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Title: That the Tide Turns! Author: Anonymous Date: Autumn 2018 Language: en Topics: green energy, renewable energy, wind energy, energy, sabotage, insurrectionary, Avis de TempĂŞtes, The Local Kids, The Local Kids #2 Source: Translated for The Local Kids, Issue 2 Notes: First appeared as Que tourne le vent ! in Avis de tempĂŞtes (Bulletin anarchiste pour la guerre sociale), Issue 6, June 2018
“The industrial wind turbine is nothing but the continuation of
industrial society by other means. In other words, a relevant critique
of electricity and energy in general cannot be other than a critique of
a society for which the massive production of energy is a vital
necessity. The rest is only illusion: a masked endorsement of the
present situation, that contributes to maintaining its essential
aspects.” - Le vent nous porte sur le système, 2009
A night of thunderstorms. Lightening illuminates the sky while the
thunderclaps seem to announce the end of the world. Even if the latter
didn’t happen the first of June 2018 in Marsanne (Drôme, France)
something did happen that night, or rather two things. Two things that
met an unexpected fate; two wind turbines were attacked. One burned
totally, the other is damaged. The dismayed cops and the RES group
[multinational energy company] could only take note of the signs of
break-in on the two entrance doors of the giant columns, on which the
generator and wings of these industrial monsters of renewable energy are
perched. Two at least, on a total of some thousands erected in France
during the last decade. Or rather three, if we include the burning of
that one on the plateau of Aumelas, not far from Saint-Pargoire
(HĂ©rault), four days later, by one of those coincidences of the calender
that sometimes does things the right way.
That these wind turbines don’t have anything to do any more with the
quaint windmills of yesteryear – that, we mention in passing, were for
the most part important sources of accumulation for the more or less
local landlord, often attracting the farmers’ wrath – is without doubt
obvious. But then, why do the states of numerous countries promote the
establishment of these “wind farms” on the hill tops, in the valleys and
even in the sea? It’s maybe not only because of calculations exclusively
mathematical. Even the engineers cannot change all the statistics and
have to admit that wind turbines don’t function more than 19% of the
year (a capacity much lower than the nuclear power plants that achieve
75% or the coal power plants, between 30 and 60%). It cannot be because
of a will to transform the whole energy supply into “renewable”, given
that is simply impossible when holding on to an equal amount of consumed
electricity (for France that would mean a wind turbine on each 5 km2).
It cannot be because of a concern for the “environment”, unless if one
is duped by the smart discourses of a clean technology, given that only
the production and installation of the wind turbines (without taking
into account the centralised electric network to which they are
connected) entails the mining of very rare and very toxic materials, the
ships that are big consumers of oil to transport the minerals, the huge
factories for producing them, the highways to dispatch the parts and so
on and so forth. Finally, it cannot be because of putting a spanner in
the works of the big energy multinationals – that have accumulated
wealth notably with oil and gas – because it are the same companies that
invest massively in renewable energies. No, in this way we’re not going
to understand anything, we have to look elsewhere.
Lets do away also at once with all the environmental and ecologist
posturing, now not only displayed by the citizens on duty, but also by
each company, each state, each researcher. There is no “energy
transition” going on, there never was one in history. Whatever the
cherished employees of the technology start-ups say, the exploitation of
the muscle power of the human being has never been abandoned… The
generalization of the usage of oil has not provoked the retirement of
coal. The introduction of nuclear energy by force didn’t signify at all
the disappearance of the “classical” plants working on gas, oil or coal.
There is no transition, only addition. The boosted research of new
energy sources is only consistent with strategic interests, and
certainly not ethical ones. In a world that is not only dependent on
electric energy, but that is hyper dependent on it, the diversifying of
means of producing it is at stake. To heighten the resilience of the
supply – of an essential importance in a connected world that functions
just-in-time on all levels – the motto is to diversify and multiply the
sources. Also to cope with the famous “peak demands” that – for
technical reasons – only can be dealt with by only one type of energy
production (nuclear plants, for example). Therefore not only the
development of the wind turbines and solar power, but also of power
plants on biomass fuel (genetically modified rapeseed as biofuel – what
acrobatics does the language of the techno-world provide us with!), of
new types of nuclear plants, of nano produced conductive materials that
promise to reduce (by tiny micro percentages) losses during the
transmission of electricity, and the list goes on.
So it’s not surprising that from the three fields referred to by the
European research programmes funded in the framework of Horizon 2020,
one is energy.
But then, what is this energy, and to what relates the energy question
in general? Like numerous struggles in the past have highlighted –
notably those against nuclear technology – energy is a kingpin in
industrialised society. If energy means production, production allows
for profit through commodification. If energy means power, power allows
for war, and war means power.
The power granted by control over the production of energy is huge. The
western states have not waited for the 1973 oil crisis – when their
dependence on the oil producing countries, that wanted to follow their
own power plans, became clear to everybody – to realize that. It was one
of the main motives for several states, including France, to justify the
multiplication of nuclear power plants. To have a relative energy
independence and to use it as a weapon to compel other countries to not
break ranks. But one thing might even be more important, and it is there
that the critique of nuclear and its world allows us to grasp to the
fullest extent the role of energy for domination: nuclear technology
confirms that only the state and capital should posses the capacities to
produce energy. That these capacities represent a relationship relative
to the degree of dependence of the population, that every revolutionary
surge wanting to transform radically the world will have to confront
these energy juggernauts. In short, that energy means domination. As a
very backed-up critical essay from some years ago emphasized, linking
the question of the nuclear to the wind turbines: “the bulk of the
energy consumed currently serves to make function a subjugating machine
from which we want to escape.”
