Folks we are truly and utterly screwed
I can relate to the impulse to be doomer, but I'd encourage leftists to begin to prepare themselves for the inevitability of neo-liberal failure to address climate change. We ain't keeping this baby under 1.5, we might not even keep it under 2.0. We will see and have to deal with climate horrors that are tantamount to genocide, and we might realistically never get "justice" against those who benefited and propogated misinformation.
It's okay to grieve that. In fact, it's essential. We have to grieve the life we thought we were going to live, the hopes and dreams and futures we were promised, the suffering and horror we are destined to observe and survive. If we are going to be clear eyed leaders when the contradictions of capitalism begin to really tear itself apart, then we need to let ourselves feel the loss and sadness now, but not be overcome by it. As revolutionaries we need to set an example of how to face reality as it is yet still stand up and be willing to resist. To believe the worst is yet to come, but a more equitable and just world is still possible. There's no magic solution, there's no mecha Lenin to seize the means for us; there is only the hard work of educating, agitating, and organizing. We must set an example for those still blinded by liberalism to the magnitude of the problem. Increasingly, though, we will also have to set an example for those crushed by the reality of climate change yet blinded to the solutions by liberalism. To have hope in the face of climate change is a revolutionary act. To show that we can understand the problem yet not accept its inevitability is to open the door for others to reconsider their assumptions and ideology.
Joe Manchin and the failures of the Democrats are a known entity. Catastrophizing will do us very little good. Instead, point out the contradictions and failures of bourgeois democracy and demonstrate that there's a better way, both of being as an individual and a path for our world.
Clean up litter, plant a tree, validate someone who is worried about the future. There's so many small ways we can put grains of sand on the scales of justice and preserve our mental health and revolutionary spirit at the same time. Once we accept the problem, it becomes fulfilling to live and act against it. The magnitude of the problem is beyond us as individuals, but our example that we set for others and sphere of influence is ours to manage.
I seriously recommend to people you go and clean up litter with friends
I choose to believe this means "do adventurism against politicians". :picard-direct-action: (jk lol)
Ironically I find cleaning up litter to make me more doomer because we can spend the whole day picking up trash and not even make the slightest dent in it.
I'm glad it's resonating. I went through the deepest depression of my life and could not bring myself out of it; not with meds, not with diet and exercise, not with all my usual go to avenues of self-reflection and adjustment. Eventually, I came to recognize it as grief, and realized I needed to process it as such. I had to go through the phases and let myself feel it DEEP instead of trying to desperately keep my head above water. Since then I'm a changed person - but by accepting the future with all its ugly bits, I can begin to see the avenues of hope and plan my life more strategically. It's truly liberating and I think it makes me a better revolutionary. I hope others can find that relief through grief and similarly use it to ground themselves.
It’s hard to come to terms with the idea that we must grieve for the future we thought we would have but it is liberating in a way too. Thank you for that insight.
In a way, it's a death of the self. The person we thought we would become and the life we had hoped for are simply impossible given climate change. That hurts bad. But once we've let go of that imagined future, we're finally free to imagine another. Even better, we're in a place of consciousness and awareness when developing this vision instead of patching it together based on whatever garbage we passively pick up from hegemonic ideology.
The failure happened 20 years ago. It's gonna happen, in you're life time. Best thing people can do is take reasonable steps to minimize the impact - i.e. If you live in Miami, think about where you want to move. Don't mourn, organize (politically and your life so you don't drown in boiling oceans)
That's kind of what I mean though. It's easy to say "LOL JUST MOVE," but people have an attachment to where they live and the networks that are there. They have an attachment to the lives they imagined they'd live in those places, the people they would become. To be able to get comfortable with the necessity of moving and choosing an entirely different life path requires letting go of the one you thought you were on.
Well put, u/MemesAreTheory.
Jokes aside, I feel like I am probably yet to go through the process of grieving that you've been through. I'm just not yet willing to let go of the hope that we'll be able to hold off the worst of climate change, and I try not to think about the mass exodus of climate refugees and how our bastard governments will deal with them. I guess these things take time.
Agreed.
