permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

No More Excuses - monbiot.com <https://www.monbiot.com>
------------------------------

No More Excuses <https://www.monbiot.com/2019/04/20/no-more-excuses/>

Posted: 20 Apr 2019 05:34 AM PDT

No one is coming to save us. Only rebellion will prevent an environmental
apocalypse

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 15th April 2019

Had we put as much effort into preventing environmental catastrophe as
we’ve spent on making excuses for inaction, we would have solved it by now.
Everywhere I look, I see people engaged in furious attempts to fend off the
moral challenge it presents.

The commonest current excuse is this: “I bet those protesters have
phones/go on holiday/wear leather shoes.” In other words, we won’t listen
to anyone who is not living naked in a barrel, subsisting only on murky
water. Of course, if you are living naked in a barrel, we will dismiss you
too, because you’re a hippie weirdo. Every messenger, and every message
they bear, is disqualified, on the grounds of either impurity or purity.

As the environmental crisis accelerates, and as protest movements like
YouthStrike4Climate <https://ukscn.org/ys4c> and Extinction Rebellion
<https://extinctionrebellion.org.uk/> make it harder not to see what we
face, people discover more inventive means of shutting their eyes and
shedding responsibility. Underlying these excuses is a deep-rooted belief
that if we really are in trouble, someone somewhere will come to our
rescue: “they” won’t let it happen. But there is no they, just us.

The political class, as anyone who has followed its progress over the past
three years can surely now see, is chaotic, unwilling and, in isolation,
strategically incapable of addressing even short-term crises, let alone a
vast existential predicament. Yet a widespread and wilful naivity prevails:
the belief that voting is the only political action required to change a
system. Unless it is accompanied by the concentrated power of protest,
articulating precise demands and creating space in which new political
factions can grow, voting, while essential, remains a blunt and feeble
instrument.

The media, with a few exceptions, is actively hostile. Even when
broadcasters cover these issues, they carefully avoid any mention of power,
talking about environmental collapse as if it is driven by mysterious,
passive forces, and proposing microscopic fixes for vast structural
problems. The BBC’s Blue Planet Live series exemplified this tendency
<https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/1111519736733536256>. As TV
comedy and drama have become ever more daring
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p071bk3f/fleabag-series-2-episode-1>,
factual and current affairs programmes have become ever more timid. Truth
now has to be smuggled into our homes under the guise of entertainment
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08tpkbm>.

Those who govern the nation and shape public discourse cannot be trusted
with the preservation of life on Earth. There is no benign authority
preserving us from harm. No one is coming to save us. None of us can
justifiably avoid the call to come together to save ourselves.

I see despair as another variety of disavowal. By throwing up our hands
about the calamities that could one day afflict us, we disguise and
distance them, converting concrete choices into indecipherable dread. We
might relieve ourselves of moral agency by claiming that it’s already too
late to act, but in doing so we condemn other people to destitution or
death. Catastrophe afflicts people now, and, unlike those in the rich world
who can still afford to wallow in despair, they are forced to respond in
practical ways. In Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi, devastated by Cyclone
Idai
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/04/death-toll-devastating-cyclone-idai-rises-1000-190410155136406.html>,
in Syria, Libya and Yemen, where climate chaos has contributed to civil war
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378018301596>, in
Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, where crop failure, drought and the
collapse of fisheries have driven people from their homes
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/06/us-mexico-immigration-climate-change-migration>,
despair is not an option. Our inaction has forced them into action, as they
respond to terrifying circumstances caused primarily by the rich world’s
consumption. The Christians are right: despair is a sin.

As the author Jeremy Lent points out in a recent essay
<https://patternsofmeaning.com/2019/04/04/what-will-you-say-to-your-grandchildren/>,
it is almost certainly too late to save some of the world’s great living
wonders, such as coral reefs and monarch butterflies. But, he argues, with
every increment of global heating, with every rise in material resource
consumption, we will have to accept still greater losses, many of which can
still be prevented through radical transformation.

Every nonlinear transformation in history has taken people by surprise. As
Alexei Yurchak explains in his book about the collapse of the Soviet Union
– *Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More*
<https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8102.html> – systems look immutable
until they suddenly disintegrate. As soon as they do, the distintegration
retrospectively looks inevitable. Our system – characterised by perpetual
economic growth on a planet that is not growing – will inevitably implode.
The only question is whether the transformation is planned or unplanned.
Our task is to ensure it is planned, and fast. We need to conceive and
build a new system, based on the principle
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/15/capitalism-destroying-earth-human-right-climate-strike-children>
that every generation, everywhere has an equal right to enjoy natural
wealth.

This is less daunting than we might imagine. As Erica Chenoweth’s
historical research
<https://rationalinsurgent.com/2013/11/04/my-talk-at-tedxboulder-civil-resistance-and-the-3-5-rule/>
reveals, for a peaceful mass movement to succeed, a maximum of 3.5% of the
population needs to mobilise. Humans are ultra-social mammals, constantly
if subliminally aware of shifting social currents. Once we perceive the
status quo has changed, we flip suddenly from support for one state of
being to support for another. When a committed and vocal 3.5% unites behind
the demand for a new system, the social avalanche that follows becomes
irresistible. Giving up before we have reached this threshold is worse than
despair: it is defeatism.

Today, Extinction Rebellion takes to streets
<https://extinctionrebellion.org.uk/international-rebellion/> around the
world in defence of our life support systems. Through daring, disruptive,
non-violent action, it forces our environmental predicament onto the
political agenda. Who are these people? Another “they”, who might rescue us
from our follies? The success of this mobilisation depends on us. It will
reach the critical threshold only if enough of us cast aside denial and
despair, and join this exuberant, proliferating movement. The time for
excuses is over. The struggle to overthrow our life-denying system has
begun.




-- 
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
Avant Geared
avantgearedshop@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared