Our House On Fire
Climate Change, The IPCC Report, Housing and Human Rights
Morning Comrades!
There are two topics we are going to tackle today, one being the newest IPCC Report and the other is the continuation of the topic of housing, property and our future. There are obviously other noteworthy topics but I’ll try to tackle those on our telegram channel as well the usual social media platforms.
First up though, it is my birthday next week! I know, a 43 year old shouldn’t get this excited about these events as much as I do, but here I am and care very little about conventions in any case. I’m tempted to do a mutual aid drop for it but wanted to ask you here first. If so, what is the one design I should run IF I decide to do one? Feel free to comment below, write an email, drop me a line in telegram or DM me on IG.
Also, before I get into the thick of it, this newsletter lives on your input and support. You can support this work with a monthly subscription IF you can, or share this with your friends! The more the merrier!
The IPCC Report ( Again )
It doesn’t seem that long that I wrote a longer essay on this topic and here we are again, and holy smoking shit-balls of fire. The new IPCC report on mitigating climate change is out today. It's 2,913 pages. The summary is 145 pages. The 'high-level' summary for policymakers, the one that's negotiated, with governments able to veto each line, is still 64 pages. Read that again. Now, I’ve read the 145 page summary, which I recommend anyone doing also that’s interested in this topic. I do not understand all the science to warrant spending time on the full report and I definitely skipped the 64 page report - because this here:
This is the part of the report that you will most likely hear from in the mainstream news and it is utter bollocks. “Some” countries literally means the Global North West, the biggest perpetrators in the destruction of the planet and it’ll make you vomit. Essentially, without radical systemic economic and societal change our children will scoff at what we imagined in any dystopia. That’s not only my opinion but the consensus of over 800 globally recognized scientist that work on these reports. It’s not even up to debate whether we should try to “change” capitalism, a fluke of an idea in any case, but the verdict is out: capitalism as the defining method of economic relations is what is killing this planet at a rate so drastic that the majority of “moderate” projections of life-endangering climate change are already written off as high school level motivational memes made by substitute gym teacher. This is from Sarah Burch, who is one of the lead authors and scientist of the report:
“Options now exist across ALL sectors and regions that can cut our emissions by at least half by 2030 (which is what is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Here’s a kicker: we can’t reach our broader sustainable development goals (vibrant nature, clean water, no poverty, healthy communities etc) if we don’t address climate change. It just won’t work.
Coal has to go. Coal without carbon capture and storage has to go down by 76% by 2030. That’s… really fast. We would also need to PREMATURELY - ie before the end of their designed lifespan - shut down oil gas infrastructure by 2050 (read… stop building new stuff!). Flow of finance is currently dramatically insufficient. It needs to go up by 300-600% to spur the scale of action needed. But there’s enough global capital and liquidity to close this gap.
Individual choice ALONE makes only modest contributions to GHG reductions. Building codes, urban planning, vehicle efficiency standards, carbon pricing, low carbon infrastructure MAKE IT EASIER for individuals to make better choices.”
Essentially, and I know I am beating a dead horse here, what the report says is that we already have the tools, plans and “money” ( I struggle with absurdity of the argument that doing so will be too expensive when the entire construct of money to save the planet is just straight up gaslighting from the capitalists ) at hand to at the very least fight off the worst of the predictions in regards to our survival on this planet and potentially build a sustainable, radically different world for everyone. But, the global 1% is in the way. It’s truly that simple, these people give a rats ass about any of this as it not only stands in their way of hoarding even more mountains of gold but truly are so mentally infantile that they cannot imagine a world that benefits everyone and not them. I’ll say it again, without radical change in every aspect of our relations to the world we created, this shit show will be over before our kids can have a say.
On Housing and Human Rights
If you, like myself, have been kicking around protests for some time ( or not, but why not? ) you will certainly have come across this line at some point. I have never given it much thought to be perfectly honest, and I should have and that is what we are going to look at now.
