Defending the Promise: Maintaining a Place from Which to Act in the Age of Climate Change
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Defending the promise: Maintaining a place from which to act in the age of climate change Joe Alizzi A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Social Sciences Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences University of New South Wales - September 2020 - i Acknowledgements This journey has been a privilege that not many people are able to experience, and something I am lucky and grateful to have been able to undertake. Part of that privilege has been the many people I have been able to meet, spend time with, and learn from – some have been guides and luminaries, and others supportive friends and confidants. Firstly thank you to my intellectual guiding forces – to Noam Chomsky, who kindled a thought about the good of humanity that will not be extinguished, and to Ernest Becker who confronted the hardest thing to face and made life better for it. Thank you to my family, who observed from afar and wondered what it could be that I was doing, but who gave from within to support the mysterious task. Thank you to my friends who reminded me why bonds of relation make life precious, and to Doudou who shared the final stretch with me, cheering me up and cheering me on. Thank you also to my instructors and mentors, who I am grateful to know. To Andrew Metcalfe, whose timely intervention understood what lies ‘between’ Thou and It. To Melanie White, whose knowledge, love and guidance has opened my world of thought. And thank you to Claudia Tazreiter whose support, love, faith, care, wisdom and openness over many years has allowed my journey the freedom of its path. Finally to the web of life, thank you for the beauty and majesty that makes life a gift. ii List of figures Figure 1.1 Guardian online thread 14 Figure 1.2 CO2 industrial carbon emissions 23 Figure 1.3 Global GHG-induced temperature increase (Consensus) 24 Figure 1.4 Global GHG-induced temperature increase (NASA) 24 Figure 2.1 Alternate/historical human rights cosmologies 60 Figure 3.1 Scott Morrison brings a lump of coal to parliament 75 Figure 3.2 Cameby Downs thermal coal mine 75 Figure 3.3 Juukan Gorge caves 76 Figure 3.4 Rapid warming data consensus 87 Figure 4.1 Apple iPhone global sales 2007-2018 105 Figure 5.1 Fundamental individual security schema categories 137 Figure 6.1 Dialectical place security schema model 149 Figure 7.1 Examples of pro-climate action groups in the Australian context 182 Figure 8.1 Dialectical place security schema model 202 Figure 8.2 The security schema of dialectical place 211 Figure 8.3 Outer influences on stability of dialectical place and action 215 iii Table of Contents Acknowledgments ii List of figures iii Table of contents iv Introduction 1 I. No time to leave it to the youth 1 II. Thesis hypothesis and questions 2 III. Theoretical orientation 3 IV. Methodology 6 V. Thesis Structure 9 Chapter 1: A world on fire 11 1.1 The world is burning 12 1.2 Climate change – science or symbol? 17 1.3 The stakes: material and symbolic injustice 25 1.3.1 Refugee displacement – a loss of home 28 1.3.2 Future generations – a loss of stable conditions 29 1.4 Different symbolism, but the same anxiety 30 1.5 Australia and climate change 32 1.5.1 The promise of a flourishing life in Australia 33 1.5.2 The promise under threat and failed political action 35 Part 1: Two narratives about security 39 Chapter 2 Humans-in-nature: Security through interdependence 41 2.1 Dialectical relation: an ongoing web-of-life discourse 42 2.2 A dialectics of struggle 44 2.3 The human within the web of life 50 2.4 An interconnected and interdependent dialectical reality: evidence through fractured relation 56 2.4.1 Marx and disrupted interdependencies of time and space 58 2.4.2 Disrupted interdependencies revealed through human rights discourses 60 iv 2.4.3 Interdependencies demonstrated in alternate epistemologies 62 2.5 The human animal in the struggle for life: a vulnerable or liberal subject? 64 Chapter 3: Humans-over-nature – The promise of security through ‘control’ of uncertainty 67 3.1 What I can measure I can control 68 3.1.1 Human centrality and an exploitable Earth 69 3.1.2 Instrumental rationality 71 3.1.3 Elevation of the individual 77 3.1.4 Aggression and competition or mutuality and cooperation? 