Know Your Place
Friday, October 12
Climate change is your friend
For a while I've been turning over a heretical idea in my head. It really annoys some of my environmentalist friends; though it intrigues some of them at the same time. Responses to my last post brought it up again somewhere in the recesses of my mind, so I thought I'd lay it out here, and annoy you too.It goes like this. I am an environmentalist. These days, this is a pretty meaningless claim, but I've been one since well before the days when it was fashionable to eat organic bruschetta or hire an allotment for a week or read Observer magazine articles about this season's eco-handbags. So I'm sticking with it. There are many kinds of environmentalist, though. These days, with even the Chairman of BP claiming to be 'sustainable', much of what passes for 'environmentalism' is nothing of the kind. Seven long years ago I wrote that the green movement was in danger of losing its way, precisely because it had become so popular, and it's only got worse since then.
Environmentalism used to be a radical position. In the early days, it was a mission to save the rest of the natural world from the ravages of one especially destructive and highly populous species - us. These were the days of the deep greens. My early green politics was born in the cradle of the Earth First! movement in the early 1990s. Hearing their slogan - 'no compromise in defence of Mother Earth' - still makes me want to burn down airports and tip sugar into the fuel tanks of bulldozers. Deep green politics sees the human race as simply one part of the natural order, no more or less important than the rest of it. We have a moral duty to our fellow inhabitants of the Earth, and a spiritual and practical duty to ourselves to live as part of the natural world, not to seek to divorce ourselves from it. Furthermore, deep greens have little interest in conventional political divides. The old human battle between right and left is not their business. The problem, as they see it, is not capitalism or communism, but industrialism - the overarching ideology to which most people subscribe, however they would like the cake divided.
These days, the deep greens are in retreat. The very success of environmentalism has allowed their wan cousins, the light greens, to take over the debate. The light greens believe that environmentalism is all about making human society more 'sustainable.' They're practical people. They believe that renegotiating our relationship with the rest of nature is futile and idealistic. They see humanity as 'stewards' of the planet, self-evidently its most important inhabitants. Environmentalism, for the light greens, is a utilitarian exercise. It's not about morality or beauty or philosophy; it's about clean technology, sites of special scientific interest and the acceptance of some regrettably necessary environmental degradation in the name of human progress. Most light greens see environmentalism as part of left wing politics, and believe that reforming the existing order can 'save the planet.'
You'll have guessed which side I'm on, at least in theory. In reality, life is more complex, and I'm probably a mixture of deep and light, depending on my mood and whether I need to use my computer or earn some money. We all have to live in the world. Where the heresy comes in, though, is on the topic of climate change.
Climate change, as we know, is A Bad Thing. If the planet gets too hot, everything will tip out of balance. Lots of species could die, and lots of people. Human civilisation will be turned upside down. It's a massive threat and we've got to stop it.
Being a human, and especially a human who is about to have a child, the idea of mass human death is not especially appealing. I'd quite like to stop that happening. I'd also do pretty much anything to prevent even more destruction of the natural world. Most people would agree, which is why preventing climate change is now the top priority of greens everywhere, and plenty of other people too.
But - and this is the unpopular bit - what if we're barking up the wrong tree? What if climate change, rather than being the planet's nemesis, could actually be its saviour?
From a deep green point of view, I think there's something to be said for this argument. Consider: the greatest threat to the health of the natural world is human beings. The human economy is vastly destructive. Rainforests are falling as you read this, fish stocks diminishing, soil being eroded, artificial chemicals pumped into the atmosphere, species going extinct every week. No amount of reformist 'sustainablity' is going to do much about this. There are six billion specimens of homo sapiens roaming about the place, and there will be 9 billion within a few decades. Each of these humans consumes more resources as the economy grows and wants are created to fuel that growth. Our appetites have always been enormous, and we are nowhere near sated yet.
What does climate change add to this mix? Well, it puts a very large spanner firmly in the human works. If it really kicks off it will wreck human agriculture, slow or stall the industrial economy and maybe even plunge us into a new dark age. It will, in other words, stop in its tracks the greatest threat to life on Earth.
There are several problems with this argument, of course. One is that climate change, as well as giving us a kicking, will also do the same to many other species and ecosystems. It will also cause mass human misery. On the other hand, consider what the world would look like if we were successful in stopping it. There would be no stopping us. As industrialism roared on, those ecosystems would get it in the neck anyway, just as they do every day now. And there's no more effective way to make the poor miserable than industrial capitalism.
Perhaps, then, we should all be letting climate change happen. Maybe we should be campaigning in favour of it. It's not as if, realistically, we can actually stop it in any case. If we are truly deep green, perhaps we should see it as the reckoning that humanity has long deserved, and see our desperation to stop it as a manifestation of the human ego . Or perhaps that's a bit Old Testament. Maybe it's just Gaia doing its thing. Either way, it's worth asking which will actually defend Mother Earth most effectively: saving human civilisation, or watching it go under. It's a happy thought, I know. But who said environmentalism was fun?
Posted by Paul at 8:38 AM 
8 Comments
The huge problem you overlook (or implicitly accept) is that climate change will have a massively differentiated impact on the world. Whilst we in Britain may actually experience an improvement in crop yields and weather patterns-certainly in the short term- sub-Saharan Africa won't be looking so rosy. It is those people perched on the threshold of survival at present whose future is most bleak. Now if we assume that overpopulation is the one problem, then maybe their deaths will be the solution. Similarly one might argue that this AIDs thing is pretty good after all. It not only kills millions of pesky humans, but it kills those ones who are particularly unproductive i.e. Sub-Saharan Africa.
