Kira -- I'm 100% on board with the climate revolution now. I'm talking about actual, full revolution with the goal of taking power. I'll try to keep this brief, but I know you checked out my substack and I am eager to build coalitions around these ideas
- We should be very specific and clear about what the goals of the climate revolution are, in a way that accounts for the reality of the economies upon which all our livelihoods depend. What is our dream climate policy? Because once the revolution gains power, we will be faced with a situation where it will have been "too late" many times over. We will need to urgently slam the breaks on the combustion of energy, and we need to do so in a way that preserves the ideals that will have driven our revolution: justice, antiracism, and antipoverty. Especially given the latter, we cannot simply shut down the economy. Rather, we need to be able to carefully manage the economy, to exert our power in specific ways that allows us to set a small carbon budget and allot it to only the most pressing and justice-informed causes: to make sure our hospitals never experience a blackout, to allow us to use concrete in order to build nuclear power plants, and globally, to make sure that everyone has access to electricity and to build equitable economies with big enough production bases to eliminate poverty (this is a big priority of mine). In order to achieve this, we will need complete authority to dictate who gets to burn fossil fuels and when. It's not enough to make them more expensive; that would only serve to re-empower the kleptocracy we will have just overthrown. That is why I propose to make fuel the first post-commodity: the first thing that was once bought and sold freely, but now can *only be sold by the government.* Sure, there will be a black market, but we will ruthlessly crack down on it. It will be illegal to sell a gallon of gas on the private market. The government will control the entire oil, coal, and methane industries, but this is more than nationalization of the companies; it's the People's control over the industries. This is why, without shame or irony, I call for Petrocommunism. I have a very large series of essays about how specifically I believe fuel fits into Marxism, but for now I have a sort of manifesto up:
If the goal of our Climate Revolution is petrocommunism, it must be a socialist revolution and be in solidarity with the working people, which means we stop fucking around with "green capitalism." Climate change is the ultimate contradiction of capitalism: it is a problem that capitalism caused that it can never, ever fix. We need to push environmentalism away from the liberal defenders of capitalism and create a new petrocommunist ideology. We need to redo for petrocommunism the intellectual work that was done by Lenin for communism.
In terms of the energy mix for our communist, postcarbon economy: we'll need a massive buildout of nuclear, which we would be able to do with existing natural resources. We need solutions that already work on a large scale, and that empower workers. We will continue to build out wind and solar as we can, but we need to keep in mind that the extraction of cobalt and other rare earths needs to be limited. Nuclear, with all its downsides, is really the only option. We will do it right, not cut corners, and avoid meltdowns as much as is possible, which should be %100.
Sorry for the late response! I used to march against nuclear… it’s been a knee-jerk hard “no” for me for years. I need to reconsider. I don’t see another option either.
And no - you are not “too extreme.” I am thinking along the exact same lines and am also eager to build coalitions. Capitalism is the enemy in all of this. Humans need to reimagine our society and global economy. The time is now.
Thank you for reading, commenting, and getting this conversation started!!!
In the first two years of so being a member of Extinction Rebellion it genuinely felt like there was some revolutionary energy. XR received a lot of criticism for being middle-class, but our Ipswich group was more diverse than that and it felt like we had momentum [I'll admit that my interactions with the Cambridge group confirmed the stereotypes somewhat more].
However, I think the movement was premised on a very naive assumption - that getting arrested would create mass public sympathy for the cause. This was premised on a faulty reading of the success of the 60s civil rights protests in America that neglected the facts:
1.) That civil rights protestors were fighting for specific legal changes, such as desegregation of schooling.
2.) That those protesting were materially impacted by these laws in a way that was grotesque and unfair. The problem with XR was that people saw the protests and thought "They've got it just as good, if not better than me, and I'm not complaining!"
3.) Media propaganda and government control of this was far less advanced than it is today .
4.) Non-violent protests were taking place alongside direct (and, yes, sometimes violent) actions by the Black Panthers etc.
I'm also not convinced by the usefulness of traffic blocking which much of XR was obsessed with as a strategy. You see this continued with Just Stop Oil.
However, what caused me to leave was the shift to online activities (and endless Zoom meetings) when lockdown occured. A lot of our members were elderly retirees or otherwise people vulnerable to Covid, but in retrospect I think young, able-bodied protestors (without, say, asthma) should have flouted the laws and kept protesting in public. The shift to online petitions etc. fatally damaged the momentum of the movement.
