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 theA 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. collectives—including AK Press, Similarly, to a pervasive collective City from Below, Justseeds Artists’ cultural imagery of apocalypse (and Cooperative, Manifesta Musicians’ a vigorous dystopian tradition) Brian Collective, Midnight Special Law Tokar juxtaposes an equally vivid uto- Collective, Red Emma’s Bookstore pian counter-imaginary of autonomous, and Coffeehouse, Solidarity and sustainable communities and visionary Defense, Team Colors Collective, and social movements freed from the taint the Trumbullplex—the IAS helped of 20th century totalizing experiments organize “A New World from Below: gone wrong. The utopian tradition at Anarchists and Antiauthoritarians at the its best, he argues, refers to “a dynamic Social Forum” during the U.S. Social process and not a static place.” For him, Forum in Detroit in late June 2010. the guidelines to such alternatives are Each collective contributed funds to to be found within the holistic ethic of print seventy-five hundred copies of a social ecology in the tradition of Murray newsprint broadsheet), which brought Bookchin; and utopian thinking in ac- thousands of forum-goers to talks, pan- tion exemplified by recent land-based els, and workshops focused particularly peasant struggles or the pre-Reagan on the visionary side of anarchism.3 The era anti-nuclear movement. Tokar too New World from Below also organized indicts capitalism as, by definition, a bustling convergence space at the unavoidably destructive of ecological Spirit of Hope Church, where Food Not balance; but he’s a bit more skeptical of Bombs/IWW Solidarity Kitchen fed the technology as a boon. He also skewers multitudes for four days. The space was the “false solutions” of alternate energy replete with free literature as well as free sources from nuclear power to biofuels, ice cream, strategic discussions as well as carbon trading and greenwashing. music, including a musical benefit for Our final selection, What We’re the Student and Farmworker Alliance; Reading, replaces What’s Happening. in short, with prefigurative anarchism in Three activist-authors examine new action. Because the convergence center books, showing why they are worth was operating outside the context of reading, and are important to anti- a protest, there was time for informal, authoritarians. relaxed conversations about where As a bottom line, all these writers anarchism in North America could point to the need for shifts in political and should go from here, including and philosophical ideas if we are, in plans in the early stage for some sort of Tokar’s words, to “meaningfully address strategizing “forum” next summer, to the simultaneous threats of climate include many of the same constellation chaos and potential social breakdown of collectives. while renewing and further developing This summer we also awarded the revolutionary outlook of social ecol- grants to four new projects, a tough ogy.” But most importantly of all, they choice following the usual round of point to the need for putting these ideas agonizing discussion. The board would into action. like to publicly thank everyone who By the way, here’s we’ve been up to applied, and heartily congratulate grant- lately in the attempt to do just that: ees Kolya Abramsky for “Steps toward 6 Perspectives Community-Worker-Led Conversion over the past decade for decentralization, of the Energy-Intensive Industries, small-scale agriculture and bottom-up egali- Collective Control of Production, tarian access to the commons as the way to Reparations, and De-Growth: Detroit link social justice with sustainable ecology and the World”; Emma Dixon for are points worth considering. 2 Fun factoid: According to Polaris “Women, Love, and Anarchism: British Institute’s Tar Sands Watch website, http:// Feminism, c. 1968–1978”; James www.tarsandswatch.org/tags/military-links Generic for “Across Three Decades of (accessed 9/3/10), “The U.S. Department Anarchism, v. 2: Lessons Learned from of Defense is the world’s leading consumer the Wooden Shoe Collective”; and the of petroleum, sucking up about 340,000 Rosehip Medic Collective “Alternatives barrels of oil every day, more than the to Emergency Medical Services (EMS).” total national consumption of Sweden or Each received a grant of $500 to assist Switzerland. . . The Pentagon is the single in the writing process. largest institutional buyer of oil in the world, This winter, look for the second consuming an estimated 85 percent of the U.S. Government’s use of oil.” title in our Anarchist Intervention book 3 Available for an online peek at http:// series: Oppose and Propose! Lessons from anarchistussf.wordpress.com/. Scroll down Movement for a New Society by Andy the home page until you find it. Cornell, due out this coming winter on AK Press. The book features art- work by Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative members Kristine Virsis and Anarchist Interventions series designer Josh MacPhee. As with all books in the Anarchist Interventions series, each author agrees to donate at least 50 and up to 100 percent of any sales proceeds to the IAS. Last but not least, the Board is delighted to welcome several new mem- bers to the family this fall: Sara Coffey in Detroit, Sara Galindo in Los Angeles, Lara Messersmith-Glavin in Portland, and Chris Dixon in Sudbury, ON.

Endnotes 1 Vandana Shiva, “The Living Democracy Movement.” Feb 23, 2002. http://www.zcommunications.org/ the-living-democracy-movement-by-van- dana2-shiva (accessed 9/5/10). Later in the piece she calls not for abolishing the state but for redefining it as rustee and protector of communities from the ravages of neolib- eral capital; but in substance, her arguments Planeta o Muerte » Favianna Rodriguez screenprint, 2010

“To provide for the permanence of life of the population of each nation of humanity that inhabits the planet Earth is the primary and essential func- tion of politics.” —Enrique Dussel1

“The bourgeoisie live on like specters threatening doom.” —Theodor W. Adorno2

t would unfortunately not be entirely absurd to claim climate change to be the greatest social Iproblem of the twenty-first century. Short of the historical development and proliferation of nuclear weapons, noth- Atmospheric ing else seems to pose such a dire threat to human welfare as do the projected Dialectics: consequences of climate change. A recent report released by The Lancet,3 A Critical for example, claims it to constitute the greatest threat to human health in this Theory of century. The dialectics of dangerous an- thropogenic interference with the global Climate Change climate and the greenhouse effect— which itself dialectically has allowed for the emergence and evolution of life on Javier sethness Earth for nearly four billion years—rep- resents a problematic that, in Dussel’s view,4 joins the mass persistence of global material poverty in constituting the final limit to the age of modernity, the capitalist mode of production, and political liberalism. Such a conclusion follows from the climatological evidence provided in recent years by Mark Lynas, a British environmental journalist who appears to have assiduously read through and syn- thesized thousands of reports and studies on anarchist theory 9 released by climatologists regarding the Virgil-like tour of various potential various threats posed by climate change climate change scenarios in Six Degrees, and compiled them in his 2008 book Six and a second that critiques Lynas and Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, dominant approaches on climate change published by National Geographic. more generally from a libertarian eco- Besides introductory and concluding socialist perspective. The conclusion chapters, Six Degrees is comprised of six here set forth, with Adorno,7 is that chapters, each of which deals with some “[p]erspectives must be fashioned that of the possible socio-environmental displace and estrange the world” as it changes that will accompany each currently exists, that de-naturalize the degree-Celsius increase in the global “monstrous apparatus”8 of capitalism, average temperature that may come domination, and planetary destruc- about during the current century as a tion—life-negating realities that, as result of human-caused carbon emis- Walter Benjamin9 observes, are too of- sions, whether historical, contemporary, ten treated as “historical norm[s]”—and or future, as well as the release of other that hence provide actual grounds for greenhouse gases. If more or less correct hope for the prospect of a happy hu- in its science,5 Lynas’s Six Degrees surely manity and a “free nature.”10 It is to be represents a decidedly important con- hoped that the present work, then, con- tribution to the advancement of social stitutes something of an effective means knowledge, and to praxis in defense of by which to help convince people in the life itself more generally. As such, then, main of the thoroughgoing transforma- it surely should be read and thoughtfully tions that they soon must help to effect considered by a wide audience, especially if total catastrophe is to be averted. those who, in identifying themselves as To begin, then: Lynas opens revolutionary leftists, seek the actualiza- his discussion of some of the likely reali- tion in history of liberated existence—a ties of a world warmer by one degree by project that could find its determinate telling us that such increased tempera- negation in the ‘realization’ of cata- tures would cause perennial drought to strophic climate change. What this essay affect the Great Plains of the western sets out to do, then, is to review the United States, eventually bringing about breadth of potential negations that Lynas a “hyper-arid state” characterized by a finds in the prospect of climate change return to the desertification observed and then to discuss some contributions during the Medieval Warm Period, with that leftist6 political thought might have. calamitous consequences for agricultural I deal here mostly just with the problem productivity and hence human life both of climate change, which should in locally and globally. The upheavals that no way be taken to suggest that I find would follow from such would dwarf unimportant other socio-environmental the experiences of the 1930s Dust Bowl problems. It is merely to claim climate in the U.S. A global average tempera- change to be perhaps the most pressing ture increase of one degree relative to such problem. pre-industrial times also threatens to This work, then, will be comprised render Mt. Kilimanjaro ice-free and of two parts: one which largely follows to degrade Alpine permafrost. Lynas Lynas in presenting many of the pos- also asserts an average increase of one sible future realities he examines in his degree will heat the oceans beyond the 10 Perspectives threshold at which coral as a species can in average global temperatures would survive, resulting in the mass bleaching also surpass what NASA climatologist of the coral reefs and the effective eradi- James Hansen finds to be the critical cation of the immense biodiversity that melt threshold for the Greenland ice resides in such—the oceanic equivalents sheet. The extinction of such famous of tropical rain forests. Made warmer by megafauna as polar bears, ringed seals, increased average global temperatures and walruses would seem to be inevi- of 1° C, the oceans may in fact come table in a world warmer by two degrees, to produce more frequent hurricanes of Lynas tells us. Such a world would also greater intensity than previously known witness the near-eradication of tundra to humans. The general trend expected biomes and a dramatic northward re- to be felt around the world warmer by treat of the permafrost boundary. These 1° C would be one marked by increased conditions might well make historically incidence of drought and the progres- traditional ways of life impossible for sive making-inhospitable of much of the the Arctic-dwelling Inuit, as well as call world to human and non-human life. into question the very survival of the An average global temperature Uru Chipaya people of the Bolivian increase of 2° C, the threshold of warm- highlands, among others.11 Recent re- ing considered to be ‘safe’ by many ports of the effects a two-degree change dominant global institutions, for its would have on India show it devastating part exacerbates many of the trends the country’s wheat-producing northern of a world warmer by one degree and states as well as contributing to further introduces a few frightening climatic destruction, displacement, and death discontinuities. “Marine deserts” are ex- from the combination of more intense pected to be vast in such a world—large monsoon seasons, driven in turn by oceanic regions bereft of plankton and warmer oceans, and increased flooding phytoplankton. The collapse of such and mudflows as the ice cover of the species results from the acidification Himalayan Mountains goes further spurred by higher contact of ocean- into decline. The climatic changes that water with increased carbon-dioxide would accompany this might indeed concentrations (the dissolving of carbon bring about the complete disappear- dioxide in water makes such water ance of glacial ice in the Andes, which more acidic). Such developments would currently supplies water to millions in prove disastrous for two important Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile. The reasons: first, plankton constitute the risk of crop failure and increased hunger basis of the life of much of the oceans’ and starvation will increase dramatically biodiversity, hence acting in much the across most African countries, given same way as do plants and trees on an average increase of two degrees; land; secondly, phytoplankton serve to Lynas briefly mentions the example remove billions of tons of carbon from of Mali, where up to three-quarters of the atmosphere every year. According to the population could go hungry under Lynas, furthermore, a two-degree rise in such conditions—up from one-third average temperatures would likely make currently. As he reminds us, preventing the heatwave conditions that killed mass starvation around the world will up to 35,000 people in 2003 annual be “increasingly difficult” in a world events in Europe. A two-degree increase warmer by two degrees, though he does on anarchist theory 11 write that the “majority of humanity” that by itself accounts for a tenth of will probably survive such warming. Earth’s total photosynthetic output. In The same does not hold, unfortunately, a world that sees the conflagration of for much of the non-human world: the Amazon, hurricanes with poten- an average increase of two degrees is tial speeds of at least a half-category expected to place a third of all living higher than the highest ever recorded— species of Earth at the risk of extinction. Category 5—are expected to pummel Lynas opens his discussion several coastal cities around the world. of some of the likely realities of a The Greenland ice cap will quickly go world with an increased average global into terminal decline under such condi- temperature of three degrees with a tions, and lakes and relatively unarable grim examination of the decidedly land will dialectically appear in the far catastrophic changes Botswana and northern latitudes in place of the reced- southern Africa generally would suffer ing ice. In such a world, parts of Central in such a world: the “great sand seas” America and Australia will experience of the Kalahari Desert are expected to dramatically more intense drought and begin expanding, much as the Great the collapse of agricultural productivity; Plains are expected to have done earlier, much of these two regions, the current and bring about a new environmental home to over 60 million people, will regime characterized by features “far simply be rendered uninhabitable. An off any scale that would permit human increased average temperature of three adaptation.”12 Botswana and much of degrees will likely contribute to the southern Africa, then, would become perennialization of drought in Indonesia a space that would “no longer be able and the dramatic melting of the to support human habitation,” that Himalayan glaciers—which currently would likely dispatch its few surviv- sustain half of the world’s total human ing residents through famine. With a population. Under such climatic condi- global average temperature three degrees tions, up to fifty percent of all species higher than pre-industrial times, fur- currently living will be at risk of extinc- thermore, the Earth may well see the tion. Lynas also briefly examines the beginnings of a permanent El Niño, a rendering-uninhabitable of “an entire climatic event that might well lead to latitudinal belt across the whole width the drying out of Amazonia and the of the globe”14 and the probable mass decline of the Asian summer monsoon, migrations of people that will follow, two conditions that Mike Davis finds together with the likely concomitant to have synergized with the onset of rise of naked fascism in the less horribly capitalist colonialism in South Asia and affected Western/Northern societies. much of Africa to have produced the A world four degrees warmer worst famines recorded in human histo- will present conditions never before ry—ones that killed between 30 and 60 experienced in the entirety of the million people.13 Such a world would evolutionary course of humans. One moreover see the decidedly violent dry- effect of transitioning to a world four ing out and final self-immolation of the degrees warmer would be the existence Amazon rainforest, current home to half of higher sea levels that would undoubt- the world’s biodiversity and thousands edly threaten the existence of essentially of indigenous groups—an ecosystem all human settlements and ecosystems 12 Perspectives located on the Earth’s coasts, from North nearly all of Central America, Bangladesh to Egypt. In addition, such southern Europe, the western Sahel an average temperature increase would and much of Ethiopia, southern India, likely result in the breakup of the Ross Indochina, Korea and Japan will be and Ronne ice shelves of Antarctica, similarly affected. A world experienc- which in turn would lead to the collapse ing such warming will see a marked of the entire West Antarctic ice sheet; decrease in the flows of the Nile, the indeed, the historical phenomenon of drying up of the Rimac, and the near- Earth’s polar ice caps could be altogether total disappearance of California’s absent in a world warmer by four de- winter mountain snowpack. Under such grees. Due precisely to the increased climatic conditions, the downstream melting of glaciers and polar ice brought flows of the Ganges and Brahmaputra about by such warming, the Atlantic Rivers are expected to have declined by thermohaline circulation system may at least half. In a world hotter by five begin to slow down and fail altogether degrees, the few remaining ‘sanctuaries’ under such conditions, subjecting parts for life on Earth—what is now parts of of northwestern Europe to a climate Canada and Siberia in Russia—would resembling that of Siberia. As the per- be menaced by summer heatwaves and mafrost boundary recedes dramatically forest conflagrations that could even northward with average temperature provoke disruptions in agricultural increases past three degrees, stored production capacity. A warming of five carbon and methane deposits will begin degrees could in addition very well pro- to be decomposed and released, further voke the destabilization and decidedly contributing to the climatic apocalypse. violent release of ocean-bound methane At this point in the climate catastrophe, hydrates, which some geologists blame moreover, very little of the globe’s land for the rather dramatic shift the Earth’s surface will be expected to be capable of climate took toward an extremely hot supporting agricultural production, due state 55 million years ago. Apparently, to the combination of drastically reduced the historical release of such methane water availability and violently acceler- took place concomitantly with the mass ated evaporation rates likely experienced extinction of life in the deep ocean and in a world warmer by four degrees. Mass the attendant further acidification of the starvation, Lynas warns us, will be the world’s oceans. The warming potential norm for most humans still existing in which lies in such methane hydrates be- such a world; the very collapse of human yond the 5° C increase that would cause ‘civilization’ itself is likely. them to be released could in fact propel In a world warmer by five the Earth to become another Venus. degrees, Lynas informs us, there will With six degrees of average come to exist two essentially perenni- increase in global temperatures the ally drought-stricken latitudinal belts, Earth’s oceans will likely be bereft of all one in each hemisphere: that of the life save for some organisms residing in Southern hemisphere will engulf much the few marine biomes not yet rendered of southern South America, eastern totally anoxic. “Super-hurricanes” are Africa and Madagascar, and essentially likely to be regular events in such a all of Australia as well as those Pacific world. Lynas suggests that these freak Islands that still exist, while in the storms may be so powerful as to be able on anarchist theory 13 to circumnavigate the globe and destroy Given the breadth and depth of the en- most of the forms of life with which vironmental and social disasters resulting they would come into contact. The from climate change that Lynas tells us prospect of the development of methane could soon come to pass, it is perhaps clouds emerging from the release of somewhat strange that he refrains from methane hydrates in the warming oceans editorializing much during his presenta- does not seem to be unimaginable. tion of the material evidence for such Lynas tells us that such methane-air claims in his book, though he does concentrations would likely be highly intermittently reveal some of his own flammable and perhaps even more de- feelings on the enormity of the problem. structive than even the most ‘advanced’ At one point, he muses that humans are weapons yet produced by humans. We “indescribably privileged” to be born are even told that the hydrogen sulfide into the only planet on which life is and methane-air clouds created through known to exist in the universe.17 He goes such extreme warming might even work on to claim that the conscious destruc- to effectively dismantle the ozone layer tion of the rich diversity of life on Earth that currently protects life on earth. It which follows from the changes that is not inconceivable that the synergy of will likely be brought about by climate these life-destructive factors could well change is “undoubtedly a crime,” one reproduce the conditions of the mass far worse than “the cruelest genocide or extinction at the end of the Permian most destructive war.”18 He firmly asserts Age 251 million years ago in which 95 that he can find no legitimate excuses percent of all extant species went extinct. for “collaborating” with such a criminal process and, citing the precedent of the Discussion Nuremberg tribunals, claims neither “The reason why the totalitarian ignorance nor subordination within hi- regimes can get so far […] is that that erarchical social apparatuses to constitute the outside nontotalitarian world, which legitimate defenses against complicity always comprises a great part of the with the perpetuation of such. Lynas population of the totalitarian country suggests that the “moral path” lies in itself, indulges […] in wishful think- “actively resisting” the “horrendous fate” ing and shirks reality in the face of real that could come about as a result of the insanity.” 19 —Hannah Arendt15 processes he examines in Six Degrees, and he rather significantly argues that “Before the spark reaches the the seeming bleakness of the present sit- dynamite, the lighted fuse must be cut.” uation should propel us not to embrace —Walter Benjamin16 defeatism but instead radicalism. These sometimes-legitimate ob- If the reports synthesized by Lynas servations of Lynas notwithstanding, in Six Degrees as well as the general we can in all probability say that Lynas’ argument he presents are scientifically expressed perspectives in Six Degrees sound, the potential consequences posed are in some ways surely constrained, by climate change for life on Earth as social reproduction more generally could well be nothing less than totally is constrained by the profound irratio- catastrophic; the scale of the threat, nalities of hegemonic capitalism. The indeed, is as shocking as it is horrifying. present work, however, is not similarly 14 Perspectives constrained; as such, it can potentially societies currently are essentially ‘choos- provide a more honest and thoughtful— ing’ to destroy themselves together with that is, expressly radical—examination much of the rest of life on Earth. of many of the questions Lynas raises as Let us now then briefly turn to well as present some potentially produc- some of the predictions various clima- tive perspectives he unfortunately does tologists have made regarding the likely not consider in Six Degrees. extent of climate change in the current To begin with, then, it should be century. Lynas tells us that scientists clear from the preceding examination of have established “beyond reasonable Lynas’s findings that, as Adorno writes,20 doubt” that the Earth has warmed by “the world is deeply ailing.” Perhaps the 0.7° C since pre-industrial times.22 The foremost consideration regarding such is Fourth Assessment Report published in quite simply that the changes associated 2007 by the Intergovernmental Panel on with each degree-increase in the average Climate Change (IPCC) predicts a pos- global temperatures reviewed by Lynas sible range of global average temperature in Six Degrees—indeed, even and espe- increases of between 1.1° and 6.4° C by cially the more frightening scenarios of the end of this century. As Lynas grimly warming beyond two degrees Celsius— informs us, however, such predictions theoretically could come about in a may indeed be conservative, considering matter of decades. This is a far cry from that the various feedback mechanisms the end-Permian mass-extinction event that might turn climate change into a that seems to have occurred over the far self-perpetuating phenomenon are still broader time-scale of perhaps 10,000 unquantified and hence excluded from years. If little substantive is soon done to consideration for the IPCC’s conclu- restrict human contributions to climate sions. A rough approximation of the change, then, the likely future rate of likely effects of such ‘positive’ feedback warming probably will be exponentially loops may indeed have led 90 percent of more violent than it has been during climatologists polled by The Guardian analogous periods of climate change in in 2009 to claim that humanity would the Earth’s geological history. It is to be fail to limit average global temperature imagined, then, that the intensity of such increases to 2° C.23 Indeed, a study on warming rates will far outstrip the ability climate change released in the same of ecosystems and human societies to month by the Massachusetts Institute adapt accordingly. If warming surpasses of Technology, more pessimistically a two-degree increase beyond pre-in- realistic than most other climate change dustrial average global temperatures, the predictions as regards the prospect of unfortunate reality will likely be that humanity’s achieving significant carbon- the death of much of humanity and the emission reductions in the near future, marked acceleration of currently prevail- found that the median global average ing mass-extinction rates will become temperature increase that would likely inevitable. An average global temperature be reached this century would be 5.2° increase of 2° C by itself is, as reviewed C and claimed a 90 percent chance that above, disastrous enough. Indeed, as the band of temperature increase reached Kolbert writes in the close of her dark in this century would be between 3.5° assessment of current warming trends,21 and 7.4° C.24 The study’s authors are it is as though technologically ‘advanced’ quick to clarify that even their decidedly on anarchist theory 15 bleak conclusions might be under-esti- a result of climatic disruption would mates, as they, like the IPCC, also did not merely die; they would, as O’Neill not fully account for the various feed- argues,30 be killed, and such crimes back mechanisms that could arise with amount to nothing less than homicide.31 the process of extreme climate change. The occurrence, indeed, of the decidedly A more recent report, this one pub- barbaric catastrophes that would ac- lished by the UK Met Office, similarly company a rapidly warming world would claimed it plausible that average global likely dwarf the torturous brutality to temperatures would increase by 4° C by which so many were subjected in the 2060 without serious action aimed at twentieth century and have been during mitigating carbon emissions in the near the trajectory of the historically alienated term,25 while the Global Carbon Project Weltlauf, or ‘world-course,’32 generally: reported in November 2009 that average the horrors that would likely enter histo- global temperatures could well increase ry within such a world would constitute by 6° C before 2100.26 A May 2009 the extension and final realization of study released by Kofi Anna’s Global such historical horrors as the ‘Columbian Humanitarian Forum, for its part, found Exchange’ and colonization and colonial- climate change processes already to be ism more broadly, slavery (both formal killing 300,000 people around the globe and informal), apartheid (whether in each year. It claims 98 percent of those its South Africa, Israeli-Palestinian, or “seriously affected” by climate change to capitalist permutations), fascism and be residents of less economically devel- Stalinist ‘socialism,’ domination—of ex- oped societies and finds that 90 percent ternal nature, the self, and other sentient of the total economic losses resulting beings—and brutality and social irratio- from climate change are to be borne by nality generally. If Western societies and such societies.27 the ‘emerging markets’ of the capitalist What is then currently being ‘successes’ of China, India, Brazil, and enacted, in other words, is the effective others do not soon come to effect a mass murder of a historically unprec- radical overturning of the potentially edented number of human beings by anthrocidal and even biocidal Weltlauf, the ‘advanced’ capitalist societies of then, their failure to act would constitute the world—the citizenry and political- the final negation of the promises of his- economic leadership of the United tory, whether conceived of in Hegelian States and Western Europe, as well as or Marxian terms, as well as that of what that of the former Soviet Union/Russia, Kropotkin33 sees as the very basis of hu- China, and India to a lesser extent. Such man society—that is, solidarity; of the potential developments, indeed, seem to promise Arendt34 sees in the concept of be tantamount to humanity’s “collective “beginning,” and especially that of each suicide,”28 though the ‘realization’ of such new human birth; of the world that a suicide would surely be predated by Subcomandante Marcos wishes for, one an effectively genocidal attack on those in which “we all can fit,” in which “peace, societies that, as Lynas reminds us, have justice, and liberty” are not realities alien least contributed to the development of to humanity35; of Bookchin’s dreams the catastrophic process of anthropogenic of acheiving a non-hierarchical human climate change—that is, Fanon’s “wretch- society that ceases to dominate nature36; ed of the earth.”29 Those who perish as of Adorno’s vision of a world in which 16 Perspectives “no-one shall go hungry anymore,”37 in threatened the very continued existence which life is to go “without unfulfilled of most human and non-human life needs”38; of Horkheimer’s “truly human forms on the only planet that as far as we society”39; of Benjamin’s conception of a know has ever given birth to life itself, as society that has achieved “the abolition well as to evaluate and overturn our own of domination” and concomitantly al- contributions, in both individual and lowed for the blossoming of a “redeemed structural terms, to the prospect of such. [humanity]”40; of Fanon’s advocacy41 of The task which lies before us is nothing a “new start,” a “new way of thinking,” less than the “radical transformation of a “new man [sic]”; of Ahmad’s endorse- world society”49 and the realization of ment of socialism,42 which he sees as the a global ecological society, one that, in sublation of capitalism’s myriad cruelties; marked contrast to global capitalism, of the prospect for Marcuse’s “non- would be characterized by social relations repressive civilization”43; or, indeed, of that, in Janet Biehl’s view,50 would not Levinas’s very conception of the “miracle threaten the very material preconditions of creation”44—“the creating [of] a moral of continued social reproduction and being”—or his account of truth45: “to existence generally with collapse—an encounter the Other without allergy, that eventuality that Earth scientist James is, in justice.” Lovelock51 likens to the dénouement of As horrifying as it may be to con- Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. Such template, what is currently at hand, if a political project is, as Dussel52 reminds it goes unchecked, would constitute a us, more radical and thoroughgoing than rather final violation of the new categori- any other previously considered, let alone cal imperative that Adorno, writing after realized. If such a project were also to in- the Holocaust,46 assigns to us—that is, clude the traditional libertarian-socialist that humans “arrange their thoughts emphasis on the eradication of material and actions so that Auschwitz will not poverty, class society, and social domina- repeat itself, [so that] nothing similar tion generally—as this author thinks will happen.” Were the worst projected it undoubtedly should—its realization consequences of climate change to come would be made even more difficult. In about, then, this would mark the final essence, then, “the forces against which victory of totalitarianism in history—the [we] must act,” Adorno tells us,53 “are unveiling, in essence, of the profound those of the course of world history.” brutalities of the capitalist mode of pro- As regards climate change alone, duction, which has long made impossible though, the enormity of the problem the satisfaction of the human needs of is potentially staggering and even far too many and that “tends toward the overwhelming. Lynas tells us54 that extermination of humanity” itself.47 the stabilization of average global Now is not the time, then, to en- temperature increases at 2° C relative gage in the “lucid consolation” of humor to pre-industrial times necessitates the that Critchley48 advises us to adopt in peaking of greenhouse-gas emissions by light of our powerlessness to overturn 2015 and a concomitant “safe landing” exploitation and oppression generally. It at a global atmospheric CO2 parts-per- is instead to seriously and rationally as- sess the prospect of total catastrophe with No Uranium » which capitalist (post)modernity has Tom Civil screenprint, 2010

