Recommended Reading: Mass Response

NinaIllingworth November 17, 2022November 18, 2022 activism, analysis, anticapitalism, Big Oil, blog, Brett Wilkins, CA4, capitalism, Capitalist Propaganda, CC3, Climate Action Network, climate catastrophe, Climate Crisis, climate genocide, climate racism, climate theatre, Common Dreams, COP27, Daniel Rodriguez, developing world, fighting climate change, fossil fuels, Fridays for Future, genocide, George Monbiot, Greta Thunberg, Harjeet Singh, Ian Brown, John Vidal, Keep It In the Ground, Letters to the Editor, lobbyist, Luisa Nebauer, Malthusianism, Media, MP6, Nina Illingworth, overpopulation, Politics, Propaganda, Rec Reads, Recommended Reading, Socialism, The Guardian, Theory, United Nations Climate Change Conference

Editor’s note: featuring links to left-wing articles and off the cuff analysis, Recommended Reading appears weekdays on NIDC and our Facebook Page. Want more? Click here to subscribe to NIDC today.

In writing about the unfolding climate crisis from a left wing perspective, much of my work revolves around untangling genocidal capitalist propaganda. Whether we’re talking about science denial, stalling tactics, or pushing climate nihilism to encourage surrender, most of this propaganda exists to obscure the reality that we can still stop the climate apocalypse, but only if we stop burning fossil fuels; which will effectively end capitalism. Given the stakes in this fight, and the sheer volume of that propaganda, it’s hard not to feel like the facts are being drowned out by malfeasant actors with infinite money to “flood the zone with bullshit.” In short, it feels like losing; and that’s terrifying when losing is simply not an option.

Of course, it doesn’t help that in a propaganda model media environment, reactionary capital also has the ability to influence our ideas about what the folks around us think about the climate crisis. Given that the same billionaires killing the planet for profit, also own the corporate media outlets reporting on the crisis, it’s not really in the mainstream media’s best interest to tell you the labor class is getting wise to their genocidal game. In today’s Recommended Reading then, let’s look at a couple of articles that prove the truth is still somehow reaching the masses on the subject of climate crisis solutions.

Let’s start with this interesting November 16th, 2022 post written by Brett Wilkins and published over on Common Dreams:

At COP27 Climate Movement Demands: ‘Phase Out All Fossil Fuels’

I don’t think I’ve made it a secret that I consider the yearly United Nations Climate Change Conference a grotesque masquerade that primarily serves to lull folks into complacency by implying world leaders and the rich capitalists who own them are actually trying to stop climate catastrophe. In other words, COP summits are literally climate inaction in progress. This is especially true of COP27; an absolute affront to meaningful climate action populated by more Oil industry lobbyists than world leaders this time around. As this article makes clear, that opinion is very much shared by the climate activists at COP27:

“Climate Action Network head of global political strategy Harjeet Singh said that “we came here to demand climate justice, but we know what’s happening. There are more than 630 fossil fuel lobbyists who have turned this COP into an expo, and they are making the climate crisis worse. The fossil fuel industry is directly responsible for the death and destruction we are seeing around the world and this same industry is profiting from the crisis, making obscene profits.”

To be fair, it’s not exactly breaking news that activists are sick of capitalist climate theater, but that also means that events like COP27 are losing their ability to sway the public into believing capitalists and the governments they own have any solutions to the problem, or real intentions of preventing climate apocalypse. Even more promising is the fact that frustrated activists are no longer settling for half-measures as calls to phase out fossil fuels entirely were loud and clear. From the article, in two parts:

“Those who’ve traveled across the world to fight for 1.5°C at COP27, and their communities at home, are sick of waiting as delegates avoid, delay, and greenwash,” the climate action group 350.org tweeted, referring to the Paris agreement’s preferential global heating target. “We need ALL fossil fuels phased out, gas included; keep it in the ground, and keep 1.5 alive!”

“Fridays for Future Germany organizer Luisa Nebauer said that “this COP has turned into a fossil fuel energy theater. I can’t believe that I am here, with two days left till the end of these climate talks, fighting for fossil fuel inclusion in the final text, when we know that the climate crisis is being caused by fossil fuels. Just because some industry leaders might be hurt when we tell them the era of fossil fuels has ended, their model does not work,” she insisted. “This COP must be the one where fossil fuels come to an end.”