In fact, I'm inclined to agree with Freddie DeBoer that the next truly widespread and effective protest movement will likely be against the internet. Social media has, over the last 15 years, been incredibly seductive for radicals, and proved illusionary - achieving short-term ends with few lasting benefits. I would argue that the same has tragically been true of horizontalism. The damage the Canning Town station protest (by a tiny Christian Action group) did to XR's credibility here in the UK is testimony to this. The majority of members voted against it, but under the rules of any groups structured like Occupy, people have the agency to launch their own actions and claim them in the same of the group (as long as they are non-violent). I love the idea of anarcho-syndicalism, but the devolution of the state and commitment to leaderless structures can only effectivelty occur //after// the revolution!
Anyway, DeBoer article on his ideas is well worth reading:
Fascinating insights - really appreciate that comment, and the link! I tend to agree with much of what you say, but struggle to imagine how to move forward with a climate revolution that does not include public NVDA. That said, I think the key is to NOT inconvenience “regular folks,” and to take our direct actions directly to politicians and fossil fuel company executives.
It's easy to fall into despair over the lack of "mass interest" in the Climate Crisis. I have been a "Global Warming Evangelist" since the 80's, believe me, I KNOW.
Our "moment" has not "come round at last". YET.
It is approaching.
Are you familiar with Erik Assidurian(sp?). He wrote a piece a few years ago that lays out the difference between "Collapse Life" and "Green Life".
The surprise is that there isn't that much difference. What we get from adaptation is SECURITY and ORDER.
He makes a good case those are worth fighting for.
Climate change is a symptom predicament of ecological overshoot. Overshoot is caused by technology use. Here's how we got here: https://problemspredicamentsandtechnology.blogspot.com/2023/07/how-did-we-get-here.html
Kira -- I'm 100% on board with the climate revolution now. I'm talking about actual, full revolution with the goal of taking power. I'll try to keep this brief, but I know you checked out my substack and I am eager to build coalitions around these ideas
- We should be very specific and clear about what the goals of the climate revolution are, in a way that accounts for the reality of the economies upon which all our livelihoods depend. What is our dream climate policy? Because once the revolution gains power, we will be faced with a situation where it will have been "too late" many times over. We will need to urgently slam the breaks on the combustion of energy, and we need to do so in a way that preserves the ideals that will have driven our revolution: justice, antiracism, and antipoverty. Especially given the latter, we cannot simply shut down the economy. Rather, we need to be able to carefully manage the economy, to exert our power in specific ways that allows us to set a small carbon budget and allot it to only the most pressing and justice-informed causes: to make sure our hospitals never experience a blackout, to allow us to use concrete in order to build nuclear power plants, and globally, to make sure that everyone has access to electricity and to build equitable economies with big enough production bases to eliminate poverty (this is a big priority of mine). In order to achieve this, we will need complete authority to dictate who gets to burn fossil fuels and when. It's not enough to make them more expensive; that would only serve to re-empower the kleptocracy we will have just overthrown. That is why I propose to make fuel the first post-commodity: the first thing that was once bought and sold freely, but now can *only be sold by the government.* Sure, there will be a black market, but we will ruthlessly crack down on it. It will be illegal to sell a gallon of gas on the private market. The government will control the entire oil, coal, and methane industries, but this is more than nationalization of the companies; it's the People's control over the industries. This is why, without shame or irony, I call for Petrocommunism. I have a very large series of essays about how specifically I believe fuel fits into Marxism, but for now I have a sort of manifesto up:
https://thespouter.substack.com/p/the-solution-to-petrocapitalism-is
If the goal of our Climate Revolution is petrocommunism, it must be a socialist revolution and be in solidarity with the working people, which means we stop fucking around with "green capitalism." Climate change is the ultimate contradiction of capitalism: it is a problem that capitalism caused that it can never, ever fix. We need to push environmentalism away from the liberal defenders of capitalism and create a new petrocommunist ideology. We need to redo for petrocommunism the intellectual work that was done by Lenin for communism.
https://thespouter.substack.com/p/the-dialectics-of-liberal-environmentalism
In terms of the energy mix for our communist, postcarbon economy: we'll need a massive buildout of nuclear, which we would be able to do with existing natural resources. We need solutions that already work on a large scale, and that empower workers. We will continue to build out wind and solar as we can, but we need to keep in mind that the extraction of cobalt and other rare earths needs to be limited. Nuclear, with all its downsides, is really the only option. We will do it right, not cut corners, and avoid meltdowns as much as is possible, which should be %100.
