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Title: Before the Big Change Author: Peter Gelderloos Language: en Topics: environment, the State Source: Retrieved on June 18, 2009 from http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/7969
It is a testament to the horror, the boundless horror of capitalism,
that after decades of its triumph, of changelessness, of the end of
history, of a famine of other possible futures even in the minds of
children, that those of us alive today who will see this world change
forever cannot count ourselves lucky. We stand at the brink, and all the
petty squabbles, all political programs and narrow affinities fall into
insignificance.
The estimates vary as to exactly when we reach the point of no return,
it could be 2015, it could be 2020, but climate scientists have reached
a consensus that since the Industrial Revolution humans (I would be more
direct and say capitalists) have caused global surface temperatures to
raise 0.7 degrees Celsius, and that at a certain point not so far off,
additional global warming will trigger a number of feedback loops that
will cause the global temperatures to rise even more.
Tested climate models suggest that within six to ten years, we will have
released enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to cause 2 C of
warming, and at that point the melting of the polar ice caps (which
currently reflect large amounts of solar radiation), the release of
methane currently stored beneath the Siberian permafrost (methane is a
more potent greenhouse gas than CO2), the increase in atmospheric water
vapor (which also acts to trap heat from the sun), and the additional
release of CO2 currently stored in the oceans as their absorption rate
decreases with warming, all will have a cumulative effect to raise
global temperatures by 5 to 6 degrees by the end of the century. Few
species alive today have survived such a hot world in the past, and we
will all have to adapt or go extinct, as the oceans acidify, desert
regions expand, and coastal areas flood.
This is not an environmental issue in any traditional, narrow sense of
the word. This will affect everything we do.
There are a number of possibilities: the very best is that within the
next six to ten years, waves of revolt overthrow the State, which is the
chief defender and administrator of the structures of fossil fuel-based
capitalism; all coal power plants are shut down; all cars are taken off
the road excepting perhaps a small number that can run on vegetable oil;
airline travel is abolished; electricity is abandoned or produced
locally with small scale renewables; agriculture transitions from the
current industrial petroleum-driven variety to traditional methods or
permaculture, meaning a huge portion of the human population will have
to concern themselves once again with growing their community’s food;
and a massive amount of carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere
through the reforestation of abandoned highways, commercial areas, golf
courses, and other spaces, and through the rewilding of the planet’s
extensive commercial tree plantations (the greatest amount of carbon
stored by a forest is in the layer of leaves and other organic debris on
the ground, which is part and parcel with a biodiversity that does not
exist in tree plantations).
This is also what needs to happen if we pass the point of no return, but
in that case it will be much less pleasant for all of us.
We are not faced with a collapse, but with a deepening of the misery
beyond what any of us can imagine.
The climate crisis will not destroy capitalism. As blind and insanely
idiotic as the powerful are, they are also looking towards the future.
At the recent NATO summit in Strasbourg, the world government discussed
its solution to the impending disaster: militarized borders and stricter
internal security measures like biometric IDs and surveillance. I don’t
see these as naively unrealistic non sequiters so much as codewords for
the full realization of the New World Order. The powerful are well
informed that a sharp decrease in agricultural productivity caused by
global warming will coincide with a projected peaking of the human
population at 9 billion, resulting in mass starvation that is predicted
to claim between 3 and 6 billion lives. Already 300,000 people die every
year, nearly all of them in the Global South, due to the results of
climate change: desertification, droughts, more violent storms, greater
spread of tropical diseases, crop failure. Human populations are already
beginning to migrate on an enormous scale in search of survival.
The NATO solution is to close the border, to seal the door of the gas
chamber that now encompasses the greater part of three continents. This
is the new jewel in their crown — they are planning the greatest mass
murder in human history. There are already confirmed reports of killings
in the desert between the US and Mexico and eerie rumours of naval boats
sinking rafts full of Africans in the Mediterranean when the press
aren’t there to get some humanitarian photos of dramatic rescues at sea
— in fact just the reported deaths on the borders of Fortress Europe
between 1988 and 2006 total to 14,000. This will become policy. This
will become open war. Of course, the border will not be hermetically
sealed. NATO will probably maintain military colonies in key fuel- and
food-producing regions, especially in areas of low population density
like Saudi Arabia where control will be easier.
