All of us live in the shadow of an ominous future. None of us can be certain what the
years and decades ahead will bring... but fleeting glimpses have begun to appear in
the here-and-now. And they are terrifying.
Fires ravaging Brazil and it’s Amazon rainforest
Super-typhoon Haiyan has made a direct hit.
In this Mozambique port city of Beira, an inland ocean
Continental Europe is baking.
feels like you’re sitting in an oven.
For years, climate scientists’ increasingly urgent warnings have fallen on the deaf ears
of capitalist technocrats from the extractive industries, and their acolytes in the halls
of state power. Faced with the apparent inaction of these decision-makers, environmental activists
and non-profits have opted to simply shout louder... seemingly unaware that they’re
speaking the wrong language.
The most dire predictions of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, have repeatedly
failed to keep up with the pace and trajectory of ecological devastation. This problem stems
from a persistent inability to predict and account for the cascading, mutually-reinforcing
nature of runaway feedback loops.
With each passing year, this situation gets worse. As glaciers recede and ice-shelves
collapse, record-breaking forest fires in Alaska and Siberia foreshadow the thawing
of the Arctic permafrost — a volatile wildcard with the potential to dump more carbon into
the atmosphere than the sum total released during the past two centuries of human activity.
Heatwaves and droughts claim the lives of millions of people each year, a majority of
whom are children from the Global South. And while the great mass of humanity swelters
here on land, temperatures are rising even more rapidly in the oceans. This is leading
to mass die-offs in what were once some of the richest areas of biodiversity on the planet,
and spawning more frequent and violent mega-storms.
And yet, despite the incredibly drastic situation that we face, much of the mainstream discourse
around climate change remains aimed at competing with oil industry propaganda to convince the
public that the phenomenon even exists. And despite the vast amount of time and resources
devoted to this task, millions of people continue to loudly claim that global warming is a hoax,
including the President of the United States.
Over the next thirty minutes, we’ll take a closer look at some of the potential implications
and underlying causes of this slowly unfolding disaster. Along the way, we’ll talk to a
number of individuals as they share their personal experiences fighting their alienation
from the natural world, pushing back against ecologically-destructive industrial development
projects... and making a whole lot of trouble.
The climate emergency is affecting people here and now all over the world.
There’s still this portrayal and thinking along the lines of “oh, we still have eight
years or ten years to really respond.” or maybe even change things, or quote unquote
you still hear “save the earth,” which is, an enormous amount of hubris that goes
along with that, as well as just being factually inaccurate. You can look out your window anywhere
you are on the planet right now and see it’s upon us now. We need to behave accordingly
because of that and not pretend that it’s out in the future and there’s still time
to avoid what’s upon us.
Worldwide all of the climates together, they act together. What happens on the other side
of the world affects us here. Climate change, we’re already seeing the effects on animals
that are in our region that don’t normally live here. We also have a great deal of changes
in the water temperatures, so it affects salmon numbers. The habitats of the salmon are being
changed with soil erosion as well as deforestation from industry. Most of these industries don’t
clean up any of their messes.
Whether it’s the amazon or if it’s the arctic, all of those different ecosystems
are now as a result, moving outside of the equilibrium that they’ve been in for, say,
several hundred thousand years
that have allowed us to live on this planet
in the way that we do in this kind of harmony.
That means huge shifts in the now and where humans and other animals area able to live.
This process is being exacerbated by capitalism.
Glaciers receding around the planet dramatically is the perfect illustration of the impact
that industrialization and corporate capitalism is having. Just in the Himalayas alone, there’s
1.5 billion people that at current rates of ice loss in the Himalayas and in the Hindu
Kush specifically, that by 2100 may not have any water for drinking and irrigation. And
that’s just talking about glaciers, I mean we could say similar things when we talk about
ocean acidification, the warming of the oceans, sea level rise, all these other really, really
dramatic and obvious impacts of the climate crisis.
The latest now, on that state of emergency in Venice. Water levels are even higher this
morning, the city’s worst flooding in more than 50 years.
The Indonesian capital Jakarta is slowly sinking. By 2030, half of the city will be
below sea level.
The simplest way to explain a feedback loop is, the more something happens, the more something
happens. The most famous and easy to explain feedback loop perhaps is the loss of summer
sea ice in the arctic. So when the sea ice is there, it reflects most of the sun rays
back into space and that solar radiation, the heat, with it. As the atmosphere warms
and the sea ice melts, then the ocean around it more is exposed and it absorbs more of
that sunlight and heat, which then makes the ice melt faster which then means the ocean
absorbs more heat, and so it goes.
