Written by Vishwas
Satgar and first published at Alternative
Information and Development Centre
The end of
the human race is a very real prospect in the context of climate change and
ultimately a heating world. Global warming at increases of 3, 4 or 5 degree
Celsius means planet earth will no longer be habitable for human and most
non-human life. There is scientific evidence that this has happened to other
planets like Venus but was caused through natural processes. Our end is not
inevitable and neither can it be prevented by false solutions. As a scientific
process, climate change is the result of the sun’s rays (energy flows) being
trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere by greenhouse gases (such as carbon and
methane). This is creating a heating planet. This article engages with this
challenge from a climate justice perspective.
The making of
climate eco-cide
There is a
history to why Earth is heating. For the past 150 years, capitalist societies
have been at the forefront of extracting, burning and emitting carbon through
coal, oil and gas. Over the past fifty years there has been a “golden spike”
and what climate scientists call the “hockey curve feature of carbon
emissions”. This means that there has been a consistent and intensive increase
in carbon emissions. The scientific consensus is simple: human beings are a
geological force shaping the planetary conditions that sustain life. We are
causing climate change. This is now known as the age of the Anthropocene.
While we can
accept at a general level such a scientific conclusion, it is misleading in
terms of the actual political economy of carbon emissions and carbon
capitalism. For the past 150 years of emissions the industrialised countries of
the global north carry a climate debt as the main contributors to carbon
emissions. In addition, about seven oil companies (Shell, BP, Exon, Saudi
Aramco etc.) have also profited from extracting and supplying fossil fuels.
Various countries are also part of extracting and burning oil, gas and coal.
These carbon corporations and states constitute carbon capital which is a key
contributor to climate change.
The US has
the largest per capita carbon footprint on the earth. Today, through fracking
and support from Obama and Trump, the US is the leading fossil fuel producer in
the world. The US imperial state is preventing the world from addressing the
climate crisis in any meaningful way. This has been happening for more than two
decades, under every US President, and this has meant the UN-led process to
secure a climate deal has never been successful. The Paris Climate Agreement
(2015) is a failed solution, with a weak pledge and review mechanism, married
to green capitalist solutions that have not worked and will not work.
The
capitalist Anthropocene reveals that rich industrialised countries, carbon
capital (including in the global south like South Africa), the US imperial
state and the lack of a climate justice agenda within the UN multi-lateral
system are the vanguard destroying the conditions that sustain life of human
and non-human nature. Climate eco-cide, the destruction of all of us through
climate change, is being led by these forces.
South
Africa’s carbon capitalism
South Africa
is one of the most unequal countries in the world according to any measure.
Ironically, this is a conclusion of the World Bank in its recent 2018 report.
The Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) have made
these observations since 2014. Their research has shown that the top 10% gets
two thirds of South Africa’s income. Half of all South Africans are chronically
poor, living in households with a per capita income of R1,149 or less per
month.
With South
Africa’s drought, our first major climate shock, these inequalities have been
made worse through high food prices, for instance. In addition, new climate
inequalities have been created through the privatisation of water. The working
class, unemployed and poor have borne the brunt of the drought. Alongside
racialised and gendered super exploitation, high unemployment and increasing
poverty, South Africa is a carbon intensive economy, based largely on coal. It
is the 14th highest emitter of carbon emissions in the world, and despite
energy inequality has a per capita carbon footprint higher than China, India or
Brazil.
Carbon
capitalism was the bedrock of apartheid and has been part of ANC hegemony, and
then dominance, in the post apartheid period. With the climate crisis, South
Africa is a carbon criminal state, contributing to the greenhouse effect and
the extinction of the human species and other life forms. It is an ‘eco-cidal’
capitalism, destroying the conditions that sustain life.
Limits of
historical socialist alternatives: a Marxist ecology critique
South Africa
has had a diverse socialist imagination which has included Sovietised socialism
(even Trotsky’s minimum program), revolutionary nationalism and social
democracy. The ANC Alliance is shaped by all three versions of 20th century
socialism. These socialisms have not come to the fore in South Africa in the
post-apartheid period. But they lurk in the national liberation imagination. They
have been theorised in a manner that grounds them in particular assumptions
about nature and historical experience of these socialisms.
From a
Marxist Ecology perspective these socialisms have the following problems:
1. A
blindness to the fact that Marx was an original systems thinker, who connected
human social relations with nature. Marx understood that the labour process
mediated the relationship with nature. Further, the human-nature relationship
underpinned a “metabolic relationship” with nature as a whole. This means that
the more capitalism undermined natural cycles and eco-systems, the more the
antagonism with nature deepened.
