Let’s face facts: Life in such cold climates as the one I live in (it was 8°F/-14°C here this morning) would hardly be possible, for us in such numbers as we are, without fossil fuels.
The harnessing of fossil fuel energy has enabled tremendous innovation — innovation that, if managed well, could help us get to the kind of new socio-ecological era that some have (contentiously) called a “good Anthropocene.”*
Proponents of that “good Anthropocene” tend to make it sound far easier to get there than it would be. The technological “solutions” many of them have offered are mostly pie-in-the-sky, with risks not worth taking. Real solutions would require dramatic renegotiation of power relations, lifestyles, living arrangements, and modes of social and technological production. Ending fossil-fuel use and ramping up renewable energy production are certainly part of it, but hardly all.
Alternatives to a “good Anthropocene,” however, are not very attractive: for one thing, they would all involve dramatic (and rapid) reduction of human numbers, which isn’t a great sales pitch for action. (Who suicides first?) And unfortunately, those who benefit most from the status quo and its fossil-fuel regime are those most committing to standing in the way of the transition that could get us there. Demonizing these people won’t help, but converting them is probably inefficient.
The only solution I see is to keep growing a global alliance for a just transition, with vulnerable (indigenous, coastal, and other) communities as central players, and to mobilize on every scale and at every opportunity we get. Does anyone see any reasonable alternative? If not, then can we just get on with it?
*Note: Among the better articles summarizing the “good Anthropocene” debate are these two by Bennett et al (connected to the Seeds of Good Anthropocenes project) and by Dalby. Unfortunately, both are behind the publishers’ pay-walls. If anyone would like a copy of either, please e-mail me. (And keep bugging me if I don’t reply.)
mobilize to do what exactly?
Fair enough question… For starters: to “Keep it in the ground” (i.e., not allow the development of massive new fossil fuel infrastructures), to disinvest from fossil fuel companies, to ban hydraulic fracturing, to work toward strengthening (not weakening) the Paris climate agreement. Beyond all that: to develop and support the many pieces that are part of the solution, from renewable energy to urban greening to agroecology, et al. (See the Bennett article and the Paul Hawken book “Drawdown,” which I recently wrote about.)
But mostly what I have in mind is what I said about “growing a global alliance for a just transition.” By that I mean developing the political-economic-media-cultural-moral power and authority to shape an emergent new hegemony (in Antonio Gramsci’s terms of an alliance of power that shapes “common sense”) that could replace the presently dominant one (extractivist-capitalist-consumerist). That can only be done through a cultural revolution that would attract people to new value commitments and practices. I see no other way.
well folks like Naomi Klein and Bill Mckibben are pretty much trying what yer suggesting but because this is very far from a majority view in any large industrial/consumer country they are failing to win enough support in governments, so really that’s a best an attempt to forge some fringe networks and slow little bits and pieces down, the only viable plans will be plan-bs for living with/in the coming collapses and as you say it will be grim (in a bare life kind of way) but than isn’t that more or less true for most of humanity thru most of history (including now)?
Change, when it comes, comes quickly. Sometimes it sneaks up on you behind your back. Usually most people don’t see it coming. Even those with their fingers on the pulse don’t know how it will play itself out. Good to be prepared for it, though, and to know which way to dive when the wave hits. Even better to be part of the wave.
do you know the work of AbdouMaliq?
https://deterritorialinvestigations.wordpress.com/2017/12/16/atmospheres-of-compression-dark-operations-in-urban-tissue-abdoumaliq-simone/
Thanks for that.