log: 2026-05-08, climate change as class war

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@@ -8,6 +8,194 @@ author: Joe Carstairs
 
 ### @{climate-change-class-war}
 
+Huber had a scathing critique of the professional-dominated environmental
+movement as it stands. This is the movement which has produced almost all the
+green literature I've been reading. A few scales fell from my eyes.
+
+He criticises the professional-led environmental movement for their analysis
+putting the root causes of climate change on individual consumption choices,
+for seeking solutions in smart, technocratic, market-based policies, and for
+portraying the climate struggle as a struggle to know the scientific facts and
+act rationally on the basis of that knowledge. He thinks all these ideas are
+wrong. They mis-identify the root causes of climate change, propose solutions
+that won't address the root causes and will never gain mass support, and, by
+focusing on a battle over scientific knowledge, distract from the power
+relationships where the struggle is actually sited.
+
+Although I still think smart market-based policies would work, I otherwise find
+his arguments pretty convincing.
+
+Apocalyptic forms have been used in this kind of rhetoric. I've been focusing
+on how this rhetoric is counter-productive because of how it makes people think
+and feel. Huber's argument shows that this rhetoric is counter-productive
+because it has the wrong goal. Instead of trying to motivate people to make
+more virtuous consumption choices, one should be trying to motivate people to
+fight capital, the root cause of the problem.
+
+I can see now that while I had distinguished an ethics of averting catastrophe
+from an ethics of martyrdom, I was still granting the assumption that what one
+should be trying to do motivate local and ultimately ineffective actions. I had
+given up the idea that anyone outside the corridors of power could have a
+causal relationship to the trajectory of world events. Huber condemns this. I
+had seen that consumption choices, voting, protesting, and gardening, are
+ineffective at dealing with global problems, but I hadn't considered that
+industrial action leading to state socialism might be effective.
+
+There are still problems for motivating people: prisoner's dilemmas as well as
+the simple fact that any one person can only have at best a very small
+influence on global issues. Perhaps my critique of apocalypse used to 'make a
+difference' rather than 'resist' applies to industrial action just as well as
+consumer action.
+
+I think this Marxist analysis is an unveiling of the way the world really is,
+complete with nesting contexts, historical interpretation (somewhat like ex
+eventu prophecy), moral dualism, and eschatology.
+
+The eschatological angle is interesting. I feel pessimistic that the Kingdom of
+Heaven can be anticipated by society-scale structures, and focus instead on
+local things. Christendom did not feel so pessimistic. Nor, perhaps, did Jesus,
+or Paul. Socialists tend to express optimism that socialism can be established.
+But not necessarily right now: in this it shares with Christian eschatology,
+the idea that we can anticipate the good time now, though it requires hard
+work. This requires some 'vision' of the good time and the route to get to the
+good time. We live in the bad time, but if we persevere, we can participate in
+the good time. Is this true apocalyptic rhetoric?
+
+Part 1 expanded Huber's argument that the root cause of climate change is
+capital's drive for relative increases in value: M-C-M'. Because their choices
+are constrained by the laws of competition, a small number of capitalists make
+decisions at the point of production which drive exploitation of the natural
+environment just as much as of labour.
+
+He argues against analyses which blame climate change on market externalities,
+and thus conclude the solution is to 'price in' those externalities, for
+example, with a carbon tax. He clearly thinks that this would not solve the
+problem, though I don't think he explicitly states why. If I could do some
+arguing on his behalf, he might argue that the laws of competition have an
+in-built tendency to cheapen inputs to the industrial process, and as a result,
+trying to increase the costs of the inputs is like commanding the tides to go
+back. Certainly, he thinks the only solution is to break the M-C-M' logic,
+because as long as that remains in place, capital will always have an incentive
+to increase its abuse of the environment.
+
+In Part 2, he looks at the 'Professional Class', and argues that the
+environmental movement driven by the professionals as it currently stands is
+incapable of solving the climate crisis.
+
+The professionals inhabit a 'contradictory class location'. Like the working
+class, they have no access to the means of production and thus depend on a wage
+to survive. But unlike the working class, they access wages through
+qualifications, a class sorting system. They are not just defined by their
+relationship to the means of production, they're also a cultural group, who --
+due to their significant relationship to qualifications -- believe that the key
+to success is working hard at knowing things. Their politics is about
+researching, finding the scientific evidence, and behaving rationally. This is
+true of science communicators like Rachel Carson, as well as policy technocrats
+and anti-system radicals. They often deliberately attempt to kill politics:
+it's about the scientific facts, and therefore not up for political discussion.
+
+Climate change denial is real. The professionals attribute it to a fight
+between real scientists and journalists, professionals carrying out their duty,
+against professionals who neglect their duty, fake scientists, and politicians.
+The way to discredit 'fake science' is to out the supposed 'scientist' as
+actually being a 'political actor'. In Huber's view, this analysis is useless.
+The root cause of climate change denial is that it benefits capital. Climate
+deniers are not the villians, they're at worst the cronies of the capitalists.
