Two thousand people gathered in Parliament Square in London a year ago today. They declared a rebellion against the UK Government and its ‘criminal negligence of the climate emergency’.
It seemed to be yet another climate protest, a common occurrence over the past decades and something unlikely to have raised the eyebrows of the MPs travelling in to another day at a major seat of power.
But this one turned out to be very different. Among those who declared rebellion was a then fifteen year old Swedish girl who had travelled from her home in an electric car driven by her mum and dad. In her speech to the gathered crowd, Greta Thunberg stated that the climate crisis set to devastate her future and demanded nothing less than an full-on rebellion to address the threat: “We’re facing an immediate unprecedented crisis that has never been treated as a crisis and our leaders are all acting like children. We need to wake up and change everything”.
Global phenomena
Few people knew Greta’s name then, and nobody had heard of the new climate movement that had encouraged her to travel all that way.
A year later, both Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion (XR) are global phenomena. They had come out of nowhere but have since captured the world’s imagination.
XR have large groups in 53 countries, and are particularly big in Germany, France, Netherlands, the US, Australia, Argentina and Ghana. They have a presence in over 70 countries.
In the UK alone, 120,000 people have signed up to take action with the rebellion, their column inches run into miles, their symbol is ubiquitous and, like Greta, they have become a household name. All of this has been achieved without any significant support from the main environmental NGOs or major political parties, nor from many in the established climate activist world, which has often either ignored XR or has been critical of the movement.
Support is on the rise now that XR has grown so significantly, and since rebels have responded positively to criticisms and made changes accordingly.
Bursting the bubble
Naivety and mistakes are inevitable for a group that is still so young. A notable example was an early slide presentation depicting incarceration as a relatively pleasant experience in which prisoners can enjoy yoga among other things. Activist groups highlighted that neglecting the harsh realities of prison, particularly for people of colour, and the prison advice was replaced by a comprehensive guide by a highly respected legal rights organisation that was passed through an equally respected panel.
XR have managed to force the climate emergency onto the news and political agenda amid Brexit, and have inspired people from across the UK – many of whom had never taken part in climate activism before – to take action.
XR has effectively burst the ‘activist bubble’ by attracting support from people from all walks of life, at an exponential rate that has not been seen in a generation. A recent report shows that the climate emergency has become a top issue of consideration for voters in the UK in the lead up to the December general election.
The rebels’ remarkable success may simply have been down to timing, as their declaration on 31 October was not long preceded by a UN report evidencing that the world had twelve years to avoid climate catastrophe.
Sir David Attenborough began to make several statements and broadcasts that likewise raised the alarm about the existential threat to life on earth presented by man made global warming, coinciding with Extinction Rebellion’s first major day of action, during which they closed five bridges in central London.
International solidarity
Extinction Rebellion is avowedly non-party-political. Their third demand asserts that party politics and representational democracy as it currently exists is moribund and incapable of dealing with the crisis. This argument may explain Extinction Rebellion’s success and broad appeal. Retired senior police officers, bankers, farmers, Olympic gold medalists, teachers and doctors have all joined in with actions.
At the same time, XR’s strategy of strictly non violent acts of mass civil disobedience has been controversial, but has also served to keep their cause central in the news.
In the April international rebellion we saw record breaking numbers of arrests that alarmed the serving metropolitan police commissioner Cressida Dick, who said that the scale of arrests was “unprecedented” in her 36 years of police service.
Many attributes of this sprawling movement have yet to become more well known. The XR Internationalist Solidarity Network, partly inspired by the New Internationalist, works with grassroots activists from the global south in creating the narratives and avenues by which authentic internationalist solidarity can be achieved.
This exciting network was established in November 2018 and still developing. It indicates that there is much yet to come from this most needed of movements.
Up to you
So, can Extinction Rebellion survive the roller coaster ride that has been their first wave of success? Will they grow into the global movement that can force the paradigm shift necessary to avert the catastrophe of climate breakdown?
Really, the best answer to that is to say that it’s up to you. If not now, then when? If not you, then who?
This Author
Jamie Kelsey Fry is the author of the Rax Active Citizenship toolkit, a broadcast media news commentator, teacher and activist.
Located on a hilltop overlooking the Irish west coast lies Moy Hill Farm, a cooperative that produces organic food for over a hundred families each week.
Moy Hill’s yearly revenue is close to 100,000 euros, but getting there has been a steep uphill – literally and figuratively. It all started with a good surf wave on the other side of the mountain.
Looking north from the farm, a mountain can be spotted in the distance. It is the world-famous Cliffs of Moher, a Mecca for surfers. It was here that the professional surfers Mitch, Matt and Fergal, together with Fergal’s wife Sally, decided buy some land five years ago.
The vision was to create a place where people can learn about agriculture while also providing people in the area with good food.
Community farm
Fergal Smith grew up on an organic farm and at an early age learned that life is hard work. He began dreaming of leaving the farm to become a professional surfer, riding the best waves of the world.
Fergal succeeded – he got a sponsorship with a big surfer brand and flew around the world surfing for several years. But one day after injuring his knee on a coral reef in Tahiti, he heard on the news about the nuclear disaster in Japan and it sparked an epiphany that would change his life forever.
Fergal suddenly realized that he did not want to live the surfer dream. He wanted to go back to his country and do something that was real, something that made a real difference for people. He figured he would use the gift he had been given by his parents: the know-how to grow healthy food while at the same improving the quality of the soil. Like this, he would inspire and teach others what he had learned and provide his local community with food.
But Fergal had no desire to take over his parents’ farm. It was too far from the sea and the people.
Fergal said: “To become lonely and isolated is the typical farmer’s fate, and the suicide statistics among farmers is very high. I wanted to create a community – a community farm”
Planting projects
Together with friends and co-surfers Mitch Corbett and Matt Smith, and his wife Sally, Fergal began with a small plot of a few thousand square meters in the valley. They borrowed the land from a local Irish farmer and soon began reaping the fruits and quickly expanded the farm to include pigs and tree planting projects.
It wouldn’t feed the whole world but it was a start. And it was near the sea. The income from their surfing careers allowed them to work the farm without the pressure of making a profit straight away.
They founded a local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), a cooperative where customers pay in advance to take part in the harvest every week. The CSA model, or cooperative agriculture, is a way of self-organizing food distribution, breaking off from long retail chains and putting sellers and buyers in more direct relation to each other.
Soon however, the owner wanted the land back. So what next? They had already established a good production and a collaboration with the local community so it would be a shame to stop now. They discovered that another piece of land was for sale on the hilltop and decided to buy it.
The land was boggy, almost marsh-like, but with much regenerative work and soil improvement methods, they converted the hill into highly fertile farmland.
Regenerative work
The word ecological has become more of a brand than a technology. Meanwhile, it is more important than ever to actually rebuild soils.
Fergal explained: “we use regenerative cultivation methods, like preparing the soil with livestock grazing that speed up the process of soil improvement naturally. And we don’t use tractors.”
Another example of Moy Hill’s regenerative farming is that, when harvested, the roots of beans and sugar peas are left in the ground (as opposed to pulling out the whole plants with roots and all) as they bind vital nitrogen in the soil.