Are you in? Or am I too "extreme"?
Sorry for the late response! I used to march against nuclear… it’s been a knee-jerk hard “no” for me for years. I need to reconsider. I don’t see another option either.
And no - you are not “too extreme.” I am thinking along the exact same lines and am also eager to build coalitions. Capitalism is the enemy in all of this. Humans need to reimagine our society and global economy. The time is now.
Thank you for reading, commenting, and getting this conversation started!!!
Indeed. It's difficult (impossible?) to get people to vote for scarcity and rationing.
In the first two years of so being a member of Extinction Rebellion it genuinely felt like there was some revolutionary energy. XR received a lot of criticism for being middle-class, but our Ipswich group was more diverse than that and it felt like we had momentum [I'll admit that my interactions with the Cambridge group confirmed the stereotypes somewhat more].
However, I think the movement was premised on a very naive assumption - that getting arrested would create mass public sympathy for the cause. This was premised on a faulty reading of the success of the 60s civil rights protests in America that neglected the facts:
1.) That civil rights protestors were fighting for specific legal changes, such as desegregation of schooling.
2.) That those protesting were materially impacted by these laws in a way that was grotesque and unfair. The problem with XR was that people saw the protests and thought "They've got it just as good, if not better than me, and I'm not complaining!"
3.) Media propaganda and government control of this was far less advanced than it is today .
4.) Non-violent protests were taking place alongside direct (and, yes, sometimes violent) actions by the Black Panthers etc.
I'm also not convinced by the usefulness of traffic blocking which much of XR was obsessed with as a strategy. You see this continued with Just Stop Oil.
However, what caused me to leave was the shift to online activities (and endless Zoom meetings) when lockdown occured. A lot of our members were elderly retirees or otherwise people vulnerable to Covid, but in retrospect I think young, able-bodied protestors (without, say, asthma) should have flouted the laws and kept protesting in public. The shift to online petitions etc. fatally damaged the momentum of the movement.
In fact, I'm inclined to agree with Freddie DeBoer that the next truly widespread and effective protest movement will likely be against the internet. Social media has, over the last 15 years, been incredibly seductive for radicals, and proved illusionary - achieving short-term ends with few lasting benefits. I would argue that the same has tragically been true of horizontalism. The damage the Canning Town station protest (by a tiny Christian Action group) did to XR's credibility here in the UK is testimony to this. The majority of members voted against it, but under the rules of any groups structured like Occupy, people have the agency to launch their own actions and claim them in the same of the group (as long as they are non-violent). I love the idea of anarcho-syndicalism, but the devolution of the state and commitment to leaderless structures can only effectivelty occur //after// the revolution!
Anyway, DeBoer article on his ideas is well worth reading:
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/ants-in-the-server-racks-21st-century
Fascinating insights - really appreciate that comment, and the link! I tend to agree with much of what you say, but struggle to imagine how to move forward with a climate revolution that does not include public NVDA. That said, I think the key is to NOT inconvenience “regular folks,” and to take our direct actions directly to politicians and fossil fuel company executives.
Thank you - yes, I agree with all of that. My favourite XR action from after I left was this one:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-54038591#:~:text=Extinction%20Rebellion%20(XR)%20activists%20have,and%20near%20Motherwell%2C%20North%20Lanarkshire.
This book describes why quite well. It's extremely well written.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18594475-don-t-even-think-about-it
And what do you suggest we all do now?
https://thespouter.substack.com/p/the-solution-to-petrocapitalism-is
It's easy to fall into despair over the lack of "mass interest" in the Climate Crisis. I have been a "Global Warming Evangelist" since the 80's, believe me, I KNOW.
Our "moment" has not "come round at last". YET.
It is approaching.
Are you familiar with Erik Assidurian(sp?). He wrote a piece a few years ago that lays out the difference between "Collapse Life" and "Green Life".
The surprise is that there isn't that much difference. What we get from adaptation is SECURITY and ORDER.
He makes a good case those are worth fighting for.