By John Pickard
In the last week, thousands of protesters, overwhelmingly young people, have blocked main roads in London (and in cities elsewhere in the world) in the name of Extinction Rebellion. Many of them will have read Jem Bendell’s Deep Adaption paper, or something like it, and are concerned at the lack of action on the issue of climate change. Young people are particularly motivated by the issue, and not surprisingly, given that it will be their generation that will suffer the impact of climate change when the rest of the older generation are dead and gone.
While the Tory press has screamed in outrage and demanded stronger police actions, socialists and labour movement activists have felt inspired by the fervour and energy of these young people demanding a change in policy by the government. They have been willing to be arrested, and so nearly a thousand have experience some time in police cells, the vast majority for the first time in their lives. It is a complete refutation of the argument that young people are ‘not interested’ in political or social issues.
The Extinction Rebellion activists have demanded that the government has to “tell the truth” about the scale of the crisis the world now faces. Secondly, it has to enact legally binding policies to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025. Lastly, it is calling on the government to set up a “Citizens’ Assembly” to “oversee the changes” needed to achieve these goals.
The Tory government will never tell the truth…on anything
These might be very laudable demands, but the overwhelming majority of the population would see them as completely unrealistic. The British government – aided, by the billionaire press – lies about almost every aspect of social and economic policy, the better to fool the majority of the population about what really goes on. Whether it is secret links between government and business, or dirty money being laundered through ‘respectable’ banks, or billions salted away out of sight of the tax authorities, the entire system revolves around secrecy and lies – and indeed could not survive without them. They are therefore not going to break the habit of a life-time and start “telling the truth” about climate change.
Likewise, who would believe – even among supporters of Extinction Rebellion – that it was realistic to expect a government policy of scrapping thirty million diesel and petrol cars in six years? What forms of transport would be available to the millions of people who need to travel to work every day? How can that all be changed in six years?
Climate change and the dangers it poses are very real. It is a looming crisis and a genuine “emergency”. But for the majority of the population there are other “emergencies”. Whatever the truth of the matter, the Extinction Rebellion gives the impression of being based on largely middle-class and comfortable people. People with jobs, homes and pensions to fall back on.
On the other hand, there are millions of families in Britain who are in real poverty; whose every day life is one of insecurity and uncertainty. Such people live their daily lives separated from destitution by a single pay-packet. How can those in extreme poverty be expected to think about an “emergency” ten years in the future (to use Bendall’s pessimistic estimate) when they can only see ahead to the middle of the next week? The movement of the gilets jaunes in France was triggered, let us recall, by increases in charges for fuel and petrol. It was no use the Macron government claiming (as it did) that this was a measure in favour of the environment. “How can we be concerned about the next ten years”, some protesters complained, “…when we can’t see more than a week ahead?”
This is a key issue that seems not to have occurred to the Extinction Rebellion leaders. How, indeed, can a family in a damp slum be expected to think that a future climate emergency is more important than their immediate housing emergency? How can a young person on a zero-hours contract and with no immediate prospects for the future worry about anything other than next week and next month? How can a single mother worry about food shortages in 2050 when she has to go to a food bank to feed her children this week? For such people, climate change is a theoretical worry whereas their daily lives are faced with concrete worries.
It is absolutely true, as Extinction Rebellion argues, that government policy needs to tackle climate change as an urgent issue. There need to be policies, research initiatives and, above all, massive investments in new approaches to energy production, food consumption, building, transport and many other things. But it is also a necessary part of winning over the majority of the population that such a ‘green’ agenda should be indissolubly linked to the solution of the day-to-day problems faced by the majority – problems of housing, health, education, jobs and services. Any attempt to tackle the issue of global warming as separate from these ‘normal’ social and political issues is doomed to failure.
The two great barriers to human development
The greatest barriers to human development, and in this context to human existence – are the private ownership of the means of production and the nation-state. It is not governments – and certainly not the man and woman in the street – who are responsible for reckless investments in oil, coal and environmentally-damaging industries. The big decisions that are made in economic investment and development are all based on short-term profit and greed. Industrial policy is dictated by stock price, shareholder dividends and bosses’ bonuses. Nothing else.
A policy that seeks to implement rational investment in energy production, therefore – and that has to mean renewable energy – can only operate in a milieu in which the big energy companies and industries are owned, controlled and democratically managed by the population as a whole and not by a handful of stock-owners. Exactly the same goes for transportation, food and other aspects of economic life. The struggle to save humanity and the planet has to be a struggle to change the economic system, or it is a meaningless struggle. The most important social force, indeed the central force, that will have the historic responsibility of overthrowing the capitalism system and transforming society is the organised working class, those as Marx put it, “with nothing to lose but their chains.”
International struggle for change
As the Extinction Rebellion activists have correctly understood, the fight against carbon emissions and human-made climate change is not a national one, but an international one. Jonathan Ford, writing in the Financial Times, points out, “The EU cuts its carbon emissions by 12 per cent between 1990 and 2013, to 3.42 gigatonnes, and US growth has been constrained. But China’s output increased from 2.44 Gt to 10.27 Gt as the country has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty…Beijing’s ‘Belt and Road’ initiative envisions hundreds of coal-fired power stations, of which 240 were underway in 2016. Overall, global emissions are up 60 per cent…” (April 22, 2019)
The national frictions and rivalries between the capitalist powers great and small are barriers to rational human development and measures to save the planet. But these rivalries – in extreme cases leading to wars – are part and parcel of the capitalist economic system itself. Power, prestige and privilege are the hallmarks of a system build on individual greed, profit and enrichment.
In summary, Marxists are not indifferent to the dangers of climate change. Far from it. Faced with the sombre predictions of writers like Jem Bendall, we are just as appalled – and as fearful – as the average activist in Extinction Rebellion. But we want to believe that there are tools available – in science, technology and human ingenuity – that would be available to tackle this and other social ills successfully. The problem is that these tools are not at the moment in the hands of rational people. They need to be.
We applaud the energy, enthusiasm and commitment of the activists in the Extinction Rebellion movement, but we would strongly urge its supporters and all ‘climate-change activists’ to join us in the labour and socialist movement. Join us in a somewhat different but more meaningful Rebellion – to get rid of the capitalist system, replace it with a socialist system based on democratic planning and ownership of national and international economies, and to put humanity in the position of being able to solve its problems.
April 22, 2019