+
+In a political culture dominated by the logic of 'cost-cutting' since the 1970s
+'cost of living crisis', professionals advocate for smart market-based policies
+on the grounds that they are cost-effective. They even promise that carbon
+taxes will not increase net government revenue, which is needed to fund
+government investment in measures against climate change. This idea just hasn't
+worked: it is the sole interest of professional technocrats, has no mass appeal
+and was even voted down in extremely liberal-left Oregon.
+
+Huber's argument here centres on politics. He doesn't seem to state any reason
+why a carbon tax wouldn't work. It's not clear that he thinks it is a bad idea.
+The problem is it doesn't address the root cause, which is capitalism. You
+could argue that even if it is effective, capital won't let it happen.
+
+Since the 1930s New Deal, American workers have lived increasingly private,
+consumerist lifestyles, especially the professional class. Since the 1970s,
+they have expressed guilt about the perceived overconsumption of themselves and
+even the working classes, and blamed environmental disasters on the
+overconsumption of people living in the 'Global North', ignoring class
+inequality and the capital interests which drive consumption. You can see this
+in the 'degrowth' movement, overwhelmingly populated by the professional class.
+The idea of living with less can only attract those who feel guilty about their
+affluence, and can choose to live with less instead of being forced to, thus
+excludes and ignores the working class.  The emphasis on GDP ignores the fact
+that growth doesn't have to benefit workers, and thus doesn't have much to do
+with the affluence or simplicity of workers' lifestyles. It also focuses on
+territories, obscuring the class differences which really matter, and cut
+across territories.
+
+Part 3 argues that the way to solve the climate crisis is by building up a
+militant working-class movement seeking to close the gap created by capital
+between the proletariat and the things human beings need to live.
+
+Professionals rightly identify that relatively few people are directly exposed
+to critical environmental harms right now, but think that the way to solve the
+crisis is to lead with people directly affected by environmental harms, and
+make sure everyone else is informed about these distant threats. Huber's
+response is different: demonstrate the link between ecology and the critical
+threats lots of people do face, namely, precarity, underemployment,
+overemployment, poverty, workplace hazards. The link is capitalism: capital
+exploits workers and the natural environment alike by separating people from
+the things they need to live, thus forcing them to sell their labour on the
+market in order to survive.
+
+The solution to one is the solution to both: break the logic of the market with
+state socialism. This will be delivered only by a working-class movement, and
+that needs a programme to unite behind. That programme is the Green New Deal.
+What we're talking about is the state guaranteeing the supply of things human
+beings need to live instead of leaving people at the mercy of the market:
+housing, energy, food, water, clean air would all be 'de-commodified'.
+
+The strategy has to be to build a working-class movement within a strategic
+sector such as electricity. Professionals in XR can try their best, but they
+just don't have access to the halls of industry where capital makes its
+profits. While XR blocking motorways can stop working-class people from getting
+to work on time, and tree-huggers can delay a pipeline getting built here or
+there, industrial action in the electricity sector could swiftly bring capital
+to its knees. It worked in the 1930s.
+
+Huber argues against a localist vision for transforming the economy. He thinks
+it wouldn't transform the economy at all. We're talking about locally-owned
+microgrids (not to mention urban farms or community gardens). He argues that
+the localist vision assumes that large-scale change is impossible and settles
+for creating micro-alternatives to capitalism that leave the whole structure
+intact. If I read him generously, I think he implies that such approaches are
+ineffective because, as much as they might try to paper it over, your local
+microgrid is still subject to market forces, and therefore does nothing to
+shift the problem. Secondly, he argues that there are huge benefits to
+socialisation over localisation, in electricity in particular, since big grids
+can even out imbalances between supply and demand over many localities.
+
+In his final chapter, he explores in more detail his proposed political
+strategy. He wants to see a militant minority of organisers radicalise the main
+existing union in the electric sector in the US, that is, IBEW.
+
+> My students often ask me what they can do to save the climate. I imagine
+> they're used to hearing things about lightbulbs or electric cars. But they
+> need to hear something different: *join a union*.
+
+In his final conclusion, Huber recognised that the ideal solution, global
+socialism, is not achievable in the next few decades, but that socialism in the
+electricity sector in the US is feasible and would be a good start. He pointed
+out that socialism has won before, and we have municipal sewage systems, rural
+electricity, the welfare state, and the Clean Air Act to prove it.
+
+> The stakes this time are not simply class relations as such, but literally
+> the planetary conditions for all human life. This time the masses of the
+> working class have quite a lot more to lose than their chains. We not only
+> have a world to win, but a planet to repair from the ravages of the
+> capitalist class. Time is growing short.
+
+## 2026-05-07
+
+### @{climate-change-class-war}
+
 The professional classes who make up the bulk of the environmental movement like
 to think that they, as consumers, drive the economy. Producers can only follow
 demand. Therefore, it makes sense to model greenhouse emissions as linked to