81 3.2 The promise of life, liberty and property 83 3.3 Governments embrace principles of separation: Enclosing what is common 88 3.3.1 The principle of profit 90 3.4 The effect of the principles within the narrative of modernity 93 Chapter 4: A false promise of freedom persists 95 4.1 The promise of freedom transferred: the rise of neoliberalism 96 4.2 Structuring life for an imagined ‘liberal subject’ 99 4.3 The false promise of security through profit 103 4.4 A vulnerable subject in a liberal subject’s world: voices of Australian Interview participants 106 4.5 The embedded narrative guides state action 114 4.6 Corporate and state synergy 117 Part 2: The individual dialectically pursuing security in the outer world 121 Chapter 5 Factors mediating individual action in the web of life 122 5.1 The vulnerable human animal in relation with the web of life 123 5.1.1 A sociological outline of relation 125 5.1.2 An individual relational self 126 v 5.2 Factors mediating the individual-to-web-of-life relation 128 5.2.1 Acting to cope with the fear and anxiety of ‘creatureliness’ 129 5.2.2 The promise: individual expectations of flourishing and meaning 134 5.2.3 The individual pursuit of secure outer-world frames of action 138 5.3 A dialectical exchange mediated by fear and a need for security 142 Chapter 6: Plotting a stable path to pursue the promise 147 6.1 Assessing the outer-world terrain to protect security 148 6.2 Pursuing the promise in relation to modernity’s promise 154 6.3 Systemic dependence, vulnerability and pursuit of the promise 163 6.4 Acting to maintain a secure platform of action 166 Chapter 7: All is not well in the land of promise 171 7.1 The Australian context: hopes based on promises from a flawed narrative 172 7.1.1 Eroded fibres of interdependence destabilising the outer world 173 7.1.2 Leadership undermined by the hollow promise of modernity 175 7.1.3 Outer-world narratives affecting the inner world 178 7.2 Protecting one’s base of action so as to act in a destabilised world 183 Chapter 8: Dialectical place – the platform of action in a promising world 190 8.1 The individual: an inner and outer exchange 191 8.2 Authoritative power and its implications 194 8.3 Dialectical place in shared place: the individual within the eco-socio-cultural web of life 202 8.4 The security schema of dialectical place 209 Chapter 9: Pursuing the promises securely from dialectical place 217 9.1 Australian climate encounters: the Adani mine and the Great Barrier Reef 217 9.2 Existential fear, voice and the pursuit of a meaningful life project 221 vi 9.3 Pursuing the promise supported by fibres of interdependence 231 9.3.1 Speak to the promise: School Strike for the Climate campaign 233 9.3.2 Speak to the individual: Extinction rebellion (EX) 236 9.3.3 De-couple from capitalism and apply interdependence: Via Campesina 237 Conclusion 240 References 245 Appendix 285 i. Additional notes on the interview methodology 285 ii. The interview participants 286 iii. Interview materials 293 a. Interview guide questions and ‘actions’ list 294 b. Audio-visual discussion prompts 297 c. Pictorial climate symbolism task in association with emotion 298 iv. What I was able to hear 301 vii Introduction I. No time to leave it to the youth In 1968 microbiologist, environmentalist and humanist, René DuBois, began his Pulitzer-prize winning book So human an animal saying: This book should have been written in anger. I should be expressing in the strongest possible terms my anguish at seeing so many human and natural values spoiled or destroyed in affluent societies, as well as my indignation at the failure of the scientific community to organize a systematic effort against the desecration of life and nature. Environmental ugliness and the rape of nature can be forgiven when they result from poverty, but not when they occur in the midst of plenty and indeed are produced by wealth. (1968:3) After musing that it is not his style to write in anger and that he would proceed to write a mild account on collective human guilt for the destruction of nature, he says: The most hopeful sign for the future is the attempt by the rebellious young to reject our social values. (1968:5) That was fifty years ago, yet similar hope, or hopeful deflection of responsibility, continues today. Should not all humans be angry that the future of humanity is threatened by climate change? The younger generation is; and again it is looked to for hope. Many plaudits, for instance, have been directed towards now-prominent activist and youth movement leader, Greta Thunberg (2018). In a seminal TED talk, she ponders the cognitive dissonance between how clear the threat of climate change is, and the continued inaction in its regard. She muses that though the threat is critically urgent, there is a comparatively yawning silence to address it by those with the power to do so.