Build a party. There is no Lenin, no Rosa without a party.
The West Virginia Senator told the White House
How does a normie lib rationalize this? What do they tell themselves after winning the latest "most important election of our life" when their victorious champion holding the highest office in the land is told by a subordinate member of their own party no, and has no recourse?
Isn't it funny how when Trump was president the lib line was "omg he can do literally anything he wants", and now that Biden is president the line has changed to "well ackshully the POTUS doesn't have any power at all".
They probably think Trump reset everything to fascism and we have to incrementally improve with baby steps back up to Obama levels of social and environmental collapse.
I think Bernie is gonna get all the flak, baby. It's very possible that NO bill passes, no BBB shit for anyone, and progressives who weren't willing to be "pragmatic" are going to get the brunt of the blame.
They’re probably telling themselves that it’s the progressives’ fault for asking for too much.
Biden proving himself as the true harm reduction candidate by ensuring humanity cooks here on Earth before we can spread and destroy the rest of the galaxy :biden-harbinger:
There's a pretty compelling case to be made that we're one of the early civilizations in the galaxy. It's probably for the best that we don't make it to the "grabby" stage of growth.
I know Biden's climate plan sucks ass and won't do anything anyway. And I get that this is just bourgeois democracy in action; and Machin's just bought out by fossil fuels.... but on a deeply emotional level, I just despise this asshat. And anyone who just gives the middle finger to anyone who wants a livable planet in the future.
I really wish hell was real and it was run by communists, so people like manchin would for once feel the consequences for their evil deeds.
A lot of people think the reason Joe Manchin opposes climate funding is because he's bought by the coal and gas industry, but the real reason is because he's Italian.
How about if I told you it used to be Manchini? Anyway - it's not even close. It's my least favorite kind of pasta.
lmao even the stuff he was proposing was weak.
:amerikkka:
4 degrees Celsius of warming speedrun incoming. :doomer:
I wish I could be like my liberal colleagues and be happy that covid is now over, be confident that their salaries are on an upward trajectory as the VC funding line will always go up, and that their Tesla means that global warming is fixed. Also that they can retire early as they have crypto “investments”. That’d be a nice set of beliefs to have.
Doesn't matter what beliefs you have. Soon or later reality will reach us all.
The sad thing is it will reach people doing it tough the quickest and hardest.
Nah. Truth can bring pain but we must struggle nevertheless
There was never any chance of a Biden administration doing anything about climate change
"Sure, the planet got destroyed. But Twitter didn't call us SJWs, at least!"
Idk other than some vague gesture to end capitalism. Climate stuff always brings out the doomer inside me.
I remember as a kid we were taught to respect the environment, and reduce our personal carbon footprint and it felt good to do our part to help the planet, but then as I got older I learned about how the majority of the damage is being done by corporations and the people in power would rather suck those people's dicks than give any meaningful effort into combatting the damage. It just feels so hopeless in the end.
I generally think any kind of direct action is good, even if it isn't directly aimed at climate change since so many of these issues are linked together. I'm also trying to find some orgs in my local area but it's definitely an uphill climb.
It's funny that both parties are decimating their respective voting bases over a disconnect between what their respective constitutes want and what they feel they must do to remain in power. I genuinely could not think of a more fitting crisis of legitimacy.
Can you elaborate on the disconnect between what the parties are doing and what their constituents want?
The parties do what their bourgeois owners want. No surprise, that doesn't line up with the desires of the general public.
Chuds want Republicans to back up their election investigation. They truely believe Trump won the 2020 election and are furious the party isn't going to bat for them. Even just playing the obstructionist game is to accept their big wet boy lost and Biden is the president. On top of that, acknowledging the virus is enough to make chuds froth at the mouth.
Democrats know they need to be seen doing something in the wake of a pandemic. The problem is, all the things they have talked about doing are things their donor's would really rather they didn't. So Manchins and Sinemas are allowed to dictate the party line and shift the blame. Trouble is, the Democrats have demonstrated numerously that there are many internal mechanisms to bring a wayward member in line - but they only get used on representatives to their left. People see and remember that.