In 2018 another 24 hectares of land was for sale on the hilltop. Apparently, three different forestry companies were trying to outbid each other to buy the plot. The plan was to plant spruce, a type of monoculture that Fergal calls “an ecological desert”, a place where nothing else likes to grow. He also points put that the spruce is definitely not a native plant.
Moy Hill then went around to the neighbors to check if anyone was interested in buying the plot. But no one could afford it. At the same time, no one wanted to be neighbor with a spruce plantation.
Financing
Fergal shakes his head at the memory: “We didn’t know how to do it, but we called the real estate agent and told him we want the land – we would outbid the forestry companies. Then we were in a hurry.
“The land landed at 300,000 euros and I think we had about 3000 euros in the bank at the time.”
With a loan of 100,000 euros from an ethical bank and private loans from friends and family, the group managed to get the money and buy the land. After selling three parcels to neighbors and a successful crowdfunding campaign that raised almost 60,000 euros, they have now managed to pay off the bank loan and only the private loans remain.
Today, Moy Hill is divided into two pieces of land, the bottom farm down in the valley and the top farm up on the hill – all and all almost 26 hectares. On top of the hill you find a row of large polytunnels, cultivation beds and an orchard, as well as the kitchen, storage rooms, shower, toilet and communal areas.
The wind is inexorable and it was raining every single day of August. Still, the farm manages to grow about eighty varieties of vegetables, from fennel, celery, broccoli, beetroot, onion, pumpkin, garlic, dill, parsley, thyme and coriander to tomatoes, passion fruit, sage, figs and all kinds of cabbage.
Harsh weather
There is currently closer to twenty people living on and around the farm in camper vans and semi-permanent tents. Others rent houses further down the valley. The working day is just about to end and some are going down to swim in the nearby lake. Others grab the chance to go surfing in the unusually sunny weather.
Fergal explained: “This is primarily a working farm. We do not have much planned activities in the evening, says Matt, one of the farm owners.”
Many would say that Western Ireland is one of the most difficult places to grow food due to the rain, harsh winters and short summers. But Matt claims it is actually one of the world’s best sites for cultivation.
Fergal continued: “We have both sun and rain. In Spain and Southern France they have a lot of sun, but also having this much rain is unusual.”
The crops are sold in markets and so-called “box schemes”, were customers subscribe to boxes of vegetables from the farm which they receive every week during the summer months. This way, the customer has a constant access to fresh produce while the farmers have a secured income.
Currently, hundred families or so subscribe to the boxes. The farm is also part of Ireland’s first REKO-circle, an increasingly popular Finnish concept where growers and buyers skip the middleman and trade directly with each other at specific delivery points.
Meaningful work
So far, everyone working on the farm is doing so on a voluntary basis, but hopes are that in the future, their work will give a good pay. But first, the loans must be paid.
Matt said: “We earn about 100,000 euros a year on our agricultural production. But until we have paid for the land, none of what we make is a profit. Right now I have a salary of about one euro an hour, he says, smiling with a frown.
“What do I get out of it? That’s a good question. But it is meaningful work. And when we have paid off the loans, we hope that it will be able to provide a good salary as well.”
Recently, Fergal, Sally, Mitch and Matt decided to hand over major decision-making to a voluntary advisory board. Previously, all decisions were made on the basis of consensus, but in the end there were too many decisions.
Matt continued: “When there is no spiritual community it becomes more difficult to make decisions because there is never a clear path forward, everyone’s opinions weigh just as heavily. So instead of breaking up, we simply chose to pass the decisions on to others.
Elections
On Tuesdays, volunteers come and work in the farm, usually a dozen extra hands or so who, for their work get lunch and a box of fresh veggies to take home. The day begins with a yoga class for those who want. Porridge and tea is served outside the kitchen at nine. Then the work begins.
It is difficult to get a chance to chat with the owners, but while planting fennel, Fergal reveals that he ran for the Irish election a few years ago. Why? Because there was no other candidate for the green party in their area.
Fergal said: “I got to raise some issues and give voice to many people, but I am glad I wasn’t elected in the end. Then I would have been in Dublin now and not here. It wouldn’t suit me. Although some say that the most powerful political act you can do is grow your own food, he adds with afterthought.”
Patrick, a volunteer who moved to the area with his wife after they retired, explains that the winters are tough. He is shovelling manure into the bed were some seedlings are to be planted.
Fergal interjects: “On the contrary!”. He is now planting pak choi: “In wintertime you can take it easy, sleep in. In the summers we work at least seventy hours a week, seven days a week. In winter there is less to do. It’s great.”
Producing energy
For their own consumption, they have enough vegetables to manage all year round, but the main growing season is four months a year.
The rainwater on the top farm is collected and used for irrigation as well as washing dishes and clothes. If there is not enough rain, they pump water from the small lake nearby.
All the electricity comes from sun and wind but they are about to connect the lower part of the farm to the electricity grid. The growing need of hot water, hot planting beds and certain tools exceeds their ability to produce energy.
Moy Hill also runs a charity called HomeTree, where they plant trees for people or companies that buys their service. So far they have planted 14,000 trees, all native varieties such as oak, hazel and birch and over three hundred apple trees.
Fergal said: “Last summer we were thirty-five people living here. It was too many. But of course, the idea from the start was that people could come here to be inspired and learn. I’m sure that If we were six experienced farmers in the farm we could probably manage. But it would probably be less fun too.
“It is the diversity of people passing here that makes the place so interesting. And ultimately, it’s all about community and doing it together.”
This Author
Sonya Oldenvik Cunningham is a journalist and ecologist from Sweden currently living in Portugal.
Climate change is likely to play a key role in determining the next government with a majority of Britons saying that it will influence the way they vote.
Thousands of people have taken to the streets in recent weeks to call for action to avoid climate catastrophe, and a survey for environmental lawyers ClientEarth has confirmed that concern is prevalent among the wider public.
Seven in ten people believe that the climate emergency demands more urgent action and almost as many (63 percent) say it is now the biggest issue facing humankind.
Climate snapshot
A majority of all adults (54 percent) say that climate change will influence the way they vote at the next general election, but nearly two-thirds (63 percent) say politicians are not talking enough about it. Young people under 25 feel even more strongly with 74 percent and 72 percent agreeing respectively.
Opinium surveyed more than 2,000 people to take the temperature of the nation for ClientEarth’s Climate Snapshot 2019. It found that most (58 percent) believe that the UK government has done too little to prepare for the impacts of climate change and reveals widespread support for policies championed by opposition parties. Britons want the government to:
Bring forward the 2050 deadline for reducing UK emissions to net zero (61 percent);
Do more to encourage a shift to electric and other low-emission vehicles (61 percent);
Introduce a ‘Green New Deal’ or ‘Green Industrial Revolution’ with large-scale, long-term investment in green jobs and infrastructure (63 percent); and,
Plant more trees or reforest land (64 percent).
Demanding action
The public wants more action from local government, too. They say councils’ top priorities should be to plant more trees, set carbon reduction targets aligned with all planning decisions, and enforce energy efficiency standards for rental properties.
Those surveyed also want councils to invest more in footpaths and bike lanes and prioritise public transport improvements over building new roads.
ClientEarth lawyer Jonathan Church said: “From the student strikes to Extinction Rebellion, people across the UK are demanding greater action to address the climate crisis. Importantly these demands appear strong enough to make a difference at the next election, with more than half of adults saying that climate change will impact how they cast their vote.
“It’s clear the public want to see more from the UK government: more ambition to achieve the goal of zero net emissions and more concrete action to stop current carbon reduction targets from going unmet.
“The public also wants more action locally – investment in cleaner transport and more energy efficient homes – and they want councils to fulfil their legal obligation to make carbon reduction central in local planning decisions to truly green their communities.”
Accountability
The poll also reveals widespread support for radical action to ensure that the government, banks, and businesses actively support the Paris Agreement to keep global temperature rise well below 2 degrees and to pursue a 1.5 degree target.
Three in five under-25s and nearly half of all adults would support taking the government to court “if it looks like the UK is breaking its Paris Agreement pledges to reduce its emissions as quickly as possible.” Only 26 percent of all adults disagree.
Nearly half of all adults would support rules requiring all companies traded on the London Stock Exchange to have business plans that are compatible with the Paris Agreement or face delisting, a policy backed by Labour. Only 20 percent of all adults disagree.
Three in five under-25s believe that financial institutions and banks should no longer invest in fossil fuels and that they should be legally accountable if they choose to do so. A majority of all adults believes the same (59 percent and 60 percent) with only one in five disagreeing (20 percent and 18 percent).
Low-carbon transition
Two in three people expect investment funds held by major institutions and local authority pension funds to positively support the transition to a sustainable economy, and to consider the climate change impacts of companies they invest in.
A majority believes that investing in fossil fuel companies could be risky if their long-term strategies are not aligned with the Paris Agreement.
People expect their own pensions and investments to avoid these (55 percent) and would consider moving to another provider if their current fund was significantly exposed to coal, oil, and gas (52 percent).
Nearly two thirds of the public also believe that fossil fuel companies, whose products contribute directly to climate change, should help pay for the tens of billions of pounds of damages caused by extreme weather events.
Climate impacts
Britons see the impact of climate change all around them. They believe the UK is already experiencing it in air pollution, extreme weather, flooding, species extinction, coastal erosion, and heat waves.
Beyond this, 59 percent say climate change is causing political instability in the UK, 46 percent believe it is increasing regional conflict and national security risks, including increased immigration, and 32 percent think it is affecting food and water supplies, for example through shortages and price rises.
The survey found that nearly three quarters of the public believe people are becoming much more fearful and anxious about climate change. Many say they have been personally affected by changing weather patterns, and by extreme weather events.
Large numbers have already taken action in response to climate change, making their home more energy efficient (48 percent), replacing appliances with more energy efficient models (30%), and installing smart metering (30 percent).
However, government support could generate much more action. If incentives were available more than half would like to install solar panels and home batteries, and almost half would switch to an electric or low-carbon vehicle.
This Article
This article is based on a press release from ClientEarth.
We travelled there slowly, by ferry and train. We discussed degrowth. On the ferry we read a paper by Blühdorn et al titled, ’The Social Theory Gap in Narratives of Radical Change’. It made us somewhat disillusioned with the narrative of degrowth and its potential for a social ecological transformation. The movement seemed to be missing a key element: how to achieve systemic change.
Strategy
We took this impression with us through the summer school and worked with colleagues there to make a short presentation on the need for a re-consideration of the role of strategy in the degrowth movement.
We developed our argument that degrowth suffers from strategic-interderminism. This means that there are many strategies but all strategies are valued equally in the movement, without any criteria for evaluating them.
However, clearly some strategies fail while others succeed, and it’s the responsibility of degrowth scholars and practitioners to better understand and investigate why and how strategies differ in their outcomes across contexts (e.g. sectoral, spatial, scalar, etc.). This culminated in a short and somewhat convoluted blog post on degrowth.info, which then became a blog series.
Back to Vienna last summer, I and the broader degrowth-community of academics and activists discussed applying for the call to host the 2020 international degrowth conference. We were new to the field, all still struggling through our Masters theses, but this did not deter us. An application was hastily written and sent off.
Then, a few months later I travelled with friends slowly to the international degrowth conference in Malmö. This time taking a bike tour through Northern Germany and Denmark on the way. Our friend who earlier that year took the ‘pilgrimage’ with me to the summer school did not join for the conference, he was increasingly disillusioned with the possibility of degrowth. We went to Malmö to represent the Vienna conference organizers and make a short presentation of our argument on the need for strategy in the degrowth movement.
Deliberation and openness
In Malmö, we had a casual dinner with some members of the Support Group, a small body of representatives from degrowth conference organizers. We ate, shared our ideas, and happily saved the left-overs from the buffet – maybe out of eco-consciousness or just out of mere hunger.
The Support Group was excited about our application but asked us if we could host a thematic conference instead of the international conference. This was to reduce the feeling of competition between the applicants and to make possible the first international conference in an English speaking country.
We agreed, and it was informally decided that in 2020 both an international conference would take place in Manchester and a thematic conference in Vienna. Such openness and consideration of the larger movement was simply cool.
We returned to Vienna with the informal mandate to organize a thematic conference on a theme of our choosing. Then a process of deliberation and ideation began.
At this point, my colleague and I sensed a chance to bring forward our earlier critique, that degrowth lacked a comprehensive consideration of strategies in its understanding of transformation. We proposed the thematic focus on strategies. The topic was appealing to many of the conference organizers as well as the Viennese degrowth community, and consensus was quickly reached.
The group of organizers, some fixed and some more fluid, began discussing the theme, organizational structure of the team, competencies of working groups, the role of plenaries, etc. We had many beers, pizzas, and socials to help the process along.
It was interesting: when new people joined they often wanted to renegotiate the structures as they looked for their role and place in the team, and to put it in their own ideas and approaches. It was often chaotic and exhausting.
Some people were called out for not listening to new ideas while others disliked the important but tedious discussion of decision making mechanisms. Ultimately the process was long but we rewarded with an enriched common understanding of what we, as a whole, wanted the conference to be.
This common understanding became the foundation for organizing to begin, the working groups to form, new members to be recruited, the organizing team to be expanded, and – to put it simply – to replace talking by doing. People from throughout Vienna’s vibrant community of socially and ecologically minded academics, activists, organizers, and artists joined the conference organizing team and brought new energy.
Achievements
What has become clear through the organizing process thus far, is that Vienna is one of the emerging ‘centers’ of the degrowth movement in Europe. The various communities of artists, academics, practitioners, and activists who are passionate about degrowth and social ecological transformation greatly increases the potential of this conference.
So far, we have given several workshops in the last months to gather more activist and practitioner insights on strategy. We also hosted a recruitment event to introduce the conference to new people. We have created a simple website that will become much more. We applied and received funding and created paid positions on the organizing team. We secured a venue and imagined who could offer a keynote on the public opening night.
