How much can we “safely” pollute our environment? How many fossil fuels can we burn? How much of a poisonous substance does not threaten our health? That our knowledge has limitations does not mean we shouldn’t exaggerate the ecological threat. On the contrary, we should be even more careful about it, given that the situation is extremely unpredictable. The recent uncertainties about global warming signal not that things are not too serious, but that they are even more chaotic than we thought, and that natural and social factors are inextricably linked.

photo by Hendrik Speck (Flickr CC)

The above quote is by Lacanian philosopher and Slovenian Marxist superstar (if there can be such a thing) Slavoj Zizek, from his article ‘Joe Public v the volcano’, which first appeared on April 29^th in the New Statesmen.

Zizek is writing about how a normal, periodic volcanic event, of the type that has taken place on Earth since the birth of the planet, can disrupt an entire continent’s economy, cause panic, etc. – all due to our dependence on advanced technologies whose purposes are to liberate us from nature. Yet, paradoxically, as Zizek points out, ‘a century ago, such an eruption would have passed almost unnoticed’.

Here is an excerpt from the film ‘Examined Life’ in which Zizek, in typical philosopher’s fashion, turns environmentalism’s trappings on their heads. Love trash, love decay – because it’s real and it’s the only thing that’s going to inspire people to be aware of the planet’s true ecological state. Pictures of beautiful healthy wildlife in natural settings only serve to reassure us that everything is OK.

Never mind that ecology and environmentalist ideologies are open to minute deconstruction by their critics, because we will always fail to live up to our ideals. Ideals by their very definition are perfect and therefore impossible to live up to, whoever you are.

I like Zizek’s points on this matter possibly because I am an environmentalist who is fascinated by technology, dystopia, history and the modern world, in all its gory detail. Idealism is always false, always an illusion – not a solution to practical problems that require science and realism to understand and confront.

We don’t need to believe in ideals, we need to face reality.

photo by Luther Blisset (Karen Eliot on Flickr Creative Commons)

Cap and trade or emissions trading schemes can be confusing. They have been touted as the chief market-based solution for limiting greenhouse gas emissions, preserving valuable natural resources like forests, while making money for rich and poor countries alike.

The far right and climate change skeptics hate them for obvious – and sometimes less obvious – reasons: they hate government meddling in the free market and regulating business and industry to the point that they believe in a vast ‘socialist’ conspiracy involving all prominent climate scientists. Or is it just a simple question of which class and which industries will make less money and pay more taxes and which are getting subsidies rather that the fact that subsidies exist at all?

But carbon trading schemes have also come under fire from serious environmentalists and those in favor of social justice, who are skeptical of their efficacy or about who ultimately profits from such emissions markets.

In the run-up to Copenhagen, Naomi Klein made her point against carbon trading quite clearly in an article penned for The Nation:

Climate-justice activists in Copenhagen will argue that, far from solving the climate crisis, carbon-trading represents an unprecedented privatization of the atmosphere, and that offsets and sinks threaten to become a resource grab of colonial proportions. Not only will these “market-based solutions” fail to solve the climate crisis, but this failure will dramatically deepen poverty and inequality, because the poorest and most vulnerable people are the primary victims of climate change—as well as the primary guinea pigs for these emissions-trading schemes.

Well, to the mixed satisfaction of all, cap and trade is waxing and waning in different parts of the world. The Obama-backed climate bill recently got shot down in the US Congress and there are doubts that any comprehensive carbon trading scheme will emerge in that country any time soon. China, on the other hand, is set to begin domestic carbon trading plans next year.

Europe already has the ECX (European Climate Exchange) whose website recently got hacked by some eco cyberwarriors called Decodcidio, part of the more direct-action oriented environmentalist group Earth First.

From a report in the Guardian:

Explaining the “carbon trade scam”, the spoof site decried how the EU’s flagship environmental policy is “susceptible to corporate lobbying,” offers industry “licences to pollute so they can continue business-as-usual,” and “generates outrageous profits for big industry polluters, investors in fraudulent offset projects [and] opportunist traders.”

