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The climate justice movement has for more than a dozen years set up a contrasting pole compared to 'climate action' - with very different principles, analyses, strategies, tactics and alliances. In recent months we've seen stronger moves from institutions in the 'action' camp to co-opt justice language up to a point, but the very clear divisions remain.
(I'm not sure the Wrong Kind of Green critics are following this historic trajectory, but I haven't read all of the recent posts; however, their occasional Third Worldism, especially in relation to Evo Morales' government in Bolivia, is an indication of hostility to the CJ movements of the Andes.)
On 2019/09/28 11:36 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:
... I have a different take on this stuff than A. O-C, Greta Thunberg, Bill McKibben and even Naomi Klein. I think that we are headed toward massive crises because neither wing of the capitalist class is capable of what they call "de-growth".
CJ politics generally includes degrowth, applied to the Global North. There are problems, however, with degrowth framings of capitalism I'll address in another post soon, and improvements offered from Latin America and other sites of struggle. Here's one take: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800918307626
On 2019/09/28 11:36 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:
The Paris Accords were woefully lacking but we have to speak out in favor of enforcing them even if that puts on the same side as Goldman-Sachs.
Here I think you're making a mistake by legitimizing Paris, which ultimately needs to be replaced. It is non-binding, with no accountability or penalty system - thanks to an alliance between Obama and four the BRICS countries in 2009. The costs of climate-related “Loss and Damage” are being disproportionately borne by Africans and others who did the least to cause the problems, yet thanks to a Paris provision, they have no recourse to claiming “climate debt” and polluter liability in lawsuits. The Paris Climate Agreement reintroduced the unworkable carbon trading gimmick, which failed miserably over the prior 15 years, through the back door. Moreover, Paris negotiators neglected to include several major categories of emitters, especially militaries, airplanes and ships. There was no attempt to penalize fossil fuel companies, or to incentivize their Just Transition to post-carbon energy supply, nor even rhetorically to endorse the need to leave fossil fuels underground. No progress was made to enhance poor countries' acquisition of climate-friendly technologies that are currently protected by Intellectual Property. As a result, when in June 2017, just over four months after taking power, U.S. president Donald Trump announced he would withdraw the largest historic emitter from the deal, there was no punishment whatsoever. Not even a carbon tax (as even Joe Stiglitz had called for), much less sanctions.
While 'climate action' celebrated Paris, 'climate justice' condemned these fatal flaws.
On 9/28/19 5:05 PM, Ralph Johansen wrote:
There are highly paid policy wonks and apologists for capital in think tanks and right wing funded foundations, those with control of the media, the IMF, World Bank, EU and transnational capitalist agencies all over the capitalist world, some of whom no longer think denial is going to get it - the evidence is too palpable - and they are instead pondering how they can divert attention and attack from those with the real power, the real culprits,
On 2019/09/29 12:51 AM, Ralph Johansen via Marxism wrote:
...enormously powerful people have the means and every design, not just to profit from windmills but to seize the issue of climate disaster and run with it in directions that will mean still more years of evasion, run-away profit-taking, increasing inequality and confusion, untold suffering for most of us, irreversible destruction of our planet, buttressing of capital as solution or only alternative, more of the "lesser evil," more delay in tackling the real problem, exacerbation of these enormous contradictions, and that we're kind of facing a diversion point that we should be very wary of, chilled by, cataclysmally frightened about. Then this discussion is put to rest, to that extent.
Ralph, I think that the division here is not only in relation to climate action and climate justice. It's whether the 'internalization of externalities' can be accomplished using market mechanisms like carbon trading and offsetting (and even a carbon tax). The adoption of 'neoliberal nature' policies and practices has been underway for several decades, most crudely expressed by Larry Summers in 1991: http://www.whirledbank.org/ourwords/summers.html
An antidote video I worked on a decade ago: https://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-cap-and-trade/?utm_source=storyofcapandtradedotorg
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