Additionally, we have started a thorough outreach process to bring in civil society actors active in the field of degrowth or social-ecological transformation, with the aim of increasing synergies between academics and practitioners. We have considered catering options and the prioritization of vegan, local and/or rescued food. We are cooperating with the University of Applied Arts Vienna to include an arts program that both supports exchange between participants and transfers results of the conference to the wider public.
We’ve also created a tentative program and drafted a call for papers, which will be circulated soon. And we have fixed a conference date: 29 May – 1 June, so we hope to see you there.
Looking forward
We know that we have lots of work in front of us. But with the network that we’re slowly building up and the strong group of organizers that formed around the conference, we are confident and excited.
We are looking forward to the input of all the actors involved on strategies and hope for both a contribution for the degrowth movement to narrow the gap of knowledge on how to reach degrowth, and to further a social-ecological transformation in practice.
The conference is organized by a few coordinators, an advisory board of academics and various institutions, and numerous volunteers. They have all worked together tirelessly to advance the conference organizing process over the last year. Without everyone’s ongoing efforts this conference would not be possible.
If you would like to contribute to or support the conference in anyway, you can contact us.
This Author
Nathan Barlow is recently finished his MSc in socio-ecological economics at Vienna University of Economics and Business where he is now a doctoral student. He is also an editor at degrowth.info and an organizer of the 2020 Vienna Degrowth conference. His research focuses on comparing US and European approaches to social ecological transformation.
We are on a little boat moving slowly through the Montlake Cut, a canal built to link the salty waters of Puget Sound with glacial Lake Washington, stretching ribbon-like along the eastern shore of Seattle.
In the distance, I know, are the off-ramps of the floating freeway. Some of the roads literally lead to nowhere – just massive truncated infrastructure built to carry even more cars, but left unfinished, providing perfect diving boards to plummet into the lake, or for paddling a canoe around their reedy passageways.
But today I can hardly make out the shape of the floating bridge as we pass it, unable to see much beyond the water skimming the boat. A veil of smoke hangs everywhere. It limits the normally expansive view across the long lake towards the Cascade Mountains, creating the sense that we are floating above more than just the surface of the water. We are out of time and place, out of civilisation, just suspended in heat and cloud.
State of emergency
It is an unreal version of a familiar view, but our eyes aren’t playing tricks. This forest-fire cloud is real. A state of emergency has been declared by the regional Washington State government. Seattle is thick with unfolding climate disaster, where smoke moving south from British Columbian wildfires converges with that from multiple blazes burning past the mountains in eastern Washington.
We’ve long feared this. It’s a consequence that’s been steadily emerging, despite the fact that this crisis is, or was, avoidable. Now this perilous cloud descends on the Pacific Northwest with frightening regularity.
Cascadia, as a region that prides itself on its natural beauty, on its love for the environment, on a desire for sustainability, is especially shocked. We have recycled. We are eco-friendly and have bought carbon offsets. Many of us have stopped driving cars or gone electric. We have voted for climate-conscious politicians. But it has proved nowhere near enough.
One hundred corporations have generated more than half of the world’s emissions. The man we refuse to call our president has pulled out of the already precarious political agreements keeping our global ecosystems from the brink of collapse.
People are in denial about the experience of entering a slow-motion breakdown; they can only look sideways at the smoke as it comes into focus for the second summer in a row. Climate breakdown is becoming our reality. A common question, half-panicked, half-resigned, asks: is this the new normal?
Dystopian atmosphere
Out now!
When I was a child, I was taught nothing about the Indigenous peoples who valued, respected and lived off this land for thousands of years. The Duwamish people call the lake Xacuabš, or ‘great amount of water’.
Their ancestors came to this area at the end of the last glacial period, moving on and off the shores with the seasons. It’s hard to reconcile their centuries of peaceful stewardship of this region with Seattle’s founding in the mid-19th century, an act of colonialism locally lionised on the walls of settler-themed bistros around the city with old-time portraits of lumberjacks chopping down big trees. In just a few centuries, we’ve almost destroyed this paradise.
As the little boat moves out onto the vast lake, it dawns on me how foolish we seem. Breathing this air for a day is akin to smoking ten Marlboro cigarettes, the air quality deemed ‘very unhealthy’. Symptoms of being out in it too long include stinging eyes, a sore throat, irritated sinuses. Recommendations are to stay indoors.
There are no other boats around, the dystopian atmosphere choking any hope for normal late-summer recreation. The bright red glowing sun shimmers across the surface of the lake, seeming to bleed above the distant city. But perhaps this sense of doom is why I felt so stubborn about the need to swim today.
Urgency
Neither the local nor the national news in the United States ever uses the phrases ‘climate change’, ‘global warming’ or ‘ecological disaster’ to describe what is happening. The heat, the dry, the forest fires destroying habitats – even the disastrous flooding and hurricanes in other parts of the country – are reported in a manner unconnected to human impact, as if the weather were a magical phenomenon, created by a complex deity, that people are merely forced to navigate.
Nonetheless, the spike in wildfires has been linked to rising temperatures in the region, but also to more than a century of preventing forests from burning naturally, together with the endless sprawl of suburban development encroaching on wilderness. The state predicts that by 2040 more than a million acres might burn each year.
So it feels urgent to be swimming now, in this smoky, impossible lake: not only to enjoy this world while it still exists as it is, but to face the reality of what is happening.
I remember days I spent out on the lake as a child, on a boat just near this spot, a memory enshrined as perfect summer bliss: standard bright-blue sky and normal hot-yellow sun, Mount Rainier a perfect white pyramid towering over us to the south. Back then I believed the mountain, the lake, the fish – the world – would go on forever.
Remember this
Our group, like an odd band of pirates wearing bikinis, with bandanas tied around our faces as makeshift filters, slowly moves towards the centre of the lake, near the middle of the floating bridge that carries an endless stream of cars from Bellevue to Seattle.
From the boat, I gaze at the murky outline of the cars on the bridge beginning to slow to a halt, brake lights illuminating as the road clogs to a stop.
I jump into the water. I’m unsure how long we’ll last out here. The lake envelops my head, my scalp tingling from the welcome, cooling water. I roll around, turning onto my back, my face now unmasked, my eyes closed and turned up to the red orb hanging in the sky.
I listen underwater to the hum: the enclosed sound of millions of gallons of water, gently mixing and flowing. I think about the bottom of the lake, so deep, and I imagine that I can hear the quiet sounds of fish. I hope they are safe. I hope the depth is endless for them. I say a silent prayer of protection for the Earth, which echoes in my head, even though I think prayer is probably hopeless. And I bless the water, and the beautiful mountains that I can no longer see for the ash.
In a few days’ time, doubtless the smoke will clear. The collective panic will subside, and everyone will talk about something else. But I promise myself that I will remember this. That I will continue to rise to accept some kind of challenge, to do whatever I can to stop this mess, if only just by resisting apathy.
With my arms spread wide like an angel, I float over the deep, ancient lake and shallowly breathe in the filthy air, savouring this beautiful and bitter moment, floating into the apocalypse.
