#climate leviathan

[refrigeratorsong]

an extraordinary and important video essay by the incredible Sophie From Mars. this piece is on climate change, community, and fungi. it is overflowing with information and empathy.

humanity can and will kill the wyrm of capitalism.

[pia-fantastic]

A major misconception in the Green, Environmentalist, Solarpunk, and adjacent movements is that Combustion Technology and other "Dirty" Technologies are necessarily damaging to our Environment.

These Technologies have become so damaging to the Environment because of their ever continually expanding Exploitative use, as a product of Capitalism.

This misconception comes from the Green movement being both a Political and Aesthetic movement. A significant part of the Green movement is imagining an Aspirational Future- in opposition to the problems of the Present and Cataclysmic Future of ongoing Climate Change.

A typical Image of a Green Future is one of whitewashed towers adorned with solar panels and geodesic domes, underneath churning wind turbines and blimps, all this broken up by corridors of green fruit bearing foliage.

Green Aesthetics aspire to a Green Future with Technology that is itself Non-Exploitative- of both Nature and Humanity, that at least appears to be Scientific, and above all "Clean".

A typical Green image of the Cataclysmic Future- the "Climate Apocalypse"- is one of thick black smog clogging up the sky, endless fields of dry cracked earth, masses of people huddled hungry sleeping outside, men in dark clothes carrying heavy guns to hold hostage the last drop of oil.

The Green imagination of the Cataclysmic Future is exaggerated reflection of the horrors of Modern Capitalism- a future in which Technology is Violent, Crude, and "Dirty".

The Cataclysmic Future is an Uncontrollable Factory of Human Suffering. The Green Future is a neatly Maintained Garden of Ecological Harmony. Our Technology then gains a mythological character of its own, it becomes a Behemoth of a deeper more powerful Nature, a Behemoth of "Human Nature" to be conquered.

This is not to say that burning Fossil Fuels doesn't create CO2 emissions that have lead to Climate Change, or that their extraction doesn't pollute local ecosystems- rather that Combustion Technology can and will continue to warm people's homes after we dismantle Capitalism, without the Exploitation.

In this myth we forget that Technology is in the hands of people, Technology is as violent as the system it is used under, and as clean as the means by which it was created. It is a mater of seizing it from the powerful.

This myth also obfuscates the ongoing nature of the Climate Crisis, that the continues to compound the stresses of Late Capitalism and Colonialism on the Global Working Class. The Factory of Human Suffering is already here, and yet it is only a Factory. It was created by people, is maintained by people, and will be destroyed by people- all we need is a Strike.

Capitalism will not survive the Climate Crisis- but we will. No one can say what the world will look like on the other side, but it wont be a Garden or a Factory- at least one that is totally in or out of our control.

We do not need any newly Invented Technology to grasp the Future, we will use whatever tools we have when we get there.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The world’s wealthy and powerful are already adapting to rapid planetary changes. Through massive private investment and the exploitation of their ties to powerful state institutions, the elite are cementing structures to protect their wealth, status, and power. They recognize that the present world order is incapable of stemming accelerating climate change. Wall Street cannot prevent the next Superstorm Sandy, but with enough concrete and generators, it can buffer itself from the worst effects, and with catastrophe bonds it can more than cover the increased cost of doing business in the storm surge. If the need to rapidly reduce carbon emissions is the world’s greatest collective action problem, then the prevailing patterns of adaptation—which entrench profound inequalities —reflect the premeditated refusal of elites to solve it. The relatively poor and least powerful are left to fend for themselves.

Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright, Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future

[probablyasocialecologist]

Science is inescapably social. This is easy to forget because it is often imagined as a project of distinct individuals: people, armed with genius and objective data, who make “breakthroughs”. In truth, breakthroughs are exceptionally rare, and even when they occur—Darwin’s theory of evolution, Einstein’s theory of relativity—they are the result of the social labor of many more people who, by learning from the insights of others, exchanging ideas, trying things, comparing results and so on, generate insights that enable creative thought. (Not to mention the many others who have no direct involvement in the “science” but enable the would-be Darwin or Einstein to devote themselves to scientific pursuits.) Even more fundamentally, the scientific process always requires coordination, exchange, and language. Thus, it always exhibits some traces of the underlying social relations that give rise to it. For this reason, science is also always deeply historical; scientific activities and meanings are of their time. This is difficult to grasp for one’s own time but obvious in retrospect. What qualified as science for the ancient Maya and Greeks was the result of genuinely scientific social labor (trying things, comparing results, and so on), even if much of it has little “scientific” meaning today.

Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright, Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future

[probablyasocialecologist]

What cost the Earth?

Calculating the exact cost of decarbonisation is impossible. But one thing is clear: the price of inaction is far higher.

"Inaction and timidity guarantee escalating breakdown, and their costs become greater the longer we wait to act. Proceeding with technocratic, managerial politics is not only anti-democratic, but risks securing decarbonisation at the expense of justice, amplifying the failures of an economic system that is driving climate breakdown. Still worse is the possibility that an ethno-nationalist response to climate crisis could triumph: a dangerous mix of a reckless defence of the commanding heights of the carbon economy rather than a justly managed transition, an aggressive acceleration of the inequalities of global capitalism, and the increasingly violent policing of people displaced by environmental crisis. A politics of incrementalism is thus not simply complacent, it is actively dangerous."

[probablyasocialecologist]

There is no realistic scenario for addressing climate change that does not involve a comprehensive reorganization of human societies in the reasonably near term. Yet we emphasize reorganization, not collapse or apocalypse. As a species, humanity will almost certainly survive the coming centuries. But who will survive, and how they will live, is genuinely uncertain. The distribution of the burdens of substantial adaptation—which is now inevitable, whatever the extent of future carbon mitigation—and the political-economic means by which distribution is implemented: these are urgent issues facing us all.

Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright, Political Scenarios for Climate Disaster

[probablyasocialecologist]

Insofar as Indigenous modes of life are not about “settling” the land—colonizing it, making it property—but rather about the continuity of living together within and upon it, they show the poverty of the liberal concept of sovereignty, which “designates less a content that can be replaced” and more “a process of compulsory relation, one predicated on the supposedly unquestionable fact of national territorial boundaries.” Hence, as we witness the gathering of Indigenous leaders in opposition to a colonial climate injustice, in Paris or Standing Rock, it is a grave mistake to assume “that what indigenous peoples are seeking in recognition of their nationhood is at its core the same as that which countries like Canada and the United States possess now.”

Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright, Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future

[probablyasocialecologist]

Unlike the People’s Climate March, so enormous it brought central Manhattan to a standstill, the group of radicals who attempted to flood Wall Street was far too small to seriously disrupt business as usual in lower Manhattan. But this demonstration was immediately attacked by police; more than 100 protesters were arrested. Why such rough treatment from a state that only the day before watched so serenely as 300,000 people filled the streets? The question almost answers itself. It can hardly be attributed solely to the fact that the financial district protesters did not have a permit. The state cannot prevent the ocean from flooding New York City, but the police can protect Wall Street. Better flooding tomorrow than anticapitalists today.

Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright, Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future