ecosocialism

By Olamide Olaniyan and Naomi Klein - The Tyee, October 22, 2021

The way we currently talk about the climate emergency and how to get out of it has been very much determined by Naomi Klein.

The author of This Changes Everything and other bestsellers, Klein is a major critic of global capitalism, has helped articulate its effects on the environment and climate change and supports transforming society in ways that improve the lives of people and protect them from its worst and unequal effects.

The Canadian journalist, author and activist was involved in drafting the 2015 Leap Manifesto — a plan for transitioning to a clean energy economy — which was the centre of much debate within the federal New Democratic Party and amongst its supporters, including in these pages.

In recent years she’s been involved with climate justice movements in the U.S. and Canada pushing for a Green New Deal and was even a surrogate for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 election campaign for the U.S. presidency.

Now Penguin has decided to package excerpts from her previous writing for a volume in its Green Ideas series.

Surely that counts as success, right? Well, as she pointed out to The Tyee in an interview last week, after a near decade of advocating for a range of climate goals, “We haven’t gotten any of those things.”

A 2016 NDP resolution based on the Leap Manifesto passed, but party leadership has since distanced itself from it. Klein’s spouse, filmmaker and climate activist Avi Lewis, ran in the 2021 federal election but ultimately lost his bid to become the NDP MP for West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country.

Below the 49th parallel, Bernie Sanders didn’t win the Democratic nomination to run as president. None of the various Green New Deal bills in the U.S. have passed.

And when we talked to Klein last week, citizens of the country where she’d spent the last couple of years living and organizing had been agonizing over whether significant legislation to address climate change would make it through the Senate, thanks to two centrist democrats.

And on a grander scale, not much has changed. Many countries, including Canada and the U.S. — two of the largest per capita emitters — continue to drag their feet and have yet to hit their commitments to cut emissions.

All this Klein would readily admit. But she’s far from ready to declare defeat. As in chess, even among the losses, there is the fight for a fighting chance. And in the long run, every move matters.

The author, who’s studied and long been involved in climate justice movements, says she won’t “indulge” in climate doom-ism. She still believes this moment has quite a bit of potential.

“We have locked in a very, very rocky future, but it is not too late for us to avert truly, unlivably catastrophic warming,” she said.

In September, Klein joined UBC’s geography department as a professor for climate justice, along with her spouse Lewis.

She’s also involved in building the university’s new Centre for Climate Justice. The goal, she says, “is to be useful on the timeline of the climate emergency, and very much to take leadership from the most impacted constituencies.”

Klein talked to us about her new role, the recent Canadian election, and the “infrastructure of care.” This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

By Sean Sweeney, John Treat, and Daniel Chavez - Trade Unions for Energy Democracy and Trans National Institute, October 22, 2021

From politicians to corporate executives, media commentators to environmental campaigners, narratives evoking the “unstoppable” progress of a global transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy have grown increasingly commonplace.

However, in reality, the global shifts in energy production, energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions we urgently need are not happening:

• In 2019, over 80% of global primary energy demand came from fossil fuels, with global greenhouse gas emissions at record levels.
• In 2020, wind and solar accounted for just 10% of global electricity generated.
• Despite stories of its decline, coal-fired power generation continues to rise globally. In 2020, global efforts to decommission coal power plants were offset by the new coal plants commissioned in China alone, resulting in an overall increase in the global coal fleet of 12.5 GW.

Recently, some have argued that the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent contraction in economic activity signal a turning point. Indeed, global energy demand fell by nearly 4% in 2020, while global energy-related CO2 emissions fell by 5.8% — the sharpest annual decline since the second world war.

Despite these short-term shifts, the pandemic has failed to result in any significant long-term changes for the energy sector or associated emissions:

• Global energy-related CO2 emissions are projected to grow by 4.8% in 2021, the second highest annual rise on record.
• Demand for all fossil fuels is set to rise in 2021.6 A 4.6% increase in global energy demand is forecast for 2021, leaving demand 0.5% higher than 2019 levels.
• By the end of 2020 electricity demand had already returned to a level higher than in December 2019, with global emissions from electricity higher than in 2015.
• By the end of 2020, global coal demand was 3.5% higher than in the same period in 2019. A 4.5% rise in coal demand is forecast for 2021, with coal demand increasing 60% more than all renewables growth combined and undoing 80% of the 2020 decline.
• Oil demand is forecast to rebound by 6% in 2021, the steepest rise since 1976. By 2026, global oil consumption is projected to reach 104.1 million barrels per day (mb/d), an increase of 4.4 mb/d from 2019 levels.

As such, an energy transition with the depth and speed necessary for meeting the 2015 Paris Agreement shows no sign of materializing. Indeed, most of the world’s major economies are not on track to reach their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) on emissions reductions.