This Author
Alexis Wolf lives in London, where she researches women’s lives and lectures on literature. She is working on a collection of essays about swimming. This article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine.
Image: Nomeato, Wikipedia. Sunset over Loon Lake, Washington. Atmospheric conditions created by forest fire about 1 mile from location photo was taken.
The environment department is considering introducing laws to prevent the burning of peat, the UK’s largest terrestrial carbon store, Zac Goldsmith has revealed.
During a debate on natural solutions to climate change and rewilding yesterday, several MPs spoke out about the burning of peat. Green Party MP Caroline Lucas said: “Ministers could make a decision right now to ban the burning of blanket bog, ending the release of huge amounts of emissions that could otherwise be captured by peat.”
Several environmental campaign groups have called for peat burning to be banned, including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and Friends of the Earth. Last year, over 150 estates signed up to a voluntary initiative supported by government to scale back the fires.
“Careful burning”
However, Goldsmith said that the voluntary approach “had not proven 100 percent successful as had been hoped. We are developing a legislative response to the problem and we will come back to the House in due course with our plans.
“There is no disagreement with the honorable members who have spoken today about the need to address the issue, but we have to do that through legislation, because the alternative simply has not worked.”
Amanda Anderson, director of the upland landowners’ group the Moorland Association, said: “There is a world of difference between severely damaging wildfire and careful, skilled burning. Grouse moors are delivering a substantial environmental benefit, particularly in terms of carbon capture on peatland, and we believe strongly that this should be taken into account by government.”
Government figures suggest that carbon emissions from heather burning in the uplands account for two percent of peat emissions, she added.
A spokesman for Defra said that the government would publish its strategy on peat by early 2020.
Polarstern, a German research vessel, is embarking on an icy journey across the Arctic. Researchers on board will be analysing the Arctic atmosphere and the processes that take place in it, such as the formation of fine particles.
Observations carried out during the year-long project will help make increasingly accurate climate change models.
Research coordinator Tuija Jokinen said: “What we are most interested in is change, as the Northern Hemisphere is changing at such a frighteningly radical pace.”
Demanding conditions
Jokinen is one of the 600 researchers working on the ship over the coming year, each of whom will spend a period of roughly two months on board. At any one time, the vessel will be carrying approximately 100 scientists. On top of that, getting to and from the ship takes an additional month.
Lauriane Quéléver, a doctoral student from the Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR), is already on board for the first stage of the expedition, while doctoral student Tiia Laurila will board the vessel for the fourth stage, Tuija Jokinen for the fifth stage and Zoé Brasseur for the sixth stage, in the summer.
The group has also received training for the demanding conditions of the expedition, such as providing first aid, sea rescue, smoke diving and protecting oneself from polar bears.
Those staying behind will also be kept busy by the project. Mikko Sipilä, the head of INAR’s polar research group, will carry out measurements during the voyage in the research town of Ny-Ålesund on the island of Spitsbergen and at the Station Nord research station in North Greenland.
The measurements are vital for the project, as they will help gain an understanding of the geographical extent of the phenomena observed close to the North Pole.
Complex connections
In addition to the University of Helsinki, the Atmosphere Team of the expedition also includes the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) from Switzerland, which has two researchers participating in the second and third stages as well as a shipping container housing the measurement equipment.
On board are a total of sixteen devices that measure hundreds of gaseous substances as well as particles whose size ranges from one nanometre to several micrometres, and their composition.
Clouds are not formed without particles, and clouds not only reflect sunlight but also absorb thermal radiation from the Earth. This way, particles can – depending on the location and season – either prevent or accelerate the warming of the climate.
In models describing climate change, atmospheric molecules and particles in fact have an important role, but in the Arctic region such processes are very poorly known.
A better understanding of the life of particles will, in turn, help understand their effect on climate change – what slows down atmospheric warming and what accelerates it.
Climate change
According to the climate report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the effect on climate change of aerosols in particular is the least well-known factor due to the considerable uncertainties of the observations related to their formation and life-cycle.
During the year, the researchers will look for sources of atmospheric compounds. They will also examine which atmospheric compounds condense into particles, how large these particles can grow and which factors affect these processes.
The aim is to investigate, as part of the international academic community, the connections between the sea, sea ice and biological processes, as well as the effects of these changes on the climate and regional conditions.
Jokinen explained: “We are particularly looking forward to the spring when light, or solar radiation, will work wonders.
“The radiation initiates a chain reaction in which atmospheric compounds begin to transform, eventually forming particles. In turn, the particles either bind heat or scatter it back into space either directly or due to their cloud-forming effects.”
The researchers can be contacted only by email during the trip, due to weak satellite connections. The ship has very limited access to the telephone.
This Article
This article is based on a press release from the University of Helsinki.
You’ve got to think outside the box when it comes to saving the world.
Wind farms and solar panels might be leading the way, but perhaps the best method of renewable energy is lurking somewhere we haven’t thought to look yet?
Power moves
Nightclubs in the UK are suffering a decline and looking for new ways to attract eager dancers. As more and more of the younger generation opt to steer clear of booze, clubs are looking for a change of image – piezoelectricity could be just what they’re looking for.
Simply put, piezoelectricity is produced when pressure is applied to an object, such as a foot on a floor. The kinetic energy of dancing feet hitting the dancefloor is transferred through a series of springs and powers batteries, which can be used to power the nightclub itself.
The technology is already being used in nightclubs in Japan, and there are attempts underway to bring the technology out on a wider scale, such as on pavements and offices.
Heathrow and the London Tubealready use special tiles to help with this process. Once the matter of expense is addressed, the technology could indeed be rolled out further — such as charging your phone with the act of texting!
Body heat
Maybe the key to renewable energy has been closer to home than we realised. How about renewable energy for humans, by humans?
That’s the line of thinking when it comes to using body heat as a renewable energy source. Let’s do a little science: A human male, at rest, gives off around 100 watts of energy and eighty percent of a human’s body power is emitted as heat.
We aren’t quite at the level of sustaining our power needs via our own body heat. The Seiko’s Thermic Watch managed to capture some of this heat as energy, at one microwatt – but an iPhone needs five volts to charge.
There’ll be no Matrix style human battery scenario just yet, fear not. But body heat is being utilised for energy in some parts of the globe: over in America, the Mall of America in Minneapolis is warmed in part by recycled heat from its shoppers.
In the UK, power has been generated via crematoriums, with a single cremation enough to power 1,500 televisions.
For now, the use is limited by the fact that the wearable tech that converts body heat to energy can only do so on a small scale. We won’t be charging our smartphones with body heat effectively any time soon. But we are seeing progress in the area, with prototype smartwatches touting to be powered by body heatwhen worn.
Jellyfish
Using jellyfish to combat the world’s rising fuel crisis is pretty far from the box. But it’s a line of thinking that is proving to be astonishingly fruitful.
In fact, jellyfish are slowly shirking-off their previous reputation of being nothing but a menace, and have been studied as a potential way to help Alzheimer’s patients and even to assist scientists in studying the inside of cancer cells.
Beyond the human body, jellyfish could become the next big renewable energy source. The key lies in a jellyfish’s green fluorescent protein (GFP), which is what gives some jellyfish their eerie glow. This substance reacts to UV light and produces electrons.
