Table of Contents Introduction 2 Maia Ramnath Atmospheric Dialectics 8 Javier Sethness The Climate Crisis or the Crisis of Climate Politics? 26 perspectives Andre Pusey & Bertie Russell All Power to the People 48 on anarchist Lara Messersmith-Glavin theory Movements for Climate Action 56 Brian Tokar v.12 n.2 What We’re Reading 76 fall 2010 Cindy Crabb, John Duda, & Joshua Stevens Editorial Collective: Lara Messersmith-Glavin, Paul About the Illustrations 80 Messersmith-Glavin, and Maia Call for Submissions 81 Ramnath. Anarchist Interventions 82 Layout & Cover Design: Josh About the IAS 84 MacPhee. Perspectives on Anarchist Theoryis a publication of the Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS). The views expressed here do not necessarily re- flect the IAS. Contact us at perspectivesmagazine@ Special Thanks: Josh MacPhee, the googlegroups.com. New articles, many artists from Justseeds, Jon Keller, not contained in our print edition, are David Combs, Cindy Crabb, John continually posted on line at our website. Duda, Joshua Stevens, AK Press, and You can see them at Anarchiststudies.org, Charles at Eberhardt Press. just look under “Perspectives.” “The non-sustainability and bankruptcy of the ruling world order is fully evident. The need for alternatives has never been stronger....As we face the double closure of spaces by corporate globalisation and militarised police states, by economic fascism aided by po- litical fascism, our challenge is to reclaim our freedoms and the freedoms of our fellow beings.... At the heart of building alternatives and localising economic and political systems is the recovery of the commons and the reclaiming of community. Rights to natural resources are natural rights. They are not given by States, nor can they be extinguished by States, the W.T.O, or by corporations... Globalisation has relocated sovereignty from people to corporations, through centralising, militarising States.” —Vandana Shiva.1 Introduction s I write this introduc- maia ramnath, tion, the radio plays in for the perspectives the background marking Athe fifth anniversary of the destruction editorial collective wrought in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. Later the story shifts to another tragedy of rising water: the devastation that continues to escalate in Pakistan. Two natural disasters, conveniently blameless “acts of God.” Except that it’s impossible to separate nature and society, at a time when weather pat- terns, distribution of flood, storm and drought have been profoundly affected by human activity in ways that have become impossible to plausibly deny. And that even leaving aside the question of our effect on the weather, storm and flood are less the true causes of massive disaster in such cases, than the chronic social pathologies that storm and flood lay bare: the economic maldistribution on anarchist theory 3 revealed by the function and dysfunc- of racial and cultural supremacy.2 Or I tion of levees and canal systems, the can read about MEND (Movement for sacrifice of infrastructure to prioritize the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) military build-up and elite super-profits, sabotaging pipelines in Nigeria in the and the political agendas that twist relief quest for local autonomy; or about the and recovery efforts. In both Louisiana power struggles manifested in the vying and Pakistan, a deluge washed the of communities and interests for access occluding dust from the map of dispos- to oil revenues in Iraq or Alaska. session and privilege. In both places Colonialism, capitalism, fossil fuel flood refugees suffered from the priori- extraction, energy consumption, climate ties of an economy driven over decades change, crisis. The vicious circle must not by the common good but by the be broken if life on the planet is going needs of US militarism, neoliberalism to continue. Some within our dissident and empire building. big tent— primitivists, deep ecologists, Speaking of which, there’s the little the anti-civ contingent— might say matter of fossil fuels. Now the radio’s that eradicating the bulk of the cancer moved on to the BP oil spill unleashed of humanity is the best thing that could by a deep-water drilling rig explosion in happen to the earth. (The ugly corollary the Gulf of Mexico last May, lately called of who is expendable and who will be the biggest environmental disaster in US left standing isn’t always discussed.) Did history. Here too it’s impossible to disem- we make a wrong turn at the agricultur- bed the ecological issue from the political al revolution, the industrial revolution, and economic questions. More than just or somewhere thereafter— in spreading the substance of our society’s insatiable the goodies around, or putting some- addiction, crude oil is a currency of one in charge of spreading the goodies which control of dwindling sources is around? indispensible in order to retain global The articles featured in this issue power, whether drilled off the coast in call not for the destruction but the the