According to a new report experts say that we have until 2030 to avoid catastrophe. It
also says if unprecedented changes are not made soon, there will be irreversible damage
to the planet. The report focuses on what could happen if global temperatures rise by
more than 1.5 degrees Celcius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.
The problem is the IPCC fails to include the rapidity of the feedback loops and the non-linear
nature. So it’s not just things are increasing like this, but they're increasing like that.
And I think that’s a concept that’s very important for people to understand, and also
one that unfortunately a lot of people don’t understand, and it’s because their simply
not being told by the corporate press.
There’s this idea that climate disaster is going to level systems of power. That we
are going to be affected at the same rate and thus have the ability to build power as
politicians and elites are simultaneously dis-empowered. But this is not how it’s
worked so far. People who have the incentive to fight against climate change are going
to be fighting the rise of fascists and militant citizen groups trying to hoard and protect
resources, as well as the militarization of the state and natural disasters.
Dealing with climate change means dealing with inequality, means dealing with systems
of injustice. The impacts are disproportionate and intersectional right. The impacts of the
climate emergency are especially felt by low-income communities, by racialized communities, by
people in the global south.
People of color, indigenous people in particular, are most likely the most impacted by climate
change and industrial disasters.
I think what we’re now starting to realize is that climate change is more than just about
carbon. it’s about a way of life, a way of being, it’s about an understanding of
the world, the understanding of nature, the understanding of who we are. And what we’re
starting to realize is that in order for us to change our approach to the climate, we
really have to change everything that we do. Looking at climate change, looking at solutions,
is a lot more than just thinking about techno fixes, it’s about re-writing our entire
operating system.
On Friday September 20th, 2019, millions of people from more than 160 countries took to
the streets, in what’s been described as the largest climate protests in human history.
These rallies and demonstrations were led by young people, particularly high school
students responding to 16 year old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg’s call to skip class
and participate in what was dubbed a ‘climate strike’.
Thunberg, who has been skipping class herself every Friday for the past year to protest
politicians’ inaction on climate change, is an impressive figure.
Her withering speeches to world leaders, in which she berates them for their shameless
insincerity and their crimes against future generations, resonate with a public that has grown increasingly
frustrated by their so-called leaders’ inability to stop this slow-moving apocalypse.
But as impressive as this massive upsurge in mobilization and awareness has been, these
rallies will accomplish very little in and of themselves, other than provide yet another
exercise in recuperation and an opportunity for political re-branding. And that is because
they are premised on a comforting, naive, and ultimately false conception of
how the world works.
The true mechanisms of power that are driving us down the path of climate destruction are
not swayed by protests. Capitalism, as it turns out, also has a pretty strong survival
instinct. And its drive for self-preservation is based on perpetual economic growth... a
principle that every single state and the entire architecture of global finance exists
to uphold.
Ridding ourselves of the fairy tale notion that we can somehow avoid the worst effects
of global warming if we organize a big enough rally does not necessarily entail giving up,
or succumbing to fatalistic despair. Instead it can and should serve as a sobering call
to brace ourselves to the harsh reality that politicians aren’t going to save us.
And that we need to start acting accordingly.
Climate change is like the earth going into shock from a gunshot wound. And it makes no
sense to try to talk about solving the problem without talking about the bullet, which is
our current capitalist, extractive resource-dependent civilization.
I don’t see us rapidly changing soon enough to stop climate change. It’s not just running
a vehicle that’s creating climate change. The mass amount of industrialization and disconnect
from our planet is what’s creating the climate change. We just feel that ‘oh, I’m entitled
to this.’ That the way we live today in a modern life—that that has to keep existing.
People know the basics of climate change and ecological destruction at this point, and
I think we need to abandon this insistence on education, or raising awareness. Education
is great, for a while, but I think what is needed is groups of people who trust each
other to feel empowered and act. And supported when they do.
I mean does anyone really, taking a sober assessment of the situation in this country
today politically, think that any pressure can be brought to bear to change a system
where fascists essentially rule the White House, the Supreme Court and the Senate?
Does it make sense to use traditional methods of information-spreading and organization to
try to apply pressure to an authoritarian regime? Would it make a whole lot of sense
for there to be a traditionally-organized environmental movement in Russia trying to
apply pressure to President Putin to have better climate policy? And anyone that’s
gonna really argue differently about that in this country is just not taking a very
clear, honest look at the situation this country’s already in.