18 Perspectives million concentration of 400, or a 450 from the level beyond which total climate

CO2-equivalent ppm concentration. catastrophe seems to become basically Basing his calculations off the 2007 inevitable.59 It should be said, of course, IPCC report, Lynas tells us that reaching that Stern finds the “only politically such targets would require a 60 percent realistic option” to be the stabilization cut in global emissions by 2030 and an of atmospheric carbon at 550 ppm, a 85 percent reduction by 2050, with the level which Lynas tells us would likely U.S. having to reduce its emissions by bring about a global average temperature 85 percent by 2030. Such a trajectory is increase of 3° C,60 together with all the clearly not the one favored by the world’s feedback loops that would further in- dominant elites. According to Lynas, crease the rise of global temperatures, and carbon emissions have already soared with it hardship and suffering, toward far beyond the decidedly weak targets truly apocalyptical levels. established by the Kyoto Protocol.55 The As Lynas warns us, then, “what is legislation aimed at reducing carbon politically realistic for humans is wholly emissions as proposed last summer by unrelated to what is physically realistic the U.S. House of Representatives calls for the planet.”61 This contribution is a for a mere 4 to 7 percent reduction in lucid one, up to a point: it is certainly U.S. emissions relative to 1990 levels,56 true that the type of socio-political while the Senate version of the bill has action considered acceptable by con- been tabled indefinitely.57 The Obama stituted power will utterly fail on the administration, for its part, has consis- question of climate change, as it so long tently rejected calls for the U.S. to reduce has on questions of material poverty, its carbon emissions by 40 percent rela- economic inequality, and oppression tive to 1990 levels by the year 2020, with generally. It seems unfair, though, for its representative Todd Stern dismissing Lynas to equate the expressed philoso- such proposals as “not feasible” and phies and interests of the world’s ruling “not necessary.”58 That Obama himself elites and their advocates with human- should have treated the December 2009 ity in general. It is clear that, were the Copenhagen summit with the levity he worst of the projected consequences did is, then, unsurprising. that are to accompany climate change In any case, were a strong treaty to come about, such would constitute to have been enacted at Copenhagen the determinate crushing of the dreams last year, there is reason to believe that it of ordinary people around the world— may already be too late to stave off the whether they be Palestinian refugees, worst projected consequences of climate Mexican farmworkers, Amazon-dwelling change: due to historic emissions, it is indigenous groups, or, indeed, the 6.7 at this point a fait accompli that global billion other humans that currently average temperatures will rise by a total of reside on Earth, in addition to the be- 1.5° C, even if all emissions were some- tween 8 and 12 billion that are expected how to stop tomorrow, and the 2006 to exist by mid-century. It is neither Stern report on climate change informs most of the people currently living on us that the carbon-dioxide equivalent of Earth nor their future children who are total greenhouse-gas concentrations in the responsible for the potentially world- atmosphere was at the time of its investi- destructive phenomenon of climate gations estimated to be 430 ppm, just 20 change; it is, instead, the leaders and on anarchist theory 19 residents of the West/North, in addition energy, a historical possibility that seems to those of Russia, China, India, and to have been largely negated by the not Brazil, who are responsible in this sense. insignificant role that Big Oil has played It is indeed to be imagined that, were in polities around the world as well as humanity in general to adopt the ‘veil the relative unprofitability of rational of ignorance’ and enter Rawls’ Original alternatives to a petroleum- and coal- Position,62 it surely would choose to based economy within the prevailing live neither in a world in which climate economic system. The emergence and change would pose as serious a threat as long-sustained victory of a mode of pro- it does, nor one in which the relatively duction that valorizes economic profit privileged of such a world would submit above all else, however, surely bears to the legitimacy of such economic and much of the blame for the problems political systems as capitalism, that are of the current situation, for capitalism, entirely complicit with the factors that according to Bookchin,66 makes “the have driven and will likely continue plunder of nature into society’s law of to drive this most pressing of social life.” Quite simply, the self-expansion of problems. With Horkheimer,63 then, capital stands radically at odds with the we can say that “[t]he battle cries of protection and maintenance of ecosys- the Enlightenment and of the French tems and, indeed, life itself.67 Revolution are valid now more than Schainberg68 posits the existence of a ever,” that the principle that both ‘treadmill of production’ in growth-based Hegel and Marcuse64 see in such—“that economies, whether capitalist or ‘social- thought ought to govern reality”—are ist,’ whereby the three dominant forces of entirely legitimate, and must be realized society (capital, labor, and government) in history desperately soon—for, if hu- come to support perpetually increased manity does not succeed in undertaking economic growth, whatever its adverse a “radical reconsideration of itself” in effects on the environment or human this sense, it is entirely plausible, as dis- society—capital, to maximize profits; turbing as it may be to contemplate, that labor, to retain employment, wages, and “there will be no more human history” hence survival; and government, to allow at all, that “all will be lost.”65 for the collection of the tax revenue on By way of brief excursus, then, which it depends. Following Schainberg, perhaps one of the most important James O’Connor69 claims to have found elements in the struggle to stave off a ‘second contradiction of capitalism’ the worst excesses of projected climate beyond the one originally identified by change would be an attempt at try- Marx. In his view, competition among ing to understand some of the reasons profit-maximizing producers under capi- for the current predicament. To begin talism leads inexorably to the degradation with, it would seem that anthropogenic of the finite natural resource base of such global warming has come about largely an economy and ultimately undercuts as a result of the discovery and mass the very possibility of a future. Sachs’s70 consumption of fossil fuels since the endorsement of a “politics of sufficiency,” onset of the Industrial Revolution. Its in which individuals and human popula- breadth and depth has undoubtedly tions take only as many resources from been exacerbated by the non-realization the planet as is necessary for survival and of a transition to clean, renewable moderate comfort, is then entirely fanciful 20 Perspectives insofar as the capitalist mode of produc- been instrumental in the development tion exists. Just as “[w]rong life cannot and ‘success’ of totalitarian movements be lived rightly,”71 in this sense, so cannot and regimes, and one that, given the nega- an economic system that acknowledges tions climate change will likely introduce no limits to growth and that in turn into history, is unfortunately still highly demands economic growth, often expo- relevant today. Moreover, the persistence nential, as a precondition for economic of social isolation and loneliness in many viability and ‘success,’ both individual and societies, of the “experience of not be- institutional—and that in turn analyzes longing to the world at all”—additional from a perspective of profitability and factors that Arendt75 finds to have made ‘pragmatism’72—protect nature. The possible the rise of totalitarianism in failure of the historical realization of the history—is also deeply troubling in this Marxian dialectic—the overthrowing of respect. It should further be said that it capitalism by the proletariat and the sub- is rather unlikely that a global political sequent establishment of socialism—and system that has failed to substantively the concomitant victory of the capitalist punish countless Nazi war criminals as ruling class across nearly the entire globe well as the ‘individuals’ Idi Amin, Haile also goes some way in explaining the Mariam Mengistu, Augusto Pinochet, prevailing state of affairs, for it is to be Royal Dutch Shell Corporation, Henry imagined that a relatively non-hierarchical Kissinger, Ariel Sharon, George W. Bush, series of either workers’ states or anarchist and Tony Blair for their myriad crimes communes, coupled with the Marcusean- against humanity and the Earth—and, Hegelian realization of reason in social indeed, that is often run by these same relations generally, would have served as oppressive and repressive forces—would a better framework in which to approach succeed in neutralizing the social forces and ultimately overturn the problem most responsible for historic and future of climate change than has capitalism. climate change, regardless of whether the Furthermore, the “introduction of power latter essentially destroys much of life on as the only content of politics, and of earth. The marked failure of the general expansion as its only aim,” which Arendt73 recognition that “the Jew is a human sees as having accompanied the rise of being”76—that the excluded, oppressed capitalism and the historical victory of Other, whether human or non-human, is the bourgeoisie, is arguably central in a subject worthy of concern—surely also understanding the present predicament, goes some way in explaining some of the as is consideration of the fact that the present problematic, as does Fotopoulos’s77 historical onset of bourgeois rule simply claim that at the heart of many current re-entrenched the historical exclusion of socio-political ills lies the problem of the majority from effective participation the concentration of power. Behind all in the management of society, together of these analyses, of course, stand those with the social alienation that results.74 of Horkheimer and Adorno78 and of For Arendt, such factors synergize to Bookchin,79 who find not just capitalism effect the eradication of questions of but social domination, and especially the right from the general consciousness and domination of nature, to be the funda- replace such with imperatives to obey and mental problem of human history. conform with existing arrangements—a As seemingly overwhelming, then, bourgeois formula that she sees as having as the threat of climate change seems on anarchist theory 21 to be, and as fundamental and deep- concept of “solar communism,”82 then, seated as the factors that contribute to represents a more rational and humane such arguably are, this should not be alternative to that which currently exists. taken to mean that we can or should Less fanciful, perhaps, is Lynas’ recom- do nothing. As Lynas reminds us,80 this mendation83 that the destruction of the is the time for action, not resignation. Earth’s tropical rainforests be halted, for The traditional environmentalist sug- he says that doing so could be crucial gestion to ‘reduce, reuse, and recycle’ is to keeping global average temperature hardly irrelevant at the current moment, increases to the 2° C threshold. It seems if reduction here is meant to be taken that the drastic reduction of meat con- as a radical one, at least in terms of the sumption, especially in the West, could various superfluities that much of the also be instrumental toward this end.84 population of many Western societ- If, however, few or none of the ies consume. Reduction must not, of more rational courses of action still course, be made into a general prescrip- open to humanity are taken in the tion, for the materially impoverished of near future, it may become necessary the world surely need more consump- to engage in some form of defensive tion rather than less. It is nonetheless geo-engineering of the climate, such as clear that a dramatic transformation the launching of reflective mirrors into of energy systems to clean, renewable space or the mass spraying of aerosols sources is desperately needed. Kolbert’s in the atmosphere, in an effort to try brief exploration of space-based solar to avert some of the more horrifying power—a project that would involve possible futures that Lynas describes launching photovoltaic array-laden to us. As long as the existent forms of satellites into space, where they would social relations exist, it is to be expected collect many times the amount of energy that any such program would be highly available to Earth-based solar plants, and problematic and far from rational or having them beam back the collected legitimate—the advent of such may energy to Earth81—seems rather promis- well blunt the need for the reduction of ing in this regard, however unlikely carbon emissions and would thus, inter the prospect of such projects under alia, condemn the Earth’s oceans to prevailing conditions, especially given certain death—but it is to be expected the current global economic downturn. that it would be less horrible than the Were any such seemingly radical project projected consequences of the essentially to be executed under currently prevail- business-as-usual approaches favored by ing socio-political conditions, though, the dominant classes of the world. it is to be imagined that the benefits of This of course should in no way be such would follow the legacy of much taken as an endorsement of currently pre- of historical scientific advancement and vailing constituted power. The argument hence be distributed in economically advanced here has repeatedly stressed the and nationally/regionally discriminating dire need to radically break with the total ways: if such projects were to be based insanity of capitalism and its reformist on consideration of economic profit, apologists. Now more than ever is the that is to say, it is more than likely that time for humanity to awaken from the such developments would fail on both social alienation propagated by liberal ecological and human grounds. The capitalism and other repressive ideologies 22 Perspectives and come to engage on a mass scale in will likely come about if radical ac- truly radical collective action designed tion is not taken soon. It seems rather at overthrowing the currently prevailing unlikely, for example, that Americans, Weltlauf. The task that lies ahead is not Western Europeans, and Chinese will one that can be realized by any One, for suddenly adopt strictly vegan diets and “[t]he only possible Messiah is a collec- concomitantly engage in insurrections tive one,”85 and it is not one that will be aimed at removing world-destructive achieved, as both liberalism and tradi- elites from power, as necessary as these tional religions tell us, through patience developments may indeed be at pres- and waiting but rather through our own ent. Given that it is the most materially efforts at “bringing about [its] coming.”86 impoverished of the world who are The “monstrous, horrible world”87 suffering and likely will suffer the most brought about by global capitalism and from the changes wrought by global domination generally that threatens the warming, this might give Marxist and very continued existence of much of anarchist critics of society further reason humanity and life itself on Earth must to work for the abolition of the rule of be resisted. It is our task to become the bourgeoisie; were environmentalism like the communist partisans of Mikis in the main not to have been historically Theodorakis and Maria Farantouri’s “O reduced to being “institutional, Band- Antonis,” who fight alongside and in Aid, and reformist,”93 as Speth explores defense of the Jews—those excluded, in detail,94 it could have served as a marginalized, and condemned by prevail- potential ‘exit-point’ from the ruling ing society, those who have been reduced absurdities of capitalism. by constituted power to “debased, The tragic reality, of course, seems enslaved, abandoned, contemptible” to be that none of these potentially beings.88 We must come to adopt the critical philosophies holds much sway “existential revolt” of Marcuse’s ‘Great in much of the popular consciousness Refusal,’ whereby “the whole organism, today. In much of the West, where the the very soul of the human being” comes epithet ‘socialist’ is often used as an to rebel against “organized and social- insult in mainstream politics, Marxism ized destruction”89 and bring about a has been indivisibly linked to the horrors “real state of emergency,” one that could of Stalinism and the Soviet Union, while represent actual hope for humanity in much of environmentalism has seeming- its struggles against both fascism and ly given up its radical potential in favor world-destruction alike.90 The creation of accommodation with existing society. of such life-affirming resistance is, as Anarchism for its part is associated with Arendt91 claims, the very precondition nihilistic violence as well as advocacy for the creation and defense of a world of Hobbesianism. The role that the “fit for human habitation,” one in which culture industry95 has played in serving humanity can in fact exist.92 to assimilate the exploited masses into How such a movement might prevailing society and neutralizing the be born, nurtured, and developed in critical potential of many social theories society is of course an essential question seems undeniable, as does the normaliza- to consider, and one whose answer may tion of the “banality of evil”96 directed in fact prove depressingly debilitating, against various others—European Jews, considering the climatic changes that Vietnamese, Palestinians, Iraqis, women, on anarchist theory 23 children, non-heterosexuals, the materi- Endnotes ally impoverished, social ‘undesirables,’97 1 Enrique Dussel, 20 Tesis de Política non-human animals, or the planet Earth (Romero de Terreros, Mexico: Siglo XXI, itself—within the dominant culture. 2006), 60. In this sense, the palpable excitement 2 Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: expressed in recent memory over the Reflections on a Damaged Life (London: accession of Barack Obama to the presi- Verso, 2005 [1951]), 34. dency of the United States reflects many 3 Sarah Boseley, “Climate change biggest threat to health, doctors say.” The of these decidedly anti-social maxims; Guardian, 13 May 2009. the rather absurd acceptance by many of 4 Dussel, 20 Tesis, 135-6. Obama’s empty rhetoric regarding ‘hope’ 5 A question I cannot adequately resolve and ‘change’ may indeed thus serve to in its totality, as I myself am no clima- repress contemplation of the decidedly tologist; I will however say that I find the life-negating threats posed by unchecked scientifically validated argument regarding climate change as well as serious action global warming—i.e., that increased concen- aimed at mitigating it. As Horkheimer trations of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s warns us, “the affirmative spirit in which atmosphere lead to increased average global the horror of reality is not sublated will temperatures—entirely reasonable. 6 By this I mean actual leftism, and only serve to eternize it.”98 not the anti-human maxims of ‘anarcho’- None of this pessimism, however, primitivism. The enthusiastic welcome with should be taken to mean that reality which some thinkers associated with this need be the way capitalist reformism philosophy have met some of the possible and its defenders would have it, with all futures examined in this essay should suffice the injustices and horrors that entails; to dispatch their legitimacy altogether. it is instead to dialectically hold out the 7 Adorno, Minima Moralia, 247. possibility of a radically different and 8 ibid, 139. better world, one whose birth could 9 Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings. perhaps be helped along by means of Volume 4: 1938-1940 (Cambridge, Mass.: serious-minded, rational approaches Harvard University Press, 2003), 392. 10 Murray Bookchin, The Philosophy of to problems as serious as catastrophic Social Ecology: Essays on Dialectical Naturalism climate change, together with compas- (Montreal: Black Rose, 1990), 45. sion for its many victims, both human 11 Rory Carroll and Andres Schipani, and non-human. Nonetheless, the pes- “Bolivia: water people of Andes face extinc- simistic desperation often evinced in tion.” The Guardian, 24 April 2009. this essay is meant in part to hold out 12 Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future the dire possibility that human history on a Hotter Planet (Washington, D.C., may indeed come to an end before even National Geographic, 2008), 125. having transcended the “pre-history”99 13 Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: of capitalist barbarism if the prevailing El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (London: Verso, 2002), 7. Weltlauf is not somehow overthrown. 14 Lynas, Six Degrees, 180. 15 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Javier Sethness is a libertarian Totalitarianism (San Diego, California: socialist and rights advocate. He blogs on Harcourt, 1968 [1948]): 437. climate change and other issues at http:// 16 Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street and intlibecosoc.wordpress.com. Other Writings, trans. Edmund Jephcott and K. Shorter (London: Verso, 1997), 80. 24 Perspectives