Ever since I moved out of my parents home I was faced with the reality that housing is a commodity. None of the thoughts I questioned in Monday’s email came to mind and I never questioned the logical basis of rent, ownership and such - I was mentally fully embedded in the reality of the early days of globalization and neoliberalism and accepted the fact that some apartments were more expensive than others as just a reality. Obviously, this is still true, materially speaking, yet this reality is again, nothing but a social construct implemented by the powerful at our expense. The more I think about this the fucking crazier it gets to me especially after finding out, today, that the above claim “Housing is a Human Right” is NOT some crazy ass lefty utopia I was protesting FOR but genuinely is the LAW.
Right? The fuck. I didn’t know this, but here we are. Now a few words about the law.
“What presents itself to us as bourgeois legality is nothing but the violence of the ruling class, a violence raised to an obligatory norm from the outset.” - Rosa Luxemburg
That’s truly all that needs to be said about “the law” and “legality”, but to put into plainer terms: The “law” exists only as a veneer to give the violence of the ruling classes the appearance of morality. None of this shit really makes sense and none of it is “just”, let alone “moral”. Still doesn’t change the fact that we still have to pay rent.
Coming back to this “law” though - and this still blows my mind:
The right to housing is recognized in a number of international human rights instruments. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , one of the most important documents of the last 100 years, recognizes the right to housing as part of the right to an adequate standard of living. It states that:
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
Let that sink in for a second. In 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations accepted the above as the de-facto reality of what the respective governments should provide. Plainly, according to this declaration - and that being the key word here - every person has a RIGHT to the above. That’s what “we” signed after the horrors of WW2 to go for - and I am absolutely more than ok with this - again, I am not going to get my big red chair and proclaim “well, let me show some of the ideas the commies came up with almost a 100 years before this one” because that’s not what this is about - but yeah, it’s not as if “we” are asking for anything totally outlandish here, shit, the most conservative of rich bastards all signed this “declaration”.
Here is the problem though, in rich bastard legal talk a “declaration” is not legally binding, of course not.
In international law, a declaration is distinct from a treaty in that it generally states aspirations or understandings among the parties, rather than binding obligations. The Declaration was explicitly adopted to reflect and elaborate on the customary international law reflected in the "fundamental freedoms" and "human rights" referenced in the United Nations Charter, which is binding on all member states. For this reason, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a fundamental constitutive document of the United Nations and, by extension, all 193 parties of the UN Charter.
Nevertheless, the status of the Declaration as a legally enforceable document varies widely around the world: some countries have incorporated it into their domestic laws, while other countries consider it merely a statement of ideals, with no binding provisions, and you can guess where the majority of these countries are that consider this a wonderful text to use when they’re bombing the shit out of countries “for freedom” but don’t apply this at home.
Right.
But that’s law, and again, let’s hear for Rosa Luxemburg and my rendition of it; “if you are still arguing and acting within the realms of law and legality, you’ve already lost. I do find it fascinating though that back in 1948, the leaders of the world got together and agreed that housing is a right - and definitely not a commodity to be sold / rented / traded on. If we agree to giving up power as individuals to a representative group of people to establish infrastructure then shouldn’t shelter be one of the absolute top priorities and trade off’s for relinquishing said individual power? I think so.
However, governments across the world do not treat housing as a “right” but as a “benefit” to be accorded when possible or when necessary. When we begin to believe that each person is entitled to a house, we will not see housing for all as a “burden on the taxpayer”, freeloading or benevolence by the powerful. Importantly, it provides redressal mechanisms to the aggrieved individuals.
Enforcing housing as an individual’s right becomes a problem in a capitalist economy. A big fuck-off problem, for them, not us.
I am going to continue this train of thought over the next few days, but I just got a warning here from Substack that this email is already too long and will probably be flagged by most of your inboxes. Uff.
In any case, thank you for your time and attention, it is as always greatly appreciated. I’ll back tomorrow with another special email for the patreons of this project and everyone else on Friday.
Until then, I remain yours, without compromise,
V.
If I had to choose 1 design, that’s a difficult choice for sure but I’ve always been hyped on the “all is well . . . Your government” design.