How come trump seemed to be able to do whatever he liked but Biden Is made redundant by one guy with less power than him in his own party?
it was funny seeing U.S whine about 'developing' countries carbon emissions
Kerry’s repeated trips to China and diplomatic efforts by other countries have failed so far to win public promises of faster emissions cuts from that key climate player, although China did newly pledge last month to stop financing coal-fired power plants overseas. China’s enthusiasm for dirty-burning coal power at home and abroad help make it the world’s biggest current climate polluter by far. China under President Xi Jinping shows no interest in being seen as following the U.S. lead on climate or anything else.
:michael-laugh:
No dirty-burning coal? Alright, hand back those treats buster. :xi-gun:
https://www.versobooks.com/books/3665-how-to-blow-up-a-pipeline preaching to the choir here, but this is a pretty cool book about how the pacifism of the climate movement is antiquated and ineffective. The scholar (and once protester) argues against harming people, but in favor of targeted property destruction of the tools of fossil fuel extraction.
Fuckin feds ruin any fun when it comes to organizing that sort of thing, though. I think principled Cadre could lead moments of mass action towards spontaneous goals like this, though. When the inevitable next oil spill occurs, or heat wave happens, or whatever the event is that sparks protests, use it to get into a crowd and drum up support for specific property destruction. That's what I think is next and unable to be easily infiltrated by feds. 500 committed Cadre across the country operating from a principled place of agitating for property destruction during mass protests can cause serious damage to infrastructure and raise the confidence and militancy of a climate movement.
The scholar (and once protester) argues against harming people, but
Ok so like I know electoralism bad and the dems would just find a new scapegoat but like... is there a good reason people like Manchin and Sinema shouldn't be [REMOVED]? Like... removed from being alive?
If everyone who pulls this shit gets killed it seems like people would stop doing it, considering afaik it is driven solely by a profit motive.I think if politicians started dying as a proxy attack on the capital that sponsors them, then the reaction would be sharp and brutal.
I’d keep an eye on what happens in the U.K. in the coming months after that Tory cumstain was stabbed today. More cops, more surveillance, less rights, backed by all political parties.
Morally? Of course not. But with where popular consciousness is at now that's likely to make them martyrs of liberalsm and backlash to the movement. As things get worse that may change what level of violence the general public is willing to tolerate - but that book was written as an intervention to the climate movement circa 2019. That's pre-covid, so maybe it's already a little out of date. I personally think oil-execs would be a target a plurality of Americans would understand violence against, but it's probably better to start with targeted property destruction tactically. Normalize real resistance to fossil fuel extraction before going for harming people.
TO BE CLEAR. THIS IS AN ACADEMIC DISCUSSION AND I AM BY NO MEANS ADVOCATING FOR THE HARM OF ANY PERSON.
Well certainly, completely academic discussion and all. Some interesting points to consider.
Indeed, very academic, I'm putting this simulation in my next Minecraft education mod :big-cool:
What would happen if someone took out those genocidal ghouls? Would their replacements be any better? No, most certainly not. Would it terrorise other ghouls into acting responsibly and passing the necessary policies? No, not without the presence of a large militant movement willing and capable of doing the same to them. Would it make them into martyrs and alienate working class people from realistic climate policies? Probably, given the current ideological state of society. Would it result in good militant activists being killed or thrown in jail, thereby being rendered unable to contribute to the struggle? Yes, most likely.
it's very difficult to do, and would not have the effect you want it to have. These freaks fear nothing. They crave death. They want someone to release them from the hell they've built for everyone.
So, to any of the people that have read ‘Ministry For The Future’, when are we forming The Order of Kali?
When 50,000,000 people die of a heatwave on the same day, apparently...
If he died to covid or something would it pass or would they just make up a different reason not to pass it?
:chomsky-yes-honey: You see, the Republicans are the greatest threat to life on Earth. That’s why you have to vote for the people that enable the Republicans + don’t have any plan to help us. I’m a very serious intellectual who totally isn’t decades past my relevancy and enjoying a pathetic stint as a “leftist” celebrity for the media circuit.
Chomsky doing the "A Wizard should know better!" scene from Two Towers.