Consider this in the context of solar panels. Right now, people are investing in solar panels as a way to turn greener, but in truth, it can take around eight years for solar panels to bring a return on investment.
Plus, with their silicon materials, the process of making solar panels is very energy-intensive. If this silicon could be replaced with jellyfish GFP, this energy-consuming process could be lessened.
Cows
On the subject of wildlife, cows could also prove useful for our renewable energy sourcing. After all, it’s an oft-repeated fact that cows produce a staggering amount of methane.
One way to reduce this impact is to eat less meat and dairy. Another would be to harvest the gas cows emit and use it for energy. Scientists have attempted the latter, with a rather euphemistically-named ‘methane backpack’ to collect this fuel.
Techno-fixes can only take us so far, but we need to think big and get creative if we are to rise to the challenge of decarbonisation. Some of the answers might just be hiding in plain sight.
This year’s SEED Awards were announced on the occasion of the SEED Malawi National Dialogue Forum in Lilongwe.
The awards recognise fourteen innovative start-up enterprises from Africa and Asia active in sustainable agriculture and aquaculture, waste, renewable energy, water and sanitation, sustainable tourism, biodiversity and conservation.
SEED Award winners are exceptional and inspiring examples of partnership-based, locally-driven enterprises that contribute to fighting poverty and tackling climate change in their communities and countries.
Innovative potential
Take Nelplast, a Ghanaian enterprise which turns plastic waste into pavement slabs and tiles that are 800 percent stronger than ordinary pavement blocks. This enterprise, which works mainly with youth and women, has collected and recycled over two tons of plastic every day, preventing this waste from ending up in landfills.
Kukula Solar from Malawi has set itself the goal of ensuring that one million low-income women and their families have access to quality, affordable and warranted solar products by 2030.
Indonesian enterprise Mycotech creates leather-like material and products from fungus. Its 100 percent vegan and zero waste philosophy is an example to the fashion industry, which is one of the most polluting in the world.
Ms Svenja Schulze, German Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), one of the main supporters of the Awards, highlighted the importance of these enterprises in advancing the SDGs: “To achieve the SDGs, everyone needs to contribute. This award highlights the innovative potential of small green and social enterprises and showcases the economic and social opportunities for often marginalized communities. It serves as a great motivation for others to follow.”
Systemic change
Head of Unit at the Flanders Department of Foreign Affairs, Delphine Delouvroy, said: “Flanders believes multi-actor partnerships are crucial to support the necessary systemic change to deliver on the SDGs. In addition to partnerships, innovation and new ways of thinking that question traditional models are essential elements of the transition.
“By supporting the SEED program Flanders wants to support innovative entrepreneurs. The program contributes to the Flemish climate finance engagements, as Flemish support for (eco-inclusive) SMME-development in Southern Africa.”
This year’s winners were selected from over 900 applicants from Ghana, India, Indonesia, Malawi, South Africa, Thailand, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Youth-led enterprises led the way, comprising 62 percent of overall applications and 48 percent of the applications were from female-led enterprises.
UNDP Administrator, Achim Steiner, said: “The winners of the SEED Awards are unique in that they deliver grassroots products and services which benefit not only the environment but also local economies and particular groups such as women and youth.
“As such, they are contributing to the resilience of communities, a fundamental shift towards a more inclusive green economy and broader efforts to achieve the SDGs.”
Refined process
As well as being awarded matching grants, winning and finalist enterprises will also receive tailored one-on-one advisory services for several months to validate and grow their operations.
The SEED winners will join the SEED Accelerator programme to refine their financial and business models with a view to scaling up and replicating their activities.
In line with this principle, 52 finalists will be supported through the SEED Catalyser programme, to refine their business models and optimise their impacts while advancing their investment readiness.
The winners will join a network of more than 240 enterprises from 38 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America – laureates of the SEED Awards.
SEED Executive Director, Lewis Akenji highlighted the importance of the awards: “The SEED Awards have a refined process of working with partners to identify future-oriented solutions. Winning enterprises are sure to impact their communities with solutions that can be adapted in other locations and scaled to contribute to address global issues.
“We encourage entrepreneurs, development partners, policy makers and implementers to take a closer look at these eco-inclusive businesses and draw from them to amplify their impacts.”
This Article
This article is based on a press release from the GSCC.
Radical action on climate change is at last on the agenda. The emphasis is on urgency and action and – for XR notably – ‘truth.’ Questions of long-term strategy are less clear, but strategy platforms have been advanced. Foremost among them are the Green New Deal (GND) and degrowth.
An edited version of this essay appears in the latest issue of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine.
GND began as a slogan but has taken shape as policy programmes, advanced by the left of the US Democrats, by a coalition of left parties in Europe, and by Britain’s Labour Party.
Degrowth, likewise, works as a mobilising slogan. It connects networks of activists. It draws on traditions of anarchist and socialist utopian community (or ‘phalanstery’) building. Its foremost agents are the squatters and agro-ecologists, “the nowtopians and eco-communities, … the back-to-the-landers who work the land, or the city dwellers cultivating urban gardens or occupying the squares.”
Ideas
Both groups inhabit large tents. Degrowth encompasses eco-liberals (say, Ramachandra Guha) at one corner, Marxists (Kate Soper, David Harvey) at another, left Malthusians at a third, and socialist feminists (Mary Mellor) too, as well as autonomists and anarchists galore and motley tendencies that defy definition— such as Stephen Quilley’s eco-libertarian-reactionary-communitarian paganism.
Where do we grow from here?
The GND marquee stretches from Thomas Friedman (who coined ‘Green New Deal’) and Joe Biden through Marianne Williamson and Mariana Mazzucato all the way to Thea Riofrancos and Tithi Bhattacharya on the far left.
In each case, despite the canvas being multi-tendency and cavernous, there’s a dominant political complexion. For the degrowthers: narodism. For the GND: social democracy.
By narodism I refer to the nineteenth-century peasant-oriented movement based in sections of the Russian intelligentsia which later, following years of dialogue with Marxists and the adoption of some of their ideas, re-emerged as a mass party, the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs). Russia’s revolutionary Marxists learned much from the SRs and were at crucial junctures closer to them than to the social democrats—despite the Marx-influenced philosophy of the latter.
Inspirational
By social democracy I mean a cross-class political alliance rooted in organised labour. The support base is working-class but the programmes are designed and presented by middle-class strata (e.g. trade union officials) and elites (e.g. parliamentarians). It grows from labour struggles but its representatives advance policies and strategies that reflect their privileged social positions, and, unless pushed forcefully from below, accommodate to the established power structures.
At one end of the GND spectrum, fractions of capital that scent profitable eco-opportunities look to programmes of state-led and state-subsidised infrastructure projects—an early example was the ‘Green Growth’ plan of Lee Myung-Bak in South Korea. For liberal elites, it represents a proposal to save capitalism from itself, for which a modicum of pressure from below may be required.