17 Lynas, Six Degrees, 302. 38 Theodor W. Adorno, Negative 18 ibid, 264-5. Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ashton (New York: 19 ibid, 265. Seabury Press, 1973), 398. 20 Adorno, Minima Moralia, 200. 39 Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason 21 Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), v. Nature, and Climate Change (New York: 40 Michael Löwy, Fire Alarm: Reading Bloomsbury, 2006), 189. Walter Benjamin’s ‘On the Concept of History’ 22 Lynas, Six Degrees, 46 (London: Verso, 2005), 60. 23 David Adam, “World will not meet 41 Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, 239. 2C warming target, climate change experts 42 Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, agree,” The Guardian, 14 April 2009. Classes, Literatures (London: Verso, 2008 24 David Chandler, “Climate change [1992]), 316. odds much worse than thought,” MIT News 43 Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Office, 19 May 2009. Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into 25 David Adam, “Met Office warns of Freud (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), 5. catastrophic global warming in our life- 44 Emmanuel Lévinas, Totality and times,” The Guardian, 28 September 2009. Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (Pittsburgh: 26 Steve Connor and Michael McCarthy, Duquesne University Press, 1969 [1961]), 89. “World on course for catastrophic 6° rise, 45 ibid, 302. reveal scientists,” The Independent, 18 46 Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 365. November 2009. 47 Max Horkheimer and Theodor 27 John Vidal, “Global warming causes W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: 300,000 deaths a year, says Kofi Annan think- Philosophical Fragments (Stanford: Stanford tank,” The Guardian, 29 May 2009. University Press, 2002 [1944]), 43. 28 Dussel, 20 Tesis, 136; Minqi Li, 48 Simon Critchley, Infinitely “Climate Change, Limits to Growth, and Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of the Imperative for Socialism,” Monthly Resistance (London: Verso, 2007), 87, 77-82. Review, vol. 60, no. 3 (July/August 2008). 49 Cornelius Castoriadis, Philosophy, 29 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Politics, Autonomy (Oxford: Oxford Earth (New York: Grove Press, 2004). University Press, 1991), 204. 30 Onora O’Neill, “Lifeboat Earth,” 50 Janet Biehl, The Politics of Social International Ethics (Princeton, New Jersey: Ecology: Libertarian Municipalism (Montreal: Princeton University Press, 1985), 282. Black Rose, 1998), 140. 31 Murray Bookchin, Remaking Society 51 James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia (Montreal: Black Rose, 1989), 187. (London: Allen Lane, 2006), 1. 32 Theodor W. Adorno, Mahler: A 52 Dussel, 20 Tesis, 132-3. Musical Physiognomy (Chicago: University of 53 Can One Live After Auschwitz? Theodor Chicago Press, 1992 [1971]), 7 W. Adorno: A Philosophical Reader (Stanford, 33 Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor California: Stanford University Press, 2003), 20. of Evolution (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2006 54 Lynas, Six Degrees, 280-2. [1902]), xvi. 55 ibid, 269-70. 34 Arendt, Origins, 473, 479, 464. 56 “The Waxman-Markey Bill: A Good 35 Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, Start, or a Non-Starter?” Yale Environment 360, Nuestra Arma es Nuestra Palabra (New York: 18 June 2009; Daphne Wysham, “Kerry-Boxer Siete Cuentos Editorial, 2001), 191, 19. Climate Bill Still Stinks Despite Cologne,” 36 Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Institute for Policy Studies, 5 October 2009. Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of 57 Haroon Siddique, “US Senate drops Hierarchy (Oakland, California: AK Press, bill to cap carbon emissions,” The Guardian, 2005 [1982]), 76. 23 July 2010. 37 Adorno, Minima Moralia, 156. 58 Jo Tuckman, “Todd Stern rejects on anarchist theory 25 calls for 40% cut in US emissions.” The 78 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Guardian, 24 June 2009. Enlightenment, 31, 153, 6. 59 John Bellamy Foster, The Ecological 79 Bookchin, Philosophy of Social Ecology, Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet (New 188-9. York: Monthly Review Press, 2009), 57. 80 Lynas, Six Degrees, 271. 60 Lynas, Six Degrees, 277. 81 Kolbert, Field Notes from a 61 ibid, 280. Catastrophe, 144-6. 62 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice: Revised 82 David Schwartzman, “Solar Edition (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Communism,” Science & Society, vol. 60, no. University Press, 1999), 15-19, 102-68. 3 (Fall 1996). 63 Max Horkheimer, Between Philosophy 83 Lynas, Six Degrees, 297-8, 300 and Social Science: Selected Early Writings 84 Juliette Jowit, “UN says eat less meat (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, to curb global warming.” The Observer, 7 1993), 37. September 2008. 64 Herbert Marcuse, Reason and 85 Michael Löwy, op. cit., 33. Revolution (Amherst, New York: Humanity 86 ibid, 104. Books, 1999), 6. 87 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, 65 Félix Guattari, The Three Ecologies Multitude (London: Penguin, 2005), 196. (London: Athlone, 2000), 68; Benjamin, op. 88 Karl Marx, The Portable Karl Marx cit. (1997), 80. (New York: Penguin, 1983), 119. 66 Murray Bookchin, Toward an 89 Herbert Marcuse, “Ecology and the Ecological Society (Montreal: Black Rose, Critique of Modern Society” Capitalism, 1980), 60. Nature, Socialism, vol. 3, no. 3 (1992), 29-38. 67 John Bellamy Foster, Ecology Against 90 Benjamin, Selected Writings, 392. Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review, 91 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in 2002), 37. Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil 68 Allan Schnaiberg, The Environment: (New York: Penguin, 2006 [1963]), 233. From Surplus to Scarcity (New York: Oxford 92 Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on University Press, 1980). Man in Revolt (New York: Vintage, 1991 69 James O’Connor, “Is Sustainable [1956]), 22. Capitalism Possible?” in Is Capitalism 93 Kevin DeLuca, “The Frankfurt Sustainable? Political Economy and the Politics School and the Domination of Nature: New of Ecology (New York: Guilford, 1994). Grounds for Radical Environmentalism” in 70 Warner Sachs, Global Ecology: A New Rethinking the Frankfurt School: Alternative Arena of Political Conflict (London: Zed Legacies of Cultural Critique (Albany, New Books, 1993), 17. York: State University of New York Press, 71 Adorno, Minima Moralia, 39. 2002), 153. 72 James Gustave Speth, The Bridge 94 Speth, Bridge at the Edge of the at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the World, 46-86. Environment, and Crossing the Crisis to 95 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Sustainability (New Haven, Connecticut: Enlightenment, 94-136. Yale University Press, 2008). 96 Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 276, 252. 73 Arendt, Origins, 138. 97 Or Les Misérables, as in Victor Hugo’s 74 ibid, 140-1. novel of the same name. 75 ibid, 475, 460-79. 98 Dawn & Decline: Notes 1926-1931 76 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of and 1950-1969 (New York: Seabury, 1978 Enlightenment, 165. [1974]), 220. 77 Takis Fotopoulos, “Concentration of 99 Adorno, Minima Moralia, 234. power, Neoliberalism and its alternatives” (Antwerp, October 1997).

