The climate in crisis: This changes everything!

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This is an abridged version of a presentation given by Socialist Action (Canada) National Federal Secretary Barry Weisleder at the SA educational conference at the University of Toronto, May 22-23. The entire speech appears at www.socialistaction.org.

“This Changes Everything” is the theme of this con­ ference. But what exactly does it mean?

Firstly, there are the obvious signs of dramatic en­ vironmental change. Sea levels are rising. Oceans are warmer and more acidic. Coral reefs are dying, with serious consequences for sea life and shorelines. Gla­ ciers and Arctic sea ice are melting. More frequent and intense heat waves are occurring, along with many more incidents of extreme weather, both superhot and frigid. There are consequent droughts, loss of food sources, displacement of people, and massive fatality due to forced migration and war over scarcity.

Some folks prefer to close their eyes and sing, “Don’t worry. Be happy.” But that won’t alter the present course of climate change (95% of it is caused by hu­ man activity, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Cli­ mate Change).

The other way in which “This Changes Everything” is the way millions of people now look at the root cause of the problem—capitalism. Naomi Klein’s book de­ serves credit for being an important factor in this change. The environmental movement is certainly the biggest factor. Both have their strengths and weak­ nesses. That is what I wish to explore.

Naomi Klein’s new book, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate,” is the climax of her influ­ ential trilogy. It registers how much her perspective has changed over the last 15 years. This shift centers on both her assessment of the movement and her deeper appreciation of capitalism “as the main en­ emy.” Her book “No Logo,” which came out in 1999, exposed the manipulative and exploitative innards of consumer culture. But it mistakenly distinguished be­ tween “good” and “bad” corporations, obscuring the social system in which these companies function.

Klein’s second major book, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” chronicled how cor­ porations and capitalist states pounce on the oppor­ tunities provided by man-made or natural crises to “ram through policies that enrich a small elite.” By fo­ cussing on crises, Klein underplayed what capitalism does between crises.

“This Changes Everything” concentrates on the sys­ tem itself—and its environmental consequences. “[O] ur economic system and our planetary system are now at war,” Klein writes, “and it’s not the laws of nature that can be changed.” The significance of the book lies in Klein’s determination to demonstrate that changing our relationship to nature is insepara­ ble from changing our relationship to one other—by “transforming our economic system.”

The immediate threat to the planet means that just adding “the environment” to our list of concerns is not good enough. The sheer scale of the problem neces­ sitates a programme that confronts capitalism. We must do away with any notions, Klein asserts, that the environmental crisis can be contained and eventually rolled back through policy tinkering, technical fixes, or market-based solutions. After all, it’s silly to expect the market to solve problems it created. A far more comprehensive solution is required.

And it’s not enough to expose the woefully inad­ equate solutions of the Right. Hard questions must be asked of the environmental movement. While the movement has put the issue on the agenda and attracted many young people to the struggle, its or­ ganizational forms simply do not match what we are up against. After decades of engagement, the environ­ mental movement remains relatively marginal, capa­ ble of slowing down this or that trend, but not able to reverse and correct capitalism’s reckless trajectory.

Klein is especially critical of those sections of the movement that jumped on the “green capitalism” bandwagon in the 1970s. Like labour unions that became increasingly bureaucratic and conservative generations ago, the environmental movement, she writes, “stopped being about organizing protests and teach-ins and became about drafting laws, then suing corporations for violating them, as well as challeng­ ing governments for failing to enforce them. In rapid fashion, what had been a rabble of hippies became a movement of lawyers, lobbyists, and UN summit hop­ pers. As a result, many of the newly professionalized environmentalists came to pride themselves on being the ultimate insiders, able to wheel and deal across the political spectrum.”

Klein goes on to point out that “so long as the vic­ tories kept coming, their insider strategy seemed to be working. Then came the 1980s.” Capitalism’s turn to neo-liberalism exposed the extent to which the environmental movement had become a paper tiger, able to maneuver somewhat within the system, but without the capacity for independent, sustained mass mobilization.

Apart from the opportunism of access to resources and entry into the inner circles, what accounts for the Alik Kepliez / AP (Left) Climate justice activists march at UN-sponsored climate talks in Warsaw, Nov. 16, 2013.

betrayals of these former ideal­ ists? How big a factor was having no broader vision beyond the en­ vironment, and little or no stra­ tegic plan for truly challenging power? This is not just a question of history but a matter of strategy for today. Klein points to a part of the movement that didn’t sell out, but remained loyal to original principles. As much as Klein puts her hope in this latter group, she also admits to frustrations with key aspects of its strategic orien­ tation. She makes two overlap­ ping points.

First, there is the tendency of many in the movement to mistak­ enly identify structures per se as part of the problem. There is no going forward, however, without the development of institutions that can deal on a mass scale with resources, coordination, outreach, popular education, and make complex collective choices while keeping wayward leaders in check.

As Klein writes, “The fetish for structurelessness, the rebellion against any kind of institution­ alization, is not a luxury today’s transformational movements can afford. Despite end­ less griping, tweeting, flash mobbing, and occupying, we collectively lack many of the tools that built and sustained the transformative movements of the past.”

Second, Klein insists that the struggle against cli­ mate change cannot be won by fear alone. Fear can be paralyzing. Fear can also generate support for the short-term false options offered by green capitalism. Similarly, simply calling for a more austere lifestyle only reinforces the austerity pushed by capitalist states. The issue is not just living with “less” but living differently—and better.

Change must be about an alternative society. To the extent that some sacrifices are necessary, there must be a radical equality of sacrifice, with such steps seen as “investments” in transforming society, rather than concessions to preserve capitalism.

It is necessary to point to issues directly linked to the environment—housing, transportation, infra­ structure, meaningful jobs, collective services, public spaces, greater equality, and real democracy. Work to convince people that “climate action is the best hope for a better present, and a future far more exciting than anything else currently on offer.

Building a broad, radical, mass movement against climate change isn’t about de-emphasizing the central importance of the environmental crisis but of think­ ing about it politically and linking it to wider values. Such a movement needs to be independent of capital, and to be for the transformation of class society, to re­ place capitalism with socialist democracy.

Klein deserves credit for putting capitalism on trial. Yet she leaves too much wiggle room for capitalism to escape clear condemnation. There is already great confusion among social activists over what “anticapitalism” means. For many, it is not the capitalist system that is at issue but particular sub-categories of villains: big business, banks, foreign companies, multinationals.

Klein is contradictory on this score. She seems to say that the problem is capitalism, but she repeatedly qualifies this position by decrying “the kind of capi­ talism we now have,” “neoliberal” capitalism, “deregu­ lated” capitalism, “unfettered” capitalism, “predatory” capitalism, “extractive” capitalism, and so on. These adjectives undermine the powerful logic that the goal isn’t to create a better capitalism but to end capitalism as a social system.

It is not just that capitalism is inseparable from the (continued on page 5, in “Racism is standard for capitalist America”)