Movements in other countries know that politicians don’t willingly give up their power. Incapacitating
systems that harm them is really what changes things.
I would say my main critique of the mainstream environmental movement in general is that
it’s too liberal. The mainstream environmental movement, at least as we see it on television,
is really a movement that features people who are fairly comfortable with the status
quo—with capitalism, with colonialism and all these other things. And don’t really
want to challenge them.
It’s exciting to see momentum around the urgency of climate change, but it’s also
important to recognize that groups like Extinction Rebellion are still operating from the basic
idea that appealing to power is an effective way to bring about change.
Really, XR I think needs to be able to engage much more closely with the communities that
are affected by these disruptions to understand what kinds of activities would they support.
And that means broadening the discussion around climate change, so that people can begin to
see it’s not just about extinction in a far-flung future. That it’s something a
bit abstract to think about. That that same system is destroying lives here and now. That’s
the system that people are worried about. Y’know, they’re struggling to pay their
bills. They’re kind of reeling under the impacts of austerity. It’s that same system
that is basically destroying the planet, and destroying our ecosystems.
The large climate marches that we’ve seen more recently—these marches of hundreds
of thousands of people—show me that we have enough human beings who care. The question
is whether those people are willing to use the tactics necessary. Whether they’re willing
and able to learn from other movements in history, and from more grassroots,
direct-action oriented movements.
The premise of direct action is that you are not appealing to a larger power than yourself
to enact change. You’re taking power into your own hands instead of trying to figure
out what you could do that would help someone else make that change happen for you.
Direct action from Indigenous-led land defence and water defence has proven over time that
we can go back to humble ways of living. We can reduce our consumption.
It requires a smaller number of people, but it requires a higher level of risk. And that’s
often why people from a more comfortable background don’t want to do that kind of action.
Mothers in marginalized communities have historically been on the forefront, because marginalized
communities are often receiving the first blow of the horrors of our ecological and
social and economic collapse.
The project of fighting climate change in the long term also means essentially getting
rid of capitalism. That we have to move to other economic systems and overturn the legacy
of colonialism that was the original way to impose capitalism on most of the world.
We need to look at how we can dismantle these kinds of systems. We have it in us to turn
things around, but there’s a lot to let go of.
We have to get very very real about the situation that we’re in. And that’s gonna call on
something different within each one of us, as far as how committed are we to
walking our talk?
That’s the action that these kids are really marching for. That’s the real action that
needs to happen. A complete overhaul and dismantling of society.
According to official statistics from the UN Refugee Agency, 16.1 million people were
displaced due to weather-related events in 2018 alone. Notably, this figure does not
include those forced from their homes by armed conflicts triggered, or worsened by climate-related
factors.
A new study, released in October of 2019, suggests that the number of people that will
be affected by rising sea levels in the coming decades is more than three times what was
previously thought. The updated report projects that 300 million people will experience annual
flooding by the year 2050, meaning that many coastal cities will need to be evacuated altogether.
These figures are based on countries meeting the emission reduction targets outlined in
the Paris Climate Accord, which isn’t going to happen... meaning that the actual figures
are likely to be even higher.
Much of the displacement from sea level rise is expected to occur in heavily-populated
regions in Asia. In Bangladesh alone, the homes of 42 million people are at risk. Given
the rise of Hindu nationalism and the acute threat of ethno-religious sectarianism in
the neighbouring state of India, the prospects of a mass exodus from Bangladesh are particularly
grim. But it’s far from the only potential geopolitical flashpoint.
The racist anxieties conjured up by the spectre of unchecked migration has been a windfall
for fascist, third-positionist and identitarian movements, nationalist politicians, police
forces, military planners and other advocates of increased border militarization
all around the world.
Unfortunately, over the coming years and decades, this trend is likely going to get
much, much worse.
The climate crisis is causing and affecting a refugee crisis, or at least adding dramatically
to already existing refugee crises. For example, we look at the Arab Spring. One of the foundational
causes of the Arab Spring was drought, regional drought. We can remember the Arab Spring was
caused by a fruit vendor in Tunisia doing self-immolation, and that was because of food
prices and because what’s happening to crops, and because of governments not stepping in
to help in anyway.
A series of global climate linked food basket failures before the 2011 Arab Spring led to
these big food price spikes in the year before the riots broke out. And it was those food
price spikes that made basic food, like bread, almost unaffordable for many people in those
parts of the world, which was one of the major triggers for the outbreak of riots.