he threat of an impending climate crisis has rightly dominated the headlines overT recent years – unabated carbon emissions, alongside peak oil, are lead- ing us to a bleak, even apocalyptic scenario. In addition to this we are expe- riencing a crisis of neoliberalism, where the restructuring of capital is finding ways to exploit (and hence worsen) the ecological collapse it has fomented. Both in the UK and worldwide, we have seen the emergence of movements the climate aiming to tackle climate change. These movements embody a politics that ap- crisis or pears to cross the political spectrum, but in fact all gravitate around a single the crisis apolitical space, or as Steven has termed it, a “post-political space.”1 of climate As the UN prepared to meet for the COP15 in Copenhagen, we found our politics? movements in a state of political crisis. Dominated by methodologies that rely on an emerging carbon consensus as the Andre pusey & basis of their (a)politics, movements such as the Camp for Climate Action find bertie russell themselves powerless to engage with the decentered problem of climate change. There is an urgent need to reassess climate change in terms of power and productive relations, and to move beyond the single-issue environmentalism that has isolated climate change as the pre- serve of a specialist eco-activist vanguard. This essay understands the « Karabash COP15 and its aftermath as a poten- Armsrock tial for revealing and overcoming the screenprint, 2010 28 Perspectives schizophrenic tension of environmental of the political, where the only debate movements. We point towards the that remains is over what technical emerging climate justice movements or ascetic measures are best placed to as an opportunity to move beyond the remedy the crises we face. The politics post-political towards an antagonistic of these movements have become fo- politics of the commons. cused on carbon-cuts and tipping-point timelines, and despite sometimes fiery It can be argued that over recent rhetoric, the methods for affecting years, the UK has seen the development change become hardwired to affecting a of a broad popular response to the thoroughly apolitical debate. clarion call of tackling anthropogenic This apolitical space means groups climate change. At the forefront of this such as the Camp for Climate Action movement, at least from our perspec- have failed to find the antagonism they tive, is the Camp for Climate Action need in order to develop a fully anti- (CCA), a movement that began in 2006 capitalist perspective, and as the UK as a “place for anyone who wants to Anarchist Federation state, “there is a take action on climate change... and very real danger of the Climate Camp for anyone who’s worried about our being turned from a genuine movement future and wants to do something about for social change into a lobbying tool it.”2 Elsewhere we have seen widely for state reform.”6 As capital restructures recognized environmental NGOs such itself around so-called “green” policies, as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace the emerging climate movement risks joined by more traditional develop- unwittingly bolstering this restructuring, ment or aid NGOs such as Oxfam and ushering in a form of “green capitalism.” Christian Aid, often in broad coalitions However, the emerging climate such as Stop Climate Chaos. Even justice movement, composed of di- governments have jumped on the social verse networks such as Climate Justice movement bandwagon, with the UK’s Action (CJA) and Climate Justice Now! Environment Secretary, Ed Miliband, (CJN!), is pushing the tension between calling for a “popular mobilization” to the liberal carbon consensus and a tackle climate change.3 properly anti-capitalist analysis to its Despite this seemingly burgeoning limits. While this appears as a crisis in response, the political imagination of climate politics, we encourage the read- those responding to the crisis of climate ing of “crisis” in a positive sense. This change has been stifled by a scientific political crisis is indeed the “hope of discourse that has fostered an apolitical Copenhagen,” the hope that what may space4 and resulted in a carbon consen- emerge from the period following the sus. A fundamental compatibility has COP15 is a more expansive politics that arisen between autonomous organiza- moves beyond the restrictions of exist- tions, NGOs, government and business, ing climate change movements towards around the shared discourse of “parts a struggle over life itself. per million,” facilitating a politics-with- out-antagonism where “the ‘enemy’ is a The Post-Politics of Climate Change mere thing [CO2], not socially embod- The global warming that we have ied, named and counted.”5 The result experienced over the past 150 years is of this abstraction is the suspension directly linked to the increase in CO2 on anarchist theory 29 and other greenhouse gases emitted campaigning ‘against’ climate change. as a result of human activity. The full In the UK, climate change has over the range of the political spectrum have course of the past decade risen to the top nailed their colors to the mast – to be a of the agenda not just for environmental climate change denier is akin to being a NGOs such as Friends of the Earth and ‘flat earther’7 – and the calls for urgent Greenpeace, but also for more traditional action to tackle the impending climate aid and development organizations such catastrophe are being heard on a daily as Oxfam and Christian Aid, often in basis. Although difficult to predict ac- broad coalitions such as Stop Climate curately, the effects of anthropogenic Chaos.12 Outside of the NGO sector, climate change are already contribut- campaign groups such as Plane Stupid ing to over 300,000 deaths a year, and Climate Rush have emerged, taking widespread droughts and famine, and actions ranging from runway occupations the increasing precariousness of global to super-gluing themselves to a number security8. The Refugee Studies Centre of symbolic subjects/objects, such as the considers that “human migration, British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, forced or otherwise, will undoubtedly the Department for Transport, BP be one of the most significant conse- Headquarters, and the statue of Viscount quences of environmental degradation Falkland in the Houses of Parliament. and climate change in decades to Of standalone significance, the come,”9 both directly and through an Camp for Climate Action (CCA) is a increase in conflict over access to arable network that aims to build a “social land or fresh water. In short, the climate movement to tackle climate change,”13 crisis is the “greatest challenge that hu- which developed directly out of the manity has ever faced.”10 Horizone Camp at the Gleneagles G8 Given the grave implications of in 2005. Taking inspiration from the maintaining existing levels of global Argentinean uprising in 2001, the emissions, let alone increasing them, Horizone Camp was organized into a stunningly little has been done to series of ‘barrios’ that represented the change global trends of production and different geographical regions of the consumption. The so-called attempts to UK; the CCA still organizes on this reduce global emissions, most notably principle, but has dropped the term the UNFCCC process and its infamous ‘barrio’ in favor of ‘neighborhoods.’ Kyoto protocol, have been deemed The CCA publicly emerged in 2006, woefully ineffectual in creating any real where it organized a weeklong action emissions reductions. Indeed, the only camp outside Drax coal power station significant reductions in CO2 emissions in Yorkshire, the UK’s largest single in the last thirty years have coincided point emitter of carbon emissions. It has with the collapse of the state-capitalist subsequently organized a yearly week economies of the Soviet Union, and the long camp along the four principles of current neoliberal crisis.11 “education, direct action, sustainable The reality of the climate crisis living, and building a movement to ef- combined with the complete lack of fectively tackle climate change.”14 While concrete global emissions reductions the yearly camp has been a mainstay has been responsible in part for the of the CCA, it has also organized a significant rise in civil society groups number of high profile direct actions 30 Perspectives including ‘The Great Climate Swoop’ This “Other”—the Pakistani, Turkish, (a mass invasion of Ratcliffe-on-Soar Jewish, Whoever—is only tolerable if it power station) and a protest at the is understood as a variation on the self, European Climate Exchange in the City as something that can be related to the of London as part of the G20 protests. “Self” through association. However, Given the diversity of groups as the unfolding of global conflict at that are calling for action on climate the hands of Western governments change, even the UK Climate Change since 9/11 has shown, “the self-declared Secretary Ed Milliband has called apostles of ethics and of the right to for a strong social movement, it may ‘differences’ are clearly horrified by any seem absurd to suggest that climate vigorously sustained difference. . . this change exists in a post-political space. celebrated “Other” is acceptable only if However, despite the apparent diversity he is a good other—which is to say what, represented by these groups, they all exactly, if not the same as us?”17 The es- place scientific discourse at the centre of sential characteristic of liberal consensus, their understanding of the problem and as Foucault traced in his genealogies of also the solutions. As such, all antago- judicial and medical institutions, is there- nistic positions are subsumed “within fore the exclusion of dissenting views and a new political space grounded upon the homogenization of difference. science and technocratic administra- Previous attempts to establish tion, where the only legitimate debates consensus have been based on seem- that remain concern the finer points ingly more ideological grounds such as of the governance mechanisms to be ‘development’ or ‘democracy,’ ground, implemented.”15 The post-politics of which could ultimately be contested. climate change is therefore one of liberal As has been highlighted by Hardt and consensus, where “there is no contest Negri, the two decades following the fall on what appears, on what is given in a of the Berlin Wall and the overcoming situation and as a situation. Consensus of the binary between ‘East’ and ‘West’ means that the only point of contest lies were dominated by a project to estab- on what has to be done as a response to lish a unilateralism based on a liberal a given situation.”16 consensus of democracy. The discourse While the science of global warm- adopted to support this project was ing has formed arguably the most one of terrorism, the ‘Other’ which was totalizing liberal consensus, it is by no posited as the ultimate threat to the means the first time what we have ex- liberal consensus. Yet the “financial and perienced the apolitical effect of liberal economic crisis of the early twenty-first governmentality. The nature of liberal century,” along with the increasing lack consensus is by definition the exclu- of legitimacy in contradictory attempts sion of real difference, the reduction of to export ‘democracy’ through bloody contestation to nothing but quantitative wars, ultimately sounded the end of this variations on a predetermined identity. fragile consensus.18 Alain Badiou makes this point through The unique nature of the ‘carbon his assault on liberal multiculturalism, consensus,’ and what makes it infi- in which he finds that the demand for nitely more dangerous than previous respect of the “Other” is a rhetorical attempts to establish liberal consensus, stand in for assimilation or exorcism. is that there can be no tolerable ‘Other.’ on anarchist theory 31 Anthropogenic climate change is a absolute hegemony of neoliberalism. totalizing force that encompasses the As Zizek has outlined, “it is easy to entirety of human activity, and given make fun of Fukuyama’s notion of the the apocalyptic picture that has been ‘End of History,’ but most people today painted, it becomes ‘morally’ impossible are Fukuyamean, accepting liberal- to be opposed to the ‘carbon consensus’ democratic capitalism as the finally and those regimes that act in the name found formula of the best possible of it. What is evident is that “the param- society, such that all one can do is to try eters of democratic governing itself are to make it more just, more tolerant, and being shifted, announcing new forms so on.”22 Much as in the political mani- of governmentality, in which traditional festation of the liberal consensus there is disciplinary society is transfigured into a no room for real contestation but rather society of control through disembedded only difference in relation to the self, networks of governance.”19 This new the neoliberal condition is one where form of governmentality will be based on all forms of economic organization are a set of moral principles embedded in the ultimately subsumed to the ‘ultimate’ carbon consensus, and will be enforced leveling force of the market. using new tools of governance such as The crisis of climate change carbon rationing and the subsequent not only offers a way to reinitiate monitoring of every aspect of our daily liberal forms of governmentality, but lives. As with all regimes of governmen- to ‘reboot’ the neoliberal failure as tality, the ‘madman’ or the ‘terrorist’ will ‘Capitalism 2.0.’ As the chairman of forever be created in a witch hunt that Shell UK has noted, “for business, tack- ends in either exclusion or destruction, ling climate change is both a necessity where the role of government-as-police and a huge opportunity. This creates a extends to the elimination of both inter- huge new opportunity for British busi- nal ‘dissidents’ and external ‘rogue’ states ness nationally and internationally.”23 that fail to conform. This post-political carbon consensus fos- While the carbon consensus may ters a situation in which capital-in-crisis provide the new-and-improved platform is capable of restructuring, unleashing on which an emerging governmentality a new round of accumulation made is developed, overcoming the present possible through initiatives such as the crisis of political legitimacy, the “post- ‘Green New Deal’24 and carbon trading, political condition is [also] one in which thus maintaining capitalist hegemony a consensus has been built around the even if it’s neoliberal clothing is out inevitability of neoliberal capitalism of fashion. The carbon consensus can as an economic system.”20 This is a therefore be understood as the much reflection of Fukuyama’s thesis that sought elixir that not only allows for the after the collapse of ‘actually existing reformation of political systems but the socialism’ we have reached the ‘end of reengagement of capitalist processes of history,’ where the neoliberal capitalist expropriation and accumulation. method of organization has emerged the eternal victor.21 This ‘end of his- ‘We come armed only with peer- tory’ is a fundamentally post-political reviewed science’25 condition, since it describes a space The conditions of the emerging with no political contestation, just the post-political consensus around climate 32 Perspectives change are somewhat different to previ- Gleneagles,28 SCC has organized a series ous regimes of governance. What makes of campaigns such as ‘I Count’, which the climate consensus not only possible lobbied for a stronger climate bill in UK but also so dangerous is the supposed parliament. In response to the COP15 neutral prophecy of the ‘science’ which conference, SCC organized a march supports it; the only ground for contesta- through London entitled ‘The Wave,’ tion appears to be within the domain of calling on “world leaders to take urgent science itself. The political is erased from action to secure a fair international deal the debate, as the only way to affect a to stop global warming exceeding the change in policy is to contest within sci- danger threshold of 2 degrees C,”29 and ence itself. Whether it be ‘climate deniers’ calling for “a green economy and [the jumping on the UEA email scandal26 creation of] new jobs.”30 like a pack of wolves or environmental The methods used by groups such activists holding up the IPCC Fourth as SCC and their member organizations Assessment report as the holy grail, poli- tend to be eschewed by campaign groups tics becomes nothing but a management such as Climate Rush and Plane Stupid process. All this points to a coming-of- as either ineffective, or as inaudible with- age of liberalism, in perhaps its most out more militant direct action forcing frightening of guises, and demands a reas- these concerns to be addressed by those sessment of the existing political attempts in the seat of power. It is possible to dis- to engage with climate change. till the actions of these groups in to two As has been outlined in the previ- categories; firstly, the explicit attempt ous section, the past decade has seen to put pressure on decision makers, an a dramatic rise in the number of civil example of which is a Climate Rush ban- society groups and NGOs mobilizing ner drop at the UK Coal headquarters in around the issue of climate change, February 2009, which was part of “call- deploying methods from postcard cam- ing for tougher measures to control CO2 paigns to the blockading of coal power emissions.”31 This form of action can be stations. Despite this, climate change considered as ‘militant lobbying’ which has remained almost uniquely an ‘en- in no way questions who makes deci- vironmental’ issue, “an issue of science sions or the interests in which they make rather than politics,”27 and the various them, but seek to use more dramatic and goals or demands of these movements often illegal methods to influence the have a dangerous tendency towards sup- decision makers. The second form of ac- porting the emerging carbon consensus tion is a more direct intervention where and the associated shift in governmen- the purpose is to have an immediate tality and neoliberal restructuring. impact on carbon emissions. Examples The broad environmental coali- of this include when 29 activists halted tion Stop Climate Chaos (SCC), and boarded a coal train bound for Drax which incorporates over 100 different power station in June 2008,32 the shut- organizations, is the sine qua non of ting down of Kingsnorth power station this post-political tradition. Jointly in August 200833, or the Didcot power founded by Ashok Sinha, who was station occupation in October 2009.34 also behind the much-maligned Make For many involved, these actions aim Poverty History coalition responsible for to directly prevent carbon emissions at the suffocation of dissent at the G8 in points of production. Nonetheless, these on anarchist theory 33 highly media orientated actions also capitalism; many of those involved appeal strongly to the first category of consider themselves ‘anti-capitalists,’ action, demanding popular support for there are wide ranging debates about their effectiveness, and more often than the role of capitalism in the climate not have carefully crafted press releases crisis at workshops held during climate designed at placing pressure on either camps, and there is possibly even a corporations or government. general agreement between those active The actions taken by these groups in the climate camp process (those who are often interpreted as being more attend monthly national gatherings, are ‘radical’ or ‘militant’ than the methods involved in working groups and local deployed by major NGOs. However, neighborhoods) that capitalism is the this appears to be no more than a battle root cause of climate change. However, of rhetoric, based on a flawed logic of any concrete engagement with an anti- what it means to be taking more radi- capitalist politics is shut down, either cal or militant action. The approaches by the perceived ‘urgency’ with which it of both SCC and some direct action is deemed necessary to act, or through groups illustrate an underlying complic- the lack of antagonism present within ity, and indeed reliance, on the liberal its politics. This means that CCA has ‘post political environmental consensus,’ papered over the real cracks of tension and are therefore radically reaction- present within its politics and actions, ary as it obstructs the development of rendering itself a paper tiger. divergent and conflictual trajectories. The urgent nature of the climate Underpinning these diverse method- crisis has a debilitating affect on the ologies is an agreement on how we development of more radical forms of interpret the climate crisis, meaning political engagement within the CCA. the “only debate [is] over technologies While it is foolish to contest that the of management, the arrangements of crisis of climate change is of immedi- policing, and the configuration of those ate concern to us all, the invoking of who already have a stake whose voice is urgency generally plays into the develop- already recognized as legitimate.”35 ment of the liberal carbon consensus. Some groups, such as the CCA or Reports such as the New Economics Workers Climate Action, entertain more Foundation’s 100 Months report and explicitly anti-systemic politics, howev- the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, er, as we will argue in the next section, which predicted the need for a peak in even for those elements of the burgeon- global emissions by 2015,36 has infused ing climate movement who proclaim an a need to deal with climate change ‘first,’ affinity with anti-capitalism, there is a where everything else becomes relegated problem with locating an antagonism to something we can deal with tomorrow. in their political analysis which would As Monbiot states, “stopping runaway enable them to develop a full anti-capi- climate change must take precedence over talist and anti-authoritarian praxis. every other aim.”37 It is not only think tanks and commentators that have fallen ‘We’re all anti-capitalists . . . into using the urgency card, individuals tomorrow’ active within the CCA have also pro- The Camp for Climate Action claimed “the aim of climate camp should has a headache. It wants to deal with be to stop human kind destroying the 34 Perspectives planet, leave aside the socialist/capitalist save the climate without surrendering debate. The system we have is capitalist, our liberty?’ In a discussion around the stopping climate change is more impor- legitimacy of an aviation tax, the pre- tant than stopping capitalism.”38 As is vailing sentiment was that despite ‘our’ made explicit above, this “invoking [of] anti-capitalist politics, a tax is a measure urgency is essentially a politically indeter- that we should accept, as it would re- minate move” whereby those that invoke duce the demand for aviation and hence urgency do so to explain why a certain benefit the climate. What he observed political project demands precedence.39 as “more pernicious” was the regularity This is the underlining of the carbon with which “the time-frame in which it consensus, a fundamentally apolitical is posited that something can be done to position that “legitimizes itself by means halt a global temperature rise [was] used of a direct reference to the scientific status as a bludgeon to quell any argument.”42 of its knowledge.”40 A report by the Anarchist Federation on The implication of this consensus the workshop entitled ’10 Years on from is, as outlined above, the suffocation of Seattle: Anti-Capitalism, Where Now?’ the space for antagonistic politics. Rather again highlighted this tendency to stress then simply an abstract point, this suf- “the urgency of climate change, and focation has concretely emerged within the time scale we have to work with” debates within the CCA—a number and the corresponding “possibility of of workshops at the 2009 Camp at using the state as a strategic tool for our Blackheath standout as examples of this movement” – yet these very same points widely experienced tension. The first of were held side by side with a discussion which was a workshop attended by one of “what ‘our’ (i.e. anti-authoritarian) of the authors and around 200 other par- alternatives are.”43 ticipants entitled ‘If not Carbon Trading This regularly experienced suffoca- then what?’ The discussion took as its tion of antagonist anti-capitalist positions starting point the illegitimacy of carbon exists as form of schizophrenic44 tension, trading as a solution to the climate crisis, for both individuals45 and with the CCA but rather than opening up a discussion as a whole, between an anti-capitalist on the problem of the financialization desire and the quasi-gravitational pull of climate change, it proceeded to offer of the liberal carbon consensus. To this a number of more ‘workable’ solutions extent, we argue that it is not the case such as ‘Tradable Energy Quotas,’ that the CCA is full of entrenched liber- a ‘Green New Deal,’ or a ‘Kyoto 2.’ als wishing to take the camp on a more Despite contributions from the audience liberal trajectory (although this may will challenging the underlying premise of be the case with certain individuals), but what was being offered to us as ‘workable rather that the presence of this schizo- solutions,’ the urgency of climate change phrenic tension, and the consequent was reasserted by both the speakers and attempts to commensurate two funda- a number of voices in the audience, mentally incompatible positions, leads re-grounding the debate firmly “over to contradictory and often unintelligible technologies of management.”41 political positions. Damien Abbot found this same This schizophrenic tension mani- problem in his attendance at the work- fests itself not only in discussion but shop ‘Green Authoritarianism: Can we also in the emerging political demands on anarchist theory 35 for ‘green jobs’ and ‘just transition,’ internalizing the contradiction between along with some of the actions taken by the environment and capital accumula- the CCA. Plane Stupid and the group tion, installing it as a fundamental Workers Climate Action, a group that driver in the new round of ‘green’ formed and has been largely active capitalist accumulation. This demand within the CCA, but has over the past for “an economic transition... ensuring year been active with a number of non- a just transition of the workforce” has aligned campaigns such as the Vestas been incorporated in the UNFCCC have taken on the demand for ‘just negotiating texts47 and at a national transition’ and Visteon disputes. The un- government level as Gordon Brown derlying principle of a just transition is promises ‘100,000 Green New Deal that the interests of workers in environ- jobs’48 as part of providing a “good mentally damaging jobs, such as the coal, driver of growth”49 that can allow automobile and aviation industries, need neoliberalism to restart accumulation. to be a fundamental part of our transi- Yet as any coherent left analysis of tion to a low carbon future. Given the capitalism will tell you, the interests of necessity of closing down these industries capital and of the workers are funda- if we are to drastically reduce carbon mentally opposed.50 As a worker during emissions, those that campaign for just the Liverpool dockers strike from 1995 transition recognize that it is morally onwards exclaimed: vacuous to abandon these workers to the scrap heap of precarious labor, and I don’t particularly want a poli- that the ‘interests of the working class’ tics centred on ‘the right to work at all in these industries is incompatible with costs.’ I don’t want to see my kids strug- the environmentally driven demand for gling for crap jobs. I think we’re actually the closure of these industries. As such, going through a revolutionary period, the push for a just transition prioritizes one where we should be saying ‘fuck you the ‘reskilling’ of these workers in ‘green and your jobs and your slave labour.’ If jobs’ such as windmill production or wage labour’s slave labour, then freedom environmental auditing, facilitating both from wage labour is total freedom . . . the closure of environmentally untenable [H]ow many socialists within the politi- cal groups that have supported us have industry and the provision of jobs in new or would build a political strategy out ‘clean and green’ sectors. of the refusal of wage work? I haven’t While these demands may appear come across any, but I know that’s what to be a highly progressive step forward Reclaim the Streets activists consistently for environmental and class politics, argue and find that a breath of fresh they make a fundamental mistake about air . . . Yer know, when we unite with the ‘interests’ of the working class that people like Reclaim the Streets, we have makes these demands fully compatible to take on board what they are saying with the restructuring of neoliberalism too, which is: ‘Get a life. Who wants as a ‘green capitalism.’ This demand for to spend their days working on the a just transition to a green economy is production line like that famous poster “in line with dominant political and of Charlie Chaplin depicting modern economic structures and interests,”46 times?’ I think this is a concept the la- as neoliberalism seeks to overcome the bour movement has got to examine and ecological “limits to capital” through take on board.51 36 Perspectives The current calls for ‘just transition’ would level the same criticisms at the by environmental groups, which have G20 meltdown demonstration outside also been made by large labor unions in the Bank of England, which although a the US such as the AFL-CIO,52 face the good symbolic target, given the collapse very real danger of playing the “role that and bailouts of the banking industry, trade unions played in the Fordist era: personified capitalism as ‘those greedy acting as safety valves to make sure that bankers’ rather than articulating a demands for social change remain within generalized critique of capitalism. These the boundaries set by the needs of capital events placed too much emphasis on and governments, and actually further financialization and risk being steered drive capitalist growth: the more they from generalized anti-capitalist critique protest, the more ‘green technologies’ into a call for more regulation, or worse, will grow.”53 a moral indignation with the banking It is not only through engage- industry resulting in a scape-goating ments with just transition and ‘green where ‘someone’ is to blame. economies’ that environmental groups We must recognize that the schizo- have attempted to commensurate anti- phrenic condition between anti-capitalist capitalist politics and the climate crisis. politics and the liberal carbon consensus At the beginning of 2009 the CCA cannot be reconciled. Attempts to do made a decision to link the climate so, as have been outlined, arrive at the crisis and the financial crisis, in both its subsumption of the values of one (anti- propaganda and its actions. This led to capitalism) in the process of the other a ‘swoop’ and subsequent establishment (liberal consensus). Rather, we need to of a Climate Camp held outside the first diagnose our own schizophrenic European Climate Exchange in London political condition, and then tackle the as part of the G20 summit protests. mechanisms that serve to subsume the The location of the camp was designed anti-capitalist to the liberal position. Our to send a clear message about the links split personality may be entering a deci- between capital, carbon trading and the sive moment of crisis, unable to contain climate crisis. This attempt to develop these two personalities within the same an anti-capitalist direction to CCA subject. There is no dialectical synthesis repeats many of the criticisms leveled to this crisis. at the J18 ‘Carnival against Capital’ in 1999, namely that activists skilled Copenhagen: Just another summit in specific issue-based campaigns, well mobilization? versed at the occupation of head of- ‘Crises precipitate change’54 fices and construction sites, mistakenly applied the same action repertoire to From the 7th-21st December, capitalism, locating its center, or at least 2009 the United Nations Framework a key node, in the City of London. Convention on Climate Change Although this criticism almost cer- (UNFCCC) met in Copenhagen for tainly doesn’t apply to all involved, many the Fifteenth Conference of Parties of who would have had a more nuanced (COP15). The COP process emerged analysis, the targeting of the City creates from the 1992 Rio Summit on the a mystification of capitalism with an Environment and Development, or overemphasis on financial capital. We what has become colloquially known as on anarchist theory 37 the ‘Earth Summit.’ The most high pro- that had been dominant throughout the file of the COPs was in Kyoto in 1997, late 1990s and early 2000s. This shared where the infamous Kyoto Protocol trajectory has led to those (mostly le- was adopted introducing a series of gitimate) criticisms of summit hopping carbon reduction strategies such as Cap that were directed at the ‘movement and Trade and the Clean Development of movements’ to be regurgitated and Mechanism (CDM).55 The COP15 has directed at those groups mobilizing been elevated to a messianic position around the COP15.60 For instance, by media and politicians alike, heralded an article in the UK movement pub- as not only “compar[able] with Bretton lication, Shift Magazine, claimed that Woods or peace treaties after the war” “besides having a good time” what but “the most important negotiation the could be achieved by the mobilizations world will ever see.”56 “will be minimal.”61 Contrary to these The apocalyptic discourse sur- criticisms, we argue that the COP15 rounding the COP15 was echoed by offers a unique place in terms of summit the vast majority of NGOs campaigning mobilizations, falling in time with a around the issue of climate change. series of multiple crises. The UK’s ‘Campaign Against Climate It is not only the climate that Change‘ understood the COP15 as “our is in crisis; as Mueller has outlined, last chance to avert a global catastrophe we also face (at least) a bio-crisis, a of unimaginable proportions” and along capitalist crisis, and a crisis of political with major NGOs such as Friends of legitimation.62 The COP15 arrived at the Earth Europe, called on “world time when we face not only a tipping leaders to take the urgent and resolute point for our complex climatic systems, action that is needed to prevent the but also a tipping point in terms of catastrophic destabilization of global cli- how capital organizes its accumulation mate.” Together these NGOs mobilized and expropriation. Yet the nature of up to a hundred thousand citizens to tipping points is that they are full of march in the streets of Copenhagen on potential, they are when our systems December 12th, rallying behind a core are precariously balanced on an ‘edge of of demands that call for “world leaders chaos’ where anything can happen.63 It [to] take urgent and resolute action.”57 is for this reason that we must embrace Much like past summit mobilizations crisis for all of its potentials; crisis as such as Gleneagles G8 in 2005, a large opportunity for something different. ‘alternative’ network also mobilized for The COP15 spectacle was precisely an the summit. Beginning in September attempt to force these crises to unfold 2008, the global network Climate in a certain way, pushing systems back Justice Action (CJA) formed around into a state of equilibrium where our a ‘call to action,’58 which the UK’s potentials for radical change are once Camp for Climate Action unanimously again extinguished. Yet there is no tele- supported. Through a number of in- ology in a crisis, they unfold based on ternational meetings throughout 2008 the decisions and actions we take in the and 2009, a series of working principles here-and-now. As Joel Kovel has noted, and ‘network goals’59 were developed “these meetings will be a turning point. that illustrated the shared trajectories of The question remains as to the direction CJA and the ‘movement of movements’ taken, whether toward eco-catastrophe « Untitled Pete Yahnke screenprint, 2010 on anarchist theory 39 or hope for life.”64 The COP15 may neoliberalism, governments attempted well become understood as the point to use the climate and the bio-crisis where one half overcame its other, as an opportunity to restructure and where the schizophrenic subject of the unleash a new round of enclosures. As environmental movement was forced the Turbulence collective point out, into a final resolution or split entirely.65 “the secret of capital’s longevity lies But let us reiterate the point—we must precisely in its ability to use limits and embrace this subjective crisis, fermenting the crises they engender as a launch pad the split between the liberal consensus for a new round of accumulation and and the antagonistic movements it cap- expansion.”67 One example of this new tures. It is only through overcoming our round of accumulation is the develop- personal political crisis that we will be ment of new international regulation able to form movements that can truly for the “rights to pollute,” which as engage antagonistically with capitalism, Brunnengräber affirms is “the precondi- governmentality and climate change. tion for the creation of new markets.”68 The ‘cap and trade’ initiatives intro- The Hope of Copenhagen From Above duced at Kyoto are a fundamental part Copenhagen, or ‘Hopenhagen’ as of this, providing a new basis for invest- some branded it, was representative of ment in the model of the derivatives a crisis of values—do we solve climate markets. Yet as Lord Nicholas Stern change and move towards a more sus- has outlined, it is not enough to create tainable way of life, or do we start a new new cycles of demand, the neoliberal cycle of accumulation? This value-crisis is model demands the creation of a “good a battle between Copenhagen from above driver of growth” through “a sustained and Copenhagen from below. The battle program to invest in and deploy energy of Copenhagen from above and below is conservation and renewable energies,”69 a battle over ‘justice,’ a battle of values. incorporating the environmental limits Capitalism wants to maintain and extend of existing neoliberalism as the very its system of value over all existence— driver of the new ‘green capitalism.’ whereas the ‘below’ wants to change This new round of accumulation what it means to value existence in all its and governmentality isn’t something forms. Mainstream discourse branded that has its beginning in Copenhagen, Copenhagen as the ‘Bretton Woods’ of elite climate change ‘solutions’ have the twenty-first century, an epoch defin- always had capital accumulation as their ing summit. Beneath this hyperbole laid rationale. As Brunnengräber states, “the a concrete aim to use Copenhagen to Kyoto protocol was [...] the starting restore faith in the capitalist system and point for the emergence of an interna- representative democracy in the midst of tional regime of resource management both a political and economic crisis. As that would soon open up new business Mueller & Passadakis state, “the biocrisis opportunities.”70 Not only do these is the opportunity that might just allow false ‘solutions’ generate more profit for capitals and governments to at least tem- capitalists, but in addition a “number porally deal with the legitimation and of ecologically sustainable forms of accumulation crisis.”66 producing and living have actually been « Untitled Not only was the COP used put under pressure not just by global- Pete Yahnke in attempt to bolster the ideology of ized capitalism, but more specifically by screenprint, 2010 40 Perspectives a top down kind of climate politics.”71 Negri and Hardt call ‘commonwealth.’”76 The attempts to both reassert new forms The struggle over Copenhagen from of governmentality and to begin a new above and below was a value-struggle cycle of accumulation will not only fail over our commonwealth, and this com- to solve the climate crisis, but will also monwealth is central to our antagonism shut down grassroots alternatives in the over the crises we face. here and now. This antagonism is completely To be clear, there is no conflict lacking in the discourse of the big between the ‘greening’ of society and NGOs and the majority of environ- the continuation of the capitalist mode mental movements, they inhabit the of production. Even Thomas Friedman post-political space they have helped has gone green, stating, “making to create and foster. Copenhagen from America the worlds greenest country above thrives on this apolitical space is not a selfless act of charity or a naive that has been manufactured around moral indulgence. It is now a core na- the climate crisis. Many environmental tional security and economic interest.”72 lobby groups even go as far as being It would appear that Brunnengräber entirely incorporated into the false is right when he suggests that “we are solutions being proposed by the big witnessing the emergence of a climate corporations, making them indis- neoliberalism.”73 The development tinguishable in their solutions to the of ‘Green Capitalism’ is more than current crises. The World Wildlife Fund green wash or a rebranding exercise for (WWF), for example, fundamentally Capitalism 2.0; while some reactionary supports capitalist strategies for dealing capitalists may drag their feet and fail to with the bio-crisis, giving its logo, and pick up on the new direction markets therefore tacit support, to a huge advert are going, green capitalism “embodies 1km from the Bella Centre77 that states the faction of the global bourgeoisie “climate responsibility is simple, it’s just that understands the reality of climate good business sense” going on to say change and of its own decline in politi- “let the clean economy begin.” On their cal legitimacy in the face of the banking website they state that “WWF partners crisis and the consequent end of the with companies to help them achieve neoliberal monetarist hegemony.”74 their environmental objectives.”78 Green capitalism may help shore Commentators were correct in up capitalism’s legitimacy crisis, but as placing the COP15 on a level of equal or Mueller & Passadakis state, it will not greater importance than Bretton Woods, “solve the antagonism of the biocrisis, it but for all the wrong reasons. Despite will draw energy from it to drive forward those ‘inside’ voices hopelessly fighting which always must be capital’s first and for progressive solutions—we do not foremost project: the accumulation deny the heterogeneity of the conference of more capital.”75 This accumulation itself—the UNFCCC negotiations are rests ultimately on the capture of the part of a dominant framework that has common(s). As Foti states, “green capi- “precious little to do with the climate, talism wants to solve the economic crisis and everything to do with the haggling via green jobs and a new welfare system, over percentage points of economic but it will succeed in its task, only if it growth.”79 Copenhagen ‘from above‘ was manages to widely redistribute what concerned with establishment of new on anarchist theory 41 regimes of governing and the emergence on the 16th can be viewed as an attempt of a new round of capitalist accumu- to create a rupture with the refigura- lation, representing a fundamental tions of capital and governance that are restructuring in both the political and underway. The attempt of demonstrators economic rules of the game. to enter the UN conference area to host a ‘peoples summit’ was not a call for a ‘dif- The Hope of Copenhagen From ferent’ set of talks or a ‘better’ agreement. Below As dissident delegates on the inside ‘Meltdown expected, the wheat is disrupted the sessions and participated growing thin Engines stop running, but in an exodus from the proceedings, we I have no fear’ witnessed a fundamental challenge to the —The Clash process of Copenhagen from above and all it entails. The crises we face are by definition This is not just a struggle against an opportunity, both for capitalist accu- climate change, or even the bio-crisis mulation/restructuring, and the creation more generally. It is crucially an affirma- of a new world. We need to keep the tive struggle, or as Mueller & Passadakis categories open and in flux. The tempta- put it “a struggle not just against tion in struggles around crises and the green (or any other) capitalism, but precariousness these crises engender is an struggle for the constitution of alterna- entirely understandable desire to return tives.”80 For us, these struggles, and the to some form of normalcy. Yet we need alternatives we hope to foster are funda- to resist this conservative urge, as well as mentally about the creation and defense the apolitical overcoding that attempts to of the common(s), in both their mate- close these open moments into either ‘en- rial and immaterial forms. Copenhagen vironmental’ (partial) struggles devoid of and its affects must force a change in political content, or from economic crisis how we struggle around climate change. to ‘recession’ or ‘recovery.’ We must resist The traditional PPM framework and attempts to determine these crises as ‘de- the value-neutral carbon consensus are pressions’ or ‘instabilities,’ as events that incapable of accounting for the fields already have a preordained resolution in of struggle that animate the world we the continuation of that which already create. The inconsistencies and tensions exists. The crises we face are unique, and that vitalize this emerging movement offer us the opportunity to remake the have the potential to force the crisis of world on our own terms. climate change out of its environmental Copenhagen offered us more straitjacket and into a fundamental than just a summit protest, more than struggle over life itself. the sum of its parts, whether it had The uncertainty of the world that turned out to be another round of street we face is something to be seized—for battles, like those over the eviction of better or for worse. Copenhagen is an Ungdomshuset in 2007, or a more uncertain and open space occupied by carnivalesque creative spectacle, such forces from above and from below. We as that enacted by the Laboratory of need to make sure that our energies Insurrectionary Imagination and their have not become captured, constantly Bike Bloc. Copenhagen promised to be reaffirming our politics to the hope an Event, and the ‘Reclaim Power’ action from below. We need to ensure that our 42 Perspectives struggles don’t become a ‘Make Poverty creating the possibility of a real move- History’ that cheer on government ment that can abolish the present state leaders in their business of expanding of things. To this extent ‘Hopenhagen’ business, prioritizing endless economic is not an empty concept, but rather the expansion over life. The battle we face is prerequisite for a new politics. clear—capital or life. This essay is a call for both politi- cal activity beyond measure – beyond In-conclusion economic value – and also towards the ‘Tomorrow dawns a day when affirmative creation of common values. nothing is certain’81 As De Angelis states, “either: social movements will face up to the chal- The COP15 came hot on the lenge and re-found the commons on heels of the ten-year anniversary of values of social justice in spite of, and the Seattle WTO demonstration in beyond, these capitalist hierarchies. Or: 1999. Ten years before that, 1989 saw capital will seize the historical moment the fall of the Berlin Wall and the col- to use them to initiate a new round of lapse of ‘actually existing socialism.’ A accumulation.”83 The climate, or even decade earlier in the UK the election the ‘environment,’ isn’t just another ‘is- of Margaret Thatcher ushered in an era sue,’ it’s a central political battleground of neoliberal policies and the totalizing from both above and below. We need mantra that ‘there is no alternative.’ Ten to fully realize this and act accordingly. years before that the Piazza Fontana We need to put aside purist political massacre marked the beginning of the positions and become involved in the ‘strategy of tension’ in Italy, part of a messy world of actually existing social state-sponsored right-wing attack on struggle. As Böhm states, “in times of the Italian Left’s ‘Hot Autumn.’ What crisis, act!”84 do all these dates and events illustrate? That the circulation of struggles to Andre Pusey and Bertie Russell remake the world from below, and of are PhD candidates at the University of those that wish to close down that space Leeds. Both have a long involvement with and return it to the profit motive, is a ecological and social struggle. refrain throughout history. It is more than possible that the COP15 will be Endnotes looked back on as the point at which we 1 Steven, P. (2009) ‘Are we anywhere? entered a new cycle of (carbon) struggle. Carbon, Capital, and COP15’, Shift The sense of hopelessness that Magazine, p. 5. is implicit in the failure to find non- 2 See http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/ capitalist solutions has been deliberately about. produced through the post-politics of 3 See http://www.guardian.co.uk/ environment/2008/dec/08/ed-miliband- the carbon consensus; we need to col- climate-politics-environment. lectively overcome this hopelessness and 4 Steven, P. (2009) ‘Are we anywhere? replace it with a ‘hope in common.’ This Carbon, Capital, and COP15’, Shift common hope is the prerequisite for the Magazine, p. 5. creation of ‘other values’82 which will 5 Syngedouw, E. (2009) ‘The help us to struggle against the bio-crisis Antinomies of the Postpolitical City: while also expanding the common(s), In Search of a Democratic Politics of on anarchist theory 43

