It’s good to be challenged once in a while. It certainly felt like that at today’s Battle of Ideas event, run as part of a weekend of provocative debate by the Institute of Ideas. And provocative it most defintiely was if you’re an environmentalist. Usually with a crowd of a few hundred largely Guardian reading liberals one would expect an (increasingly dull) consensus. But no. Us greenies got it in the neck. We are in a moral vacuum, are anti-democratic and anti-progress as well as fatalistic and “miserablists”. Wow. By the final session I felt somewhat punch drunk, staggering home with a string of serious question marks in my mind.
If the event did anything it punched a whopping hole in the argument that our current economic plight, which figured heavily in the range of debates that took place, would put us squarely in the climate change camp. That seeing what a mess capitalism had got us in to in the past year and a half would throw us in to the arms of those arguing for a fundamental rethink of our economy and society. Out with financial services and in with the green new deal. Let’s scotch our flawed economy and save on CO2 in one go was the narrative. Well from what I heard today we’ve got a bloody long way to convince anyone of that.
And from a range of speakers today came a passionate and forceful argument against the environmental narrative itself. This came from some sources you would expect – step forward writer and wind-up merchant James Woudhuysen (touting his book Energise) – but others more unexpected. Attacks poured in from several Germans, who themselves are questioning their own Government’s policies on microgeneration and the green economy. And I was struck by comments from Brendan O’Neill, the editor of online magazine Spiked and author of Can I Recycle My Gran? And 39 other Eco-Dilemmas.
So here’s a selection of attacks on environmentalism from the sessions:
- Greenies are doing the human race down: This really stuck out for me. A range of speakers, from Woudhuysen to O’Neill, as well as Claire Fox, director of the Institute of Ideas, took environmentalists to task for painting an apocalyptic and miserable picture of us as a race. We’ve done a dreadful job in the history and if we don’t rein ourselves in now we’re doomed, was how they described the green message. “It’s like we shouldn’t aspire to have anything more on our gravestones than ‘he or she minimised his or her carbon footprints’” said Woudhuysen. “It’s the dumbing down of the human condition.” It’s anti-freedom as it tells us to restrict our behaviour and not to continue to progress as a race. German writer called Thomas Reichman, editor of NovoArgumente Magazin, called the energy crisis as a “crisis of ambition and trust”. It’s society that has lost confidence and trust in themselves to “continue civilisation”. And in a session on sci-fi and whether we’ll ever go to the moon again (where I posited whether we should be concentrating on our own planet to a room full of geeks, which went down like Obama at a BNP meeting) a man from the floor decried us for being so negative about our race. “We are incredible,” he said (not us in the room, us as a race).
- Technology not restriction: There is often the politically-driven split on how to cope with climate change between hairshirts and laptops (reduction versus technology). No exception here in a pretty fractious debate between Woodhuysen and Reichman on the anti-green side and three other panellists in a discussion on energy. The other three were your straightforward environmentalists (Friend of the Earth, leftie journalist and scientist). It was interesting to hear this played out as there were not too many howls of disbelief when Reichman suggested that a warming up of the planet could be a good thing. Is it me or is the apocalyptic talk on climate either not sinking in or just being ignored? Strange/disturbing, especially with only just over a month until Copenhagen.
- The economics of environmentalism: Again you heard the backlash in a discussion on the green new deal. Can the creation of an army of insulators and wind turbine manufacturers lead us into a bold new world of green growth? Well apparently not. We had another couple of German sceptics to quell our enthusiasm, as well as author James Heartfield, who reckoned there was a fundamental flaw with the green economy. Apparently you can’t reconcile green with growth. And later on Claire Fox called on a return to the idea that economic growth was good and anything that restrained us was an attack on freedom.
- I hate sustainability: O’Neill stepped up at the end to stick the knife in further. The word sustainability is one of his “big bugbears”. It’s dishonest and damaging as well as a “sly lazy word” which challenges anyone that criticises it. It implies that we are “pollutants and parasites” as a race.