The Industrialised West, that which you seem so keen to see dismantled will be relatively untroubled by catastrophic climate change. In fact, such an outcome may further exacerbate the problem. Those hugely productive economies, built on fossil fuels, can sustain themselves through the bad times, whilst other more precarious societies will collapse into resource wars and forced migration.
On the other hand, you suggest that should humanity solve this problem, we would actually be in a less desirable position. Of course this rests on the incredibly bizarre notion that economic activity is somehow a bad thing, one which has been a net negative to the poor of industrialised countries (I'm not sure even Marx would be with you on that one!). It also implies that *even* if we can reorder society to reduce our carbon emissions by over 80% on 1990 levels (what it will probably take to 'solve' the problem), the world will still be worse off. This is despite the fact that humanity will have achieved its single greatest act of cooperation and coordination, to radically transform the societies of all industrialised economies, to break the oil dependency before it runs out, to recognise the differentiated responsibilities of counties based on historical actions, to construct and follow through on the single most ambitious multilateral agreement humanity may even attempt. all this, and *still* you think we would worse off than otherwise should we achieve it.
i salute your pessimism though i worry about worldview.
Posted by: 
at 4:06 PM
Good points JimBob. Remember this is only a vaguely thought-through thesis and not my next book project, so I'm more than happy to accept that it may be utterly wrong. Here are some random observations on your points:
1. Certainly industrialism had reduced or removed a lot of very horrible human poverty. But it has also created a lot of it - urban slums, for example. It has also destroyed, and continues to destroy, indigenous people and rural communities the world over. Since Marx thought the inhabitants of such places were 'mired in rural idiocy' he'd have been happy with that, but we always need to remember how ruthless this system is with those who are not useful to it.
2. The point about inequality is well-taken. I'm not sure the industrial economy is as resilient as you seem to think, but we won't find out until it's tested. But yes, as usual it's the poor whop will be hit hardest.
3. I note you've only talked about humans which, since my post was largely about deep ecology, is interesting. If you believe that other forms of life are as valuable as the species of ground ape to which we both belong, the scenario looks different. My point was that the human industrial economy is destroying the natural world. Save it from destruction or destabilisation (via climate change) and it will continue to be. Indeed, the very act of stopping climate change will make things worse (the Amazon is already being burned and replaced with fields of biofuel crops). It's a nasty thought for a human, but one that deserves to be examined: what if stopping us in our tracks is the only way to 'save the planet'?
Hi Paul,
I was spurred on by this to write my own thoughts on the subject
http://earthquakecove.blogspot.com/2007/10/science-and-misanthropy.html
too long for just a comment...
Hi Paul, your musings are somewhere near the same lines as mine. Ok, so human induced climate change will wipe out other species as well as us, but, once we're gone evolution will take its own merry course. In a few million years time the earth will have a whole new array of diverse ecosystems - with no humans to trash them. Global warming is the planet experiencing a fever - just like we do when we get ill. The point of a raised temperature is to make the body an unpleasant environment for an infectious organism - like humans.
Posted by: at 6:18 PM
Climate change + Peak Oil + all the other nasty stuff we do + 6 billion of us (and increasing) = we're fucked
We depend on ghost acres in other countries, and with the energy crisis deepening those acres are not only supposed to grow food but also fuel crops. I don't see how anyone is going to escape the effects, even if we in Britain should end up with ideal growing conditions. It's payback time.
Oh, and those new light greens? I coined a name for them "nuvoux verde" (not sure of French spelling though), they flaunt their shallow green-nes, and carry it on their sleeve. Madonna's closing words at the Climate Aid concert nearly had me puke. If only she and her likes actually meant half of what they say.
Ah, enough spleen vented. Paul, thanks for your courage.
Posted by: judyofthewoods at 9:09 PM
hi there.
I went through a similar thing to you paul, after reading derrick jensen. Before then i had an intuition of the problem, and would probably have classed my self as deep green - but one that is also inspired by figures like Judi Bari - who explicitly made links between deep ecology and social justice and workers movements. She did this in opposition to the idea that we need to move beyond the definitions of left and right. That is because we can ignore these definitions as much as we like - but whilst they are still the dominant forces in the world i.e the conditions and nature of work, ignoring them doesn't make them go away.
The more i thought about it the more derrick jensen books (admittedly beautiful and well written), the more the idea of human beings as a virus,and industrialisation as being the core of the problem, the more i realised that, for me, in these especially tricky times, these ideas obscure and divert energy for real change - and may give a green light to horrendous authoritarian changes in society , changes which due to the nature of capital won't actually solve the core issues causing climate change - just drastically reduce the quality of life for the vast majority of humans (and plants and animals.)
So for me, whilst remaining inspired on some levels y these ideas , i prefer to look at other sources that that for me define tangible reasons for these problems rather than the rather vague terms 'industrialistion' and 'humans' . If 'everyone' is to blame then 'no one' is to blame.
Rather than hog this comment anymore i would suggest checking out the fantastic book 'Defending the Earth' by Dave Foreman and Murray Bookchin - a conversation between ecologists that come from both a 'deep' and 'social' perspectives.