2. An absence
of thinking about value creation as grounded in both nature and labour. While
labour was “priced in”, all these socialisms externalised the costs of nature
in the production process. So pollution, climate change, species extinction,
eco-system destruction, for example, are not taken into account in how
production is organised. Nature must be conquered.
3. These
socialisms are all productivist. They copied capitalism’s obsession with
growth. This meant that accumulation and wealth creation were based on the
assumption of endless resources. There were no ecological constraints.
4. All these
socialisms are obsessed with technology as progress. But technology is not
neutral. It is embedded in class relations. For corporations, science and
research are about profit making. So unleashing the “forces of production” will
not necessarily meet the needs of society and, worse, will have destructive
consequences for nature. Genetic engineering of seeds is a good example of
this.
Beyond
Fatalism – the struggle for a democratic eco-socialist South Africa
South Africa’s historical socialist alternatives are limited and inappropriate for the struggle to address ecological crises and, particularly, the dangerous contradiction of climate crisis. Moreover, the dominant carbon capitalism is the real challenge. Many believe that carbon capitalism is too big a problem to solve and hence either accept the end of the human race or a catastrophic future. We are at the “end of times”. This is a fatalism that legitimises that madness and irrationality of carbon capitalism. It undermines any kind of mass working class-led response and is also blind to the science. Such resignation is deeply reactionary.
We have a
rapidly heating world, with 12 years left to prevent catastrophic climate
change and an overshoot of 1.5°C. According to the UN’s IPCC Global warming of
1.5°C report, massive reductions need to be implemented, much before 2030. At
least 40% of reductions must happen at 2010 levels before 2030. By 2050, net
zero emissions must be reached. In this context we have to be clear about the
dynamics, logic and character of contemporary carbon capitalism.
Carbon
capitalism produces class, racialised and gendered inequality. But it also
produces climate inequality and “eco-cidal” destruction of human and non-human
life forms. Carbon capitalism is anti-life. In this context, democratic
eco-socialism is central to the demand: “System Change, Not Climate Change”. It
recognises that “democracy” (rights, freedoms, procedures and institutional
forms) is about a people’s history of struggle against capitalism and
oppression; “ecology”, or the human relationship with nature, is essential for
our survival and “socialism” is necessary to achieve the end of exploitation,
racism and gender oppression and ensure the rational organisation of society to
meet human needs.
Democratic
eco-socialism – challenges and tasks for deep just transitions
There are no stages in this struggle to secure human and non-human life. We need to break with the anti-life and climate eco-cide logic of carbon capitalism now. The first challenge in this regard is to overcome old modes of politics and thinking. This means “reformist pragmatism” or “revolutionary maximalism” is not what the historical moment demands.
We are in an
uncharted moment in human history which requires a response that brings to the
fore what is necessary to sustain life as part of the deep just transition (an
idea articulated by trade unions). We need a transformative politics that
constitutes power from below, transforms the state into a climate emergency
state, builds new systems to sustain life and advances just transitions in
every living space so workers and the poor don’t bear the brunt of climate
change. The second challenge is to recognise there are two fronts of the
climate justice struggle: (i) decarbonisation across society: from extraction,
production, consumption, finance, living spaces and the state; and (ii) the
pro-active emergency responses to climate shocks: when communities are
devastated by fires, flooding, droughts, heat waves and sea level rise.
These
challenges affirm the organic and immediate tasks facing democratic
eco-socialists today. Democratic eco-socialists have three crucial tasks as
part of the deep just transition.
• First,
building a transformative climate justice movement – a red-green alliance that
can lead society. This means environmentalists have to become socialists and
socialists have to become environmentalists to ensure fundamental
transformation of capitalism. A new post-carbon bloc of counter-hegemonic
red-green alliances led by the working class has to crystalise. This is already
happening.
• Second, a
programmatic approach to democratic systemic reform including decarbonisation;
democratic planning; food, seed and water sovereignty; socially owned renewable
energy; climate jobs; zero waste; mass clean energy public transport;
solidarity economies; a substantive basic income grant that has to be scaled up
now as part of deep just transitions. The Climate Justice Charter process
underway is crucial in this regard.
• Third,
democratic eco-socialists have to advance a vision and conception of the
climate emergency state that is deeply democratic and which builds the relevant
capacities to decarbonise and have functional and responsive emergency services
and constructs through democratic planning of new systems to sustain life.
Vishwas
Satgar has been an activist for over three decades. He is an Associate
Professor of International Relations at WITS, board Chairperson of the
Cooperative and Policy Alternative Centre, an activist in the South African
Food Sovereignty Campaign and editor of the Democratic Marxism book series. The
recent volume he edited on the climate crisis is freely downloadable here: http://oapen.org/search?identifier=1000474
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