Domestically too their answer is already becoming visible:
totalitarianism. Unintegrated immigrant populations and youth who have
not yet consented to the murder of our futures present a constant
internal threat to this order that has manifested in numerous revolts
and insurrections, as well as countless quieter negations and the
creation and diffusion of new social models — I mean our protests, our
social centers, our permaculture farms, hacklabs, counterinformation
groups, diy health collectives, bicycle workshops, and other
self-organized projects. When coupled with a will to destroy the
existing system and an attempt to overcome the separations imposed by
government and media to create real solidarity, these movements evidence
a superhuman optimism that may be the only hope for the future.
And it is apparent that the State feels threatened. Under the rubric of
anti-terrorism, the constellation of leading governments have begun
instituting systems of total control. Infiltration and provocation in
anarchist groups and Muslim communities throughout the US, as well as
the curtailing of gun rights and the imprisonment for up to 22 years of
activists trying conscientiously to save the planet; biometric IDs
across Europe; in France mandatory DNA sampling as a consequence for
over a hundred criminal offenses including graffiti and illegal protest,
and psychological tracking and databasing of delinquent, potentially
criminal characteristics of all children from as young as three; in the
UK thousands of surveillance cameras with facial recognition and
automatic license plate-scanning technology deployed across the whole of
public space as well as most bars; in Germany the criminalization of
self-defense from surveillance by wearing masks in demonstrations, and
the government prerogative to declare any radical political group a
criminal organization and imprison anyone said to be associated with it;
in Spain the extension of the torture and high security isolation
prisons long used against the Basques to anarchists and squatters; in
the Netherlands the installation of a new system requiring one to use a
personal ID/bank card to get on or off the bus, rendering one’s
movements through the city trackable; and everywhere the use of
cellphones to listen to people’s conversations and log people’s
movements.
The world governments may also try to mitigate the disaster by
proliferating nuclear power plants and deploying particles in the
atmosphere or orbital shields to reflect some of the sun’s energy, with
unknown consequences for the future, as usual.
Capital and the white supremacist states are preparing to manage the
apocalypse they have brought down on all of us. We need to develop our
ability to survive, undermine, and destroy them. We cannot do this
alone; in fact we must overcome the isolation they impose on those who
resist. Non-integrated immigrant communities and anti-authoritarians who
have been privileged with citizenship must increase communication and
build networks of solidarity that overcome racism, national boundaries,
and otherification, and all active people must engage in a Herculean
campaign of communication with everyone outside the movement to
challenge the legitimacy of the State. There is a need to remind people
that the politicians and capitalists created this problem, for years
they worked hard to silence it, and they have been repressing those of
us trying to do something about it. The problems of the future will be
much easier if everyone feels as we do — that as the lifeboat starts to
sink, those responsible should be the first to go overboard. A vital
task is to intervene publicly in the discourse on terrorism, to show
that we are the people being persecuted as terrorists and the war on
terror is actually a war of social control, that the state is crying
wolf and none of its security measures make us feel safe. People need to
be comfortable with resistance, not with surveillance. If we can achieve
this, we will have deprived the State of a tool it desperately needs to
survive the coming storm.
The end result of this communication must be a consciousness that the
State and capitalism are suicidally insane and a complementary desire to
organize our own lives free of their management; an acknowledgement of
the central role racism and colonialism and their attendant genocides
have long played in this insanity; and an understanding that the earth
is not a mechanical, dead agglomeration of materials and processes that
exist for us to exploit but rather a living, sacred thing that gives us
life and meaning, of which we are a small and dependent part. No future
with the mentality of control and exploitation is possible: this
mentality is responsible for enslavement, genocide, and the destruction
of the planet. No peace with the State and capitalism is desirable: we
are reclaiming our power to create the world we want to live in.
This is the change we face: total revolution or a new totalitarianism
installed to preside over mass extinction, the murder of billions of
people, and the deepening enslavement of those who by citizenship or
skin color are marked for survival.