Morning Comrades!
We are going to do something a little different today. Below you will find a text that I wrote for the comrades that support this work with their monthly fee. Aside from the discounts on BL gear they also get a more focused email once a week and I felt this one needed to be shared with everyone, one because it is important and secondly so that you see what happens behind this uncomfortable paywall.
No hot shots today but of course, a new, damn fine playlist for you from me.
Just listen to the damn thing, it’s filled with nothing but top tunes. Throw this on shuffle, share it, like it- you know what to do.
We need to have a serious discussion about the climate and ecological emergency.It's now crystal clear that there is mass misunderstanding about this crisis. Actually, that is putting it wrongly, the narrative is purposely being misdirected from what is needed to what the capitalists want. That is more accurate, and no, this isn’t the time talk about mainstream media and who owns what. At this point, the science has been extremely clear, concise and logical about what needs to happen to avert a person-made climate catastrophy that our species will, in it’s present form, not survive, let alone the billions of species we have already killed off thanks to our violently enforced, undemocratic and brutal, economic system. Again, the science is clear on what needs to happen: a radical de-growth economic system, followed after regenerative period by a zero growth, 360 degree, sustainable model of our society.
To be clear, when I say “sustainable” I am not talking about the fucking green washing your mind is being polluted with on the daily and plastic straws, but a 360 degree philosophy of sustainability, or Organic Marxism as it is being coined these days, that involves sustainability -i.e. the interaction where our species leaves more, ideally, than we take without suffering any need - on every aspect of our species interaction with oneself, the community and the understanding that we are part of an interacting ecosystem. Just to be clear. Also, this isn’t science fiction. I have 17 pages of single spaced scientific references for my the later part of my PhD on this subject. This has been scientifically explored since the mid 1970s. Just so we are clear. However, getting back into the larger idea, the climate catastrophy is willfully “misunderstood”.
Misunderstanding is a far bigger problem than no understanding. With misunderstanding, people mistakenly think they understand the problem and will not listen to any other explanation of the problem, because they mistakenly think they already understand it. There's this bizarre mistaken perception that it's just about electric cars, wind energy, heat pumps, insulating housing, and then we can carry on as normal. Again, all of this bullshit it capitalistic green washing par excellence and mf’ers like Musk are at the forefront of this bullshit.
Principally, the problem is that it is an ecological crisis, a sustainability crisis, and the climate crisis, although a critical part of it, is only a small part of the problem. The biodiversity part of the ecological crisis alone is at least as serious. Yet, none of these technological solutions to the climate crisis will in anyway address the biodiversity crisis, let alone the rest of the ecological/sustainability crisis. In fact, they are likely to make it far worse. It’s vital to remember that at best, the self-proclaimed visionary billionaire superhero’s, are copy and pasting utopian comic books from the 1940s. I mean, if the future of “mobility” still involves a car, well, sorry mate, your ideas are outdated by nearly a 100 years and again…genuine “utopian” mobility concepts have been around for longer than I have been alive. Additionally, take seeing electric vehicles as a solution. A simple switch to private electric vehicles from petrol and diesel cars, will cause a surge in demand for minerals, that will devastate natural habitat, leading to bigger biodiversity loss. You know where I am going with this.
Remember, I am just highlighting one small part of lifestyle. There are similar potentials for massive increases in air travel, general consumption and waste. The Earth is already groaning in just a minority living like this. Ecological/sustainability, means looking at the whole system, future trends. Trying to not only maintain, but to increase this high consumption lifestyle in rich countries, will see every country in the world trying to catch up. Even worse, in these rich western countries, only a relative small part of the population, lives these really high consumption lifestyles, with the less well off trying to catch up with it. If you just play this through, and ahead, with the present economic model, we are just going to see increasing consumption, and increasing impacts on biodiversity and natural habitat, in theory forever.
Of course we will never get there. You would need many Earths to support the whole world living the lifestyles of Americans now. Plus remember, Americas politicians wants Americans to get forever more prosperous. We have got a gigantic problem with consumption and energy use at present levels, without a massive increase in this in the future. Yet all I see, are all western politicians talking about increases in prosperity, and what is euphemistically called green growth (none of this type of growth can be green). This is all a lie to keep you consuming, make profit for the 1% and give these politicians a retirement fund that they hope will last until this shit show is over.
Actually, the real crisis is not the effects of this over-consumption and over-exploitation of the natural world. These are just the symptoms. The real problem are the false beliefs, the delusions that it can continue.
There are real limits to growth. Continue with this delusion of infinite growth in a finite world, and we will just eventually see the total collapse of our civilization.
I know, everyone talks about the weather and all that, but this is a necessary conversation because we are about to burn through the only habitable home we have. There are plenty of answer to not only avoid this, but how to build a egalitarian, sustainable world for everyone. The time for wanting to believe that half-measures, electric cars are a step in the right direction is over.
Yours, without compromise,
V.