neighborhood of our first flood, or transformation of civilization. Each is piped across the marches of Central to acutely aware of existing in the shadow South Asia, the site of our second. of approaching disaster, and yet each If I surf through the alternative refuses to succumb to nihilism: their news, I can read about mountaintop radical rejections of the status quo are removal in the Appalachians, not only tied to a positive agenda of realizing destroying the mountains and their the alternatives that could stave off an- ecosystems, but poisoning, exploiting nihilation. What’s more, they neither and impoverishing the coalmining perpetuate the nature/culture dichoto- communities based there; or about my (as primitivism often does), or deny First Nations mobilization in defense (like neoliberalism) the entanglement of of the tar sands of Alberta, illustrating ecological and economic dimensions. By the way extraction of energy resources implication, these articles open the door is so often synonymous with primitive to debate on the question of whether accumulation, i.e. accumulation by rationalism and technology are cause or dispossession, i.e. colonization; and the cure (or both, or neither) for our ter- ideologies legitimating the conquest of minal condition— that is, whether the nature so compatible with ideologies damage has been done by the success 4 Perspectives of modernity’s projects and logic, or by of the liberal “carbon consensus” on their failure; by using them at all, or by climate, with its implicit conformity to misusing them in the service of profit the economic and geopolitical status and power? quo. In contrast, Pusey and Russell insist Like all our authors Javier Sethness that environmentalism must be radically, takes the risk of total catastrophe as his uncompromisingly anti-capitalist. This starting point, comparing the possible requires a truly oppositional approach outcomes of human-induced climate including an affirmative struggle for real change to mass suicide, mass murder alternatives, based on the “creation and or genocide by the advanced capitalist defense of the commons” and a tran- societies: a true end of history or final scendence of economically measurable solution for humanity as a whole. He concepts of value. supports the theory of “capitalism’s sec- We also include here the Portland, ond contradiction,” namely that infinite Oregon based Parasol Climate capital expansion is impossible given the Collective’s review of the anthology finite nature of planetary resources. But Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution, he argues that what we need is need to edited by recent IAS grant recipient fulfill rather than negate the philosophical Kolya Abramsky and published by AK aspirations of the Enlightenment, argu- Press. Their collaborative reading and ing that industrial capitalism is actually assessment of the book is informed by the antithesis rather than the expression hands-on engagement with “the ques- of these modes of thought. He also tions we have yet to ask and answer emphasizes that violence and ecological as a movement” regarding the coming destruction are rooted not in capitalism “energy transitions” and our ability to alone, but in social domination and con- navigate these transitions toward a free centration of power. Therefore, any way society based on anti-authoritarian, out of our terrifying dead-end lies in an- anti-capitalist principles. It’s a glimpse archistic thinking on social organization, of hope that the doomsday scenario or “libertarian eco-socialism”— regardless ironically makes possible, but by no of whether we accept the creative applica- means guarantees. When the current tions of technology he suggests as ways system breaks down—which these selec- for anarchistically organized society to tions suggest is a question of not if, but sustain itself. when— we had better be prepared for Rooting their piece in the context the opportunity to implement a better of the Camp for Climate Action in the one. To paraphrase Parasol, quoting organizing around the Copenhagen Caffentzis: will the closing of the energy summit in 2009, Andre Pusey and Bertie frontier, and/or arrival at the planetary Russell extend this critique to activist limit beyond which it’s no longer pos- approaches. Mapping out some of the sible to “externalize the contradictions groups and internal tensions within a of capitalism,” make inevitable our ulti- complex field, their critique of those mate liberation? Or just deliver us even organizers who continue to frame de- more firmly into the hands of oligarchs mands within a scientistic/technocratic controlling and selling what we need to framework, or who adopt liberal reform- survive, from energy to food? As we’re ist or state-oriented strategies, is as sharp reminded here, it’s not only the form as their critique of the false apoliticality of energy we use that defines a just and on anarchist theory 5 sustainable economy, but the structures As part of a collective of of power that define its use.