Now look; I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “just because these folks are calling for the end of fossil fuels, doesn’t make them anticapitalist.” The thing is, in a capitalist economic order more or less dictated by fossil fuel consumption on every possible level, they really are talking about ending capitalism; and some high profile activists are starting to say that out loud. We are of course a long way away from where we need to be; but the message that preventing climate catastrophe means ending capitalism is getting out, and not just on the fringes of our collective discourse.

Our second article shifts the focus of our discussion from awareness to refuting deflections; in this case the still mainstream “reasonable” idea that we can stop climate crisis without ending capitalism, if only we keep the poors in the developing world from breeding so much. In response to a fairly odious November 14th, 2022 article by former Guardian environment editor John Vidal, the Guardian also decided to publish two rebuttal letters written by the general public. Thanks to author and environmental activist George Monbiot, I found a link to that November 16th, 2022 post by readers Ian Brown and Daniel Rodriguez:

Curbing population growth will do little to solve the climate crisis

The plain truth is that I could write an entire second article here just about the unhinged mainstream embrace of Malthusianism in the wake of climate crisis; as it’s an issue I feel quite passionately about. From my perspective, the “overpopulation” discussion surrounding climate chaos is a close cousin of arguments like “it’s okay if the U.S. military poisons the atmosphere as long as we all use paper straws” and “eat bugs so rich people can keep doing capitalism on a boiling planet.” That is to say the purpose here is to deflect blame from those responsible for climate crisis, and protect the accumulation of capital at literally all costs; even billion of lives.

The funny thing however is that even if you don’t agree with my opinion that the overpopulation debate is a neofeudalist plot to protect capital, you have to acknowledge that it doesn’t make any sense scientifically. As reader Ian Brown notes, not only are we out of time, but the people most closely associated with the presumed overpopulation problem are absolutely not drivers of the carbon emissions crisis threatening to kill us all:

“I am hugely disappointed to see John Vidal suggesting that slowing population growth can help solve the climate crisis, when he fully acknowledges that the rich generate orders of magnitude more emissions than the poor (It should not be controversial to say a population of 8 billion will have a grave impact on the climate, 15 November). Population growth will cause many problems, not least increased resource consumption, but our ability to “solve” climate change in the here and now has nothing to do with future population growth because of the relative timescales involved. To argue otherwise is not controversial, it is merely wrong.

We have less than 10 years to bend the curve downwards on emissions, whereas doing the same with population is impossible. As the late Swedish academic Hans Rosling made clear, global heating is the fault of the overconsumption of the richest billion people on Earth and the next richest billion trying to adopt the same way of life. It has very little to do with the poorest billions, where future population growth is concentrated.”

Indeed, as our second reader’s letter notes, the question of extravagant consumption to support Pig Empire lifestyles vastly outweighs concerns about population growth; which is again, primarily occurring in developing nations that are not largely responsible for fossil-fuel induced climate catastrophe. More poignantly however Rodriguez bluntly cuts through to the heart of the matter; the racialized offloading of climate preservation responsibilities onto anything that isn’t western capital. From the letter:

“But the biggest problems are the trends: population growth is slowing and peaking, but our overconsumption of resources is constantly growing. One problem is diminishing (albeit slowly), the other is accelerating. It is clear that the planet can’t even sustain one billion of our environment-devouring western lifestyles.

Perhaps we should clean up our backyard before we go preaching with a holier-than-thou attitude to other countries. Some of them are literally sinking because of us.”

Frankly my friends, I didn’t share these stories to give you a false sense of security. The truth is that we’re all under the gun and running out of time for useful fictions and lying sociopaths. What these stories do prove however is that sometimes by inches, and sometimes by miles, everyday people are starting to tune out capitalist propaganda about climate catastrophe, and speak truth to power about who is really responsible, and what is to be done. It’s not the solution, but it is a beginning, and it can provide weary resistors to the capitalist genocide in progress with something important; hope, a resource in short supply during this terrifying moment in human history.

I can’t in good conscience tell you that life is winning the war against capitalism; what I can tell you is that more and more everyday people are choosing not to sleepwalk their way into a graveyard, for rich capitalists. You can’t fight a problem you don’t understand, and you can’t hold genocidal billionaires responsible for their crimes against humanity if you don’t even know what those crimes are. Every day, and despite infinite waves of pro-capitalist climate propaganda, we the masses are learning the truth about the people and systems trying to murder us all for five points on the share next quarter; and our collective anger grows.

Just maybe, we’re not all going to walk off the cliff like billions of lemmings for nothing more than the insatiable greed of a few thousand people who already have more money than they can spend in their lifetimes. Maybe, those folks should expect us.