What's Goin on? Latest Update

So...where to begin? First, after all these months I have finally figured out who Trump is; the reincarnation of Rodney Dangerfield! Right? At his golf course in Scotland, it's a scene right out of Caddy Shack. And who wouldn't want Rodney for President? And now we have the soon-to-be Prime Minister of Greatest Britain Boris Johnson, a brash New Yorker with crazy blonde hair and absurd politics, so that if they were to do a routine together it would be INCREDIBLE. And then there is the whole Brexit shock; talk about your "ideological rubble"! There is so much incoherent or banal analysis on both the left and right that I am about to concede to those who want to proclaim a "post-ideological age", not in the sense of techno-managerial but in the sense of Caddy Shack. Marx speculated on the conditions which might bring about "...the common ruin of the contending classes..". Mao celebrated destabilization: "Everything under Heaven is chaos, the situation is excellent." I have my doubts about the excellence of the current situation because climate chaos can't seem to compete in the realm of Spectacular Chaos. The hope to resurrect social democratic parties in the form of Bernie or Podemos in Spain or Labour in UK or Syriza in Greece has fizzled because these efforts avoid the difficult question. Basically; what kind of work are all these people supposed to do? (Africa, Asia, Middle East, Latin America)

But the crisis of capitalist democracy is now in high gear. climate migration, technology, nationalism/populism, stagnation, terrorism, market volatility; "the center cannot hold". Some try to narrow it down to "neoliberalism", others to "industrial civilization", others just blame "greed" or "evil". If I were some autocrat running a small country I would be nervous right now- this is when the Empire likes to send its Christian Soldiers out to snuff some Noriega or Saddam Husein, or Grenada. Nothing inspires and unites like a good ass kicking.

There are numerous attempts to stitch together a left opposition but nothing seems to stick. The People's Summit I mentioned in my last post drew 3000 but they all that came out of it was a manifesto to focus on ten different things. So 3000 divided by 10. Should work out great.

Post Election

A tremendous amount of digital ink has already been spilled by progressive commentators on how to maintain the Bernie momentum. It is a time-worn dilemma; elections mean losers and defeat often leads to disillusionment and cynicism. Especially in the American system of Kabuki Democracy.
But lots of these progressives (and some socialists) believe that the Bernie "political revolution" is different, that it has a capacity to fold into movement building IF ONLY the energy gets directed somewhere before it dissipates. The other dilemma is the theoretical split between "the streets" and "the voting booth". If Obama proved one thing, it's that getting your man in office can send a lot of people home, satisfied with their "victory" and assured their man will follow through on his campaign promises. You know, "representation". on the other hand, masses of chanting activists can demand all day long but if they can't back their demands with a viable threat to the existing order, they are just pounding sand.

A quick survey just today finds articles by Kate Aranoff, Robert Borosage,Sarah van Gelder and Dan La Botz on strategy going forward. A theme which emerges is one similar to that of Michael Albert and his "Shared Program"; that of finding a synthesis. Van Gelder puts it like this; to "come together on a strategic focus...set ambitious,disruptive, transformational goals". To this end Albert got a bunch of left luminaries to sign a document and others are putting together a People's Summit (June 17-19 in Chicago) and Gar Alperowitz is building a Next Systems Project. Each hopes to take the myriad issues linked to justice and equality around which the left now mobilizes- a partial list includes "fight for 15, mass incarceration, voting rights, tax on Wall Street speculation, climate justice,Medicare for All..." and come up with a way for each to support the other. Some see this struggle taking place over the Democratic platform, some look to the ongoing Social Forum process. Almost everyone traces a trajectory from Occupy Wall Street through Sanders to the current moment. But always and forever we see the list of social ills and the NGOs dedicated to them but almost never do we see anybody try to actually prioritize it.

The list I quoted from above comes off the People's Summit website and through its ordering it suggests, if only implicitly, a certain prioritization. And what I immediately notice is that climate justice comes in at number 5. What I want to do here is make the argument that climate justice should explicitly be made number 1. Here is why.


First, the science tells us if we don't address climate change immediately it will simply be too late (see the last post for data). And by too late I mean not just the obvious devastation from weather, but also that the effects will exacerbate all the other issues on the list to the point where social justice activists will be confronting a self-feeding crisis that makes the 2008 global economic meltdown seem like a game of frisbee. So there is the temporal element, the ticking clock, as it were. Then there is the fact that the climate movement is already a powerful, militant force of resistance whose critique is becoming more radical by the day, thanks to its intellectual contributors and theoretical foundation. By that I mean it potentially challenges the essence of capitalist ideology; more precisely, the imperative of unlimited growth (and accumulation. It also fatally punctures market logic. Thirdly, the notion of climate justice allows us to move beyond mere carbon reduction to global re-distribution and structural change. It allows us to re-imagine democracy and to think about power relations, both political and economic. By placing our conception of Nature in question, it upends many destructive mythologies, constructions and conceptions upon which capitalism is built.