Environmental Protection’, International In Search of a Democratic Politics of Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Environmental Protection’, International 33(3), pp. 601-20. Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 6 Anarchist Federation (2009) ‘Climate 33(3), p. 209. Camp and Us: A perspective paper’, avail- 21 Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of able on the World Wide Web:. 22 Zizek, S. (2009) First as Tragedy, Then 7 Despite the recent ‘climate email’ as Farce, Verso: London. scandal. 23 James Smith, quoted in Shell (2006) 8 Global Humanitarian Forum (2009) ‘Climate Change to be £30bn opportunity The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis, GHF: for British business over next ten years’, Geneva. available on the World Wide Web:. 10 Gurría, A. & Leape, J. (2009) 24 Green New Deal Group (2008) A ‘Climate Change: the biggest threat to eco- Green New Deal: Joined-up policies to solve nomic review’, OECD Observer, available the triple crunch of the credit crisis, climate on the World Wide Web:. Camp at Heathrow. It was created, in part, 11 Mueller, T. & Wolf, F. (2009) ‘Green to diffuse hostile media coverage that the New Deal: Dead end of pathway beyond camp had received in the previous weeks capitalism?’, Turbulence, 5, pp. 12-16. that had indicated the Camp was a hotbed 12 See http://www.stopclimatechaos.org/. of ‘violent’ individuals. 13 See http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/ 26 http://www.guardian.co.uk/ about. environment/2009/nov/20/climate-sceptics- 14 See http://climatecamp.org.uk/about. hackers-leaked-emails. 15 Lear, B. (2009) ‘Are We Anywhere? 27 Brand, U. et al. (2009) ‘Radical The (Post)Politics of Climate Change’, in climate change politics in Copenhagen Anonymous (ed.) Dealing With Distractions: and beyond: From criticism to action?’, in Confronting Green Capitalism in Copenhagen Brand, U. et al. (2009) Contours of Climate and Beyond, self-published: Copenhagen. Justice: Ideas for shaping new climate and en- 16 Ranciere, J. (2003) Comment and ergy politics, Dag Hammarsköld Foundation: responses, Theory & Event, 6(4), p. 5. Uppsala, p.11. 17 Badiou, A. (2002) Ethics: An Essay on 28 See Hewson, P. (2006) ‘‘It’s the the Understanding of Evil, p. 25. politics, stupid’ How neoliberal politicians, 18 Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2009) NGOs and rockstars hijacked the global jus- Commonwealth, Harvard University Press: tice movement at Gleneagles... and how we Cambridge, MA. let them’, in Harvie, D. et al. (eds.) (2006) 19 Syngedouw, E. (2009) ‘The Shut Them Down! The G8, Gleneagles and Antinomies of the Postpolitical City: the movement of movements, Autonomedia/ In Search of a Democratic Politics of Dissent G8: New York/ Leeds. Environmental Protection’, International 29 See http://www.stopclimatechaos.org/ Journal of Urban and Regional Research, the-wave. 33(3). 30 See http://www.stopclimatechaos.org/ 20 Syngedouw, E. (2009) ‘The quit-dirty-coal. Antinomies of the Postpolitical City: 31 See http://www.earthfirst.org.uk/ 44 Perspectives actionreports/node/22254. available on the World Wide Web:. Web:. phrenia’ in the colloquial sense that infers 33 See http://climatecamp.org.uk/ a dual personality. The authors are aware actions/kingsnorth-2008. that schizophrenia and Dissociative Identity 34 See http://www.guardian.co.uk/ Disorder (DID) are clinically distinct condi- environment/2009/oct/28/didcot-power- tions, and that DID offers a ‘clinically’ more station-protest-ends. accurate analogy of the split subject we 35 Syngedouw, E. (2009) “The are suggesting. However, we are using the Antinomies of the Postpolitical City: term schizophrenia colloquially so as to not In Search of a Democratic Politics of muddy our political-philosophical analysis Environmental Protection,” International with clinical analysis, a topic on which nei- Journal of Urban and Regional Research ther authors are literate. 33(3), 610. 45 Indeed for the authors, the process 36 IPCC (2007) “Climate Change 2007: of writing this paper is a ‘self-diagnosis’ of Mitigation of Climate Change, Summary sorts, as we search to purge the liberal con- for Policymakers” Working Group III, sensus from our political engagements with IPCC. pp. Table SPM.5, page 23. Available climate change. on the World Wide Web:. and beyond: From criticism to action?’, in 37 See http://www.monbiot.com/ Brand, U. et al. (2009) Contours of Climate archives/2008/08/22/identity-politics-in- Justice: Ideas for shaping new climate and en- climate-change-hell/. ergy politics, Dag Hammarsköld Foundation: 38 A response by ‘Harvey’ to Resonance Uppsala, 10. (2009) ‘The liberal “Anti-Capitalist”: 47 Negotiating text (see Shared Vision, Climate Camp 2009’, available on the para 4) United Nations Framework World Wide Web:. eng/08.pdf. 39 Mueller, T. & Wolf, F. (2009) ‘Green 48 See http://www.guardian.co.uk/ New Deal: Dead end of parthway beyond politics/2009/jan/04/gordon-brown- capitalism?’, Turbulence, 5, p. 16. employment-new-deal. 40 Zizek, S. (2006) The Universal 49 Stern, N. (2008) “Upside of a down- Exception, Continuum: London, p. 188. turn.” www.ft.com/climatechangeseries 41 Syngedouw, E. (2009) ‘The 2/12/2008. Antinomies of the Postpolitical City: 50 The authors are aware of the differ- In Search of a Democratic Politics of ence between ‘just transition’ and the calls Environmental Protection’, International for ‘worker led’ just transition. Whilst there Journal of Urban and Regional Research, is not space in this paper to discuss this, we 33(3), p. 610. recognize that the calls for ‘worker led’ are 42 Abbott, A. (2009) ‘The State an important qualifier that has different po- Climate Camp’s In’, Mute Online, avail- litical implications. We hope either ourselves able on the World Wide Web:. the political implications of this in the near 43 Anarchist Federation (2009) ‘Climate future. Camp and Us: A perspective paper’, 51 Aufheben (2002) ‘Anticapitalism on anarchist theory 45 and ideology... and as a MOVEMENT?’, Order out of Chaos: Man’s new dialogue with Aufheben, 10. nature, London: Fontana Paperbacks 52 See http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/09/22/ 64 Kovel, J. (2009) ‘End Times in trumka-calls-for-just-transition-to-green- Copenhagen’, available on the World economy/. Wide Web:< http://info.interactivist.net/ 53 Mueller, T. & Passadakis, A., node/13310> [Accessed 22.11.2009] “Another Capitalism is Possible?,” in 65 In suggesting the resolution of this Abramsky, K. (ed.), Sparking a World-wide specific ‘schizophrenic’ crisis, we are not imply- energy revolution: Social Struggles in the ing that any other case demands resolution, or transition to a post-petrol world, Oaklend: AK that other cases of schizophrenia are necessarily Press, 2010. composed from antagonistic positions. 54 Deltron 3030 (2000) 66 Mueller, T. & Passadakis, A. ‘Another 55 Reyes & Gilbertson (2009) Capitalism is Possible?’, in Abramsky, K. ‘Carbon Trading: How it works and why (ed.) Sparking a World-wide energy revolution: it fails’, Critical Currents, 7, Uppsala: Dag Social Struggles in the transition to a post- Hammarskjöld Foundations petrol world, Oaklend: AK Press 56 Ruddock, J. (2009) ‘Transcript of 67 Turbulence Collective (2007) ‘Move Parliamentary debate on COP15’, available into the light? Postscript to a Turbulent on the World Wide Web: [accessed on 28.11.2009] the air’, in Brand, U. et al. (eds.) ‘Contours 57 Campaign Against Climate Change of Climate Justice: Ideas for shaping new cli- (2009) ‘Invitation to Day of mass Climate mate and energy politics’, Critical Currents, Action in Copenhagen’, available on the 6, Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation. World Wide Web: Green New Deal: Joined-up policies to solve [accessed 28.11.2009] the triple crunch of the credit crisis, climate 58 See http://www.risingtide- change and high oil prices, New Economics northamerica.org/wordpress/2008/08/19/ Foundation: London. pp.2 copenhagen-2009-un-climate-conference/ 70 Brunnengräber, A. (2009) ‘Kyoto’s 59 See http://www.climate-justice- flexible mechanisms and the right to pollute action.org/about/about-cja/ the air’, in Brand, U. et al. (eds.) ‘Contours 60 For criticism of previous summit of Climate Justice: Ideas for shaping new cli- hopping see Venemous Butterfly Publication mate and energy politics’, Critical Currents, (n.d.) Summits, Counter-Summits and 6, Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation. Social War, Eberhardt Press: Portland, and, pp. 27 Some Roveretan anarchists (2009) Notes on 71 Brand, U. et al. (eds.) ‘Contours of Summits and Counter-Summits, available on Climate Justice: Ideas for shaping new cli- the World Wide Web: [Accessed 28.11.2009] 6, Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation. 61 Bassett, L (2009) ‘The Climate Camp pp. 11 as Radical Potential’, Shift Magazine, 7, 72 Friedman, T, (2008) Hot, Flat, and available on the World Wide Web: And How It Can Renew America, New York: 62 Mueller, T. (2009) ‘Green New Deal: Farrar Straus Giroux. pp.23 Dead end or pathway beyond capitalism?’, 73 Brand, U. et al. (eds.) ‘Contours of Turbulence, 5, pp.12-16 Climate Justice: Ideas for shaping new cli- 63 See Priogine, I. & Stengers, I. (1985) mate and energy politics’, Critical Currents, 46 Perspectives

6, Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation. pp. 27 74 Foti, A. (2009a) ‘The Precariat and Climate Justice in the Great Recession’, available on the World Wide Web: [Accessed 22.11.2009] 75 Mueller, T. & Passadakis, A., “Another Capitalism is Possible?,” in Abramsky, K. (ed.), Sparking a World-wide energy revolu- tion: Social Struggles in the transition to a post-petrol world, Oaklend: AK Press, 2010. 76 Foti, A. (2009a) ‘The Precariat and Climate Justice in the Great Recession’, available on the World Wide Web: [Accessed 22.11.2009] 77 The Bella Centre is the location of the COP15 summit. 78 See http://www.worldwildlife.org/ climate/business.html 79 Mueller, T. & Passadakis, A. (2009) ‘Green capitalism and the climate: It’s economic growth, stupid!’, in Brand, U. et al. (eds.) ‘Contours of Climate Justice: Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics’, Critical Currents 6 (Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation), 58. 80 Mueller, T. & Passadakis, A., ‘Another Capitalism is Possible?’, in Abramsky, K. (ed.) Sparking a World-wide energy revolution: Social Struggles in the transition to a post- petrol world, Oakland: AK Press, 2010. 81 The words of an initiative from the occupation of the Athens University of Economics and Business 82 De Angelis, M. (2009) ‘The tragedy of the capitalist commons’, Turbulence 8, 32. 83 ibid. 84 Böhm, S. (2009) ‘In Times of Crisis: Act!’, Mute Magazine, Available on the World Wide Web:

Coal Will Never Be Clean » Shaun Slifer screenprint, 2010

A review of Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution: Social Struggles in the Transition to a Post-Petrol World, edited by Kolya Abramsky. (Oakland: AK Press, 2010).

ne of the most intimidat- ing aspects of climate change is its scale. When weO imagine it as a thing in itself, it becomes monstrous, far out of propor- tion to our ability to stop or even slow it in its path of influence. We cannot petition or strike against it. We cannot use rocks or molotovs or even guns to all power to slow it down. It is already happening: the earth is warming, little by little, and with that shift we witness a seem- the people: ingly endless chain of results, from energy catastrophic storms and droughts to changes in human and animal migra- production and tion patterns, disappearance of species, and altered ocean chemistry. In the face the climate of these effects, it is easy to feel over- whelmed, and to turn one’s attention crisis to those problems which seem more solvable, and less apocalyptic. Yet it is important to remember that the engine lara messersmith- behind this global dilemma is human glavin, for the activity, and is therefore human in scale. The better we are able to break the issue parasol climate down to its parts, the closer we will be to understanding how we can fix it, and collective thereby confront the enormity of the issue in a manageable, intentional way. In the process of examining the sources of climate change, we find the sources « Marrichiweu of many other human issues, as well. Amor y Resistencia Not only does this effort trace a map of screenprint, 2010 50 Perspectives the way out of ecological disaster, but it Abramsky says that the intention may also lead to a more just and equi- of the book is to “trace some of the table world order. material processes and human relations A great deal of literature exists on on which the energy system is based. many of the pieces of this giant puzzle: Importantly, it seeks to show that a tran- the physical mechanism behind a warm- sition to a new energy system requires a ing planet, the present and future effects material process of building new social of climate change, renewable energy relations and not just a shift of ethical technologies, and the politics of fossil and cultural values.”2 The investigation fuel economies; yet little has been done of the material processes at work is the to explore the concept of energy from greatest strength of this collection. One a radical perspective. A new collection chapter that stands out is Tom Keefer’s from AK Press, Sparking a Worldwide essay, “Machinery and Motive Power: Energy Revolution: Social Struggles in the Energy as a Substitute for and Enhancer Transition to a Post-Petrol World, edited of Human Labor.” Keefer reinvigorates by Kolya Abramsky, seeks to fill this gap some basic Marxist principles in clear by bringing together analyses of energy terms without oversimplifying them, and production and consumption from a describes industrial energy consumption broad spectrum of views around the through a history of automation and ef- world, from the progressive to the anti- ficiency models. capitalist Left. As Abramsky says in his introduc- “What is manifestly absent from tion, “This is not a book about climate most ecological economist thought is a change. It is a book about energy.”1 The critique of capitalism as a historically- central thesis of the collection is that specific economic system that is not energy is the lynchpin of a potential only based on ever-increasing expansion, transition to a new and better world; but is also compelled to substitute ma- recapturing the commons and disasso- chinery (and the energy these machines ciating local and global economies from require) for human labor in its quest to hydrocarbon energy resources are vital achieve higher margins of profit and to undercut tendencies towards working- challenges for a successful revolution- 3 ary project. The book delves into the class self-organization and resistance.” problems confronting the transformation of global and local energy systems, and Keefer reminds us that capitalism unearths the tensions between alterna- is not just a simple product of techno- tive visions for the distribution of both logical innovation so much as the result energy and power. In light of declining of a constellation of social relations that natural reserves of both coal and oil, require increasing levels of exploitation renewable energy production may form to remain in motion. The introduction a new field of contest for control of of machinery and new energy sources resources. While many see the transition replace certain job tasks and devalue to these renewables as an opportunity human labor, thereby weakening the to adopt a decentralized model of social position of workers in production. organization, capital recognizes the need Then, the competitive market continues for industrial scale generation to main- to favor those systems that increase tain its hegemony over the energy sector. energy efficiency and are able to exploit on anarchist theory 51 labor at higher rates. “Every capital- shocks due to credit crises and other ist is in competition with many other destabilizing elements, climate change capitalists, and seeks ever higher profits and peak oil may constitute new threats to reinvest in production...the key to to capitalism’s supply of cheap energy. continued accumulation lies in increas- Of course, while peak oil and global ing the productivity of labor power climate change are new developments, purchased from the worker.”4 This, in history is not without precedents, even turn, translates to ever greater levels of for this. In “Everything Must Change So exploitation, and as capital imposes its That Everything Can Remain the Same,” organizational forms and duplicates its George Caffentzis reminds us that “this is social relations on a global scale, a world not the first time that capitalist crisis co- system of imperialism is the result. incides with energy transition, as a glance This world system requires increas- at the previous transitions [from coal to ing amounts of cheap energy to maintain oil and natural gas, and, unsuccessfully, its hegemony. A key question at this from oil to solar] in the 1930s and 1970s moment in time is: Does capitalism indicate.”6 Caffentzis suggests that capital have the capacity to achieve another and the state recognize this moment of round of “revolutionizing” the means of weakness for what it is, and resist efforts production as it has in the past? That is on the part of revolutionary movements to say, can it shift to a different source of to utilize this period of transition as an energy without disrupting its power? Or opening for a restructuring of social can a new order acquire control of what relations: “The ultimate purpose of the remains of the fossil fuel reserves in time Obama administration is...to preserve the to use that energy for a transition both to capitalist system in very perilous times.”7 renewable resources and a new and more Caffentzis goes on to outline the equitable means of distribution? stages of a transition to renewable ener- “A point of crisis will be gy resources and the considerations that reached with capital will no longer be should be made. “The first element in able to externalize its contradictions. This the transition is to recognize that there will provide a whole new set of oppor- will be inter-class resistance to the tran- tunities for revolutionary forces seeking sition from those who stand to lose.”8 to transcend the capitalist economic The second element, he says, is to recall system...With the depletion of easy to that non-hydrocarbon energy sources, access fossil fuel reserves and the impacts i.e. renewables like wind and solar, of global climate change, humanity will are not necessarily in opposition to a be required to build an alternative to capitalist structure. Indeed, capitalism capitalism under conditions of declining and colonial expansion led to “the geno- labor productivity and under solar energy cide of the indigenous Americans, the constraints momentarily transcended by African slave trade, and the enclosures twentieth century industrial capitalism. of the European peasantry [all of which] Consequently, the implications for our occurred with the use of alternative re- theory and practice are significant, and newable energy!”9 Thirdly, while oil and deserve to be put at the center of any coal are extremely efficient resources for anti-capitalist revolutionary project.”5 generating surplus value, renewables At the same time as the global eco- will not immediately be in a position to nomic system has been suffering internal replicate the same level of production, 52 Perspectives which indicates that a transition is likely Since capitalism is not likely to to lead to a great upheaval in terms of meet this challenge, it is an ideal oppor- the process of production of energy, in tunity for radical social transformation. particular for worker transitions and “The historical record shows very clearly retooling. Lastly, he notes that, in light that deep, enduring changes in energy of the frequency with which capital has industries require the mobilization of been able to recover from prior crises, mass social movements. We cannot sim- the question remains: “Will this transi- ply wait for visionary politicians to forge tion be organized on a capitalist basis or the way.”13 While the book does not will the double crisis, opened up on the give any precise recommendations for levels of energy production and general how these social movements are to come social reproduction, mark the beginning about, it does relate a number of efforts of another mode of production?”10 at transition and resistance to capital’s Are climate change and the threat appropriation of energy resources and of peak oil posing a genuine crisis the commons around the world. for capitalism? On the one hand, the In these pieces we find the tan- trend toward “green capitalism” seems gible evidence of a movement - here to suggest not. As Tadzio Mueller and is the inspiration, and the beginning Alexis Passadakis remind us in “Another experiments and models, both positive Capitalism is Possible?,” “crises are not and negative, for how the future may necessarily bad things from the perspec- look. Particularly inspiring are the ac- tive of capital....While serious crises counts of resistance in South Africa, always entail the massive destruction the efforts of the FARMA collective to of capital, as well as transformation build self-manageable energy systems in the matrix of social power, this de- with Zapatista communities, and the struction of capital is precisely what is details of individually and communally necessary for capital(ism) to maintain owned wind generators in Denmark. its innovative, revolutionary power.”11 The book is at its best in this regard However, for this power to maintain its when it lets people speak for themselves primacy, it must use its own position and their own experiences, as in Patrick of control to begin a more concerted Bond and Trevor Ngwane’s piece, shift to renewables now, in order to “Community Resistance to Energy maintain its stranglehold on the means Privatization in South Africa,” which of production throughout the process includes an interview with a 58 year old of transition. Nonetheless, in light of woman who describes her decision to actions such as the expansion of drilling have her electricity illegally reconnected in the Gulf post-Deepwater Horizon, by a neighborhood team of “bootleg and the pursuit of extraction in Alberta’s technicians” after she was laid off and tar sands, “it is increasingly clear that then unable to keep up with mounting rather than the market rising up to energy bill hikes. Here the human inter- develop solutions for climate change... est shines through, while simultaneously we are witnessing what can only be de- providing a clear and relatable example scribed as the irrational, frantic push of of active resistance within a familiar market-forces in their most naked form, political and economic setting, with precisely at a time where reductions and practices and tactics that can be applied radical transformation is required.”12 in a number of contexts. on anarchist theory 53 Also of interest are the global its author “Various Energy Sector Trade surveys of struggle: Chapter 42, “Some Unions and Other Organizations,” or Brief News Reports from Direct Action- Chapter 41, “Call for an Immediate Based Resistance Around the World,” Moratorium on EU Incentives for and Chapter 46, “Two Mini Case- Agrofuels, EU Imports of Agrofuels Studies: 1) The End of One Windmill and EU Agroenergy Monocultures,” by Cooperative 2) Chinese Peasants Killed “Diverse Organizations.” US labor has in Land Conflict Over Windmills.” no representation in the collection at all, These additions to the collection serve beyond the endorsement by the United to underscore the tension between Steel Workers of the statement issued decentralization or community control in Chapter 10, “For the Democratic, of resources. In this situation—as evi- National Development of North denced by struggles in Mexico, Canada, America’s Energy Resources.”15 The Nigeria, and elsewhere—the general majority of these pieces are formalized outlines of capitalist social relations are statements issued by union leader- easily recognizable: tearing people from ship, and so may or may not reflect the the land and the basis of their material interests or concerns of the workers them- reproduction through the enclosure selves. In these pieces we see statements of of collective resources; the conversion reform and the defense of jobs; we don’t of the survivors of this process to a see examples of a real threat to capitalism, disenfranchised proletariat; the physical or a dedicated concern for environmental destruction of the natural environment; justice within organized labor. and the use of violence to maintain the Another criticism is that, while new arrangements. The more qualitative Abramsky clearly lays out a revolutionary pieces are valuable for their direct- intent in his introduction, the book draws account format and the detail they offer much of its material from groups who are about communities and their struggles. more closely aligned with the tasks of en- There are some good, rich stories here, ergy transition than with radical politics. but they are often merely anecdotal and Unions, liberal academics, and members lack analysis and context. Chapter 40, of parliament figure prominently among for example, “Dynamics of a Songful the contributing authors. Resistance,” loses the impact of its Beyond simple questions of message of forced displacement of com- content, we identified several areas in munities along the coast of Columbia which the book fails to completely meet in the sentimentality of its internal our basic standards of clarity, readabil- metaphor: “Together, we built a frater- ity, logical presentation, fairness, and nal fire and shared a small artisanal boat usefulness. First are the book’s organiza- in which we ate together as equals and tional structure and length. Abramsky gently sung ourselves into dissonance.”14 states in his introduction, “the book One thing that is missing from has been carefully structured to be read this book is the voices of workers. as a whole, from beginning to end.”16 This collection includes a number of However, despite short introductions to position papers written by unions - each section, the thematic components Chapter 10, “For Democratic, National that arise are overshadowed by the expe- Development of North America’s Energy rience of reading the text itself. Sparking Resources,” for example, which lists as a World Energy Revolution is more than 54 Perspectives 650 pages long, and though the individ- narrative, and because the quality and ual chapters are nearly all very short, as tone of the chapters are so varied, the a whole they do not produce the linear book is best used as a reference text; the and progressive narrative that Abramsky addition of an index would therefore be intends. The thesis of the book is lost in valuable for enhancing the accessibility a jumble of details with works that are of a future edition. As Bruce Pobodnik simultaneously too specific and yet not says in Chapter 3, “Building the Clean specific enough, or rather, their relation Energy Movement,” “this inclusivity is to the whole is lost in the minutiae important, because individuals under- of their individual purpose(s). While stand and respond to different kinds of Abramsky clearly has a radical motive in messages about energy-related dangers. mind, this commitment emerges greatly If the clean energy movement can build diluted from the overall span of the per- a diverse coalition of leaders, each of spectives included. whom can speak effectively to constitu- In addition, the collection is encies from all across the political and lopsided in favor of a few prolific con- ideological spectrum, it will more likely tributors. As the book’s editor, Abramsky spread deep roots into societies through- may be excused for contributing a long out the world.”19 introduction and conclusion. But some Ultimately, the book’s strengths other writers contributed surprisingly and utility as an educational overview of large numbers of articles as well—there issues in the energy sector far outweigh are three by George Caffentzis, four by its shortcomings of focus and readability. Sergio Oceransky, and six by Preben Much of its value lies in what it does not Maegaard (arguably the most problematic include; what is missing from this text contributor in the book, politically and indicates areas we need to investigate as stylistically). If a diverse spectrum of opin- a movement. For this reason, Sparking ions and viewpoints was the goal, perhaps a Worldwide Energy Revolution serves a it could have best been presented by an dual purpose. On the one hand, it as- actually diverse representation of interests, sembles - possibly for the first time - the rather than simply an array of topics cov- most comprehensive and wide-reaching ered by a small collection of men. array of thought and action taking place Another criticism is that many on the Left regarding energy and energy of the authors frequently rely upon production. For this reason alone, the highly specialized jargon without offer- book is an essential addition to any ing explanations or glosses. It is unfair serious reading list aimed at forming to expect that every reader will know a more complete picture of the world what the Gini coefficient17 indicates, for today and the project before us. On the example, or what it means to measure other hand, its deficiencies delineate the an oil “reserves-to-production ratio” in questions we have yet to ask and answer “years.”18 In the interest of making the as a movement. Exactly how can an material and concepts more available to anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist social a larger audience, the inclusion of either organization make the energy transitions a glossary or expanded footnotes would necessary without creating devastating greatly improve the usefulness of this gaps in food production? What role edition. Because Sparking a New Energy will nation-states (or centralized au- Movement fails as a linear, progressive thority structures) play, if any, in those on anarchist theory 55 transitions? On what economic models Endnotes can we reliably build a free society? How 1 Abramsky, Kolya, (Ed.) “Racing do we make it happen? to ‘Save’ the Economy and the Planet: Capitalist or Post-capitalist Transition to a Lara Messersmith-Glavin is a board Post-petrol World?” p. 29. member of the Institute for Anarchist 2 ibid. Studies. She publishes a nonfiction ‘zine, 3 Keefer, Tom. “Machinery and Motive Alltopia (http://www.alltopia.org). Power: Energy as a Substitute for and Enhancer of Human Labor.” p. 82. Parasol Climate Collective is a study 4 ibid., p. 85. and outreach group based in Portland, 5 ibid., p. 89. Oregon. We have developed a 5-part 6 Caffentzis, George. “Everything Must curriculum composed of approximately Change So That Everything Can Remain the 500 pages of text and 35 minutes of Same: Reflections on Obama’s Energy Plan.” video that explores anthropogenic climate p. 566. change from a radical perspective. The 7 ibid., p. 567. materials we have collected and outlined, 8 ibid. through learning objectives and suggested 9 ibid. discussion questions, encourage study 10 ibid., p. 568. participants to consider the origins of the 11 Mueller, Tadzio and Passadakis, Alexis. “Another Capitalism is Possible? ecological crisis as it is rooted in the capi- From World Economic Crisis to Green talist system, and the ways in which it is Capitalism.” p. 557. linked to other social and economic strug- 12 Walsh, Shannon, and Stainsby, gles around the world. The materials are Macdonald. “The Smell of Money: Alberta’s intended to direct participants to envision Tar Sands.” p. 333. workable, equitable alternatives to the 13 Pobodnik, Bruce. “Building the Clean current social structures and build a move- Energy Movement: Future Possibilities in ment capable of putting those structures Historical Perspective.” p. 76-77. in place. Parasol also performs community 14 Avendaño, Tatiana Roa, and Toloza, outreach and education by meeting with Jessica. “Dynamics of a Songful Resistance.” p. 465. other groups engaged in a wide spectrum 15 ibid., p. 155. of social justice work and by facilitating 16 Abramsky, Kolya. “Racing to ‘Save’ discussions on the ways in which a warmer the Economy and the Planet: Capitalist or world may affect their issue(s) of focus. As Post-capitalist Transition to a Post-petrol our own goals are educational, we have World?” p. 24. read this book as a group and evaluated its 17 Oceransky, Sergio. “European Energy successes and weaknesses through the lens Policy on the Brink of Disaster.” p. 173. of the text as a learning tool. Note: The Gini coefficient is used to mea- Parasol Climate Collective is Paul sure the concentration of a variable - that Messersmith-Glavin, Lara Messersmith- is, economic inequality. A Gini coefficient Glavin, Ian McBee, and Emily-Jane rating of 0 indicates perfect equality within in a society. A rating of 1 indicates perfect Dawson. To obtain a free copy of the cur- inequality. riculum, or to schedule a workshop, please 18 Jasiewicz, Ewa. “Iraqi Oil Workers’ contact: [email protected], or visit Movements.” p. 219. parasolpdx.wordpress.com. 19 Pobodnik, Bruce. “Building the Clean Energy Movement: Future Possibilities in Historical Perspective.” p. 77.

