Thursday, December 11, 2014

Win the environmental war


 Saral Sarkar writes an interesting contribution on the Countercurrents website which is worthy of quoting.

“…A war usually has many fronts, also a “war” to prevent the threatening worldwide collapse and to start the transition to a peaceful and sustainable world society. It is necessary to fight at all the fronts. But activists must have an overview of the whole. It seems to me, however, that most activists are fixated on the battles they are fighting at the moment and ignoring the “war” that is necessary, namely the “war” against the industrial-capitalist system. Sometimes they already celebrate the small insignificant successes in their particular battles…
…. Bill Mckibben, one of the awardees of the Right Livelihood Award (the “Alternative Nobel Prize”) of this year, addressed to his fellow activists who, together with him, organized in September of this year the great People’s Climate March in New York and other cities of the world. He wrote2a:

“… by the time that day was over (and remember that it ended with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund announcing their divestment from fossil fuels) I was letting myself think that we’d seen the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel industry.” He wrote further: “Which doesn’t mean we’re guaranteed a victory, of course. Unless that end to coal and oil and gas comes swiftly, the damage from global warming will overwhelm us. Winning too slowly is the same as losing, so we have a crucial series of fights ahead: divestment, fracking, Keystone, and many others that we don’t yet know about.”

Note that he is already celebrating a victory after the Rockefeller Brothers Fund has announced their divestment from fossil fuels. But it is not even a victory in a battle, it is only an announcement. It is being suggested in this quote that everything will be well when the fossil fuel industry has been abandoned and the renewable energy industries have taken over the task of powering the industrial societies of the world. There is no question raised about the viability (energy balance) of the so-called renewable energy industries, no questioning the sustainability of industrial society, no questioning of capitalism….

… Also the announcement made by the USA and China in the run-up to the UN climate conference in Lima – namely that these two giant CO2 emitters have agreed to stop the growth of their emissions in ten to fifteen years – was much celebrated. Roughly around the same time, however, The New York Times International Weekly (28.11.2014) published an article entitled India’s Ruinous Pursuit of Coal (ruinous for the climate, naturally), in which they reported that India plans to double the output of coal in five years. I recently read in a report from the said Lima conference that, at half-time, the European delegates are highly satisfied with the progress made. They are very optimistic, they think that this time a positive agreement can be reached. But at the same time it has been reported that at the conference all difficult and controversial questions are being studiously avoided – e.g. whether oil- and coal-rich countries (Saudi Arabia, Russia, Australia, Poland etc.) would be prohibited from exploiting their mineral riches; whether economic growth, that particularly less developed countries strive for, would still be possible when consumption of fossil fuels has been drastically curtailed; whether Ecuador and Bolivia, the two countries that most loudly preach “buen vivir” (good life, in contradistinction to rich life) will stop exploiting their fossil fuel riches; whether capitalism is compatible with the goal of protecting the climatic balance and, more generally speaking, the natural environment…

… We should postpone our celebrations until real victory has been achieved. And now at the latest, let us stop deceiving ourselves, let us take up in right earnest the real issues for our struggles, namely gradually overcoming the industrial mode of living and capitalism. For as long as these two dominate our life and societies, little else can be achieved. Then we are sure to lose the “war”.”

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