In this era of "inter-sectionalism" and local autonomy I realize it goes against the grain to call for actual unification, for prioritization or consolidation. I've noticed that those who do call for "focus" never actually select. It is of course unclear what such a selection process could ever look like but for now a robust, frank discussion and debate would be refreshing.

Zero

So the world needs to get to zero emissions within 20 or so years to have a 65% chance at staying under a 2 degrees celsius rise in temp. Right now the world emits 36 billion tons annually, down just a bit from last year, thanks to China's decreasing coal use. To stay under one and a half degrees, we will have blown through our budget in just five years. This is all based on modelling which is itself continually changing. It is expressed in chances or percentages of such and such scenario, hence the wide margins. But basically we can express the chance of going from 36 billion to near zero as near zero. It is hard to even imagine the scale of such an undertaking. The most massive and massively profitable (and powerful) industry on earth would have to be dismantled next month. This includes state-owned. Production of renewables (while avoiding nuclear?) would have to make up for some if not most of that energy to avoid economic meltdown. A new grid would have to be developed, new systems of transport and new food systems that didn't produce emissions as well. Rather than contemplate such an ambitious agenda most world governments are instead tasking some internal agency to develop ways to cope with climate change, to adapt and mitigate. So imagine you are some technocrat functionary in a cubicle and your boss comes to you saying (s)he wants you to write a plan for climate change adaptation. You get some staff and some software, you plug in some numbers and think about ways you can protect infrastructure, plan for fires, etc..all ridiculous bullshit that just postpones the inevitable but hey, this is capitalism. In this self-reinforcing way the illusion is maintained that there is no crisis even as the crisis gets worse (after all, who would have a geek drawing up useless contingency plans if it was a REAL crisis!) The other way to mask the crisis is to show great concern over ancillary, marginal issues like coal dust or oil spills or crime in fossil fuel boomtowns etc. (climate change can't be an existential crisis if they are worried about meth) In other words, the climate movement needs zero distractions and 100% focus on the real issue.

Whether We Like It or Not

An article in the NY Times titled Blistered Earth: How Capitalism is Destroying the Planet.... just kidding, it's actually titled :Exxon Mobile Backs Fuel Cell Effort- and it is quite telling. It explains how Exxon Mobile, under investigation for its morally bankrupt business model, now has a keen interest in Carbon Capture and Sequestration aka "Clean Coal". A big promoter of this imaginary technology ( besides the coal companies and Montana politicians) is Emily Carter ,director of the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton. Which is basically an astro-turf front group for Exxon with a veneer of elite academic legitimacy. Emily insists: "We are going to be burning fossil fuels for the vast majority of our electricity for some time to come WHETHER WE LIKE IT OR NOT." In other words, it is out of our control, Market Forces will dictate. This is echoed by the CEO of the fuel cell corporation who says: "When you can make it affordable with private capital, everyone wins." So what are these magical forces that decide when something is "affordable"? Well part of the force is real force, as in, the threat of violence. Then there is the force of ideological hegemony, cultural dominance and influence. Then there is that subtle coercion of dependency; depending on a paycheck, depending on a line of credit, depending on infra-structure so that "everyone wins". But of course not everyone wins and this is the other threat hanging over everyone's head. On a side note, old Pat Buchanan was interviewed on NPR this morning and basked in the glory of his redemption. All those years as the kooky outsider, the insurgent, and now he could tell the Republican establishment to kiss his white ass (and he handed the interviewer her white ass as well) All he had to say was : "Look, it's democracy in action! Trump speaks a language all these people understand!" The language of obscene jouissance.

Just Transition Blues

With the Break Free protesters confronting the fossil fuel industry, the workers with those relatively good production jobs are being asked a familiar old labor question: which side are you on? We are told by the rosy Blue/Green Alliance optimists that "jobs versus the environment" is not a real question, that with a little managerial planning, we can painlessly move workers from dirty energy jobs into clean energy ones. Some even present this as the promise of economic stimulus and growth. But the average refinery worker has a right to be skeptical. They know all too well how capitalism works and how it treats workers. But the question here is: why exactly is it up to to the climate change movement to find jobs for these folks? We aren't threatening their jobs, the science is. We are just the messengers,those forced to deliver the bad news because their politician friends and union bosses are too cowardly. And personally, I would have more sympathy if these same workers hadn't been sticking their heads in the sand for the last decade, pretending the problem away. Or worse, actively distorting the issue so that we lost valuable time when a easy "transition" might have been more possible. Now we are out of time. Oops. The US government will relocate people living on a Louisiana island that is being inundated by salt water to the tune of 1 billion dollars of tax money. The fossil fuel industry profits from destroying their home, the Ted Cruz taxpayers buy them new ones. So this subsidizing scam is why that fossil fuel worker keeps his good job but this only happens in rich countries. Millions of less fortunate people (and workers) around the globe will suffer so the American worker can have his "just transition". But this relocation is just the tip of the melting iceberg. Coastal cities are all planning trillions of dollars worth of dikes and canals and pumps because that's how capitalism works. Pumps will be a growth industry and economists will say GDP is rising with the inexorable tide.