People were literally not eating and farmers were literally not making it, and that spread
across the whole region, and look at what’s happened today. There’s a huge immigration
crisis of people going across the Mediterranean, drowning in boats, and trying to get to Europe,
and trying to get to safer countries.
The number of migrants and refugees who have lost their lives in the Mediterranean in 2019
is up to 900.
... declared a state of emergency.
The summit that’s taking place next week will be looking for new ways to tackle the
continent’s biggest influx of migrants since the second world war.
The number of asylum seekers are very high.
Police now decide who stays and who moves on deeper into Europe and into uncertainty.
So we’re already seeing governments around the world move in a direction of policing
migrants, in particular, because of the climate emergency and because of its impact. There
is a real essential connection and an essential overlap between the migrant crisis and authoritarianism.
And we see in North America, and many parts of the world, that authoritarians or would-be
authoritarians are using the migrant crisis as an excuse to whip up xenophobia and racism.
And using it as an excuse to crack down at borders and crackdown on undocumented people.
We look at what’s happening in the United States where so many people coming to the
southern border coming up through Mexico are farmers from Central America that just can’t
make it- that’s because of drought, that’s because of extreme weather events and things
that never used to happen at the level that they’re happening now.
Another factor is rising sea-levels. The hard fact is that the amount of sea-level rise
that right now is already baked into the system; meaning, if we stopped all C02 emissions on
a dime, we have meters of sea-lvel rise that are inevitable now, that means every major
coastal city on the planet is gone. The question is not, “if,” it is “when”. So, where
are all those hundreds of millions of people going to go?
People are becoming more and more paranoid and afraid, thus this human population is
becoming more and more fragile. And with that fragility comes more fear-based expansion
on the militaries.
At the moment, most governments who are looking at climate change... where we’re seeing
the real action is that most governments are doing it through the lense of national security.
They will look at all the different ways that climate change can amplify traditional security
threats- how will climate change amplify conflict? How will climate change destabilize different
countries due to impact on water or impact on food? And that sort of thing, so all of
the focus ends up expanding... you know you’ll have militarization and police state power
in order to be prepared for what happens when climate destabilizes your soc iety. After the
Arab spring, we had this massive seismic shifts in politics, very rapidly across the Western
world. The election of Donald Trump, the Brexit referendum, the increase in popularity of
far-right groups in Europe. And what we know is that this sort of thing is
likely to continue happening.
We’re gonna see capitalism and neo-fascism both exacerbating and causing these disasters,
and being involved in the aftermath whether that be militias or hate crimes occurring.
Western world. Fortress Europe. Fortress Britain. Is that the politics we have in store? Are
we seeing this worst-case scenario of where doing nothing about climate change leads to
the rise of different forms of fascism, and possibly even a form of even eco-fascism...
who knows?
Given its incredibly vast scale and complexity, and the existential threat that it poses to
the future of life on this planet, the spectre of climate catastrophe can take a serious
toll on our individual and collective mental health.
Unfortunately, matters aren’t helped by the heavily ingrained Western tendency to
frame issues in stark, moralistic, all-or-nothing terms. Environmental non-profits repeatedly
claiming that humanity has ‘one more chance to save the world’ may encourage people
to come out to a rally or a march... for a while. But it doesn’t do much to equip people
for the inevitable disillusionment that comes when the world isn’t saved, and business
continues as usual. The question is... what comes next?
Thankfully, the struggle isn’t a zero-sum game. We need to accept that the effects of
climate change are already upon us, and they will continue to get worse for the foreseeable
future. In order to stem and begin to reverse this tide, we need to overthrow capitalism,
remove the ceaseless drive for profit as the central organizational pillar of the global
economy, and build a new, more sustainable civilization in its place. This monumental
task is too much for any of us to do on our own. It is a historic challenge that will
require a massive shift in global consciousness, and the combined, unshakable determination
of millions of people willing to risk their lives. All that each of us can do is play
our own small part in this bigger whole.
I make it a point to not give suggestions or advice to people about what to do about
the climate crisis. Instead I tell people the most important thing to do is to get really
really quiet and listen. And really really ask to be shown what is it that I need to
do to try to serve and take care of the earth. What is the sense of justice that's really
calling to me, that I need to go act upon. I think each one of us is going to get a very
very different message. It might be feeling a deep calling to go create music, or be a
doctor, or go join extinction rebellion or go do something even
much more radical than that.
So a big question is what people can do to get involved and take action. Building networks
with people you trust right now. Learn skills and share them with people you love. And fight
infrastructure projects in our community. And take care of yourself. Recognize the ways
that all struggles for liberation are intertwined. And I think primarily supporting people in
retaining or getting ownership of their land back is one place to start by supporting indigenous
struggles. The highest levels of biodiversity that still exist on this planet are the places
where people still live or have returned to who are indigenous to that area.