These facts point to a clear conclusion: the dominant, neoliberal climate policy paradigm, which deploys a “sticks and carrots” approach that attempts to disincentivize fossil fuels through carbon pricing, while promoting low-carbon investment through subsidies and preferential contractual arrangements has been completely ineffective. This policy paradigm positions governments as guardians and guarantors of the profitability of private actors, thus preventing them from addressing social or environmental challenges head-on.

Read the text (PDF).

By John Foran - Resilience, October 14, 2021

Ecosocialist strategic thinker Ian Angus has observed, with reason that “There is no copyright on the word ecosocialism, and those who call themselves ecosocialists don’t agree about everything.”

That’s true. One puzzle that many ecosocialists, especially here in the “global North,” seem to share is: Why are there so few ecosocialists?  For most of us – I count myself as part of the ecosocialist movement – it feels intuitively natural to hold a political orientation to the world based on the principles of the interconnectedness of an ecological approach and the universal solidarity, egalitarianism, and social justice orientation of a democratic socialism. Indeed, what other kind can there be after the authoritarian horrors of the 20th century?

Why, then, are we so few?

In my country, some may suppose that this can be explained away by the U.S. working class’s lack of consciousness of a world beyond capitalism, or by the pull that the values of feminism and racial justice exert on a younger generation preventing activists from recognizing the economic roots of the evils of the capitalist system that saturates our lives.

But aren’t these all caricatures? Are there not ecosocialists who have understood that race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, and indeed all systems of division intersect with class? Are there not working people and unions who live every day with the economic and political abuses of capitalism?  And are there not young social-justice activists who are acutely aware of how capitalism works to cause untold suffering?

There are, fortunately, in all these cases, and their numbers are growing.

I began thinking about this essay early in 2020. Now, in the waning months of 2021, everywhere, people live in a world transformed by pandemic, rebellion, and the multiple pre- and post-pandemic crises that remain with us. In a way, this new world only underlines the importance of ecosocialism’s promise, as well as gives life and urgency to my thesis that 21st-century ecosocialism will either be intersectional or remain marginal to the needs of, and alternatives to, our collective moment.

By Aragorn Eloff - New Frame, October 5, 2021

A radical collective committed to change in the face of climate collapse calls for global solidarity and a turn to the worker to revolutionise how we relate to the world.

The tone of The Tragedy of the Worker: Towards the Proletarocene is set in the opening paragraph with a sobering addendum to the Communist Manifesto’s most well-known sentences: “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win. What if the world is already lost?”

This important new book, written by the Salvage Collective – of which well-known science fiction author China Miéville is a member – is a manifesto-like cry to countenance the state of our social and ecological lifeworlds, and to grapple with the question of how “we imagine emancipation on an at best partially habitable planet”. Herein, for Salvage, lies the titular concern of the book, which unashamedly wears its politics on its sleeve: the tragedy of the worker is that “she was put to work for the accumulation of capital, from capitalism’s youth, amid means of production not of her choosing, and with a telos of ecological catastrophe”.

How do we think about progressive – even revolutionary – forms of politics when we live “at a point of history where the full horror of the methods of fossil capitalism is becoming clear”, and where, even if capitalism were overthrown tomorrow, we would “inherit productive forces inextricable from mass, trans-species death”?

As we are relentlessly reminded throughout the text, the situation is not good. The current confluence of accelerating ecological crises, most popularly termed the “Anthropocene” or the “sixth mass extinction crisis” is, as Salvage describes, “a megaphase change taking place in microphase time”.

By staff - Unity Consulting, ASLEF, RMT, TSSA, and Unite the Union, October 29, 2021

Scotland cannot meet its environmental obligations without a world-class rail service that shifts people and goods from cars and lorries onto trains.

This requires a service that is fully staffed, with affordable fares, stations that are accessible and trains that are clean, green and attractive.

What is needed is an ambition for Scotland’s railways that is expansive, that encourages people to make rail their first travel choice and increases freight capacity.

Our long-term vision for Scotland's railways:

• It should be a publicly operated and governed system run as public service and not for private profit
• A system that helps Scotland meet its wider environmental and public policy ambitions
• A railway that is supported by public subsidy
• Is fully staffed
• That reinvests in rail infrastructure, to help grow the economy.
• Takes ScotRail (and the Serco operated Caledonian Sleeper) back under public ownership permanently
• A railway that is part of a wider integrated public transport system with through ticketing
• Is part of an industrial strategy that recognises rail services are a vital part of Scotland’s economy helping create jobs and growth
• Has a democratic regulatory and governance structure
• Has a cross representation of Scottish society and rail interests at the heart of decision making
• Has representation from all four trade unions on the board of the new operator
• Has local political representatives on the board
• Has passenger representatives on the board

Read the text (PDF).

