I have a broad back, but to be described as an anarchist, a marxist, a friedmanite, a drunk, and a narcissist, all in the space of a few lines, is a little disorientating. Its also a little (just a little) depressing that you have to preface a response by inserting me into one or another of a stock of ‘activist’ stereotypes, but the ‘five finger’ reference made me chuckle. I’m sure if you were to reread the article, you’d realise that in fact I don’t refer to anything masturbatory, but to a collusive and consensual eroticism. And I’m a little confused as to what was so vain in my communication. However, I feel bound to point out that, by using that particular word as an insult, you are doing nothing to refute my observations of the moral value assigned to self–denial in the camp.

It is not a solely scientific problem. Having orbited the sun for a long time now, the planet doesn’t give a shit what we do, so the popular call to save the planet, is in actuality, a call to preserve (or create?) a climate that is conducive to human activity. And human activity is always political. Besides, were you at the same camp as me? The one that was explicit, in its introductory handbook, about its anarchistic, ideological aspirations? That being so, I don’t think its unfair of me, let alone vacuous, to report my own reactions to the event (which I’m sure, on close reading, are revealed to be quite mixed). It was an expensive event to produce, for which the “Welcome Committee” asked a £15 donation. Shake a bucket in front of someone’s face and tell him or her it’s for the cause, and that donation is to all intents and purposes an entrance fee (of the dozen or so people I entered the camp with, I was the only one to question this fee). It’s a cheap deal for a week’s camping, but with no clear declaration of how the money was being spent (and a very clear indication that the money had already been spent by an advance, administrative group, despite the DIY, anti-hierarchical rhetoric), one is taking it on trust that participation is not simply replicating worker/bureaucracy power relations, albeit in a slightly different form to the traditional theme park.

This point is even more salient given the overwhelming prominence allowed to the notion of economic austerity by the camp. I don’t begrudge the amount of money spent, quite the opposite since, I am not convinced that “less” is the only possible route that is open to us. I do, however, find it disturbing that such austerity is so deeply ingrained that it was almost as if some protagonists were play acting George Monbiot’s call, “not for more freedom, but for less”, a little too literally. (uh… that quote may not be exact, I don’t have the exact quotation to hand right now… but the gist is sympathetic)

Most of your presumptions about me are baseless: I made no mention of ‘illegal’ immigration; I demonstrated no desire for an expansion or otherwise of migration by whatever means; I don’t think I demonstrated much in the way of ‘laissez-faire’ attitude. I did imply that taking control of the production of flight, creating forms of flight that were not dependent on the mutually supporting capitalist categories of ‘work’ and ‘leisure’ might be a ‘good thing’. Certainly from my perspective this is a lot more plausible, even more desirable, than the neo-luddite fantasy of making 'planes history.

Thanks for your response though. I do concede that there are quite a few right-wingers who are arguing for our ‘freedom to work’, but I don’t think it’s a particularly huge leap to suggest that an uncontested belief in small and beautiful boundaries, in an abstemious or stringent economy is a ripe atmosphere for the nationalist Right. It was simply my mistake not to implicate the nationalist Left in that statement too.

Array

Thanks for your response, which, I have to say, I found a lot more interesting and incisive than the main piece. I guess we could quibble back and forth for ages to not much purpose about some of these points, so, other than assuring you that I didn't call you all those things you think I did, I'll limit myself to a few key questions.

To say that politics is going to be endemic to any human life now or in the future, not to mention any attempt to ensure a human future, while obviously true, is not really salient to what I was saying, which, badly expressed as it probably was, I'll try to spell out more clearly: specific ideological points of principle such as the right to free movement of individuals, valid as they are in themselves, take on a different complexion when weighted against large scale destruction of the world's habitable land mass. I'm aware of the sinister potential of statements such as this. We've all seen quite enough of 'new contexts' laying waste to old rights and it's something to watch for. But as I tried to say, I think, so far, in this arena, the concern about nationalism is a canard. Just to be clear, no one within the environmental movement, to my knowledge, has said that all travel will have to stop. Other than that, it simply hasn't come up and many of the people who might be tempted to try this on are still banging the drum of reasonable doubt about science no reputable scientists seem to doubt - rather than using that science to their own ends. Anyway, what you're suggesting almost seems to boil down to saying we can't act in accordance with that science in case it gets spun by people we don't agree with. Just because they can spin it doesn't mean the gist of it isn't true.