here is little doubt that we are living in apocalyptic times. From mega-selling ChristianT “end times” novels on the right, to the neo-primitivist nihil- ism that has captivated so much of the anti-authoritarian Left, people across the political spectrum seem to be anticipating the end of the world. Predictions of “peak oil” have inspired important efforts at community- centered renewal, but also encouraged the revival of gun-hoarding survival- ism. A 2009 Hollywood disaster epic movements elaborated the myth, falsely attributed to Mayan peoples, that the world will for climate end in 2012. A cable TV series featured detailed computer animations purport- action: ing to show exactly how the world’s most iconic structures would eventually toward utopia crumble and collapse if people ceased to maintain essential infrastructure. or apocalypse? Numerous literary genres have em- braced the apocalyptic mood, from Jared Diamond’s detailed histories in brian tokar Collapse, to Margaret Atwood’s current dystopian trilogy, which began with the darkly satiric biotech nightmare, Oryx and Crake. The prevalence of apocalyptic images is not at all limited to literature and popular culture. Disaster scenarios stemming from the accelerating global climate crisis look more severe with ev- ery new study of the effects of the rising levels of greenhouse gases in the earth’s « Resourced Josh MacPhee atmosphere. Steadily rising levels of screenprint, 2010 58 Perspectives drought, wildfires and floods have been proposed that the critical, holistic out- recorded on all the earth’s continents, look of ecological science was logically and people in the tropics and subtropics and historically linked to a radically already face difficulty growing enough transformative vision for society. A food due to increasingly unstable weath- fundamental rethinking of human er patterns. Studies predict mass-scale societies’ relationship to the natural migrations of people desperate to escape world, he proposed, is made imperative the worst consequences of widespread by the understandings that emerge from climate disruptions. And the diplomatic ecological science, and these under- failure of the 2009 UN climate talks standings also embody the potential in Copenhagen raised the profile of for a revolutionary transformation of several new studies forecasting the dire our philosophical assumptions and our consequences of temperature increases political and social institutions. Can this that may exceed 15 degrees in the Arctic approach to ecology, politics and history and in parts of Africa.1 Bill McKibben’s be renewed for our time? What kinds of latest book, Eaarth, elaborates the view movements have the potential to express that we are now living on a far more these possibilities? Can we meaning- turbulent planet, one that is already fully address the simultaneous threats strikingly different from the one most of of climate chaos and potential social us grew up on. breakdown while renewing and further In this context, the utopian developing a revolutionary outlook? ecological visions that inspired earlier generations of social ecologists—and Ecology and Capitalism environmental activists more broadly— From the 1960s until his passing may seem quaint and out-of-date. The in 2006, Bookchin insisted that the eco- images of autonomous, self-reliant, logical crisis was a fundamental threat solar-powered cities and towns that to capitalism, due to the system’s built illuminated the first large wave of in necessity to continuously expand anti-nuclear activism in the 1970s and its scope and its spheres of control. In eighties sometimes appear more distant a 2001 reflection on the origins of his than ever. Despite an unprecedented thinking, Bookchin wrote: flowering of local food systems, natural building, permaculture design, and I was trying to provide a viable other important innovations that first substitute for Marx’s defunct economic emerged from that earlier wave of imperative, namely an ecological impera- activism, today’s advocates of local self tive that, if thought out … would show reliance and ecological lifestyles only that capitalism stood in an irreconcilable rarely seem engaged in the political contradiction with the natural world… In struggles necessary to sustain their vi- short, precisely because capitalism was, by sions for the longer-term. definition, a competitive and commodity- For social ecologists seeking to fur- based economy, it would be compelled ther the forward-looking, reconstructive to turn the complex into the simple and dimensions of an ecological world view, give rise to a planet that was incompat- this presents a serious dilemma. From ible environmentally with advanced life the 1960s onward, Murray Bookchin, forms. The growth of capitalism was the founding theorist of social ecology, incompatible with the evolution of biotic on anarchist theory 59 complexity as such—and certainly, with Paul Hawken as saying, “Green con- the development of human life and the sumerism is an oxymoronic phrase,” and evolution of human society.2 acknowledging that green living may indeed require buying less. With rising For a couple of decades, however, awareness of the cost of manufacturing it appeared to many that capitalism new “green” products, even the iconic had found a way to accommodate non- Prius has come under criticism for human nature and perhaps to “green” the high energy costs embedded in its itself. This notion can be traced to the manufacture. period leading up to the 20th anniver- The more forward-looking capital- sary of the first Earth Day. By the spring ists have had to admit in recent years of 1990, many of the largest, most that an increasingly chaotic natural and notoriously polluting corporations had social environment will necessarily limit begun to incorporate environmental business opportunities. Some critics messages into their advertising. By have suggested that this is one reason reducing waste, partially restoring dam- for the increasing hegemony of the aged ecosystems, investing in renewable financial sector. The Midnight Notes energy, and generally promoting an Collective writes: environmental ethic, the oil, chemical, and other highly polluting industries . . . in its disciplinary zeal, capital- would become “stewards” of the en- ism has so undermined the ecological vironment. The 1990s, we were told, conditions of so many people that a state would usher in a “sustainable,” even a of global ungovernability has developed, “natural” capitalism, whereby produc- further forcing investors to escape into tion and consumption would continue the mediated world of finance where they hope to make hefty returns without to grow, and companies like Exxon and bodily confronting the people they need Monsanto would join with a new gen- to exploit. But this exodus has merely eration of “green” entrepreneurs to solve deferred the crisis, since “ecological” strug- our environmental problems. gles are being fought all over the planet As awareness of the climate crisis and are forcing an inevitable increase in rose rapidly with the cost of energy dur- the cost of future constant capital.4 ing 2006-7, the “green consumerism” that was promoted as a conscientious The result is an increasingly lifestyle choice in the 1990s became parasitic form of capitalism, featur- an all-encompassing mass culture ing widening discrepancies in wealth, phenomenon. Mainstream lifestyle and both worldwide and within most even fashion magazines featured special countries, and the outsourcing of most “green” issues, and the New York Times production to the countries and regions reported that 35 million Americans where labor costs and environmental were regularly seeking out (often high- enforcement are at the lowest possible priced) “earth-friendly” products, “from levels. As the profitability of socially organic beeswax lipstick from the west useful production has fallen precipi- Zambian rain forest to Toyota Priuses.”3 tously, we have seen the emergence of But the Times acknowledged rising a casino-like “shadow” economy, in criticism of the trend as well, quoting which a rising share of society’s material the one-time “green business” pioneer resources are squandered by elites in 60 Perspectives the pursuit of meaningless but lucrative changing the way economic decisions are profits from ever-more exotic financial made may prove to be a futile pursuit. manipulations.5 The latter approach, broadly described Simultaneously, capital is advanc- by the term “geoengineering,” threatens ing a number of highly promoted, but to create a host of new environmental thoroughly false solutions to the climate problems in the pursuit of a world-scale crisis. These vary from relatively trivial techno-fix to the climate crisis.6 lifestyle suggestions, like changing light The other broad category of capi- bulbs, to disastrous technical fixes such talist false solutions relies on the tools as reviving nuclear power, pumping of the so-called “free market” as a sub- sun-blocking particulates into the atmo- stitute for direct interventions against sphere, and processing the world’s grain pollution. These include the creation of supplies into automotive fuels. Different new markets in tradable carbon dioxide sectors of industrial and finance capital emissions allowances (now termed favor different variations on the general “cap-and-trade”), and the use of carbon theme, but the overarching message is offsets, i.e. investments in nominally that solutions to global warming are at low-carbon technologies elsewhere, as a hand, and everyone should simply go substitute for reducing an individual or on consuming. More hopeful innova- a corporation’s own emissions profile. tions in solar and wind technology, Among the technological false “smart” power grids, and even energy solutions, efforts to expand the use of saving technologies are promoted by nuclear power are by far the most insidi- some “green” capitalists as well, but ous. Nuclear power has been subsidized these technologies continue to be mar- for over fifty years by various govern- ginalized by the prevailing financial and ments—amounting to over a hundred political system, raising serious ques- billion dollars in the US alone—yet it tions about how such alternatives could still presents intractable technical and be implemented. A comprehensive environmental problems. Any expansion understanding of capitalism’s false solu- of nuclear power would expose count- tions to the climate crisis is an essential less more communities to the legacy prerequisite for moving forward in a of cancer that critical scientists such as thoughtful and proactive way. Ernest Sternglass have documented, and many indigenous communities to Exposing False Solutions the even more severe consequences of Capitalist false solutions to the uranium mining and milling. Scientists climate crisis fall into two broad catego- still have few clues what to do with the ries. First are a series of technological ever-increasing quantities of nuclear interventions. They aim to either in- waste that will remain highly radioac- crease energy supplies while reducing tive for millennia. Efforts to export the reliance on fossil fuels, or to intervene nominally most successful example of on a massive physical scale to counter nuclear development, i.e., the French the warming effects of increasing car- model, have utterly failed, as demon- bon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere. strated by France’s own legacy of nuclear Reducing fossil fuel use is certainly a contamination, as well as years of de- necessary step, though attempting to lays, quality-assurance problems, and transform our energy systems without massive cost overruns at the 5 billion on anarchist theory 61 euro French nuclear construction proj- has offered generous new subsidies ect in Finland.7 to the nuclear industry in an effort Recent studies of the implications to win Republican Senators’ support of an expanded nuclear industry have for his proposed climate and energy also revealed some new problems. First legislation.10 it appears that supplies of the relatively Claims that the coal industry will accessible, high-grade uranium ore that soon clean up its act and cease contrib- has thus far helped reduce the nuclear uting to the climate crisis are equally fuel cycle’s greenhouse gas emissions are fanciful. While politicians incessantly quite limited. If the nuclear industry repeat the promise of “clean coal,” and ever begins to approach its goal of the World Bank has established a new doubling or tripling world nuclear gen- carbon capture trust fund for developing erating capacity—sufficient to displace countries, scientists actually engaged a significant portion of the predicted in efforts to capture and sequester CO2 growth in carbon dioxide emissions— emissions from coal plants admit that they will quickly deplete known reserves the technology is decades away, at best. of high-grade uranium, and soon have Many are doubtful that huge quantities to rely upon fuel sources that require far of CO2 can be permanently stored un- more energy to mine and purify.8 derground, and project that attempting Additionally, the economics of to do so will increase the energy con- nuclear power rule it out as a significant sumed by coal-burning plants as much as aid in alleviating the climate crisis. In 40 percent.11 Still, the myth of “cleaner” one recent study, energy economist coal is aggressively promoted in the US (and Natural Capitalism co-author) and around the world, partly to justify Amory Lovins compared the current the continued construction of a new cost of nuclear power to a variety of generation of coal-burning plants, which other sources, both in terms of their are misleadingly sold as “capture-ready.” power output and their CO2 emissions The difficulty of minimizing even savings. He concluded that from 2 to conventional pollution from coal plants 10 times as much carbon dioxide can were dramatized by a massive spill of be withheld from the atmosphere with hundreds of millions of gallons of toxic comparable investments in wind power, coal ash in 2008, following the breach of cogeneration (simultaneously extracting a large dam in the US state of Tennessee. electricity and heat from the burning That incident literally buried the valleys of natural gas), and energy efficiency.9 below in up to six feet of ashen sludge, Such findings, however, are far from which is essentially the byproduct of adequate to sway either industrialists or scrubbers installed to make coal burn- politicians who are ideologically com- ing somewhat cleaner; contaminants mitted to the nuclear path. Well known that were once spewed into the air are environmental advocates, including the now contaminating waterways instead. British scientist James Lovelock and An investigation by the New York Times Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart revealed that more than 300 coal plants Brand, reap the apparently unending have violated US water pollution rules adoration of the mainstream press for in the past five years, only 10 percent their born-again advocacy for nuclear of which were fined or sanctioned in power, while US Senator John Kerry any way.12 Activists in regions of the 62 Perspectives Appalachian Mountains that have relied deforestation and other changes in land on coal mining for over a century are use that go along with agrofuel devel- now rising up against the practice of opment clearly make these fuels net “mountaintop removal” mining, in contributors to global warming.16 which mountaintops are literally blasted Commercial supplies of biodiesel off to reveal the coal seams below. often come from soybean or canola So-called “biofuels” present a fields in the US Midwest, Canada, or more ambiguous story. On a hobbyist the Amazon, where these crops are or farm scale, people are running cars genetically engineered to withstand and tractors on everything from waste large doses of chemical herbicides. oil from restaurants to homegrown oil Increasingly, biodiesel originates from from sunflowers. But industrial-scale the vast monoculture oil palm planta- biofuels present a very different picture; tions that have in recent years displaced activists in the global South use the more than 80 percent of the native rain- more appropriate term, “agrofuels,” as forests of Indonesia and Malaysia. As these are first and foremost products of the global food crisis has escalated, agro- global agribusiness. Running American fuel proponents have asserted that using cars on ethanol fermented from corn, food crops for fuel is only a temporary and European vehicles on diesel fuel solution, and that soon we will run pressed from soybeans and other food all of our cars on fuel extracted from crops, has contributed to the worldwide grasses and trees; this dangerous myth is food shortages that brought starvation exacerbating global conversion of forests and food riots to at least 35 countries in to timber plantations, and helping to 2007-8.13 The amount of corn needed drive a new wave of subsidies to the US to produce the ethanol for one large biotechnology industry to develop fast- SUV tank contains enough calories to growing genetically engineered trees.17 feed a hungry person for a year.14 Even if the entire US corn crop Trading Pollution were to be used for fuel, it would only Perhaps the most brazen expres- displace about 12 percent of domestic sion of capitalist ideology in the climate gasoline use, according to University debate is the notion that the capitalist of Minnesota researchers.15 The cur- market itself can be a tool for reduc- rent push for agrofuels has consumed ing global emissions of greenhouse a growing share of US corn—more gases. When Al Gore—then US Vice than 30 percent in 2009—and en- President—addressed the UN climate couraged growers of less energy and conference in Kyoto in 1997, he offered chemical-intensive crops such as wheat that the US would sign on to what and soybeans to transfer more of their soon became the Kyoto Protocol under acreage to growing corn. Land in the two conditions: that mandated reduc- Brazilian Amazon and other fragile tions in emissions be far less ambitious regions is being plowed under to grow than originally proposed, and that any soybeans for export, while Brazil’s reductions be implemented through uniquely biodiverse coastal grasslands the market-based trading of “rights to are appropriated to grow sugarcane, pollute” among various companies and today’s most efficient source of ethanol. between countries. Under this “cap- Two studies released in 2008 show that and-trade” model, companies that fail on anarchist theory 63 to meet their quota for emission reduc- technologies. Then, as an extension tions can readily purchase the difference of this argument, Dales proposed a from another permit holder that was “market in pollution rights” as an able to reduce its emissions faster. While administratively simpler and less economists claim that this scheme costly means of implementing pollution induces companies to implement the charges. “[T]he pollution rights scheme, most cost-effective changes as soon as it seems clear, would require far less possible, experience shows that carbon policing than any of the others we have markets are at least as prone to fraud discussed,” Dales suggested—a proposi- and manipulation as any other financial tion thoroughly at odds with the world’s markets. Over a dozen years after the experience since Kyoto.20 In 1972, Kyoto Protocol was signed, most indus- California Institute of Technology econ- trialized countries are still struggling to omist David Montgomery presented a bring down their annual rate of increase detailed mathematical model, purport- in global warming pollution.18 ing to show that a market in licenses The intellectual roots of carbon to pollute indeed reaches a point of trading go back to the early 1960s, equilibrium at which desired levels of when corporate managers were just environmental quality are achieved at beginning to consider the consequences the lowest possible cost.21 of pollution and resource depletion. By the mid-1970s, the still-new Chicago School economist R. H. Coase US Environmental Protection Agency published a key paper in 1960, where (EPA) was actively experimenting with he challenged the traditional view of pollution trading, initially through pollution as an economic “externality,” brokered deals, in which Agency and proposed a direct equivalence be- would allow companies to offset pol- tween the harm caused by pollution and lution from new industrial facilities by the economic loss to polluting entities reducing existing emissions elsewhere if they are compelled to curtail produc- or negotiating with another company tion. “[T]he right to do something to do so. But it appears that the real which has a harmful effect,” argued breakthrough was a 1979 Harvard Law Coase, “is also a factor of production.”19 Review article by US Supreme Court He proposed that steps to regulate Justice (then a law professor) Stephen production be evaluated on par with the Breyer. Breyer proposed that regula- value of the market transactions that tion is only appropriate to replicate the those regulations aim to alter, arguing market conditions of a “hypothetically that economics should determine the competitive world” and introduced a optimal allocation of resources needed broader array of policymakers to the to best satisfy all parties to any dispute. concept of “marketable rights to pol- The Canadian economist J.H. lute,” as a substitute for regulation.22 Dales, widely acknowledged as the By the late 1980s, Harvard founder of pollution trading, carried economist Robert Stavins, associated the discussion two steps further. First, with the uniquely corporate-friendly he echoed the neoclassical view that Environmental Defense Fund, was charging for pollution, via a disposal collaborating with environmentalists, fee or tax, is more efficient than either academics, government officials, and regulation or subsidizing alternative representatives of corporations such as Chevron and Monsanto to propose new of Gore’s intervention in Kyoto, which environmental initiatives to the incom- created what the British columnist ing administration of the elder George George Monbiot has aptly termed H.W. Bush. These initiatives featured “an exuberant market in fake emis- market incentives as a supplement sions cuts.”25 The European Union’s to regulation. Seeking to distinguish Emissions Trading System, for example, himself from Ronald Reagan, his ra- has produced huge new subsidies for bidly anti-environmental White House highly polluting corporations, without predecessor, Bush soon announced a demonstrable reductions in pollution. plan based on tradable permits to re- While European countries are also duce the sulfur dioxide emissions from supporting energy conservation and power plants that were causing acid renewable energy technologies with rain throughout the eastern US.23 The public funds, in the US we are told that US has indeed reduced acid rain since solar and wind technologies first need 1990, but more slowly than other coun- to prove their viability in the so-called tries, and mainly as a result of pollution “free market”—in marked contrast to controls mandated by state-level regula- ever-increasing subsidies for nuclear tors. Trading may have helped reduce power and agrofuels. the cost of some companies’ compliance Carbon offsets are the other key with the rules, but also likely contrib- aspect of the “market” approach to uted to limiting the spread of important global warming. These investments in new technologies.24 nominally emissions-reducing projects That didn’t stop the Environmental in other parts of the world are now a Defense Fund’s senior economist, Daniel central feature of carbon markets, and Dudek, from proposing that the limited an even greater obstacle to real solu- trading of acid rain emissions in the US tions. They are aptly compared to the was an appropriate “scale model” for “indulgences” that sinners would buy a much more ambitious plan to trade from the Catholic church during the global emissions of carbon dioxide and Middle Ages. Larry Lohmann of the other greenhouse gases. Al Gore first en- UK’s CornerHouse research group has dorsed the idea in his best-selling 1992 demonstrated in detail how carbon book, Earth in the Balance, and Richard offsets are encouraging the conversion Sandor, then the director of the Chicago of native forests into monoculture tree Board of Trade, North America’s larg- plantations, lengthening the lifespan est commodities market, co-authored a of polluting industrial facilities and study for UNCTAD (UN Conference toxic landfills in Asia and Africa—in on Trade and Development) that en- exchange for only incremental changes dorsed international emissions trading. in their operations—and ultimately Sandor went on to found the Chicago perpetuating the very inequalities that Climate Exchange, which today engages we need to eliminate in order to create a nearly 400 international companies and more just and sustainable world.26 Even public agencies in a wholly voluntary if they can occasionally help support carbon market. beneficial projects, offsets postpone While the US never adopted the investments in necessary emissions Kyoto Protocol, the rest of the world reductions at home, and represent a has had to live with the consequences gaping hole in any mandated “cap” in on anarchist theory 65 carbon dioxide emissions. They are a site in the coastal town of Seabrook, means for polluting industries to con- New Hampshire. That event helped tinue business as usual at home while inspire the emergence of decentralized, contributing, marginally at best, to grassroots antinuclear alliances all across emission reductions elsewhere. the country, committed to nonviolent Capitalist techno-fixes, trading direct action, bottom-up forms of in- and offsets will simply not bring us ternal organization, and a sophisticated any closer to the zero-emissions future understanding of the relationship be- that we know is both necessary and tween technological and social changes. achievable. Nevertheless, markets in Not only did these groups adopt an greenhouse gas emissions allowances uncompromising call for “No Nukes,” continue to be a central feature of pro- but many promoted a vision of an posed climate legislation in the US and entirely new social order, rooted in de- worldwide. This clash of worldviews centralized, solar-powered communities compels us to revisit an earlier time in empowered to decide both their energy the evolution of popular movements future and their political future. If the around energy and climate issues, and nuclear state almost inevitably leads to a re-evaluate the lessons that past move- police state—due to the massive security ments may have to teach us today. apparatus necessary to protect hundreds of nuclear plants and radioactive waste A Utopian Movement? dumps all over the country—activists The last time that a forward- proposed that a solar-based energy looking popular movement compelled system could be the underpinning for significant changes in environmental a radically decentralized and directly and energy policies was during the late democratic model for society. 