By David Klein, Jasmin Vargas, Eric Gill, and Aura Vasquez - Los Ahgeles DSA, September 30, 2021

By staff - The Bullet, September 15, 2021

The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative is spurring international cooperation to end new development of fossil fuels, phase out existing production within the agreed climate limit of 1.5°C and develop plans to support workers, communities and countries dependent on fossil fuels to create secure and healthy livelihoods. Cities such as Vancouver and Barcelona have already endorsed the Treaty with more considering motions to endorse. Hundreds of organizations representing thousands more individuals join the call for world leaders to stop fossil fuel expansion.

Over two thousand academics across disciplines and from 81 countries have delivered a letter demanding a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to manage a global phase out of coal, oil and gas to governments gathering at the next UN General Assembly (September 14-30, 2021).

In the open letter, the academics recognize that the burning of coal, oil and gas is the greatest contributor to climate change – responsible for almost 80% of carbon dioxide emissions since the industrial revolution. Furthermore, they note that, “air pollution caused by fossil fuels was responsible for almost 1 in 5 deaths worldwide in 2018.”

Despite this, national governments, including the COP26 hosts themselves, plan to expand fossil fuel production at levels that would result in around 120 percent more emissions than what is in keeping with the Paris Agreement target of 1.5ºC of warming.

For more information on the Initiative, please visit the website, explore the Campaign Hub and view the introduction video.

By staff - Central Única dos Trabalhadores, September 2021

Never before in the history of capitalism have the contradictions between the social character of production and the private appropriation of wealth been so great. The current environmental crisis is not an external fact independent of the functioning logic of this system, but the result of a process of exploitation and exhaustion, both of the working class and of nature, which each day points to the inexorable need for change in the economic and development model. We need to understand that the way out of the current crisis will only be possible if we subvert this logic of rentierism, hyper-consumerism and productivism.

In this context, the Brazilian trade union movement has the challenge of effectively incorporating the new needs of society and the class into its structure and political agenda. working people, updating the anti-capitalist confrontation from an ecosocialist, feminist and anti-racist perspective in the face of transformations in the world of work and the crisis in the system, intensified by the CODIV-19 pandemic.

These elements are in dialogue with the CUT unionism, which has defended an action where it is understood that the agendas of the world of work are the same as those of the world of work.

Read the entire statement (PDF).

By Les P - Washington Socialist, September 2021

On August 23, a DC protest against construction of the Line 3 pipeline rallied against Joe Biden and his Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, calling on the administration to cancel the pipeline. Two days later, on August 25, Indigenous leaders led more than 2,000 to the Minnesota state capitol to make the same demand of Governor Tim Walz. As construction on the pipeline nears completion, it feels necessary to recount the history of Line 3’s development in order to consider how socialists might commit to the fight against its completion.

In 2014, Enbridge Inc. — a multinational oil and gas pipeline company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta — proposed an expansion to its existing Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline. The pipeline begins in Alberta and is set to end in Superior, Wisconsin — cutting across greater areas of Canada, North Dakota, Wisconsin and (pending construction completion) northern Minnesota; that includes three different Indigenous reservations in Minnesota and land that, according to the Treaty of 1855, Ojibwe people have the right to use for hunting, fishing and gathering wild rice.

Ever since Enbridge submitted its proposal, Indigenous organizers and activists like Winona LaDuke, along with tribal governments, climate justice activists and Minnesota DSA chapters, have fought furiously to stop the additional construction of a pipeline that, in 1991, was the culprit of the worst inland oil spill in American history. More than 600 people have been arrested or received citations related to protests against Line 3 according to a recent Guardian report, with Native water protectors leading the charge. Protesters have blocked key roads on Enbridge’s pipeline route, chained themselves to construction equipment and stood up to Minnesota law enforcement which received $750,000 in order to police Line 3 protesters back in April.

Throughout the last nine months, activists have persistently called on Governor Walz and President Biden to cancel the pipeline. Importantly, this is within their powers and not without precedent: Biden took similar action against the Keystone XL pipeline early in his term, and in May, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced a plan to revoke the easement granted to Enbridge for another pipeline, Line 5. But in a too-predictable concession to the fossil fuel industry, both Walz and Biden have allowed Enbridge’s permits to stand. The Biden White House has supported the Trump administration’s federal approval of the project, and despite once tweeting that “any line that goes through treaty lands is a nonstarter for me,” Walz, too, has approved the pipeline’s construction.

Proponents of Line 3, including Walz, argue that replacing an aging pipeline is an environmentally responsible move. To make that argument during the same month that the IPCC released its climate report — which states, not with any subtlety, that we needed to move away from fossil fuel energy yesterday — is laughable. If completed, Line 3 will carry enough oil to produce approximately 170 billion kilograms of carbon dioxide per year, equivalent to around 50 coal power plants. Pipeline development also indicates a broader state commitment to fossil fuel dependency: a devastating policy decision with ramifications for our planet and the generations to come. We don’t need a new pipeline; we need there to be no pipelines.