Down on Main Street: Democratic Dilemmas and the Politics of Nostalgia

Though it has gone mostly unreported, lots of people have gathered in D.C. for "Democracy Spring" with lots of civil disobedience (a good thing) and protest over "corrupt campaign finance/governance". This is described as an outgrowth of the Occupy movement which apparently alerted the populous to "inequality". The problem with this narrative is even if you take all the money out of elections and start to re-distribute wealth, the original distribution of power (owning the means of production) stays the same. And what that power concedes it can always take back. I will never write for Yes! magazine because I'm always writing about NO! but David Korten wrote a piece saying capitalism vs socialism is a false dichotomy and we should be FOR democracy. The difference is that under capitalism private capitalists own the means of production and "under socialism, government owns these assets in the name of, but not necessarily in the interest of, the people". He starts with a description of his idyllic upbringing where his dad owned a business on a local mainstreet in smalltown America circa 1950-60. This embodied "Adam Smith's vision of local markets governed by a shared moral code and populated by local farmers, artisans and merchants who own their land and tools..." This nostalgic pastoral is notable for what it excludes (thanks Derrida) in the realm of power and antagonism: there are no farm laborers, no resource issues with said farming, all production and manufacturing magically done by honest craftsmen in small shops, and bartering done on a trusting, “fair and square” handshake manner. No exploitation or subterfuge, no externalities or inequity. You remember those days, right? Of course; because they happened on television and the movies! Not historical reality but the cultural production of reality. David Korten’s “the people” is the same as Democracy Spring’s “the people”, they are everyone BUT evil Corporations, all united in a “moral code” and working hard for the betterment of all. They hope to turn back the clock to those idyllic, Jeffersonian , pre-Citizens United days of small entrepreneurial capitalism. It ignores the account of Pickety wherein the gains of capital always outstrips the gains of the economy. It turns a purposefully blind-eye to patriarchy and nationalism and race and the other inevitable antagonisms. This romanticizing of “the local” is found in many of the “new” movements, especially the climate movement, but is problematic on many levels. First, the local can be totally reactionary, it can be the local warlord or mob or precinct captain. Second, it avoids the hard work of theorizing at meta-levels, where lots of change also has to occur.

Messaging

When the Break Free PNW Coalition asked for volunteers for the Communications Working Group I jumped on board. Experience has taught that it is within such innocently named bodies where "messaging" is developed; the analysis and narrative and eventually conceptual language which will guide action. In other words, "there is a necessary relationship between conceptual apparatuses and political institutions." that's right, ideological power. I don't know whether the others in The Group would articulate it but I suspect they intuit it. So when the original draft of the Core Messaging Document came online I got my licks in early. I inserted language around Markets and market failure as essential roots to understanding the current crisis. Those who read the blog know to what I refer. And the language hung in there for quite some time. It survived a few edits and iterations, but as it came time to finalize the doc, my language around Markets turned into "the economic system" and "the fossil fuel economy". I'm pretty sure The Message had to pass muster with representatives of organized labor, and I suspect my seditious focus was found problematic. After all, "economic system" is the ultimate empty signifier, it explains nothing while pretending to explain everything. It can be used by anyone and everyone to mean whatever they want. "Market failure", on the other hand, is a little too specific. I didn't bother to argue or press my point. This Coalition is broad based and I knew that going in; there will be folks who read Naomi Klein's book as a call for revolution and some who saw a call for cheaper solar energy. So it goes. The labor folks are in bind and we can be sympathetic. But to deny much of it is their own doing is to condescend, to say they have no agency. They can claim to be "shocked" that their "fossil fuel economy" is bad for the planet, and claim special dispensation (a Just Transition)but I have been in enough of these Blue -Green Dialogues to know these guys are good at seeing trees and missing the forest. Though capitalism has tyrannical power over their consumptive lives, most cannot speak the word. tey'll blame hippies and commies and say "just let the market sort things out."