1970s. In the aftermath of the OPEC This movement was so successful oil embargo, imposed during the 1973 in raising the hazards of nuclear power Arab-Israeli war, the nuclear and utility as a matter of urgent public concern industries adopted a plan to construct that nuclear projects all across the US more than 300 nuclear power plants began to be cancelled. When the nu- in the United States by the year 2000. clear reactor at Three Mile Island near Utility and state officials identified rural Harrisburg, Pennsylvania partially melt- communities across the US as potential ed down in March of 1979, it spelled sites for new nuclear facilities, and the the end of the nuclear expansion. While popular response was swift and unan- politicians in Washington today are do- ticipated. A new grassroots antinuclear ing everything possible to underwrite movement united traditional rural a revival of nuclear power, it is still the dwellers and those who had recently case, as of this writing, that no new moved “back-to-the-land” with sea- nuclear plants have been licensed or soned urban activists, as well as a new built in the United States since Three generation of environmentalists who Mile Island. The antinuclear movement only partially experienced the ferment of the late 1970s helped spawn the first of the 1960s. wave of significant development of solar In April of 1977, over 1400 and wind technologies, aided by sub- people were arrested trying to nonvio- stantial but temporary tax benefits for lently occupy a nuclear construction solar installations, and helped launch a 66 Perspectives visionary “green cities” movement that a new opening, reaching far beyond the captured the imaginations of architects, confines of what is now deemed politi- planners and ordinary citizens. cally “acceptable.” The 1970s and early ‘80s were Activists hesitant to question the relatively hopeful times, and utopian underlying assumptions of capitalism thinking was far more widespread than tend to focus on various techno-fixes. it is today. This was prior to the “Reagan While these are generally far more be- revolution” in US politics and the rise of nign than the false solutions proposed neoliberalism worldwide. The political by the coal, nuclear and agrofuel in- right had not yet begun its crusade to dustries, they won’t likely proceed very depict the former Soviet Union as the far in the absence of broader, systemic apotheosis of utopian social engineering changes. Not that such proposals aren’t gone awry. Many antinuclear activists often compelling in their own terms. looked to the emerging outlook of social For example, the acclaimed advocate ecology and the writings of Murray Van Jones, who advised Barack Obama Bookchin as a source of theoretical on green jobs policies before he fell vic- grounding for a revolutionary ecologi- tim to a vicious right wing witch-hunt, cal politics. Social ecology challenged writes: activists by overturning prevailing views about the evolution of social and cultural Hundreds of thousands of relationships to non-human nature and green-collar jobs will be weatherizing examining the roots of domination in and energy-retrofitting every building in the United States. Buildings with leaky the earliest emergence of human social windows, ill-fitting doors, poor insula- hierarchies.27 For the activists of that tion and old appliances can gobble up period, Bookchin’s insistence that envi- 30 percent more energy… Drafty build- ronmental problems are fundamentally ings create broke, chilly people—and an social and political in origin encouraged overheated planet.28 forward-looking responses to ecological concerns and reconstructive visions of a Clearly, measures to address these fundamentally transformed society. Social problems will offer an important benefit ecology’s emphasis on popular power and for those most in need, and are a neces- direct democracy continued to inspire sary step toward a greener future. But activists during the emergence of the are such near-term measures sufficient? global justice movement in the 1990s. Since the 1970s, Amory Lovins has While radically reconstructive so- been a tireless advocate for dramatically cial visions are relatively scarce in today’s increased energy efficiency throughout political climate, dissatisfaction with the US and global economies. He has the status quo has a wide reach among demonstrated in exhaustive detail how many sectors of the population. The we can feasibly reduce energy con- more people consume, and the deeper sumption by 60 - 80 percent, and how they fall into debt, the less satisfied they many of the necessary measures would seem to be with the world of business- result in an unambiguous economic as-usual. Though elite discourse and gain. Lovins’ pitch is unapologetically the corporate media continue to be aimed at believers in the “free market,” confined by a narrowly circumscribed and at those whose primary concern is status-quo, there is also the potential for market profitability, yet adoption of his on anarchist theory 67 proposals has been spotty at best. now required to project themselves The problem, as we have seen, is into a future of growing instability and that capitalism aims to maximize prof- deterioration,” writes Israeli activist and its, not efficiency. Indeed, economists scholar Uri Gordon. He acknowledges since the 19th century have suggested the current flowering of permaculture that improvements in the efficiency and other sustainable technologies as of resource consumption will most a central aspect of today’s experiments often increase demand and further toward “community self-sufficiency,” economic expansion under capital- but views these as “rear guard” ac- ism.29 Nonetheless, while efficiency tions, best aimed to “encourage and improvements often reduce the costs protect the autonomy and grassroots of production, corporations will gener- orientation of emergent resistances” in a ally accept the perhaps higher expense fundamentally deteriorating social and of sustaining existing methods that political climate.31 have proven to keep profits growing. Derrick Jensen, one of the most Corporations almost invariably prefer prolific and popular anti-authoritarian to lay off workers, outsource produc- writers today, insists that a rational tion, or move factories overseas than to transition to an ecologically sustain- invest in environmentally meaningful able society is impossible, and that improvements. Lovins’ focus on ef- the only sensible role for ecologically ficiency runs counter to the inclinations aware activists is to help bring on the of a business world aggressively oriented collapse of Western civilization. Hope toward growth, capital mobility and itself, for Jensen, is “a curse and a bane,” accumulation. While important innova- an acceptance of powerlessness, and tions in solar technology, for example, ultimately “what keeps us chained to are announced almost daily, its accep- the system.” Well before Barack Obama tance in the capitalist marketplace is still adopted a vaguely defined “Hope” as decades behind other, far more specula- a theme of his presidential campaign, tive and hazardous alternatives.30 Jensen argued that hope “serves the needs of those in power as surely as Hope and Despair belief in a distant heaven; that hope is If technological fixes are insuf- really nothing more than a secular way ficient to usher in an age of renewable of keeping us in line.”32 technologies, is the situation hopeless? This view is considerably at odds Is a nihilistic response, anticipating a with decades of historical scholarship cataclysmic “end-of-civilization,” the and activist praxis. Radical hopeless- only viable alternative? Are we limited ness may be sufficient to help motivate to a future of defensive battles against young people to confront authorities an increasingly authoritarian world of when necessary, but it seems unlikely to scarcity and climate chaos? Or can the be able to sustain the lifetimes of radical prefigurative dimensions of earlier, more thought and action that are necessary hopeful radical ecological movements be if we are to create a different world. renewed in our time? As social movement historian Richard Dystopian outlooks are clearly Flacks has shown, most people are only on the rise in today’s anti-authoritarian willing to disrupt the patterns of their left. “Anarchists and their allies are daily lives to engage in the project he 68 Perspectives terms “making history” when social not serve to rationalize the emergence of grievances become personal, and when new forms of hierarchy. they have a tangible sense that a bet- Rather than prescribing blueprints ter way is possible. This, for Flacks, is for a future society, Bookchin sought among the historic roles of democratic to educe principles from the broad popular movements, to further the idea scope of human history that he saw “that people are capable of and ought as expressing potentialities for further to be making their own history, that the human development. His outlook on making of history ought to be integrat- social change is resonant with the best ed with everyday life, that [prevailing] of the utopian tradition, as described in social arrangements … can and must a recent essay by Randall Amster, who be replaced by frameworks that permit describes utopia as routine access and participation by all in the decisions that affect their lives.”33 “a dynamic process and not a Flacks’ expansive view of democ- static place . . . attaining a harmonious racy resonates well with social ecology’s exchange with nature and an open, long-range, community-centered vision. participatory process among community members are central features of these Bookchin’s reconstructive outlook is [utopian] endeavors; that resistance to rooted in direct democracy, in confed- dominant cultures of repression and au- erations of empowered communities thoritarianism is a common impetus for challenging the hegemony of the state anarcho-utopian undertakings; and that and capital, and in restoring a sense of communities embodying these principles reciprocity to economic relationships, are properly viewed as ongoing experi- which are ultimately subordinated to ments and not finished products.”34 the needs of the community. He viewed these as essential steps toward restoring While people of different material harmony to human relations, and to the circumstances and cultural backgrounds reharmonization of our communities would surely emphasize differing needs with non-human nature. and inclinations in their search for a Further, in his 1970s and eight- better society, such a long-range utopian ies’ anthropological studies, Bookchin perspective can help us comprehend the sought to draw out a number of ethical fullest scope of human possibilities. principles common to preliterate, or This view clearly has far more to “organic” societies, that could further offer than a bleak “end of civilization” illuminate the path toward such a outlook, both for people in Northern reharmonization. These include an- countries facing increasingly chaotic thropologist Paul Radin’s concept of weather, as well as to the majority of the irreducible minimum—the idea people around the world who are expe- that communities are responsible for riencing more direct consequences of satisfying their members’ most basic hu- climate disruptions. It is the hope for a man needs—and an expanded view of better society, along with the determina- social complementarity, through which tion and support necessary to intervene to communities accept responsibility to challenge current inequities, that has in- compensate for differences among indi- spired people around the world to refuse viduals, helping assure that differences to accept an oppressive status quo and act in skill or ability in particular areas will to take the future into their hands. on anarchist theory 69 Still, since the collapse of the of a secular social order, marking the authoritarian, nominally socialist bloc decline of religion as the sole means for of countries that was dominated by the expressing people’s hopes for the future. Soviet Union and spanned nearly all of French social critic Alain Touraine eastern Europe, many thinkers have cast writes, “Utopia was born only when the doubt on all forms of radical specula- political order separated from the cos- tion about the future. Utopian political mological or religious order ... Utopia is thought—with its legacy reaching back one of the products of secularization.”38 to Plato and to the writings of Thomas Utopian scholar Lyman Sargent quotes More in the early 16th century—is now the Dutch future studies pioneer seen by many as utterly discredited. Frederick Polak, who wrote in 1961: Liberal centrists, as well as ideologues of the political right tend to dismiss . . . if Western man now stops the pursuit of any comprehensive al- thinking and dreaming the materials of ternative political outlook as if it were new images of the future and attempts a potential stepping stone to tyranny. to shut himself up in the present, out Even such forward-looking thinkers as of longing for security and for fear of the literary critic Frederic Jameson sug- the future, his civilization will come to gest that utopia “had come to designate an end. He has no choice but to dream a program which neglected human or to die, condemning the whole of frailty” implying “the ideal purity of Western society to die with him.39 a perfect system that always had to be imposed by force on its imperfect and The pioneering German sociolo- reluctant subjects.”35 gist Kark Mannheim wrote that “The This is in stark contrast to the view utopian mentality is at the base of all of Ernst Bloch, the mid-20th century serious social change” and saw the integ- chronicler of the utopian tradition who, rity of human will as resting to a large instead, in Jameson’s words, “posits a part on “the reality-transcending power Utopian impulse governing everything of utopia.”40 While the popular litera- future-oriented in life and culture.”36 ture of the past two centuries wavers Bloch’s exhaustive and free-ranging continuallly between the poles of utopia 3-volume work, The Principle of Hope and dystopia, even many intellectuals begins with the simple act of daydream- who lived through the nightmare of ing and embarks on an epic journey Stalinism and its decline warn against through the myriad expressions of the discarding utopia along with the bag- utopian impulse throughout Western gage of authoritarian Marxism. For history, spanning folktales, the arts example the Czech dissident Milan and literature, along with the perennial Simecka, who personally experienced search for a better world. “Fradulent the repression of the Prague Spring of hope is one of the greatest malefactors, 1968, writes that “A world without even enervators of the human race,” utopias would be a world without social states Bloch, while “concretely genuine hope, a world of resignation to the hope its most dedicated benefactor.”37 status quo and the devalued slogans of Current scholarship on the everyday political life.”41 Today, if we utopian tradition often views utopia fail to sustain the legacy of utopia, not as a central element in the emergence only will we miss the opportunity to 70 Perspectives envision and actualize a humane, post- the global North whose most insistent capitalist, post-petroleum future, but we contribution is to contemplate the end may inadvertently surrender humanity’s of civilization. future to the false hopes of an ascendant The actions of mainly indigenous, religious fundamentalism. land-based people around the world are The social critic Immanuel also a central inspiration for the emerg- Wallerstein is one who has very recently ing climate justice movement. The sought to rescue utopian thinking from outlook of climate justice reflects the its role as a breeder “of illusions, and growing understanding that those most therefore, inevitably, of disillusions,” affected by accelerating climate-related proposing a renewed “utopistics” that disasters around the world are generally broadly examines the alternatives and the least responsible for causing disrup- reveals “the substantive rationality of tions to the climate. The call for climate alternative possible historical systems.”42 justice is uniting activists from both the Wallerstein is one renowned contempo- North and the South, with a commit- rary social theorist who very explicitly ment to highlight the voices of these speaks to the likelihood of a difficult, most affected communities. Many are contentious and unpredictable, but simultaneously impacted by accelerating potentially rational and democratic climate chaos and by the emerging false long-term transition to a post-capitalist solutions to climate change, includ- world. It is in this spirit of exploring ing carbon trading and offsets, the rational, liberatory future possibilities destruction of forests to create agrofuel that today’s climate justice activists are plantations, large-scale hydroelectric seeking to define the terms of a world projects, and the entire nuclear fuel beyond petro-capitalism. cycle. Climate justice movements are also challenging the expanding scope Toward Climate Justice and a of commodification and privatization, Greener World whether of land, waterways, or the at- From the Zapatistas of south- mosphere itself.43 eastern Mexico, who have inspired In the US, the call for climate global justice activists worldwide since justice is uniting indigenous communi- the 1990s, to the landless workers of ties, who are resisting increased mining the MST in Brazil, and the scores of of coal and uranium throughout North self-identified peasant organizations in America, with long-time residents of some eighty countries that constitute southern Appalachia, who are regularly the global network Via Campesina, a risking arrest to block the devastating wide array of contemporary people’s “mountaintop removal” coal mining movements in the global South are chal- practices that have already destroyed lenging stereotypes and transcending over 500 mountains in their region. At the limits of the possible. These grass- the same time as they are challenging roots efforts to reclaim the means of life, the most devastating mining practices, while articulating far-reaching demands some people in coal-dependent com- for a different world, represent a starkly munities are demanding a restorative different relationship to both the pres- economic model that relieves the stran- ent and the future than is offered by glehold of the coal companies over their relatively affluent activists and writers in communities, protects people’s health, on anarchist theory 71 and facilitates the phase-out of the most oil. While this movement often has a environmentally-destructive form of disturbing tendency to focus on personal energy production. rather than political transformation, and Meanwhile, hundreds of cities and has been critiqued for shying away from towns in the US have defied the federal important local controversies in some government’s 20 years of inaction on areas, the effort is filling an important the climate crisis and committed to sub- vacuum in social organization, and stantial, publicly-aided CO2 reductions creating public spaces that more forward- of their own. At the local level, people looking and politically engaged efforts across the country are working to regen- may be able to fill as the tangible effects erate local food systems, develop locally of various crises strike closer to home.45 controlled, renewable energy sources Still, many chronically vexing and, sometimes, to build solidarity with questions remain. Can the potential for kindred movements around the world. a more thoroughgoing transformation of Campaigns to create urban gardens and society actually be realized? Is it possible farmers’ markets are among the most for now-isolated local efforts to come to- successful and well-organized efforts gether in a holistic manner and fulfill the toward community-centered solutions generations-old left-libertarian dream of to the climate crisis. In recent years, a “movement of movements,” organized they have been joined in many areas from the ground up to radically change by nonprofit networks aiming to more the world? Can we envision a genuine systematically raise the availability of synthesis of oppositional and alternative- healthy, local food for urban dwellers, building efforts able to challenge systems especially those dependent on public of deeply entrenched power, and tran- assistance. The local foods movement scend the dual challenges of political in the US, once dominated by those burn-out and co-optation of counter- affluent enough to seek out gourmet institutions? Can a new movement for products, is learning from Slow Food social and ecological renewal emerge activists in Europe that it is necessary from the individual and community to directly support farmers and food levels toward the radical re-envisioning producers, and to aim to meet the needs of entire regions and a genuinely trans- of all members of their communities. formed social and political order? As the food system is responsible for at In these often cynical times, with least a quarter and possibly half of all ever-increasing disparities in wealth greenhouse gas emissions, such efforts and media-drenched cultures of con- are far more than symbolic in their spicuous consumption in the North, importance.44 together with increased dislocation and Community-based efforts to looming climate crises in the South, it reduce energy consumption and move is sometimes difficult to imagine what toward carbon-free energy systems have a genuinely transformative movement seen some important successes as well. would look like. In the US, right wing More than two hundred cities and towns demagogues appear to be far more throughout the English-speaking world effective than progressive forces in have signed on as “transition towns,” channeling the resentments that have initiating local efforts to address the emerged from the continuing economic dual crises of climate chaos and peak meltdown toward serving their narrow 72 Perspectives political agendas. But it is clear that Resistance and Renewal (Monthly Review when people have the opportunity to Press, forthcoming). An earlier version of act on their deepest aspirations for a this article appeared in Communalism: stronger sense of community, for the A Social Ecology Journal, Issue no. 1, health of their families and neighbors, December, 2009. and for a more hopeful future, people’s better instincts often triumph over Endnotes parochial interests. This is a reliable 1 See, for example, Juliet Eilperin, “New feature of daily life, and one that also Analysis Brings Dire Forecast Of 6.3-Degree illuminates the entire history of popular Temperature Increase,” Washington Post, social movements. It offers an important September 25, 2009; David Adam, “Met kernel of hope for the kind of move- Office warns of catastrophic global warming ment that can perhaps reinvigorate the in our lifetimes,” The Guardian, September 28, 2009. On the justice implications of the long-range reconstructive potential of a climate crisis, see Brian Tokar, “Toward a social ecological outlook. Movement for Peace and Climate Justice,” A 2009 poll commissioned by the in In the Middle of a Whirlwind, Journal of BBC confirmed that people in a dozen Aesthetics & Protest (Summer 2008), avail- key countries now agree that capitalism able at http://inthemiddleofthewhirlwind. has serious endemic problems, and that wordpress.com/toward-a-movement-for- we may need a fundamentally different peace-and-climate-justice. economic system. Only in Pakistan and 2 Murray Bookchin, “Reflections: An the US did more than 20 percent of Overview of the Roots of Social Ecology,” those interviewed express confidence in Harbinger, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2002). Italics in original. the present status quo.46 Perhaps this is 3 Alex Williams, “Buying Into the Green the kind of sensibility that will reopen Movement,” New York Times, July 1, 2007. a broader popular discussion of the 4 Midnight Notes Collective, Promissory potential for a different kind of society. Notes: From Crisis to Commons (April 2009), Perhaps we don’t yet need to resign our- p. 5. selves to apocalyptic visions of the end 5 For an insightful discussion of of the world. Perhaps the climate crisis, the capitalist trend toward financializa- along with the continuing meltdown of tion, see John Bellamy Foster and Robert the neoliberal economic order of recent McChesney, “Monopoly Finance Capital decades, can indeed help us envision a and the Paradox of Accumulation,” Monthly transition toward a more harmonious, Review, Vol. 61, No. 5 (2009). 6 See, for example, the report The more humane and ecological way of life. Emperor’s New Climate: Geoengineering as 21st Century Fairytale (Ottawa: ETC Group, Brian Tokar is an activist and au- 2009. thor, the current director of the Institute 7 Linda Gunter, “The French Nuclear for Social Ecology, and a lecturer in Industry Is Bad Enough in France; Let’s Not Environmental Studies at the University Expand It to the U.S.,” AlterNet, March 23, of Vermont. His most recent books are 2009, available at http://www.alternet.org/ Toward Climate Justice: New Perspectives story/132852. on the Climate Crisis and Social Change 8 See, for example, Jan Willem Storm (Communalism Press, 2010) and the van Leeuwen and Philip Smith, Nuclear Power: The Energy Balance, available at co-edited collection (with Fred Magdoff), http://www.stormsmith.nl. Crisis in Food and Agriculture: Conflict, on anarchist theory 73