At the other end, for the far left, it represents an historic opportunity to wrest reforms from capitalism until the ensuing contradictions reveal spaces ‘beyond.’ The goal is a far-reaching and radical transformation of society. The method will be the building of a ‘movement of movements’ that knits workers’ demands for ‘green jobs’ and ‘pink jobs’ together with climate justice activism, and feminist, anti-racist, indigenous and pro-migrant campaigns.
In the zone between is social democracy. Organised labour and its allies demand state backing for green jobs programmes, as steps toward a ‘just transition.’ Social democrats are drawn both ways—excoriating capitalism one day, saluting the flag the next.
A case in point is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (pictured): the most inspirational and brilliant propagandist for a GND, a beacon for the US and global left, who however voted to gift $1,480,000,000,000 to the Pentagon, the most powerful and murderous of US institutions and the world’s biggest polluter.
Minerals from sunlight
In recent times we’ve seen a spiky back-and-forth between ‘eco-modernist’ supporters of a Green New Deal and advocates of degrowth (hereafter, ‘degrowthers’). Matt Huber, a Syracuse geographer, castigates degrowthers for advocating a politics of less. In their focus on the prefix ‘de-’ and ‘reductions,’ they have “little capacity to speak to the needs of the vast majority of workers ravaged by neoliberal austerity.” Further, they recoil from “any hint of industrial technology (or what they pejoratively call a ‘techno-fix’).”
Leigh Phillips, an anti-environmentalist campaigner and contributor to Spiked, presses the same buttons ad absurdum. Degrowth and austerity “are mathematically and socially identical. They are the same thing.”
Against austerity-degrowth, he intones the mantra of modernity. “Energy is freedom! Growth is freedom!” A revival of “Prometheanism” is the order of the day, defined (idiosyncratically) as “the idea that there are no limits other than the laws of physics to how we can re-engineer ourselves and the world around us.”
Central to the programme is technology, regarded as if shorn of its socio-political integument. We should “weep hot tears of pride” at the technological miracles that capitalism has enabled, exemplified by the moonshot. Without reflection on its thoroughly militarist origins, purposes and personnel, Phillips celebrates it as “the best that our species can do.” As for today, to counter climate change a massive worldwide build out of nuclear power is required.
Pollutive
In response, degrowthers diagnose Huber, Phillips and their ilk as suffering from a characteristically capitalist affliction: technological hubris. Lacking a comprehension of economic-ecological constraints (other than the laws of physics) they cannot take full measure of the crisis. Nor do they reflect seriously on the inadequacies and blowback potential of their preferred techno-fixes.
Phillips’ claim that nuclear power emits no carbon dioxide and is the safest of all energy sources is beyond risible. This conveniently forgets that mining and refining uranium ore and manufacturing reactor fuel require enormous energy inputs. And it is belied by the many tens of thousands of deaths due to Chernobyl alone, and the problem of waste.
Scientists are still stumped by the problem of warning the creatures approaching waste dumps a hundred thousand years from now. One biologist and semiotician team has developed the “ray cat solution”—cats genetically altered to glow when radiation is present. Why they predict that future earthlings will flee the luminous pussycats rather than, say, construct a religion around them is unclear.
Pace Huber, degrowthers do not “recoil” from technology or industry. Most of them recognise that phalanstery formation is no panacea, but one element within a comprehensive world-systemic revolution of relations of production and consumption and of society’s relations to nature.
One systematic survey of degrowth literature notes that a common thread “acknowledges the virtues of technology,” and here the kinship to GND programmes is apparent. Many degrowthers fight for wind farms, with their mega-tonnes of reinforced concrete and steel towers, magnetic direct drive turbines, and nano-engineered polymers and composites.
War
Troy Vettese is by no means the only degrowther to advocate free public transport to entice people out of cars and planes, and ‘passive’ houses for all—both of which require colossal construction programmes.
Or listen to Burton’s call for “a major transformation on the kind of scale of the Marshall Plan,” with its requirement of stupendous investments in “the decarbonisation of the power grid, the conversion of transport, heating and manufacture to electric power, and massive increases in energy efficiency.”
Jason Hickel, similarly, aligns himself with GNDs on at least one central point: public investment must urgently be targeted to churning out solar panels, wind turbines and batteries “at a historically unprecedented rate, reminiscent of the industrial retooling that enabled the allies to win the second world war.”
Revolutionary austerity?
On austerity, however, the picture is less clear. Certainly, Phillips’ barbs miss their target, reliant as they are on crude misrepresentation. His antagonists are clear that degrowth is not identical to austerity programmes, “mathematically” or otherwise.
One is a strategy to restore rates of capital accumulation and defend the enrichment of the upper classes through slashing services and welfare spending on which workers and the poor depend. The other is a strategy that erodes the power of capital by relieving the rich of their fortunes and prioritising the welfare of the poor.
Huber’s charges are hardly more convincing, and degrowther Giorgos Kallis, in a brilliant rejoinder, makes short work of most of them. However, there is in Kallis’ writings some ambiguity on austerity.
We know he does not subscribe to austerity politics. He is for debt forgiveness and the creation of “debt-free public money,” and against the imposition of creditor power. Yet he takes as his guide the Italian Communist Party (PCI) leader Enrico Berlinguer’s advocacy of “revolutionary austerity.”
This, in Kallis’ gloss, “is the sort of personal austerity that real revolutionaries of all times have practiced in their personal lives.”
Excess
Defending revolutionary austerity, he adds, “does not make one accomplice to Thatcherite austerity. On the contrary, what is Thatcherite is the liberal assumption of a God-given right of each and everyone to mobilize all resources possible in their pursuit of their individual (or collective) goals.
According to this ingrained liberal view, we cannot tell people that we could perhaps live better with less, because it is people’s god-given right to want more and more, as much as those richer have. What is more revolutionary instead than Gandhi’s plea to ‘live simply so that others may simply live’?”
Two elements of this deserve scrutiny. One is the Gandhian injunction. In affirming the centrality of individual consumption choices, Kallis is himself rehearsing an “ingrained liberal view”: consumer demand is the motivating force that drives and shapes economic life. This is a myth. It obscures the power structures of capitalist society—and this occlusion is one reason why Gandhi received backing from India’s industrial tycoons.
The other is Berlinguer’s austerity agenda. It was not the austerity of today, i.e. the commitment of governments, typically citing the Smithian notion that thrift is the engine of growth, to slash spending on the services that working people require, plunging them into destitution while the well-heeled stroll on unperturbed.
Rather, his call for degrowth emphasised ending “excess” in the Global North to aid the South; it carried hints of Rousseau’s position in the querelle du luxe, and of cultures of communist asceticism at times of struggle and war.
Beef
In a 1977 pamphlet entitled ‘Austerity, An Opportunity to Transform Italy,’ Berlinguer assured the “old dominant groups” that the PCI would agree to “sacrifices by the workers” but only if the “social system as it stands, with its economic structures and basic ideas” were simultaneously transformed.
Yet his PCI was at the time committed to a ‘historic compromise’ with those same elites. The premise was that radical change inflames the dominant groups. Leftists should tamp down social struggles at the very moment when they carry their greatest potential, and instead construct alliances with the parties of army, business and church. In this context, Berlinguer’s call for degrowth as a route to system change was incoherent.
