Jim \ Chris
I'm afraid I can't support your positions. Rather, I think that your
statements precisely support my contention that climate change is the cipher
through which many seek the vindication of their own ideological positions.
Chris, you accept a priori the idea of modernity\capitalism\industrial
society as a total system, authenticity is located outside that totality
(presumably you are going to run into some difficulties, a la Debord,
exactly where the totality ends and authenticity begins) and anything other
than authentic opposition to the totality acts as a recuperative mechanism
to domesticate the challenge to the totality. I take it therefore that from
your position anything other than a commitment to some kind of primitivist
revolution is recuperation - ergo there's no point talking mitigation
strategies, they are themselves part of the totality. There is surely a
conceptual flaw in your logic however. If the 'apolitical' climate change
groups serve to recuperate any challenge to the system so it can carry on
functioning with business as usual then the system is bound to collapse due
to climate change inaugurating the dispensation of its other - authentic
primitivist experience. Doesn't your logic imply that climate change is not
the problem, it is the solution? I'm interested also in how you define
"apolitical" - I'm involved in various climate change groups from the
mainstream to the fringe - all are engaged in the sphere conventionally
known as the political. Given that 'the political' is a sphere defined
within and by modernity wouldn't it in fact be the case that your enemy is
politics and for your opposition, to be authentic, would have to be
apolitical (I expect you've read Zerzan and the Fifth Estate lot- this is
where they end up).
Jim, what you describe is simply a late modern variant of the teleological
understanding of history, where you place 'consciousness' or 'values' in the
position previously occupied by God. That SoW's 'Principles' makes reference
to St Paul's Letter to the Corinthians supports the obvious suspicion that
you believe in Providence. In my understanding 'providence' is the
domestication of the great Semitic apocalyptic narrative, conducted by the
early Church in order to contain the threat to the political and social
order posed by the apocalyptic by inaugerating the endless deferral of
history. (Chris, I'd argue this is the origin of your totality and
authenticity too).
Whilst I suspect we share a set of personal ethics I think what you propose
regarding climate change and history is extremely dangerous. Firstly, unless
this is just a slip of tense you imply climate change is both somehow
pre-ordained and the necessary precursor of some cultural and ontological
transformation. This is a conventional trope - seen in as various historical
phenomena as Europeans gleefully welcoming the onset of the First World War
for its transformational potential, Christians welcoming all manner of
plague, wild weather and disaster as the onset of the end times, arguably
even a vulgar Marxist notion of the necessity of violent revolution. I'm not
implying you support any of these things merely that this is well worn
historical ground and that this form of thought militates against genuine
praxis (the crisis is required for transformation - as transformation is the
essence of history the crisis is predetermined by the movement of history
itself) and subordinates genuine analysis of events to an a priori
framework.
You say in one breath outcomes will escape our plans and change will not be
predicted by our ideologies (I couldn't agree more) whilst in another your
belief that the outcome will be a transformation of 'consciousness' and that
change follows some cosmic 500 year cycle (why the Renaissance, why not the
Enlightment? why Europe not China?) Do you really want to deny the
magisterial contingency of history with a new age version of Albrecht of
Fiore? Its all been done so many times before I'm afraid.
You seem to confuse the unknowability of the future with the possibility of
rationally planning outcomes. I can plan to go to work but I might get run
over by a bus on the way there. The fact that I might get run over by a bus
doesn't mean that I can't plan to go to work, it simply means that the world
imposes unforeseen limits upon my plans. Furthermore if I don't plan to go
to work, in the sense of getting up, getting dressed, catching the bus I
won't get to work.
How can it be 'not useful' to identify a group for sharing neoliberal
discourse if my question is 'How should we approach the critique of
neoliberalism within the context of the constraint of the time frame needed
to impact climate change?'
SoW's website states:
"As to no amount of technique, strategy, change in political structure or
reasoning achieving anything without deep and loving caring..."
"No political or economic strategies and 'solutions' will have any effect
unless they are founded on caring and compassion. We need to celebrate and
cherish our World's beauty, diversity and radiance."
These statements are at best tautologies surely - 'achieving world wide
compassion can only be achieved with compassion'. I think SoW's position is
a version of "There will be no resurrection for those who don't believe in
the resurrection" (to go back to St Paul). Look at that second statement
again - no effect without a foundation on caring and compassion. The
greatest drop in greenhouse gas emissions achieved over the last twenty
years was caused by the industrial collapse of the Soviet Union - where's
the compassion there? I don't mean to be offensive, I share the desire for
a culture that values compassion - I just don't think that desire equates to
a necessity. We need mitigation strategies fast and my point is we need to
transcend our ideological preconceptions, not use climate change as a
vehicle for them.
