The Capitalist Climate:
Thinking Our Way Out of Climate Catastrophe
Warrenton is a small, working-class town of about 5,000 on the Oregon coast, in the far Northwest corner of the state. Originally inhabited by the Chinook people, it was established by white settlers in the mid-1800s. Fort Stevens was established nearby during this period, and it earned the distinction of being the only US-based military installation on the lower 48 to come under fire during WW II, when a Japanese submarine shot 17 shells from its deck gun at it. In 2000, the median household income was $33,472.
About half the population of Warrenton live on what is considered land vulnerable to sea level rise below four feet, and there is currently a 75% risk of that rise happening in the next thirty years. It’s now predicted there will be at least a six foot sea level rise by the time today’s toddlers are elderly. “One of the things they found out is there’s going to be a lot larger sea level rise projected in a lot shorter time period than anyone had realized,” said NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) researcher Jen Zamon.[1] When looking at a satellite map of Warrenton, with a four-foot sea level rise projected on the town, it appears largely underwater.[2] Peoples’ homes, workplaces, the airport, city hall: all under water, lost to the sea. Of all the towns on the Oregon Coast, Warrenton appears the most vulnerable to rising seas.
Global sea-level rise is one of the scientifically most well-established results of global warming. During the past two decades, the seas have risen at a rate twice as fast as during the 20th century.[3] Future sea-level rise is difficult to predict, as factors such as how much more carbon humans put into the atmosphere, and the impact of melting ice and rapid ice sheet breakdowns are uncertain. But one thing is for sure: even if we stop burning fossil fuels today, the seas will continue to rise, as the carbon already put in the atmosphere since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and particularly in the last several decades, will continue to contribute to rising global temperatures.
While the seas rise, on the land we experience increased and more intense forest fires, like the one that dropped ash on us here in Portland as the beloved Columbia River Gorge burned. Other parts of the US experience droughts and extreme heat, while others brace themselves against unprecedented hurricanes, like the one that nearly destroyed Puerto Rico, killing close to 5,000 people[4]. We have lost over half the animal species over the last forty years, and while the seas rise, they are also becoming more acidic due to the changing climate, endangering marine life, likely making ocean fish a thing of the past. Thirty years from now it is estimated humans will no longer have ocean fish to eat. The commercial fishing industry will come to an end. Fisherpoets, a gathering that recognizes and celebrates the lives and work of fishing people each February in Astoria, right next door to Warrenton, will transform into a gathering looking back on a life that no longer exists.[5]
What we have always taken for granted about life on Earth is going away. Since at least the 1970s, when Earth Day first became a thing, people have talked about the ecological crisis, about environmental catastrophe, about how humans have to wake up to what we are doing to the planet. We are clearly in trouble, but how do we think about that? What is causing all this and how do we best respond?
The Ecological Crisis is a Social Crisis
The ecological crisis, which climate disruption is one part, reflects the crisis in society. This perspective, for instance, understands that a society in which men dominate women, whites dominate people of color, straights dominate queers, and so on necessarily leads to the idea that humans can also dominate nature. In other words, domineering attitudes and social structures in society are extended to the attempt to dominate non-human nature, resulting in the ongoing ecological crisis we are in.
Social forms of domination are intertwined with the exploitation and degradation of the natural world and must be untwined in the process of changing our relationship to non-human nature. This insight about the relation between social forms of hierarchy and domination and the ecological crisis was offered by Murray Bookchin a generation ago. For Bookchin, “the very idea of dominating nature stems from the domination of human by human.”[6]
In thinking this through it seems that to address the ecological crisis we must also address the crisis in society. If we recognize that the source of ecological destruction can be found in the very way societies are organized — particularly the capitalist economy — perhaps by addressing those social issues and changing them we can move towards creating a society that no longer changes the climate.
The crisis in society is what motivated groups like Black Lives Matter to call for an end to the police murdering people. It also led to workers, like meat packers and those who work in warehouses at Amazon, to organize themselves and go on wildcat strikes to improve their working conditions. It’s led to those in the queer and transgender community and their allies to organize against violence and abuse.