You're not saying you don't think it's true are you? Maybe not, but now you're pedantically obstreperous about the phrase 'saving the planet'. This is in danger of turning into one of those philosophical brain-teasers about separating an axe-head and its handle. Where's the axe? What do you have to take away for the planet to stop being the planet? Er...there goes another species. But the planet's still the planet, so not to worry.

You cite Monbiot as an advocate of straitened circumstances (something, again, I have to point out, right wingers are tending to do to). In fact, his book 'Heat' seems to be a serious attempt to address all of this without adopting a 'foetal position' (a phrase I think you used earlier). Specifically, mindful of the fact that most people are probably going to be entirely unwilling to change their lifestyles significantly, he's tried to figure out ways, based on current science, in which infrastructural changes can meet the necessary emissions targets while leaving ordinary life to go on pretty much as it is. He succeeds (provisionally, admittedly) in every area except air travel.

Your suggestions for taking over the means of air travel production remain, I must say, vague, but if they involve using planes, then I fee duty-bound to let you know: they don't involve addressing the problem of greenhouse gas emissions. I take your point about making planes history being 'unrealistic' though, since you don't say why you think this, I can't tell if it's because you know voters won't wear it or because, like some modern primitive out of Ortega y Gasset, you simply feel they're a natural phenomenon like fruit on the bushes and rain. If it's the former, all I can say is, well, yes, I'm bloody pessimistic too. Still, I don't think the moment's quite come to just throw it all up and say, what they hey, let's face the music and dance. Not that that necessarily is what you're saying. I still can't really tell.

I think you mentioned airships back there somewhere. Monbiot suggests them too. Apparently the technology's moved on and there's no risk of another Hindenburg.

But finally, what if addressing the problem really does mean straitened circumstances? First off, if having less really was the only way to do it, then you'd really only be talking about a choice between that and mass death, not just of people, but animals and plant life, including entire species. But, rather than being as po-faced as you suggest, isn't 'less' really where the discussion and the process has the potential to get interesting in a society where having 'more' is so dogmatically promoted and seems to make for such uninteresting lives? Isn't this really the launch-pad for all that playful proliferation you seem to espouse, necessity being the mother of invention?

Array

Digit,

First a few points - the namecalling which seemed to make up most of your initial post and you deny in the second, points usefully to some of the real limitations of the 'activist' mileau both you and Damian helped characterise. A space in which one is either a ... 'anarchist', 'one of those guys necking special brew' (your disgust for a working class intoxicant of choice is palpable here - i.e. this reads - people who can't afford organic lager should not consume at all), 'a Friedmanite laissez-faire monetarist', 'an art world anarchist' is a pretty conscripted one. This seems to sum-up a limit to the existing activist scene and some of the shared expectations about who is supposed to attend such events.

You seem to think the problem is 'fundamentally scientific' - that sounds pretty fundamentalist to me - you only need to look at cutting edge contemporary science's solution to the environmental crisis (described in Iain Boal's piece on the Berkeley biofuels deal [http://www.metamute.org/en/BPerkeley-Inc]) to understand where exactly your recourse to 'reasoned' science is currently leading. A major constituency of the anti-nuclear environmental movement of the 1970s were alternative businessmen/women and  looking to make a quick alter-captitalist buck from alternative energy (see Midnight Notes, Langdon Winner etc.), since their lobbies were defeated and the movement crushed by Reagan's rise to office, now the large players are simply reviving the same schemes.

So, not to nitpick any longer, I think the key problem with your criticisms and a major point which you seem to be missing is that you fail to see that the politics of scarcity originates from the right and is THE cornerstone of capitalism. You level criticisms at Damian for apparently defending working class access to cheap travel - when in fact he is defending mobility per se and attacking any limits on that hard won mobility. The right has always defended consumption for the middle and upper classes and attacked working class 'overconsumption'. This can be seen from Protestantism's turn to self-policing in response to the wave of repression following the English Revolution through to the promotion of the Temperance movement by bourgeois philanthropists in the 19th century, right down to demonizing and policing of 'overweight kids' today. The current politics of scarcity promoted by environmentalists relates more closely to the thought of Malthus, who promoted the idea that the lower classes ate and reproduced too much and caused disease and should therefore be either wiped out through withdrawal of medical treatment or sent to the colonies! But, there is if you'd care to read it a 'quantative' critique of energy scarcity  and 'peak oil' too.

Which reminds me, I was on the DLR yesterday and overheard a girl talking on her mobile phone and she seemed to get at a basic point that so many environmentalist can't see for the trees: 'You know why is it? We get all this shit about emissions taxes, recycling fines, extra tax on gas guzzling cars when here I am passing Canary Wharf and every single light on all those empty buildings is on all night!'. She just hit the nail on the head of something very obvious that Marx explained way back in the 19th century - the main consumer is industry and capital itself, not its customers!!!