The reluctance to challenge dominant elites is a critical failing in Berlinguer-style degrowth. An ethical critique of growth is vacuous if your party is concurrently stabilising the capitalist order, with its systemic drive to rapacious accumulation. It fails to connect with the experiences of those whom capitalist states, businesses and landlords have robbed: of their land, labour, social housing and so on.
Opposition to luxury and ‘excess’ in the abstract, and a prospectus of universalfrugality, is conciliatory to those kleptocratic elites unless they’re knitted to programmes to overturn the foundations of social injustice by eliminating absolute and relative poverty, and turning private productive and landed property over to the commons. (‘Expropriation’ in the old parlance.) These egalitarian goals are perfectly compatible with degrowth. There’d be a smaller overall materials/energy envelope, with differentiated contents.
For the rich, much much less, while for the billions who lack the basics: more good food, better housing, abundant clean water, efficientsanitation, excellent public transport, quality public amenities available freely to all. For the Global North: drastically reduced consumption of beef, SUVs, aviation, but better public transport, insulated homes, cleaner air, more self-governed time, less hierarchy.
Environmentalism of the poor
Mainstream advocates of GND and degrowth alike seek coalition with sections of the capitalist classes—big business for the GND, SMEs for degrowthers.
But on the far left of each movement the perspective is of fanning the flames of popular movements to the point where they besiege and begin to overcome the institutions of corporate and state power.
The strategic perspective of GND leftists is to build capacity among workers’ and other social movements to push for immediate reform programmes, with an orientation toward socialist goals in the longer run.
What of the degrowth narodniki? By and large, they will join campaigns for unionised ‘green jobs,’ but what ‘just transition’ programmes would they discuss with, say, the Kentucky miners who are blocking coal trains to demand back pay?
At first sight, that conversation may not seem promising. From the phalanstery window, workers’ housing and jobs do not loom large. The degrowthers’ strategy, laments Stefania Barca, has not gained traction among “the impoverished and precarized working classes of the austerity era, nor does it seem capable of having a constructive dialogue with the labour movement in general.”
Self-organisation
Yet there are three resources on the left of the degrowth movement that enable constructive engagement. One is the commitment to powerful unions, seen—rightly—as vital allies in the struggle for reductions in the working week and for improved public services and affordable housing.
The second is the commitment to the self-organisation of groups suffering poverty and oppression. This is a mainstay of authors in the degrowth canon. One such is Guha, notably his work on the Chipko movement, which saw peasants in Uttarakhand ‘hugging’ trees’ to prevent commercial logging.
Guha broadens the lens from India to other countries—Malaysia, Kenya, Brazil—to argue that environmentalism of peasants, pastoralists and indigenous peoples is entwined with agendas of social justice, of local rights to resources, to survival and livelihood. Another is Joan Martinez-Alier.
His The Environmentalism of the Poor finds transformative potential in groups in the Global South, such as the Ogoni and the Ijaw of the Niger Delta, who defend themselves against extractivist corporations and compliant states, and in the process learn to link local grievances to international environmental politics, connecting with campaigning groups elsewhere to press for indigenous rights at the local scale as well as national and international reform.
How these commitments to defending peasant and pastoralist control over the immediate means of livelihood and the rural ‘commons’ can translate to urban settings, and beyond to questions of national and global infrastructure (including Amazon, Google, etc.), all on the basis of self-organisation, is a question that will face our narodniki if they upscale to SRs.
Refugees
The third is anti-capitalism, where capitalism is understood, with input from feminist theory, as a system that loots and plunders across all socio-natural fronts. It degrades the environment, uproots communities and dispossesses people of their means of reproduction and subsistence, threatening livelihoods.
It requires continuous expansion, and irreversibly damages the climate. It rests on the exploitation of wage labour and on uncompensated care-work performed mostly by women. It displaces costs in racialised ways and enforces a racialised economic hierarchy of core and peripheral nations. It imperils the earth, but workers and the poor—foremost women and racialised groups—are first in the firing line, least responsible, and possessed of immense latent power.
From this diagnosis flows the aspiration to what degrowther Bengi Akbulut and colleagues call a “reproductive economy of care, understood not only as caring between humans but also between humans and the non-human environment.”
It is an ethic that builds on the experiences, in daily life and struggle, of exploited and oppressed groups. Whether in the sphere of production or reproduction, struggles strengthen ethics of care and solidarity, and as they broaden, the compass of care/solidarity expands. Environmental crisis demands the extension of such an ethic to the natural world, to climate refugees, against militarism, and so forth.
Venality
Degrowthers therefore seek to build coalitions with “women, peasants, artisans, workers and indigenous people,” groups who “are typically engaged in struggles against the negative impacts of capitalist growth on their living conditions.”
As Martinez-Alier has discussed, opposition to such projects as commercial plantations, mineral extraction, and big dams, is “as much a defence of livelihood as an ‘environmental’ movement in the narrow sense of the term.”
Degrowthers, Barca observes, share with socialists the belief that a strong labour movement is capable of leading a concerted bid for system change, an ecological revolution, so long as a convergence can be achieved between red and green movements “on the terrain of a politics of livelihood.”
That requires a coalition of the labour movement and anti-racist, feminist, social justice and environmental justice movements in a “movement of movements, or an alliance of the dispossessed.” The defence of ‘life’ against capital offers a lattice on which a radical, working-class environmentalism could grow, nourished by the aforementioned ethic of care, and anger at injustice: at the theft of surplus value, the dismantling of welfare, and the venality and recklessness with which those in power have handled this our planet.
Convergence at the left
The three principles just listed bear a distinct resemblance to those that guide socialist theorists of GND. I have in mind Alyssa Battistoni’s vision of a climate-stabilising socialism “oriented toward sustaining and improving human life as well as the lives of other species,” with an emphasis on green- and pink-collar labour such as “teaching, gardening, cooking, and nursing: work that makes people’s lives better without consuming vast amounts of resources, generating significant carbon emissions, or producing huge amounts of stuff.”
I’m thinking, too, of Tithi Bhattacharya’s reflections on ‘Three Ways a Green New Deal Can Promote Life Over Capital,’ with its call for “insurgent caring.” These share an understanding that the environment is a class question. The compulsive force that drives businesses to exploit workers drives them to plunder and despoil nature too. Ending the latter requires abolishing the former.
In this survey of the terrain, there is no ‘degrowth vs GND’ rivalry as such. Between the camp heartlands there clearly is. Growth boosterism and degrowth are incompatible, and the difference is often infused with morality and aesthetics—on one hand, a fetishism of technology, a belief that there exist no environmental limits and a dogma that ‘growth is good’; on the other, a self-righteous frugality and zeal for the hair shirt. But at the left corners, the tents are so close as to practically touch. The greater clashes will occur within each.
This Author
Gareth Dale teaches politics at Brunel University. He is a co-editor of Green Growth (Zed, 2016). His articles are available online. He tweets at @Gareth_Dale. This article was first published on OpenDemocracy, and is part of a new series on economic growth. Image: nrkbeta.
