All at C: climate change, crisis, catastrophe, capital, class, commons, communism…

These are some notes/a rough draft for an op-ed piece we thought the Guardian might publish to coincide with climate camp. As it turned out, the Guardian lost interest. In Keir’s words: “It didn’t fit the narrative the media were building up on the climate camp which had a ridiculous amount of publicity when BAA tried to take out an injunction against Prince Charles amongst others. And also the story got too big, the press were only interested in their old reliable liberals (Mombiot) or new Swampys (Joss from Plane Stupid) who are, of course, also liberals.”

Capital likes a good crisis. Crisis provides it with an opportunity to restructure, to sweep away existing barriers to its expansion and to realise new profits. An opportunigy to re-order social life according to its own logic of profit and waged labour, money and markets, to produce and reproduce hierarchies. In the words of Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, capitalism develops through “waves of creative destruction”.

Global warming is such a crisis. Let’s have no doubt: the threat of climate change is as real as it is terrifying. But climate change is not a threat facing all of humanity. The problem for capital is one of security of the state and security of investment – always top of the agenda at any high level leaders’ summit whether the context is Africa or global warming. The problem for the rest of us is different. We are more concerned about things like the security of our drinking water supply as rising flood waters threaten the security of our homes.

It’s become common to compare the climate crisis to Britain “at war” and to invoke the “Blitz spirit” to describe our apparently all-in-it-together situation. This war analogy is more apt than commentators imagine. While millions lost their lives in two world wars, the few invested and made millions, both in financing the wars and in post-war reconstruction. In fact just as each year we continue to remember the dead, the British government continue to pay dividends on war bonds issued a century ago. War is always a catastrophe for humanity. For capital it’s not only a profit-making opportunity but an opportunity to extend its logic. Just think of Iraq.

Global warming will only reinforce existing hierarchies. The world’s poor are more likely to live in areas at risk from flooding or drought, or both. or even to live in areas at risk of total submersion or desertification. Poor people are less likely to have insurance or the ability to migrate. With so many millions already lacking access to adequate food or healthcare, or the means to live in the catchment area of a good school, climate change will strengthen these inequalities and for many increase the precariousness of existence.

But climate change is a double whammy for the vast majority of the world’s population. For not only are we more likely to suffer from its effects, we will also suffer more from capital’s solutions to the problem. Carbon trading is, in effect, a privatisation or enclosure of the atmospheric commons with a market mechanism used to limit emissions. It’s the mobility of the poor which will be constrained. Travel will once again become the preserve of the rich.

And here’s the rub. As our lives become more precarious, and as travel and other goods and services become luxuries, we will be forced to work harder, and this is really what’s in it for capital. Because capitalism is a mode of production which organises life through work. We mostly work 35-40 hours a week for most of the year for most of our adult lives. So of course we must organise our lives around that work. Capitalist value is created through work, through waged labour. But capitalist value is not the same as wealth, and sometimes the two stand in direct opposition. A good example of this is those mega-dam projects which destroy the livelihoods of thousands (destruction of wealth) in order to power the factories in some export-processing zone (creation of capitalist value). Certainly any link between increased value and increased wealth is tenuous. Victoria Beckham is only an absurd instance of this. With the almost immeasurable growth in productivity since the Industrial Revolution, we could easily satisfy all our most basic needs and much more, by working just a few hours each week. And so to keep us setting the alarm for seven every morning, capital produces scarcity. Marketing and brands. Built-in obsolescence. Intellectual property rights which may actually hinder the development of new drugs and software besides denying them to those who can’t afford to pay. In extreme circumstances it imposes scarcity through the physical destruction of war. And it will try to impose scarcity through climate crisis.

But a crisis is not only an opportunity, it’s a threat too. Capitalist solutions to climate change are not the only solutions. In fact capital itself is the source of the problem. Waged labour, and all that goes with it, pollutes. All the business flights, the miles we commute daily, the energy used to heat and light all those office blocks and out-of-town shopping centres. Why don’t we convert them into houses, instead of developing greenbelt or yet more flood plains? If we only worked six months in the year, or four or three – and it’s entirely possible - imagine what else we could do. No need to easyjet to Malaga or Prague. Who’d worry about taking a day to travel across Europe if we could stay for a month?



So, what are we gonna do now? The problem is capital and capitalist work and we need to recognise that. Climate change activists – and I include here the thousands of scientists who’ve been forcing the issue – have been successful in raising awareness, forcing the issue into the mainstream. And since the Stern Report, the various IPCC reports, etc., the issue has become mainstream. But the movement hasn’t moved. Now we need to construct a clear antagonism, to identify capital as the enemy. But this leaves us with at least two problems.

First, yes, we have to destroy capital. But we no longer have the luxury of time. With the climate “tipping point” possibly little more than a decade away, we can’t afford to patient. Kay and Harry make this point in “The end of the world as we know it”. And somewhere or other John Holloway has also attacked the orthodox Left’s “be patient” exhortations.

Second, if we are guided by an anti-capitalist ethic, then we must treat all market-based “solutions” with extreme scepticism, if not outright opposition. In fact we may have to consider adopting some apparently paradoxical positions, such as opposing congestion charging or new taxes on aviation (I admit, this makes me uncomfortable), as these will limit our autonomy and reinforce existing hierarchies. An alliance with Jeremy Clarkson? Opposing airport expansion or new road building is different, as this “rations” in a different way.

And that’s where I’ll leave it…