WE MUST
Thoughts on universal climate solutions
Climate collapse affects everyone in the globe. That is unmovable and unchangeable. Not only are the effects of climate collapse universal but they are also felt earlier and with more strength in the outskirts of the developed world, on what was once called the colonies. Faced with this collapse (or investment opportunity, as some other people see it) the civil leaders, the handlers of social capital, those whose opinions matter rush to appeal to civil(ized) responsibility, to unity, to weather together this storm.
In this unique world represented through the means of communication society forms a whole mass, a single Man with The Good Opinion, the crystallization of Humanity’s progress and its achievements. This is an Ideal that has yet to be realized; once humanity grasps The Good Opinion and monkey-wrenchers, saboteurs and egoists are removed We will be able to produce change and fix the Easily-Solvable problem. It does not matter in which form The Good Opinion presents itself, either through red popular ecology which will in turn solve all of Our problems or liberal-green salvation of the Third World, once (and only once) The Good Opinion is mainstream and We are a mass-movement We will be able to save the Earth. The civil leader (or aspirant to civil leader) rushes then to make the boldest and most nonsensical of claims: We must build nuclear and green power plants, We must unite the working-class, We must put solar panels on our roof.
What is this We? We is not we in any sense, as “we” only refers to a puntual grouping of people. We is not I in any other sense, as I don’t and will never lay down a brick to build a nuclear power plant. We refers to a monster larger than any organization will never be, a Colossus that smashes and dissolves those encaged in it. Those civil leaders with the goal of dominating it refer to it as Society, the Proletariat, Humanity, etc. This giant colossus could even be defined as non-existent if it weren’t for the enormous consequences and punishments it inflicts. The colossal We-machine has many organized appendixes, interiorized thoughts as eyes and ears, punishing and earth-shattering legal feet and colourful electorally-elected representative paint.
The We-machine doesn’t have Society as it’s unique plain of existence; it has a territorial plain, with longitudes and latitudes generally distinguishable: the nuclear power plants pop up in the extrarradio, the water to run both the nuclear plants and the nightmarish green megalopoli is extracted from what some people call the Third World (what the author of this text sometimes refers to as Outside). It even tries to configure itself as a territory with solid borders, a clear-cut and set-in-stone culture and a self-evident tradition with the right to transform, exploit and destroy itself at will.
The self-exploitation of We is one of its most defining characteristics: when We build a nuclear power plant We do not extract the resources nor destroy the territory We build it in, We just take what is ours, what is Our right to use and destroy. Similarly, when We protect ourselves through self-regulation We do not shun people into self-destruction nor incarcerate free-acting people for most if not all of their lives, We just protect Ourselves and Our just, fair and justified system and hierarchies of power.
When I talk about We in an ecological sense I don’t intend to label out the famous statistic “100 companies produce 71% of global emissions” in a way that exclusively blames evil, self-indulging in an almost destructive manner CEOs. Representing supergiant companies as caricaturistic evil enemies who destroy the Earth in a sadistic self-destructive way does not help anyone. The top strata of We does not sustain itself on its own and cannot exist without many other lower strata: these unnamed 100 companies benefit and require many perks of the civilized mode of live, from exploitation of the Outside to mass-consumption. The 100 companies are not a cartoon-ish factory atop a barren field with toxic rivers flowing out of it as much as factories and industrial power plants are not magic concrete boxes where commodities and energy flow out. For every product sold there is a product bought, for every factory there is a forest cut.
Anyway, much of the moral discourse on ecological justice, collapse aversion and the like tend to want to expel these 100 companies (and many entities that form the imagined bourgeoisie) from We. It is at least implied that by destroying these 100 companies, either through legislative action or by molotov, will remove 71% of global emissions. But 100 companies are 100 companies; the industrial-civilized machine of extraction and consumption will keep running, destroying the land and spewing commodities, albeit from smaller businesses if it needs to.
These justice advocates don’t want to renounce the commodities of industrial, civilized and “imperialist” lives: they even see the concept of renouncing industrial society as tartamount to genocide. They don’t want to take this, for them, disastrous route (it may be disastrous for their commodity), they want green and nuclear power, the electrification of the whole world, free Wi-Fi, running water for every home… it is almost surprising that they don’t demand 1-day Amazon shipping for the jungles of Borneo. These civil advocates who apparently know all about Our deserved future propose a We that encapsulates the whole world, where the technocrats of the industrial system plan the economy so every ounce of carbon emission is counted and paid for, a fully formed We where every person and territory has an imposed place and role. For them, the base of our present We are stable foundations, only some small details (like “greed” and “overproduction”) are to be ironed out for a perfect eco-society to emerge. This is why the eco-idealists say that climate change is easily solvable; it is as easy as enclosing all of the world in a well-oiled social machine.
It is perfectly suitable for them to want to remove the contaminating industries, the top of the social-economic machine from the We, to spit them out and reintegrate them as responsible citizens, redeemed labourers or penitent Sisyphuses. As long as the social machine moves on the ecological citizenists will have no fear or doubt in their minds, as long as their organic needs for social interaction and society-building are mediated through spectacular images of green justice and “mutual aid” charity-work they will be satisfied.
I don’t place myself inside of the We: I don’t build nuclear power plants and I don’t install solar panels on my fence, in fact I directly oppose them because I know their effects. I don’t recognize myself inside the humanity that strives to encompass all the globe through capitalist interventionism and extractivism. The world is fragmented and rightfully so, and the global implementation of the Good Opinion will not fix it. It is not the hour that Humanity must unite to fix the climate collapse, if nothing else it is the time of resistance in rapidly-changing environments. We must not build nuclear power plants, We must stop bothering us!