I share your value on compassion, beauty and diversity - however I do not
share your belief that your notion of personal redemption can be writ large
onto the historical drama of climate change, nor that climate change is a
predetermined narrative element in a redemptive history.
It is all too easy to see climate change as the vindication of a world view
in which an alienated humanity gets either its just deserts, or the
redemptive possibility of transformation to authentic being. It is all too
easy to subordinate the difficult task of thinking how to approach the
crisis to one's own ideological or religious preconceptions as to what to
oppose, how to behave. The atmosphere knows neither compassion nor
capitalism, only physics and chemistry.
best regards,
Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: SoW Net [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 18 February 2007 13:59
To: Dan Welch; [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Running a Temperature - an action plan for the eco-crisis
Dear Dan and anyone else,
A number of world thinkers (e.g. Neale Donald Walsch & Deepak Chopra),
whom I find persuasive, consider that climate change is at the forefront of
a series of apparently insuperable crises which have to occur ahead of
socio-economic/cultural/philosophical transformation - in consciousness and
in values. Neale Walsch specifically calls it 500 year interval jump-time,
last occurring at the time of the Renaissance, though at a smaller scale,
since that mainly affected Europe. This is why we, in SoW, are promoting a
New Movement for Survival at this time, and have created a new domain name
to serve it. See link below.
I suggest that all of our thinking needs to move away from concentrating
upon rationally determined outcomes and 'realistic' options, for change will
be far more profound and un-predictable than currently conceived ideological
alternatives can handle. I maintain it is not useful to group 'many
environmentalists (as) united around an essentially neoliberal response to
climate change', for they/we are hugely varied in in our responses.
Best wishes from Jim Scott
Sign up on-line to
VALUE LIFE ITSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE !!! - OR RISK LOSING IT ALTOGETHER
and support the
NEW MOVEMENT FOR SURVIVAL
www.m-4-s.net & www.save-our-world.net
----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Welch
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, February 02, 2007 3:58 PM
Subject: Re: Running a Temperature - an action plan for the eco-crisis
Does substantial mitigation of climate change, absent global economic
collapse, presuppose social revolution? Is a global economic collapse
resulting from oil and gas depletion the most likely scenario for
substantial mitigation of climate change?
I find it difficult to articulate my political desires (for systemic
socio-economic transformation) with the foreshortened timescale we are
presented with within which to substantially mitigate climate change. I am
wary that climate change can become the vehicle for political desires (my
own included) such that realistic options may be rejected on ideological
grounds - or to put it another way that the profound potential for climate
change to act a vehicle for social transformation becomes an ideologically
driven focus above and beyond the objective conditions of climate change.
An illustration of the problem.
Carbon Trading A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation
and Power edited by Larry Lohmann, makes the case convincingly that the UN,
governments, academics and many environmentalists are united around an
essentially neoliberal response to climate change in which the Northern
elite is manoeuvring to defend its power over the global atmospheric commons
and thus contain the threat of the radical transformation of scion-economic
forces potential in the problem of climate change. I agree with this
reading. A central plank of the 'technological fix' element of this
neoliberal discourse is carbon capture and sequestration. We see the US
Department of Energy teaming up with oil majors to fund research in this
area - thus rather than seeking to reduce and replace fossil fuel use a
prominent proposed 'fix' to the climate change problem is actually an
enabler of increasing fossil fuel use - a "little tested and hazardous
techno-fix". Aren't techno-fixes a perpetuation of the thinking that got us
to where we are? Shouldn't we oppose such funding for research into
sequestration projects as dangerous business-as-usual? Shouldn't we oppose
the construction of coal power stations per se, even those employing 'clean
coal technology'?
China is expected to construct the generating equivalent of 150 new
1000mw coal plants by 2010, a further 168 by 2020, with lifetime emissions
of 25bn tons of carbon. This is within the limit of the timeframe we have to
mitigate catastrophic climate change. These are conventional coal-fire
plants with which, for technical reasons, carbon capture and sequestration
are not possible. The International Energy Agency projects that China will
become the world’s largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in 2009,
overtaking the United States nearly a decade earlier than previously
anticipated. Coal is expected to be responsible for three-quarters of that
carbon dioxide. China has 13% of the world's coal reserves. It is
increasingly dependent on imported oil. In the event of a oil importation
supply crunch China would undoubtedly ratchet up its already ambitious
program of producing synthetic oil from coal (it's current program aims to
produce 10% of national requirements by 2020). For those of us who expect an
earlier rather than a later supply crisis in world oil reserves, it is well
before 2020, thus China may increase its use of coal above current
projections.
