social ecology

By Sam Gindin - Jacobin, December 30, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Naomi Klein is a longtime movement and media icon, a gifted synthesizer and popularizer who, over the past two decades, has been a leading chronicler of anti-corporate, anti-globalization, and anti-capitalist social movements (a series of “anti”s that undeniably needs some unpacking).

Who else on the Left gets a sympathetic interview on the evening news of Canada’s publicly owned television broadcaster before the release of her latest book? And who else, as a preview of that book, is immediately given a chance to explain to a national audience why, from the perspective of the environment, capitalism is “the main enemy?”

Klein’s writings and talks have provided “the movement” with needed context and coherence, and served as a conduit and catalyst for discussions, contributing to its recruitment and growth. Her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, is the climax of her highly influential trilogy and also registers how much her perspective has changed over the last fifteen years.

This shift centers on both her assessment of the movement — more than ever before, Klein expresses frustrations with the movement she is part of and still sees as fundamental to social change — and her deeper appreciation of capitalism “as the main enemy.” On this latter point, her earlier criticisms of particular aspects of capitalism have now expanded into suggesting — or at least coming very close to suggesting — that capitalism has become the central barrier to human survival and progress.

Klein’s trilogy began with No Logo, which came out in 1999 and exposed the manipulative and exploitative underbelly of consumer culture. Fortuitously published amid the Battle of Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization and later branded the “bible of the anti-globalization movement,” No Logo built on the moral crusade across university campuses against the corporate use of sweatshop labor for that culture. But it mistakenly separated supposedly “good” and “bad” corporations, obscuring the larger social system in which these companies lived and acted.

Klein’s second major book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism also arrived at a propitious moment: in 2007, just before the financial implosion and the most dramatic economic crisis since the Great Depression. This time Klein chronicled how corporations and capitalist states pounce on the opportunities provided by man-made or natural crises to “ram through policies that enrich a small elite.” In this case, though, the focus on crises underplayed what capitalism does between crises.

Again displaying a penchant for well-timed releases, Klein’s This Changes Everything reached bookstores two days before October’s massive Climate March in New York City. Here it is no longer capitalism’s bad apples that are the focus, nor capitalism’s ability to use crises against us, but the organizing principles of the system itself — and the environmental consequences that follow. “[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.”

In characteristically accessible language, Klein summarizes the alarming scientific consensus on climate change. But the significance of This Changes Everything doesn’t lie in Klein’s detailed and passionate description of the urgency of the environmental crisis. Rather, its importance lies in Klein’s determination to demonstrate that changing our relationship to nature is inseparable from changing our relationship to each other — by “transforming our economic system” (I’ll return later to ambiguities in how this is interpreted).

The immediate threat to the earth “changes everything” in the sense that just adding “the environment” to our list of concerns is not good enough.

The sheer scale of the problem necessitates a politics that can take on capitalism. We must do away with any notions, Klein asserts, that the environmental crisis can be contained and eventually rolled back through policy tinkering (though addressing symptoms is necessary); technical fixes (though sensible technological advances should be vigorously pursued); or market-based solutions (no qualification necessary — it’s silly to expect the market to solve problems it was instrumental in creating). Something far more comprehensive is required.

By some ZADistas - Constellations, 2015

In the Autumn of 2015 the government once again announced that the building of the airport of Notre-Dame-des-Landes was about to begin. Since then they have been repeating their intention to evict those who live and farm together from the zad . With the combined force of the gendarme’s gas grenades and Vinci’s bulldozer’s, they want to try to finally get done with everything that is alive and thriving in the bocage “as soon as possible”.

Faced with this renewed threat, this text is a call to defend the zad everywhere, and the contagious hope it contains in these arid times. The zad as a conviction that it is possible to stop destructive projects fostered on us by those who claim to govern us. The zad as a space where different ways of inhabiting this world - fully and generously - are invented in the here and now. It is a hope rooted in histories we hold in common, enriched by the momentum of tens of thousands of rebels and relationships woven thick by time. The words that follow evoke certain decisive fragments of this adventure, they are like blazing bearings for the future.

Download PDF Here.

By Flint Jones - December 2, 2014

In 2010, I was part of a workshop at the Renewing the Anarchist Tradition conference in Baltimore, MD.  Also on the panel were Michael Loadenthal and Chris Spannos. The panel was givein these questions:

• What types of nonhierarchical organizational forms are applicable to the environmental movement as well as up to the challenge of contesting and ultimately offering a dual power to those forces that are destroying the planet and separating humans from the nonhuman world? 
• How would a society based on anarchist principles resolve the ecological problems inherent in various aspects of the current system, from transportation to the food supply to energy production?