9 Amory B. Lovins and Imran Coalition, 2008), especially Chapter 6, Sheikh, “The Nuclear Illusion,” available available at http://www.globalforestcoali- at http://community.livejournal.com/ tion.org/img/userpics/File/publications/ greenparty/342794.html. Truecostagrofuels.pdf; for continuing up- 10 John Kerry and Lindsey Graham, dates see http://www.nogetrees.org. “Yes We Can (Pass Climate Change 18 See, for example, Netherlands Legislation),” New York Times, October Environmental Assessment Agency, “Global

11, 2009; Darren Samuelsohn, “Senate CO2 emissions: annual increase halves in Dems Opening to Nuclear as Path to 2008,” available at http://www.pbl.nl/en/ GOP Support for Climate Bill,” avail- publications/2009/Global-CO2-emissions- able at http://www.nytimes.com/ annual-increase-halves-in-2008.html. cwire/2009/10/07/07climatewire-senate- 19 R.H. Coase, “The Problem of Social dems-opening-to-nuclear-as-path-to-go- Cost,” Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 3 28815.html (accessed 14.11.2009). (1960), p. 44. 11 See, for example, Emily Rochon, 20 J.H. Dales, Pollution, Property & et al., False Hope: Why carbon capture and Prices (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, storage won’t save the climate (Amsterdam: 1968), p. 97. Greenpeace International, 2008). 21 W. David Montgomery, “Markets in 12 Charles Duhigg, “Cleansing the Air at Licenses and Efficient Pollution Control the Expense of Waterways,” New York Times, Programs,” Journal of Economic Theory, Vol. October 13, 2009. 5 (1972), pp. 395-418. 13 See Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar, 22 Stephen Breyer, “Analyzing regulatory eds., Agriculture and Food in Crisis (New failure, mismatches, less restrictive alterna- York: Monthly Review Press, forthcoming), tives and reform,” Harvard Law Review, Vol. and earlier versions of some chapters in 92, No. 3 (1979), pp. 547-609. the July-August 2009 issue of the journal 23 For a more complete treatment of the Monthly Review. origins of the US Acid Rain Program, see 14 Lester R. Brown, “Supermarkets Brian Tokar, Earth For Sale (Boston: South and Service Stations Now Competing for End Press, 1997), pp. 33-45. Grain,” Earth Policy Institute Update, July 24 See, for example, Gar Lipow, 13, 2006, available at http://www.earth- “Emissions trading: A mixed record, with policy.org/Updates/2006/Update55.htm; C. plenty of failures,” available at http://www. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer, “How grist.org/article/emissions-trading-a-mixed- Biofuels Could Starve the Poor,” Foreign record-with-plenty-of-failures. Affairs, Vol. 86, No. 3 (2007), pp. 41-53. 25 George Monbiot, “We’ve been 15 Jason Hill, et al., “Environmental, suckered again by the US. So far the Bali economic, and energetic costs and benefits of deal is worse than Kyoto,” The Guardian, biodiesel and ethanol biofuels,” Proceedings of December 17, 2007. the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 103 no. 26 Larry Lohmann, Carbon Trading: A 30 (2006), pp. 11206–11210. Critical Conversation on Climate Change, 16 Joseph Fargione, et al., “Land Clearing Privatization and Power (Uppsala: Dag and the Biofuel Carbon Debt,” Science Vol. Hammarskjold Foundation, 2006). 319 (2008), pp. 1235-1238, and Timothy 27 See Brian Tokar, “On Bookchin’s Searchinger, et al., “Use of U.S. Croplands Social Ecology and its Contributions to for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Social Movements,” Capitalism, Nature, Through Emissions from Land-Use Change,” Socialism, Volume 19, No. 2 (2008). Science Vol. 319 (2008), pp. 1238-1240. 28 Van Jones, The Green Collar Economy: 17 See Rachel Smolker, et al., “The True How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Cost of Agrofuels: Impacts on food, forests, Problems, New York: Harper One, 2008, pp. peoples and the climate,” (Global Forest 9-10. 74 Perspectives

29 John Bellamy Foster, “The Jeavons prefers “moral individualism” to political ac- Paradox: Environment and Technology tion as a means for limiting autocratic power. Under Capitalism,” in The Ecological 39 Lyman Tower Sargent, “Utopian Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet Traditions: Themes and Variations,” in R. (New York: Monthly Review Books, 2009), Schaer, et al., eds., Utopia, p. 15. pp. 121-128. 40 L. T. Sargent, ibid., p. 14; Krishnan 30 Recent prescriptions for a tech- Kumar, “Utopia and Anti- Utopia in the nologically feasible solar future include Twentieth Century,” in R. Schaer, et al., eds., Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi, Utopia, p. 265. “A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030,” 41 Quoted in K. Kumar, ibid., p. 266. Scientific American, November 2009; 42 Immanuel Wallerstein, Utopistics: Or David Schwartzman, “Ecosocialism or Historical Choices of the Twenty-first Century Ecocatastrophe?,” Capitalism Nature (New York: The New Press, 1998). Socialism, vol. 20, no. 1, March 2009; and 43 For a comprehensive review of the Greenpeace International, Energy [R]evolu- emerging climate justice movement, see tion: A Sustainable World Energy Outlook, Brian Tokar, Toward Climate Justice: New available from http://www.greenpeace.org/ Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and Social international/en/campaigns/climate-change/ Change (Porsgrunn, Norway: Communalism energyrevolution/. For a more specula- Press, 2010). tive future vision, see Harvey Wasserman, 44 For evidence that factory farming Solartopia: Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. may be raising agriculture’s contribu- 2030 (2010), available from solartopia.org. tion to global warming to as much as 50 31 Uri Gordon, “Dark Tidings: Anarchist percent, see Robert Goodland and Jeff Politics in the Age of Collapse,” in Randall Anhang, “Livestock and Climate Change,” Amster, et al., eds., Contemporary Anarchist WorldWatch, November/December 2009. Studies: An Introductory Anthology of Anarchy 45 For an articulate political critique of in the Academy (New York: Routledge, 2009). the emerging “transition towns” movement, 32 Derrick Jensen, “Beyond Hope,” see Paul Chatterton and Alice Cutler, “The Orion, May/June 2006 Rocky Road to a Real Transition,” (Leeds: 33 Richard Flacks, Making History: The Trapese Collective, April 2008). American Left and the American Mind, (New 46 “Worldwide poll: Vast majority say York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p. 7. capitalism not working,” November 9, 2009, 34 Randall Amster, “Anarchy, Utopia, available at http://rawstory.com/2009/11/ and the State of Things to Come,” in survey-capitalism-not-working/. Amster, et al., eds., Contemporary Anarchist Studies. Emphasis in original; several embed- ded references have been deleted here. 35 Frederic Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and other Science Fictions (London: Verso, 2005), p. xi. 36 Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future, p. 2. 37 Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope Vol. 1 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), p. 5. 38 Alain Touraine, “Society as Utopia,” in R. Schaer, G. Claeys, and L.T.Sargent, eds., Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World (NY: Oxford U. Press, 2000), pp. 18, 29. Interestingly Touraine, once a Overfished » pioneering scholar of social movements, today Gaia screenprint, 2010

This issue, in place of the column What’s Happening, we asked several individuals to tell us what their favorite three to five new books are. We heard back from three: Cindy Crabb, John Duda, and Joshua Stevens.

From Cindy Crabb: Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism by Alison Piepmeier (New York: New York University Press, 2009) is an academic book about girl zines, and “what they can tell us about the inner lives of girls and women over the What We’re last twenty years.” This book explores ways women’s and girls’ sense of self, reading political involvement, agency and em- bodiment have been affected by writing cindy crabb, john and reading zines. Piepmeier uses this book to “consider what kinds of resis- duda, & joshua tance are possible within this particular stevens cultural and historical context and how girls and women leverage the available cultural materials to create personal identities and communities.” Academic, but fun to read. Everyone who is involved in a collective or wants to do collective organizing should read Come Hell or High Water: A Handbook on Collective Process Gone Awry by Vannucci and Singer (Oakland: AK Press, 2010), even if they’ve been in a collective for years and think they know everything. It’s extremely accessible and to the point, and discusses just about every problem I’ve ever seen in collectives. Chapters on anarchist theory 77 include “Tactics Used to Subvert reread the history of people who have Democratic Process,” “The Baggage traditionally been regarded as primitive of Collective Members,” “Banning,” remnants of historical epochs preced- “Relinquishing Control,” “Staying True ing the emergence of the state instead to the Mission,” and much more. as active deserters from the state, using It didn’t come out this year, but geographic isolation, anti-sedentary you probably haven’t read Whipping agriculture, and even the deliberate Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism abandonment of writing as weapons and the Scapegoating of Femininity, by in a struggle to escape incorporation Julia Serano (Emeryville: Seal Press, into the work regime of the state form. 2007). This book “. . . reveals the way Focusing on a Europe-sized region of that fear, contempt, and dismissive- Southeast Asia spanning seven national ness toward femininity shape society’s borders he calls Zomia, Scott argues attitudes toward trans women, as well that the real history of this region over as gender and sexuality as a whole.” the past two millenia(!) is one character- Political and brilliant. ized first and foremost by widespread and largely successful practices designed From John Duda: to evade and ward off the state. On The Lower Frequencies: A A flaw in Scott’s book is his in- Secret History of the City by Erick Lyle ability to draw consequences from these (Berkeley: Soft Skull Press, 2008) is practices for contemporary struggles, a recent history of San Francisco and but here, one can turn to Raúl Zibechi’s people’s resistance to gentrification. It is amazing account of present-day extremely funny and inspiring. Includes struggles against the state in Bolivia, interviews with Biotic Baking Brigade, Dispersing Power: Social Movements As Gay Shame, Punks Against War, The Anti-State Forces (Oakland: AK Press, UN Plaza Homeless Project; investiga- 2010). Here the account focuses on the tive reporting about welfare hotels indigenous alternatives to permanent, mysteriously burning down during the centralized power, against the backdrop dot-com era of city development, and both of Latin American neoliberalism much more. and of social democracy under Evo There are three books released in Morales. What’s most exciting about the past year which I have found Zibechi’s investigation is not just that exceptionally intriguing from an anar- it’s looking at fascinating anti-state con- chist perspective, precisely because while ceptions and tactics embedded within they all present accounts of people en- indigenous society and culture, but that gaging in long-term struggles against the he’s concentrating on the encounter state, none of the struggles chronicled of these conceptions and tactics with in the three books in question are being modernity, and specifically in the way waged by self-identified “anarchists.” in which the city of El Alto, only a few James C. Scott’s The Art of Not decades old, has been constructed in Being Governed: An Anarchist History the wake of mass displacement by its of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: indigenous inhabitants in ways that Yale University Press, 2009), for its part, thwart the formation or penetration of makes the argument (following Pierre state power, and indeed, have proved Clastres) that we need in many cases to potent means of constructing a platform 78 Perspectives for broader challenges to state-facilitated of revolution. At that, it’s one that has neoliberal dispossession in Bolivia. endured despite the fact that such suc- And speaking of cities and un- cesses have shown little in the way of expected anarchisms closer to home, replicability. Correspondingly, crises Matt Hern’s Common Ground in a of virtually every stripe over the last Liquid City: Essays in Defense of an decade, from economic collapses and Urban Future (AK Press, 2009), while tsunamis, to wars and hurricanes, to making a number of important and earthquakes and coups, have produced highly accessible arguments about often unprecedented forms animated urban sustainability, settler culture, and by solidarity, human innovation, and gentrification, also traces the ways in unconditional care. Often enough, which the best cities are those that build these appear to have been pulled themselves—where self-determination, straight from the air we breathe, under mutual aid, and horizontal social- conditions of unthinkable suffering ity, rather than central planners and and duress. Conspicuously, such crises speculators, shape the built and lived rarely seem to inspire irrevocable, linear environment. Again this process, which sorts of shifts toward revolution as it’s Hern tracks in neighborhoods from his conventionally understood. It makes hometown of Vancouver and around for an instructive contrastcone that the world, is perhaps another kind of Ward would’ve likely underscored. overlooked anarchism; an implict anar- Fitting then that Autonomy, Solidarity, chism. And while I’d be the last person Possibility: The Colin Ward Reader to suggest that we shouldn’t be explicit (Oakland: AK Press, 2010) should and call ourselves and our ideas “anar- arrive in this particular moment. chist,” it’s the virtue of these three new Covering ground from social theory to books to remind us how much we can education, city planning, transporta- learn from other, more implicit forms of tion, housing—all hats Ward wore at struggle against the state. one time or another—editors Damian White and Chris Wilbert have assem- From Joshua Stevens: bled in 375 pages a collection perhaps In its February 22nd obituary of unsensational in its pragmatism but Colin Ward, the Guardian UK remind- stunning in its breadth, brilliance, and ed readers that “Colin saw all distant (most importantly) seriousness. goals as a form of tyranny and believed Combining Ward’s observation of that anarchist principles could be the revolutionary in the everyday with ­discerned in everyday human relations Howard Zinn’s histories from below, and impulses. Within this perspec- Jordan Flaherty brings us Floodlines: tive, politics was about strengthening Community Resistance from Katrina ­cooperative ­relations and supporting to the Jena Six (Chicago: Haymarket human ingenuity in its myriad vernacu- Books, 2010). To borrow from Eve lar and everyday forms.” Ensler’s nod to the book, it functions Arguably, the uprising against the as something of a “people’s history of WTO in Seattle eleven years ago, and the storm,” whereby Flaherty excavates its unexpected success, rekindled an struggle as a piece of Louisiana’s very aspiration toward—and belief in the culture, documenting the emergence of viability of—a more cataclysmic vision popular forms as a politics of necessity. on anarchist theory 79 Simultaneously, what Flaherty offers advocate. She writes the zine Doris, and well beyond this is a politics drawn edited the zines Support, Apoyo, and from narrative, from before Katrina, up Learning Good Consent. (www.doris- through the upheaval surrounding the dorisdoris.com) Jena Six. Given his intimate relation- John Duda is a collective member ship to these movements, his ceaseless of Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse in dedication to illuminating them, and Baltimore, where he also is finishing a his unlikely victories in bringing them PhD examining the intersections between to the forefront of American conscious- anarchist/autonomist theory and the ness, one could hardly ask for a more sciences of self-organization. He is the capable voice. editor of Wanted! Men to Fill the Jails of Also drawing on the cultiva- Spokane (Charles H. Kerr, 2009) tion of organic forms—particularly Joshua Stephens is a board member in the way of representation—is Jeff of the Institute for Anarchist Studies. He Conant’s A Poetics of Resistance: The likes coffee and bikes, and dislikes socks. Revolutionary Public Relations of the Zapatista Insurgency (Oakland: AK Press, 2010). After some sixteen years, various iterations, tactical experiments, reinventions, and perhaps even simply the reality that there are now adults who were born, raised, and educated entirely within the world Zapatismo remade in southern Mexico, the fact of an initial few weeks of armed conflict almost seems a footnote. Appropriately, the first page of Conant’s book quotes the late Edward Said, insisting on the primacy of narrative as a field of anti-imperialist struggle. And indeed Zapatismo’s ar- ticulation, and the manner in which it captured the imaginations of vast sectors Mexican civil society against consider- able odds, is virtually unthinkable when divorced from what could reasonably be described as a new genre of political writing. Therein we find not just a writ- ing of words or pages, but a (re)writing of possibility. Conant’s is a welcome meditation, and might be the first major work attempting a technical, tactical analysis of Zapatismo as a communica- tions strategy unto itself.

Cindy Crabb is a writer, public speaker, and sexual abuse survivor While consumers experiment with greener lifestyles, the majority of the globe’s population is left to deal with the ecological fallout of industrial and technological “progress.” These are inequalities that only stand to increase as climate change and the unending about the capitalist pursuit of natural resources produce even more precarious ecologies. Already, thousands upon thousands of illustrations species are extinct or endangered, and millions upon millions of people have been thrust off of their land and into Justseeds’ ecologically, politically, and economi- cally hazardous conditions. resourced This is an “exhibition in a book,” a teaching tool, a collection of reproduc- portfolio ible graphics for activists and organizers, and a dialogue starter for community spaces, schools, conferences, and galler- ies. It can be used to help ask important questions about our environment: • Who benefits from the extraction of natural resources and who pays the costs? ll of the illustrations in • Are there viable possibilities for alter- this issue of Perspectives native energy sources? are taken from Resourced, • Is it possible to distribute energy more theA 2010 Justseeds Artist’s Cooperative equitably? portfolio. • What does resistance to Western and Resourced is a bound portfolio corporate climate policies look like? of hand-produced prints, as well as • What role can workers in resource and an online collection of open-source energy sectors play in this resistance? graphics for use by social movements. • How does environmental devastation It focuses on resource extraction and effect different communities along the climate struggles, and includes 26 artist lines of race, class, and gender? prints, with screenprinted covers and For more information about front sheet, as well as a booklet with Resourced, to purchase a portfolio, or additional information. to access high-resolution, download- For centuries now, industries able version of the images online, go to have been mining the globe in search Justseeds.org/resourced. of raw materials that can be converted into profitable commodities, displacing innumerable communities and leaving in their wake toxic, hazardous, and ecologically devastated environments. on anarchist theory 81 Perspectives on Anarchist Theory will address this subject in our next issue. Our theme will be Building a Movement, and we would like to hear what you have to say about how we can bring a directly democratic social order into being. call for What are the immediate chal- lenges we face in building movements? What should our guiding prin- submissions ciples be? How do we confront and over- come forms of social domination such as heteropatriarchy, racism, capitalism and the State? How do we both overthrow exploitative social relations and institu- tions, and institute new ones based on freedom and mutual aid? There are many questions that we, as a movement, need to answer – sooner, rather than later. For instance, Insurrectionism has recently emerged as a highly visible, and equally contro- versial, position. What does it have to narchism is at a high offer? What are its weaknesses? What point. Anarchist organiz- is the importance of building anarchist ing principles infuse organizations? How can the needs of contemporaryA social movements with both urban and rural communities be models for decision-making and the understood and served? Should we be importance of affinity groups; anarchist involved in social movement work, and organizations and counter-institutions if so, how? What does anarchism have exist all over North America and to offer the problems of energy produc- Europe; Greek activists have shown the tion? How are we going about making capacity for creating prolonged threats our dreams of a better world into reality, to State power; and the emphasis on and what should our next steps be? local commerce and food production Our deadline for the next print in the US echoes a widespread underly- issue is December 15th, 2010. All ing desire for community building and submissions should have endnotes control of resources. All of these things rather than footnotes, contain no page indicate an upsurge in interest in the numbers, and conform to the Chicago principles we embrace. Now is a time Manual of Style. Please include your for action. The ongoing economic crisis name and reliable contact information. and the increasing threat of ecological Send your essays or questions to: per- disaster make fundamental social change [email protected]. more imperative than ever. But how? ollowing on the heels of the first title in our Anarchist Intervention Fbook series, Anarchism and Its Aspirations by Cindy Milstein, we’re proud to introduce our second offer- ing, Oppose and Propose! Lessons from Movement for a New Society by Andy Cornell, due out this winter. The Movement for a New Society (MNS), a network of feminist radical pacifist collectives in the United States active in the 1970s and 1980s, developed many practices at anarchist the heart of anarchist politics today: consensus decision making, mass direct interventions action campaigns, collective living, unlearning oppressive behavior, and IAS/AK press more. Participants opposed capitalism and eco-destruction in antinuclear book series and other movements, while they simultaneously proposed alternatives by creating everything from community- controlled housing and safety programs to antisexist men’s support groups. In this way, the MNS served as a crucial organizational link between the movements of the 1960s and the post-Seattle global justice movement. Yet the group’s political innovations created tensions of their own. Members found their commitments to “live the revolution now” often alienated potential allies and distracted them from confronting their opponents, while their distrust of leadership and rigid commitment to cumbersome on anarchist theory 83

group processes made it difficult historical trajectories, and new forms to keep their analysis and strategy of domination, to name a few—as well cutting-edge. Andy’s book will include as reveal opportunities for different discussions with self-reflective former tomorrows premised on horizontal, members, original documents, and a egalitarian forms of self-organization. Given that anarchism has become detailed history of the MNS, revealing the dominant tendency within revolu- crucial strategic lessons for activists and tionary milieus and movements today, organizers seeking to reinvent a holistic it is crucial that anarchists explore cur- radical politics today. Like Cindy’s rent phenomena, strategies, and visions book, Andy’s features Josh MacPhee’s in a much more rigorous, serious man- series design along with artwork by ner. Each title in this series, then, will another Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative feature a present-day anarchist voice, member, Kristine Virsis. And like all with the aim, over time, of publishing books in the Anarchist Interventions a variety of perspectives. The series’ series, each author agrees to donate at multifaceted goals are to cultivate an- archist thought so as to better inform least 50 and up to 100 percent of any anarchist practice, encourage a culture sales proceeds to the IAS. In case of public intellectuals and constructive you’re not yet familiar with our series, debate within anarchism, introduce here’s the mission statement: new generations to anarchism, and offer insights into today’s world and “Radical ideas can open up potentialities for a freer society.” spaces for radical actions, by illuminat- ing hierarchical power relations and drawing out possibilities for liberatory You can order Anarchism social transformations. The Anarchist Intervention series—a collaborative and Its Aspirations now for yourself, project between the IAS and AK your friends, and/or your bookstore Press—strives to contribute to the or infoshop from AK Press (http:// development of relevant, vital anarchist www.akpress.org/2010/items/ theory and analysis by intervening in anarchismanditsaspirations), and stay contemporary discussions. Works in tuned for preorder information for this series will look at twenty-first- Andy’s book. century social conditions—including social structures and oppression, their institute for anarchist condemnation of domination and studies hierarchy. This has made it possible to understand and challenge a variety of social relationships—such as patriarchy, racism, and the devastation of nature, to pobox 15586 mention a few—while confronting po- washington, dc 20003 litical and economic hierarchies. Given this, the ideal of a free society expanded www.anarchiststudies.org to include sexual liberation, cultural diversity, and ecological harmony, as well as directly democratic institutions. Anarchism’s great refusal of all forms of domination renders it histori- cally flexible, politically comprehensive, and consistently critical—as evidenced by its resurgence in today’s global anticapitalist movement. Still, anar- chism has yet to acquire the rigor and complexity needed to comprehend and transform the present. The Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS), a nonprofit foundation established in 1996 to support the narchism emerged out of development of anarchism, is a grant- the socialist movement as giving organization for radical writers a distinct politics in the and translators worldwide. To date, we nineteenthA century. It asserted that it have funded some sixty projects by au- is necessary and possible to overthrow thors from countries around the world, coercive and exploitative social relation- including Argentina, Lebanon, Canada, ships, and replace them with egalitarian, Chile, Ireland, Nigeria, Germany, South self-managed, and cooperative social Africa, and the United States. We also forms. Anarchism thus gave new depth publish the online and print journal to the long struggle for freedom. Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, organize The primary concern of the classi- the annual Renewing the Anarchist cal anarchists was opposition to the state Tradition conference, and offer the and capitalism. This was complemented Mutual Aid Speakers List. The IAS is by a politics of voluntarily association, part of a larger movement to radically mutual aid, and decentralization. Since transform society as well. We are inter- the turn of the twentieth century and es- nally democratic and work in solidarity pecially the 1960s, the anarchist critique with people around the globe who share has widened into a more generalized our values.