You can view the spoof page here, which includes an embedded video of Annie Leonard’s ‘The Story of Cap and Trade’, which is alone worth a quick visit.

Graham Land

Additional resources:

Thomas Friedman – The news is we will regret messing with Mother Nature

Sandbag – China to introduce carbon market for power sector by 2011?

I guess a hexayurt wouldn't hurt; photo by bartt (source: Flickr Creative Commons)

A few days ago I wrote a bit about the Dark Mountain Project, a sort of post-environmentalist survivalist ideology with a lot of poetry thrown in. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand DM seem appealingly realist and anti-system. Yet at the same time it’s a prematurely pessimistic ‘the worst case scenario has already arrived’ kind of philosophy.

The thing is, for the overwhelming majority of environmentalists, greens, etc. the fight is far from over. George Monbiot – who will be attending Uncivilization: the Dark Mountain Festival at the end of the month – clearly hasn’t given up. In fact, he’s staunchly critical of Dark Mountain’s rejection of environmentalism, though at least partly sympathetic to their loss of faith in our political processes and the environmental movement in general. There is a fair bit of debate in the comment section of between Monbiot and Dark Mountain founder Paul Kingsnorth in Monbiot’s opinion piece in Monday’s Guardian.

Like all cultures, industrial civilisation will collapse at some point. Resource depletion and climate change are likely causes. But I don’t believe it will happen soon: not in this century, perhaps not even in the next. If it continues to rely on economic growth, if it doesn’t reduce its reliance on primary resources, our civilisation will tank the biosphere before it goes down. To sit back and wait for what the Dark Mountain people believe will be civilisation’s imminent collapse, without trying to change the way it operates, is to conspire in the destruction of everything greens are supposed to value.

–George Monbiot

As I stated before, I’m kind of excited by Dark Mountain’s honest pessimism, though I don’t really get the point of why they’re doing whatever it is they are in fact doing, especially at this crucial time when we might still have a chance. At the same time, though I’m not attracted to fanaticism, DM sure gets my imagination going. After all I love a good dystopia, although I prefer ones that I can at least imagine myself living in.

Of course, this isn’t a fantastical science fiction book or film. This is real life. I don’t really fancy living in a hexayurt, foraging for edible berries and dandelion greens or worrying about where my next drink of non disease-ridden water is going to come from. Then again, I’ve never really tried. However, I think I’d rather stay on this sinking ship, fight the fight – or write about it, as the case may be – and if need be abandon it along with the rats. At least I’ll stick around until Monbiot starts doing up his life jacket.

by Graham Land

Additional resources:

Dark Mountain Project Manifesto

photo by Cian O'Donovan (source: Flickr Creative Commons)

Sweeping away years of Bush intransigence, the arrival of Barack Obama in the Whitehouse has given new life to action on climate change. Unfortunately, however, many of the political difficulties that previously shaped the US position remain very much in place.

–Tony Juniper

In a piece for the British Independent entitled ‘Review of the Year 2009: Climate change – The heat of the moment’, Tony Juniper, a well known U.K. environmentalist and General Election candidate for the Green Party, sums up the year in environmental terms. Juniper names COP15/Copenhagen, the loss of the honeybees (aka Colony Collapse Disorder) the reentry of disappearing rainforests into the public consciousness, vegetarianism as environmentalism and the concept of ‘natural capital’ as events or features that gave 2009 a climate change theme. The so-called climate ‘sceptics’ – or ‘skeptics’ if you butter your bread on the other side of the Atlantic – even get a mention, though he considers the Climatic Research Unit email leak at the University of East Anglia to be a last ditch effort of a vociferous few, which had little, if any effect on the Copenhagen climate summit.

Since Tony Juniper is a politician as well as an environmentalist, it makes sense that he is thinking and communicating in political terms ¬– and that his overall message is positive and hopeful:

I hope 2010 will see an intensified discussion about the kind of economics system we need to survive and thrive in the 21st century. 2010 might also see a stronger focus on the need to protect other ecosystems services. An international summit of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in the second half of the year should be a major focal point

–Tony Juniper

by Graham Land

Additional resources:

Tonyjuniper.com

The Prince’s Rainforest’s Project