My answers, I think, still hold up: One thing that environmental movement has been successful at is atleast temporarily halting some kinds of ecological destruction;whether it’s stopping construction of a lumber mill or a nuclear power plant.  Unfortunately, many of these campaigns are quite localized andexamples of “Not In My Backyard” environmentalism.   Ecological destruction can then often relocate to a location in which thepolitical climate is more open to natural exploitation.  WhileNIMBYism might work in a limited matter in terms of conservation ofsome relatively underexploited bit of wilderness--it doesn’t matter where coal is being burned for it to effect global warming and climate change.  Stopping a particular environmental abuse in one location does not change the demand that stimulated that environmentally destructive process.  I grew up in rural West Virginia and my fatherworked the coal trains.  While many people have turned against mountain top removal or coal mining in general, the coal industry hasa simple effective slogan, “Coal keeps the lights on!”.   Until we either convince people to do without light, produce light with less energy or find another way to produce the light without coal... there is still going to be a huge demand for mining and burning coal--regardless of which ancient mountain they destroy in which county, state or country.

There has been considerable emphasis in the environmental movement in regards to influencing consumers to individually change their consumption practices.  One example is the advocacy of a vegetarian or vegan diet.  I’m a vegetarian, myself.  In terms of bringing about a shift in food consumption in the U.S. for environmental reasons--that movement has failed; and spectacularly so.  While the number ofvegetarians/vegans amounts to 3.7% of population (with 10% being vegetarian inclined), since the 1950s the per capita meat consumptionin the U.S. has increased from 150 to 200 pounds (even with the growth of vegetarianism).  Americans eat twice the global average for meat. At about 5 percent of the world’s population, we grow and kill nearly 10 billion animals a year, more than 15 percent of the world’s total. When we are talking about environmental problems we are talking about the collective impacts of all people.   In terms of the impact of diet upon the environment, we would have been more effective if we had encouraged the majority to only reduce their meat consumption or if we had limited meat production to only open range grass fed meat (rather than grain fed feed lots)--rather than convincing a tiny minority to eliminate meat entirely from their diet. Individual consumption patterns matter far less than the aggregate impact of all people. The infrastructure and industrial method of how energy and goods areproduced and delivered matter more than the specific product beingconsumed.

When white people start talking about overpopulation, I get nervous. Globally, the population growth rate has been reducing for some time. In many industrialized countries, there is now even negative population growth.  Population predictions have the global population growing to nine billion before declining--all the while the median age will increase.  The problem isn’t so much the sheer quantity of people but how those people use resources.  The third most populated country in the world is the United States. The problem is very much with the U.S. and. how it has been built up and consumes resources.  Outside of some black carbon from cooking fires, the carbon footprint of the poorest billion people on the planet is negligible. The impact of of 310 million folks in the U.S. is huge.  An average U.S. resident emits twice as much carbon dioxide as an European and 20 times as much as an African.  We must meet the needs and demands of nine billion peopleand a discussion on how to more rapidly decrease population in the next fifty years is as much a distraction as any kind of viablepolicy.  If noone in the U.S. environmental movement ever mentioned overpopulation again and we stuck only to a conversation about how to reduce our per capita resource use nationally--I think we’d be better off.

For similar reasons, attempts to form small autonomous communities within the U.S that are disconnected from the majority of the population will not solve our environmental problems.  This panel description suggested a dual power situation between our anarchist ecological ideas and presumably the status quo.  Given that climate change is a global phenomenon and any intentional anarchist community would share bio-region and watersheds with environmentally destructive capitalists states; there can be no parallel development.  We must systematically transform the current industrial mode of production and we can not wait to do that by building an separate alternative as merely a demonstration.  Green Potemkin villages will not change people’s mind or have any significant impact.  It’s not enough for asmall group of activists to create a back yard victory garden in abandoned lots to address our demands for food.  If we are serious about addressing the ecological destruction caused by our food production, we need large scale systematic change of how we grow food. If small urban farms can’t even provide all calories their farmers need, they certainly can’t meet the demand of all those people who are not farming.  The new society must be built literally in the shell ofthe old; not just down the road from it.  We must build organizations capable of winning immediate demands from the status quo.

By De Balie -Vimeo, October 21, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

#1. Stateless Democracy: The Revolution in Rojava Kurdistan [part 1] from De Balie on Vimeo.

The fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has often been portrayed as a fight between the West and its Arab allies against Islamic ultra-fundamentalists. Over the last several years, however, a progressive Kurdish-led resistance has been forming in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) amidst the Syrian Civil War. The resistance has successfully implemented new models of grassroots democracy, gender equality, and sustainable ecology, its members practicing a political project they refer to as Democratic Confederalism. Women and men stand side-by-side in its armed forces in the face of both ISIS and the Bashar al-Assad regime. Despite the resistance’s efforts, Rojava is currently threatened by a massacre, and the international community continues to stand by silently as tragedy unfolds.

This conference discusses the current Kurdish resistance in Kobanê, Rojava against ISIS. With help of representatives from the Kurdish movement as well as specialists in the field, it explores the politics and culture of Rojava and the reasons behind the formation and growth of the self-proclaimed Islamic State. The question as to what and how the international community and civil society can help is also addressed—not only to stop ISIS, but more crucially, to support a movement from within the region that is offering a new democratic horizon from which the world can learn.

Keynote speeches by Dilşah Osman (co-president of the Kurdish Democratic Society Congress in Europe, KCD-E) and Dilar Dirik (PhD researcher and activist of the Kurdish Women’s Movement), contributions by Joost Jongerden (researcher and Kurdish specialist, Wageningen University), Jolle Demmers (co-founder of the Center for Conflict Studies, Utrecht), Jonas Staal (artist), Jasper Blom (Director Scientific Bureau Groenlinks / Green Party), Dilan Yezilgoz-Zegerius (Amsterdam council memberfor Liberal Party VVD, former Amnesty International specialist on Turkey) en Golrokh Nafisi (artist) and many others.

The conference is hosted by New World Academy; BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht; Center for Conflict Studies, Utrecht; and De Balie, Amsterdam.

Stateless Democracy: The Revolution in Rojava Kurdistan is the first of a series of events on stateless democracy organized by New World Academy in collaboration with the Kurdish Women’s Movement.

By Jon Queally - Common Dreams, October 9, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

In order to build an adequate low-carbon 21st century energy system that scientists have said is necessary to stave off the worst impacts of climate change, a new report argues that the world must look beyond large-scale, centralized renewable projects—such as industrial solar and wind farms—and take up efforts to build more democratically-controlled and decentralized power grids.

Contained as a chapter in the Worldwatch Institute's State of the World 2014: Governing for Sustainability, the research compiled by professor Sean Sweeney, who co-directs of the Global Labor Institute at Cornell University, says the world's energy systems must be "reclaimed to serve public interests, rather than focus on maximizing sales and profits" for the large corporations who now benefit from the burning of fossil fuels and the centralized grids that distribute most of the world's electricity.

"A timely and equitable energy transition can occur only with greater energy democracy, which requires that workers, communities, and the public at large have a real voice in decision making, and that the anarchy of liberalized energy markets is replaced with a comprehensive and planned approach," writes Sweeney.

According to a 2010 report (pdf) by the Center for Social Inclusion, true "energy democracy" is exemplifed by renewable energy projects that are "small-scale, locally owned or controlled" and  "structured to allow local investment, sweat equity, and a transparent process for setting fair [market] prices."

By David Graeber - Boston IWW, October 8, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

In 1937, my father volunteered to fight in the International Brigades in defence of the Spanish Republic. A would-be fascist coup had been temporarily halted by a worker’s uprising, spearheaded by anarchists and socialists, and in much of Spain a genuine social revolution ensued, leading to whole cities under directly democratic management, industries under worker control, and the radical empowerment of women.

Spanish revolutionaries hoped to create a vision of a free society that the entire world might follow. Instead, world powers declared a policy of “non-intervention” and maintained a rigorous blockade on the republic, even after Hitler and Mussolini, ostensible signatories, began pouring in troops and weapons to reinforce the fascist side. The result was years of civil war that ended with the suppression of the revolution and some of a bloody century’s bloodiest massacres.

I never thought I would, in my own lifetime, see the same thing happen again. Obviously, no historical event ever really happens twice. There are a thousand differences between what happened in Spain in 1936 and what is happening in Rojava, the three largely Kurdish provinces of northern Syria, today. But some of the similarities are so striking, and so distressing, that I feel it’s incumbent on me, as someone who grew up in a family whose politics were in many ways defined by the Spanish revolution, to say: we cannot let it end the same way again.