portugal", a tactic I believe is critical for building the anti-capitalist, climate justice movement. Who knows if it can hapem in time. But you have to admire the spirit guiding the effort. Perhaps if we are All In?

Project Esther

As the genocide in Gaza intensifies and Zionist settlers murder American citizens with impunity and the Israeli state attacks Syria and Lebanon with impunity, you might think the good citizens of America would wonder why. But you would be wrong. Ezra Klein makes an attempt to intervene, explaining the contradiction between a settler/colonialist/ethno-state with expanionist ambitions ie.. Zionism, and the liberal ideals that many American Jews value such as the right to self-determination, secularist governance, etc... Unfortunately, Ezra doesn't go so far as to to call the Zionist state of Israel genocidal, but he hints that it is a conclusion difficult to avoid. Already the Lobby has Mamdani parsing language like "global infitada" and American Zionists, especially the Christian types, will do everything they can to make sure everyone knows he has "Islamist" leanings. Not to mention socialist. I just hope he finds a way to lean into this particular criticism rather than the typical backing away. The photos of wealthy real estate developers handing his opponents big checks makes this the perfect opportunity to clarify who stands for what. This brings us to Project Esther, a paper put out by the now-ascendent Heritage Foundation. The paper outlines a strategy to not just marginalize but destroy the cause of Palestinian liberation from Israeli occupiers and oppressors. They were the inspired thinkers behind this program to smear any and all with the label of anti-semitic, a program which has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams (or so I would imagine). Get a few Jewish students on various campuses to claim they "feel threatened" when pro-Palestinian or anti-Zionist voices are raised. Get a few rabid Republican Zionists to do their own threatening; taking away funding, suing, creating bad publicity, etc.. Get politicians on both sides of the aisle to equate anti-Zionism with anti-semitism. Keep talking about the defenseless Israelis in their dangerous neighborhood. Yada yada.