Coal gasification plants produce cleaner power with emissions comparable
to natural gas and potentially can use capture and storage technology. They
cost about 10% to 20% more per megawatt than old style coal-fired power
plants (see www.thepeakist.com/chinas-coal-future/). Estimates for including
carbon capture and storage technology are in the region of 40% more. Before
the break up of the Chinese State Power Corporation in 2002 into
quasi-private corporations China was set to develop cleaner coal technology.
Now subject to market forces, in the absence of an imposed cost for carbon
and\or the reduction of the price gasification and storage technology to
market competitive levels the 218 proposed plants will not be amenable to
reduced carbon emissions through technological means during their operating
lifetimes. David Hawkins points out (Kolbert 2006) that contrary to the
argument for US inaction in the face of the China's enormous emissions
growth the US should forge ahead technologically and with a regulatory
framework because history shows that where America goes China will follow.
This is because, firstly, the conditions motivating regulation are
objective - urban pollution from car exhausts, or sulphur dioxide pollution
from power plants for example - China is now regulating for these just as
the US previously did. On a practical level US R&D and market economies of
scale both drive the price of the technology down (sulphur dioxide scrubbers
today, coal gasification and carbon capture technology tomorrow) and China
can regulate in the knowledge of an existing tried and tested technological
solution. No new coal fired plants have been built in the US for some time,
but new plants are on the horizon (the Pentagon is also funding the
development of coal-to-liquid fuel technology as it intends the US military
to free itself from dependence on imported oil
http://www.thepeakist.com/pentagon-announce-plan-to-secure-fuel-for-us-war-m
achine/). David Hawkins argues the US should regulate so that no new plants
should be allowed except those that employ carbon capture technology,
therefore kick-starting Chinese use of the technology within a time frame to
impact on the 13 coming years of coal plant development and reduce emissions
from them within the timeframe for action on claimte change.
I ask again, shouldn't we oppose funding for research into sequestration
projects as dangerous business-as-usual? Shouldn't we oppose the
construction of coal power stations per se, even those employing 'clean coal
technology'?
To head off a couple of points, I am fully aware of the technological
uncertainties and potential dangers of sequestration. Chinese geologists
have given a preliminary estimation of storage space in oil fields and
aquifers for more than a trillion tons of carbon dioxide–more than China
could emit at their current rate for hundreds of years. I don't think anyone
would suggest that it is realistic to think 218,000 mw capacity could be
provided by renewables in China over the next 13 years.
The possible scenarios it seems to me are 1) status quo, the capacity is
provided by dirty coal plants 2) capacity provided by clean coal plants with
the potential for sequestration 3) the capacity is not built due to economic
collapse, either apocalyptic, in which case emissions drop, or not, in which
case lack of investment is likely to mean the existing capacity carries on
emitting beyond its currently assumed lifetime.
I look forward to your thoughts.
Dan Welch
-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Chris
Sent: 01 February 2007 16:01
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Running a Temperature - an action plan for the eco-crisis
Hi Boris
Ok, the technology thing - it isn't anything I can cover off quickly,
and so I don't know if it would be right of me to use this list to start
expounding my beliefs. Perhaps we can discuss it elsewhere. But, for this
episode at least, I have started, so I'll finish, with apologies to all
uninterested parties.
My feelings about this are simply that - thoughts and impressions, not
a dogmatic blueprint for 'how it should be'. However, I think industrial
technology is not only life threatening in the longer term, but that it also
leads to what Habermass has described as a 'maimed and truncated existence'.
My PhD is concerned with the ideas of a 'safe limit' to warming, a
critique of the idea that climate change is, like everything else in the
world, amenable to control through a range of industrial management
techniques. "X amount of CO2 = X amount of warming = X amount of danger" is
the equation underpinning every response to climate change I have
encountered to date and such an approach seems predicated on the desire to
maintain the dominance of technology, science and capital. And yet if
anything would require a truly revolutionary response, I would have thought
climate change would be it.
So, over to you Boris (and the use of 'you' does not indicate any ad
hominen element to this) - how does one increase automation ( an idea I saw
on your website as part of the solution to our current predicament) without
reproducing the current order? After all, I would have thought people must
be educated, shaped, trained and disciplined to ensure maintenance of the
machines, hierarchies kept in place, timetables kept to etc - which all
seems pretty similar to the current state of affairs.