Your invocation of the imminent destruction of humankind sounds strangely close to the kind of hysterical and obediant citizenry the government and our new austerity Prime Minister would like to promote - there is no time for critical thought - we have to act or die and it will be all our own fault! Iain Boal again nails this 'politics of emergency' and the climate it thrives off pretty well -

'A second note of caution, which also has to do with the politics of emergency. We live in a system that positively produces crisis and emergency and disaster. It is a system that even thrives on disaster. Naomi Klein calls it ‘disaster capitalism’; she notes it was very visible in New Orleans and now again in Iraq. Companies like Halliburton are the beneficiaries of the chaos. A profoundly undemocratic politics of emergency flows rather plausibly from the current climate of fear; it is on view every week in the US on Fox TV’s 24. As the result of a kind of ‘Jack Bauer effect’ we are invited to believe that there is no time for deliberation, only for extreme measures… now.'
http://www.metamute.org/en/BPerkeley-Inc

But there are also my own conclusions on this situation:

'From apocalyptic predictions of dramatic climate change down to fashion tips for the greening of lifestyles, we experience exactly the same ‘terrorism of conformity that underlies all the publicity of modern capitalism’.9 The trouble with this work and almost all public discussion of climate, is that rather than critically evaluating the role of this ecological threat as part of the ongoing deterioration of living standards dictated by capital in most of the world, there is a tendency to exaggerate the threat, to rationalise it as a natural fact, and thus approve and provide training for the modification of behavior urged by capitalism.'

http://www.metamute.org/en/Heavy-Opera

Sorry if I ramble, but then again I'm in no hurry. Afterall, things are certainly getting worse, but the world isn't going to end now, or tomorrow, so rather than naturalise an intolerable situation I'd like to begin to think and act against it:

'Inquire if a thing be necessary
Especially if it is common
We particularly ask you
Not on that account to find it natural
Let nothing be called natural
in an age of bloody confusion
Ordered disorder, planned caprice
And dehumanized humanity, lest all things
Be held unalterable!'

Bertolt Brecht 'The Exception and the Rule' in The Jewish Wife and Other Short Plays (English versions by Eric Bentley, New York, Grove Press, 1965)

Array

Hi Anthony and all

It's unseemly for two Mute editors to pile in in the defence of a Mute contributor so I'm going to take a different tack.

I enjoyed this discussion and the various contributions, but think it's worth adding one thing: there is, it seems increasingly likely, a global climate crisis over and above the uses and abuses made of it by an 'emergency politics', 'disaster capitalism', etc.

Indeed while capital can make money out of the disasters it currently spawns on an ever expanding scale, this is not quite its main source of value nor a sustainable - that is ever expandable - one.

I would argue, with Will Barnes (cf 'Capital Climes' in Mute or Loren Goldner's text 'Fictitious Capital for Beginners'), that capital really is engaged in a rapid burning up of futures, both through non-investment in and non-replacement of resources. Because capital is investing more heavily in behaviour modification schemes and propaganda such as discussed above, than in alternative techologies allowing not only the maintenance but expansion of mobility (here I agree with Damian - why should the majority have to constrain their movement in the name of a non-solution to an environmental crisis produced by capital?), the end of the world - or at least peak oil etc etc - is going to come sooner rather than later.

This is no argument for immediate action of the consumerist anti-consumerist kind advocated at the climate camp, however.Instead, we need immediately to argue against the malthusian morality of the current bourgeois green movement AND work out how we can assist in the overthrow of capitalism in order to enable the production of the new technologies necessary to avoid the destruction of the planet and expand social reproduction. I don't see these technologies being developed this side of communism, not even by an ascendant asian capitalist hegemon, if and when it comes to power.

Luckily most proletarians don't think like the climate campers and instead throw their rubbish out with abandon, fully aware how much they are being shat on by the powers that be who do not repair their estates or maintain their public space (except when they are about to sell it off to incoming members of the green elite), yet expect them to recycle and become 'green champions'. fuck that!

The bad news is that the working class globally are not yet in a position to impose the overthrow of capitalist relations of production. It's not enough to defend the working class against bourgeois austerity a la the climate camp (and mass  market outlets of the same bullshit), we need to find ways to help increase the chances for implementing a human-made solution to the serious problems capital has cooked up for us. This really is a scary situation and can't be shrugged off as mere ideology, unfortunately.

Ben

Array