One aspect of responding to the environmental crisis is by working to fundamentally change the dominant economic, political, and social structures that contribute to the destruction of the delicate web of life that sustains humanity. This perspective sees the very way modern society is structured as the cause of climate disruption. So, although one can make a small contribution to stopping climate change by, for example, riding ones’ bike to work rather than driving, what’s really needed is a much larger collective project of shutting down and transforming much of the infrastructure of the capitalist economy. With this thought, if you want to do something meaningful about climate change, you would be more effective getting involved in grassroots social and political organizing with others, rather than simply changing your light bulbs, riding your bike, and growing your own food, as important as those things are.
Making Connections, Making Change
When we understand that capitalism, racism, colonialism, and patriarchy are the primary underlying contributing factors altering our climate in catastrophic ways, we can see that getting involved in, for instance, workplace organizing, or movements against the police or against sexism, are crucial steps towards creating a different society: one that no longer changes the climate because it will no longer be the one we currently live in. The society that gets us out of the climate crisis will not be the one that got us into it.
By confronting and changing various forms of social domination such as class exploitation, we take steps towards creating this new society. In creating a new society, we need to create one that has eradicated social forms of domination like racism and sexism, but also one that’s economy and energy production does not alter the climate. In making a new society we need to fundamentally change the economic and energy structures, which things like the Green New Deal point towards, though it doesn’t go far enough because it assumes the continuation of both capitalism and the nation-state, two forms of social-economic organization which are at the roots of our problems.
In the immediate long-term process of eliminating social forms of oppression and domination, we need to think about our orientation toward revolution — collectively creating a society we all would want to live in together — and what that would look like. Here I’m thinking of revolution in the sense of making a society fundamentally different than what we have today. Perhaps this is a concept we are better able to explore now with so many of us out of work, at home. Those of us who are not working outside the home now can use this pause in the rat race to consider how we cannot go back to “normal.” Just what type of society do we actually want to live in, and create for our children? Certainly not the one currently taking us to the point of no return.
The same system that makes you work a shitty job, that employs a racist police force that continuously kills people of color with impunity, that drives you out of your home by raising the rent, that goes to war in the Middle East, is the same one that is creating a hostile environment filled with killer storms, devastating heat waves, failing crops, typhoons, and species extinction. The same system that doesn’t care for people as we die of a pandemic, is the one endangering humanity by increasingly pumping carbon and methane into the air. We need to bring an understanding of the connection of these social ills, and the very structure and economy of our societies, into our work to stop climate change and broader ecological disruption.
In this sense, the struggle against racism is also a struggle for the environment, the struggle against violence against women is a struggle for the environment, and the struggle against capitalism is a struggle for the environment. To solve the ecological crisis we must solve the social crisis.
The Way Forward
As we do our daily organizing work around these issues, we need to keep the connections between them in mind, always looking for ways to link disparate movements, change the common sense understandings about the world, create popular momentum, and respond to sudden opportunities and social upheaval with decisive action.
We can see climate disruption as an urgent invitation to reorder our society and change the economy and our sources of energy. We need to confront the grim realities of climate change while understanding that because they are human made, we can intervene and alter the processes that are causing it.
We are more motivated to act by hope than by despair. We need to face the realities of climate change, but also see this as an opportunity to create a fundamentally different society. Climate disruption may be the final indictment of the trajectory of the capitalist social and economic system. It’s a message and a warning that we have to change, that we can do better for humanity and future generations.
To do this type of work well, we need organizations, institutions, and popular movements. We need to make these types of connections as we do our organizing work. We need to boldly assert visions for different ways we can live together, and clearly identify what exactly it is that stands in our way. We need to think differently. And act.
Notes
[1]http://www.kgw.com/news/local/study-as-sea-levels-rise-thousands-of-oregon-homes-will-be-underwater/287840474
[3]https://riskfinder.climatecentral.org/api/reports/place/warrenton.or.us/state-report
[5] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533125/All-seafood-will-run-out-in-2050-say-scientists.html
[6] Bookchin, The Next Revolution, p. 31.