Yet, to bring up the question of energy frequently generates – including
amongst the enemies of this world – at least a certain embarrassment. We
indeed easily associate energy with life. Like the energetics
specialists who have hugely contributed to the spread of a view that
explains every vital phenomenon through transfers, losses and
transformations of energy (chemical, kinetic, thermodynamic…). The body
would only be a cluster of energetic processes, as a plant would only be
a set of chemical transformations. Another example of how an ideological
construct influences – and is in its turn influenced by – social
relations, is the very contemporary association between mobility, energy
and life. Moving continually, never remaining, “seeing the world” by
jumping from a high speed train to a low cost air plane to cross
hundreds of kilometres in the blink of an eye, is the new paradigm of
social success. Travel, discover, adventure or unknown are words that
appear now prominently on all the publicity screens, destroying by a
fake assimilation a whole set of human experiences, reduced to fast and
risk-free visits of places developed specifically to that end. Even
staying in the room of someone unknown to you is duly controlled,
protected and exploited by the profiling and databases of a virtual
platform. That’s maybe as well why the cheeks get red or the lips start
to tremble when someone dares to suggest we should cut the energy to
this world.
To overcome this embarrassment is not an easy thing. State propaganda
warns us permanently, with images of war – real enough – as evidence,
about what the destruction of the supply of energy entails. Nonetheless,
a small effort to get rid of the spectres that hound our minds will be a
necessary step. And this, however, without developing “alternative
programmes” to resolve this question, because – in this world – it
cannot be resolved. The modern cities cannot do without a centralised
system of energy, regardless if produced by nuclear power plants, nano
materials or wind turbines. The industry cannot do without devouring
monstrous amounts of energy.
The worst – and that’s already partly happening, not only inside the
struggles against the energy management and exploitation of resources,
but also against patriarchy, racism or capitalism – would be that out of
concern for being empty handed in the face of an uncertain and murky
future, the research and experiments of an autonomy will fuel the
progresses of power. The experimental wind turbines in the hippie
community of the sixties in the US maybe took some time to make an
entrance on the industrial stage, but it is today an important factor in
the capitalist and state restructuring. As a recent text, sketching
perspectives of struggle inspired on the ongoing worldwide conflicts
around the energy question, resumed: “Admittedly, unlike in the past, it
is possible that in this third beginning of a millennium the desire for
subversion intersects with the hope of survival on the same terrain that
aims to hamper and prevent the technical reproduction of the existent.
But it is an encounter that is destined to transform in confrontation,
because it is obvious that one part of the problem cannot be at the same
time the solution. To do without all that energy mainly necessary to the
politicians and industrialists, one has to want to do without those that
are seeking, exploiting, selling, using it. The energy necessities of an
entire civilization – the one of money and power – cannot be called into
question just out of respect for hundred-year-old olive trees, for
ancestral rites, or for the protection of forests and beaches already in
large part polluted. Only another conception of life, the world and
relations can achieve this. Only this can and should challenge energy –
in its use and false needs, and so also in its structures – by calling
in to question society itself.”
And if this titanic society is indeed going down – reducing or
destroying on its way all possibilities of an autonomous life, all inner
life, all singular experience, devastating the lands, intoxicating the
air, polluting the water, mutilating the cells – do we really think it
would be inept or too rash to suggest that to harm domination, to have
some hope of opening onto unknown horizons, to give some space to a
freedom unbridled and without moderation, undermining the energy
foundations of that same domination could be a most precious trail?
Think of what we have in front and around us. Everywhere in the world
conflicts are ongoing around the exploitation of natural resources and
against the construction of energy structures (wind farms, nuclear
plants, oil and gas pipelines, high voltage lines, biomass powered
plants, fields of genetically modified rapeseed, mines…). All the states
consider these new projects and the existing energy infrastructures as
“critical infrastructure”, meaning essential for power. In light of the
centrality of the energy question, it is not surprising to read in the
yearly report of one of the most renowned agencies for the observation
of political and social tensions in the world (funded by the global
giants of the insurance sector), that of all the attacks and acts of
sabotage reported as such on the planet and carried out by “non-state”
actors – all tendencies and ideologies mixed up – 70% took aim at energy
and logistics infrastructure (namely pylons, transformers, gas and oil
pipelines, cell towers, electricity lines, fuel depots, mines and
railways).
Admittedly, the motives that can animate those fighting in these
conflicts are very diverse. Either reformist, ecologist, related to
indigenous or religious claims, revolutionary or simply to strengthen
the bases of a state – or a future state. Far from us the idea to
neglect the development, the deepening and the spreading of a radical
critique of all the facets of domination, but what we want to emphasize
here is that inside a part of these asymmetrical conflicts is spreading
a method of autonomous struggle, self-organized and starting from direct
action, joining de facto the anarchist proposals on this field. Beyond
the insurrectionary potentials that the conflicts around new energy
projects can have, that maybe give us a glimpse of a more vast and
massive revolt against these nuisances, it is clear that the production,
storage and transmission of all the energy this society needs to
exploit, control, make war, submit and dominate, depends invariably on a
set of infrastructures spread out over the whole territory, favouring
the dispersed action in small autonomous groups.
If the history of revolutionary struggles has an abundance of very
suggestive examples concerning the possibilities of taking action
against that which makes the state and capitalist machinery function,
taking a look at the chronologies of sabotage during the last years
demonstrates that the here and now is also not lacking in suggestions.
Getting rid of embarrassment, looking elsewhere and differently,
experimenting with what is possible and what can be tried. Some paths to
explore. Nobody can foresee what that can give, but one thing stays
certain: that it pertains to the anarchist practice of freedom.