Best
Chris
From: Boris Kelly-Gerreyn
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007 12:21 PM
Subject: Re: Running a Temperature - an action plan for the
eco-crisis
Hi Chris
thanks very much for your nice e-mail. And thanks for the support.
I am interested though in why you are suspicious of the role of
technology. I am aware that you have posted on this in the past but I'm not
sure whether I fully understood your particular angle. I suppose one
question might be about what you define as technology... a simple tool such
as a hammer or are you thinking more industrially e.g. robotic arms in an
assembly plant, transport etc. Is the issue to do with technology as a
distraction/hindrance to human existence and fulfilment or is there
something I am missing?
Maybe we should discuss this offline but I hope this may be useful
for others to know too, assuming they don't already.
Cheers Boris
At 11:50 01/02/2007, you wrote:
Hi Boris
I apologise unreservedly for any ad hominen elements in my reply -
I try and always maintain conviviality in such discussions and I failed in
that instance.
I was very impressed with your site and indeed before posting my
message had already ordered a copy of the book - I am totally committed to
supporting all responses to this problem which are predicated on a degree of
political consciousness. I guess perhaps that was why I got a bit carried
away when I saw the statement about increased automation being a route to
human emancipation - I was disappointed to come a cross a statement which
seems to assume a maintenance of the industrial order as part of the
solution. I am coming to this from a sort of Frankfurt school critique of
the enlightenment project and thus am suspicious of how technology can have
any role in the creation of an authentic existence.
Anyway, I look forward to receiving the book and keep up the good
work.
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: Boris Kelly-Gerreyn
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 3:07 PM
Subject: Re: Running a Temperature - an action plan for the
eco-crisis
hi Chris
I'm not sure what you mean by old school (ad hominem possibly?
or what you base your statement regarding automation on. However, an
'authentic' human existence will be ushered in not on the back of automation
but on the back of social and political change. It's not about technology
it's about social (and therefore cultural political economic etc) relations.
The work of AWTW is to try and bring this change about. As such they provide
political/economic analysis on the problems we face (whether they be
climate, pensions, health etc) and come up with action plans... I myself
find it very hard to disagree with their action plan for the eco-crisis we
face... try and get a copy of running a temperature and see what you think
(incidentally, it promotes among other things, contraction and convergence)
Cheers
Boris
At 12:55 31/01/2007, you wrote:
I see that on the AWTW website that this is a strictly old
skool marxist approach to the problem, predicated on the belief that an
authentic human existence will be ushered in on the back of increased
automation of industrial processes. I can understand H.G Wells or Issac
Asimov proposing such an idea but, in all seriousness, how could anyone
today be proposing salvation through robots?
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: Boris Kelly-Gerreyn
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 10:03 AM
Subject: Running a Temperature - an action plan for the
eco-crisis
Dear Forum, A prescription I hope you may read, follow and
pass on... Cheers Boris
Running a Temperature – an action plan for the eco-crisis
Buy your copy now!
This 64-page guide to climate chaos just published
provides you with analysis as well as solutions that you won’t find anywhere
else. Running a Temperature proves the direct link between corporate-driven
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too late. Written by Penny Cole and Philip Wade, it is published by A World
to Win through Lupus Books.
How to purchase your copy
Running a Temperature costs only £3.00 plus postage. You
can buy online by going to www.aworldtowin.net and following the links to
the RBS-WorldPay secure system.
Or send a cheque for £3.65 (made out to AWTW) to AWTW, PO
Box 942, London SW1V 2AR.
What other say about Running a Temperature:
“That capitalism and climate change are inextricably
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“A World To Win has produced a rational and workable
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homemaker
“Running a Temperature makes it very clear that there is
no time to lose. To dwell on a market-led solution to this crisis is to
continue to waste precious time and ignores the very real opportunity that
must be recognised if we are to empower ourselves.”
Anita Ceravolo TGWU organiser (personal capacity)
Dr. Boris Kelly-Gerreyn
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Ocean Biogeochemistry & Ecosystems
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National Oceanography Centre, Southampton
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NERC as
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Ocean Biogeochemistry & Ecosystems
National Oceanography Centre, Southampton
Waterfront Campus, European Way
Southampton, SO14 3ZH, UK
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Sec : +44 (0) 2380 596015
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This e-mail (and any attachments) is confidential and intended
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are
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contained
in this e-mail and any reply you make may be disclosed unless it is
legally
exempt from disclosure. Any material supplied to NOCS may be stored
in the
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NERC as
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