A few years ago I read Half-Earth Socialism by Vettesse & Pendergrass. It's quite a good and inspiring book, and it helped push me further in my efforts for the preservation of our biosphere - I recommend it. But it had one major flaw to me: in spite of it's ambitions to be utopian - #solarpunk even - in it's imagination, I could never again shake off the dystopian scenario sketched out in the first chapter. In it, fossil capitalism continues on and switches to #geoengineering to make that possible. It also destroyed any organized climate opposition. Something clicked in my thinking, making it clear how under #capitalism this is actually the best scenario. It made me really afraid, something the latter chapters never managed to alleviate.
#ClimateDiary
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Discussion
Last year I read Malm & Carton their two books on #overshoot #CCS and geoengineering that analysed this dynamic further. It's truly a horror scenario and it's the path that we're on. It's all baked in into the structure of our society, economy and politics.
Remember: 'The Earth is not dying - it is being killed. And the people who are killing it have names and addresses.'
@mysteriarch never 100% comfortable with the "names and address" part. Get rid of them , their place will be filled by others. The real target is the underlying system, the people defending it need to be fought, but defeating them individually won't be enough.
@corpsmoderne @mysteriarch
I don't know about that. One name and address, yes. A thousand names and addresses, and actual, real, life-or-death pressure ? Maybe the incentives to dominate aren't the same and there is an opening for a more profound change
I don't know about that. One name and address, yes. A thousand names and addresses, and actual, real, life-or-death pressure ? Maybe the incentives to dominate aren't the same and there is an opening for a more profound change
@rakoo @mysteriarch for me it's a question of treating the effects or the root cause. Get rid of all the billionaires (and those who defend them) but keep Capitalism as an economic system, I guaranty you in two generations, you'll have billionaires once again. Get rid of capitalism and those who defend it, and billionaires are gone for good.
(* I'm using "get rid of" in a very loose way, not necessarily meaning physical elimination, but elimination as a social category)
@corpsmoderne It sounds like a bit of both. Any system can only work by the parts that make it up. If you take away the power of each individual part, the system grinds to a halt. If you allow the system as a whole to replace parts, it will stress the system and make it work slower, but it might eventually go on - sometimes even more robust, because it learned from the damage. @mysteriarch
@malte @corpsmoderne @rakoo @publicwondering
Some thoughts after your comments:
- Funny that people are a bit flustered with the last 'names and addresses' line. Even my own climate action group asked to have it removed from a poster.
- Of course we need to change the underlying system, but that won't be possible if we're not removing the existence of billionaires. It's one of the means to the ends, namely the end of capitalism;
- How to interpret this removal, or this reference to the adresses, is up to you. It seems as if you may be scared of your own thoughts about this.
- Just to be clear: I would prefer to have everything happen seemless, bloodless, without violence and democratically - but we don't have to kid ourselves that any of this will ever happen without at least some violence happening (at least from the ruling classes out), so I'd rahter it hurt the billionaires who at least have the actual power and knowledge of the wrong they're perpetrating.
@mysteriarch I wonder if I'm the intended recipient here. I agree with most of what you're saying.
@malte @mysteriarch @rakoo @publicwondering oh I think it's mainly for me :)