For folks who are used to and conditioned to having great amounts of advantages, just
understand that a lot of your advantages most likely came from our devastation. There's
a lot of changes that are going to be coming very soon. There's going to be a lot of things
that you're not going to like hearing. It might involve folks that are disadvantaged
picking up on some advantages for once in their lives. Support them. Support those movements,
support those populations. The capitalist planet is not going to build a big massive
ship for us to escape and get to another planet. We don't have any other options. This is our
one option. This is our one chance.
We don't have to start from scratch, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. Our planet has
a rich tradition, a rich history of social movements and of resistance movements, on
this continent and around the world on many different time scales. And if we can understand
and learn from and celebrate those movements, then we can learn the things that we need
to learn in the time that we have to take action. One of the primary shortcomings of
the mainstream environmental movement has been its focus on individual action. And individualism
really limits what we're able to accomplish. Things like flying less or using less gasoline,
I mean these are all fine things to do, consuming less if you're a kind of an affluent, privileged
person, but they only go so far. And if we really want to change society and stop catastrophic
climate change, that means collective action, that means organizing into groups of people
who can confront injustice in really tangible ways. And that means building those groups
also into powerful movements.
It's really easy to get lost in the sense of overwhelming chaos that's going on in the
world every day. And to realize that you can't change all of those things as one person.
But what you can do, fundamentally and what no one else can take away from you, is you
can completely change yourself, and you can act within the domain around you and change
that. When you look at your networks when you look at your friend circles, when you
look at the communities that you operate in when you look at your skills and your resources,
however limited they might be, what that process of assessment does is it allows you to see
that actually you're far more powerful than you might think you are.
Avoid getting into climate nihilism. There are definitely a lot of weaknesses in the
capitalist and resource extraction machine. I think that folks should just find the easiest
exploit for them to go after and find some folks who wanna shut shit down, organize around
that exploit and go forth with insurrectionary optimism.
I think these are very critical life and death decisions and each one of us needs to take
this very very seriously. Because these are decisions that a lot of us are gonna make
to literally go put our bodies on the line and try to save what's left of the earth.
And that's why I would never try to tell somebody what to do I think that's something that each
one of us has to take full responsibility in making that decision for ourselves.
We are entering a new era – one that will be inevitably characterized by increasingly
hostile weather patterns, rising sea levels, shortages of fresh water, and historically
unprecedented levels of forced human migration. Over the coming decades, these pressures will
lead to the sudden collapse of states, further exacerbating the cycle of displacement and
offering a political justification for the entrenchment of nativist reaction and the
further militarization of borders in the Global North.
This will be a period of profound social, economic and political strife... and if history
is any guide, it will be ugly. Yet even in the tragedy, chaos and bloodshed brought about
by these seismic geopolitical shifts, there will be opportunities for solidarity and mutual
aid. Humanity has faced incredible hardships before, and we have persevered. As always,
the specific form that our future takes will depend, in large part, on our willpower, ingenuity,
level of preparation, and capacity to resist.
So at this point, we’d like to remind you that Trouble is intended to be watched in
groups, and to be used as a resource to promote discussion and collective organizing. Are
you interested in incorporating a more radical environmental analysis into an existing organizing
project, or in starting a campaign against an ecologically destructive development in
your area? Consider getting together with some comrades, organizing a screening of this
film, and discussing where to get started.
Interested in running regular screenings of Trouble at your campus, infoshop, community
centre, or even just at home with friends? Become a Trouble-Maker! For 10 bucks a month,
we’ll hook you up with an advance copy of the show, and a screening kit featuring additional
resources and some questions you can use to get a discussion going.
If you can’t afford to support us financially, no worries! You can stream and/or download
all our content for free off our website: sub.media/trouble. If you’ve got any suggestions
for show topics, or just want to get in touch, drop us a line at trouble@sub.media.
This episode would not have been possible without the generous support of Michael, Carla,
Jimmer and the good folks at the Earth First! Journal Collective.
We’ll be taking off a month for the holidays, but stay tuned in early 2020 for Trouble 24,
where we plan on taking a closer look at anarchist theories, strategies and tactics for organizing.
I mean most of the time you see them when they riot. Couple 30 second clips, and that’s
about it. What is it like inside these groups... and what motivates their members?
Now get out there…. and make some trouble!