I’ve simplified the arguments a lot but you get the gist. In spite of many misgiving about what was said today I think there is a nub to the backlash. The problem for me is where’s the humanism in environmentalism? When will it turn from a critique of what we have done or will do and tell us where it fits into our interests as humans? Not what we must stop doing or give up but where we can embrace a new idea of what it is to be human? How to control our urges to a degree but embrace our instincts to progress, explore and innovate. This is going to be bloody hard. Can we combine some seemingly contradictory ideas or thoughts around progress which can seek technology and progress but allied to responsibility? Have space travel but also compost? Turn a desert into a giant solar factory (the Desertec idea) but also have a solar thermal panel on the roof?
Are there some examples where stepping back from the so-called advanced technology does not really advance us as a race (cars for short journeys when bikes are better for us physically, socially and for urban spaces)? Or that deciding that as individuals taking more responsibility for areas we have previously outsourced (energy, food) could again bring positives rather than fitting in to the critique that environmentalism equals backward-ism?
Random thoughts but ones that need to be addressed as more and more thinkers begin to hit back on what had become a broad consensus that green is good. Today green was made to look pretty bad.
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on Nov 1st, 2009 at 11:16 pm
I suspect the battle of ideas looks rather different from the perspective of people living in Bangladesh or the Maldives. But maybe their voices weren’t considered sufficiently weighty.
on Nov 1st, 2009 at 11:36 pm
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by Zerochamp: Environmentalism as miserbailsm. Blog post after experiencing challenging day at #battleofideas http://ow.ly/ynL3...
on Nov 1st, 2009 at 11:37 pm
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on Nov 1st, 2009 at 11:40 pm
I think a lot of the problem is that the environmental movement has spent far too long in opposition, and is defined by what it’s against rather than what it’s for, and people outside the movement are naturally defensive about what they perceive as an attack on their lifestyle (which in many cases it is).
The green new deal and such are trying to move things in the right direction and show that sustainable life needn’t be full of drudgery and sacrifice. We need to show how the green life is desirable, because there’s no real reason why spending hours each week commuting and buying loads of cheap tat just because it’s so cheap you don’t have to think about it is any better a life than working locally and buying fewer better made products that you really need.
We don’t need an environmental movement any more, converting people to a cause is always going to be hard. We need to show how normal and interesting and fun a sustainable lifestyle is.
on Nov 1st, 2009 at 11:57 pm
who the f*** is Clare Fox?
on Nov 2nd, 2009 at 12:06 am
Actually what would have been surprising would be an event that is organised by the “institute of ideas”, “spiked online”, old LM crew where their “environmentalism is anti-human” schtick wasn’t touted. Being ideologicially opposed to environementalism irrespective of the evidence, makes them rather dreary… On Brendan O’neill post on comment is free referred to environementalism as a “death cult”. They tend to be much better at getting attention than they are at intellectual rigour…
on Nov 2nd, 2009 at 5:10 am
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on Nov 2nd, 2009 at 9:47 am
You’ve been savaged by the growth monkeys!
on Nov 2nd, 2009 at 11:17 am
An experience not unlike sharing a hall with a bunch of Christian evangelists – except substitute faith in God with faith in Progress, Civilization, Human Spirit, Economic Growth and other mantras that single out humanity as being something ‘special’, something that somehow puts the race apart from the rules that govern the rest of the planet.
The real grief for these dreamers is that someone comes along and pisses on their party. Their (too) long-running Hegelian project is at risk of hitting the buffers, so they scream and shout (or the academic equivalent) at the messengers.
Do I feel lucky, do I feel like handing over the future of my children to chancers who have such a faith in their own abilities that makes visiting church look like an act of pure reason?
on Nov 2nd, 2009 at 11:28 am
Many thanks for the excellent blog post. I agree with all of the comments above. Clare Fox and the Institute of Ideas are well known for being opposed to many environmental ideas so I wouldn’t take yesterday’s experiences at the Battle of Ideas as representative of the world population (although it may be, I don’t know). But, then again, your conclusions (provoked by the Battle of Ideas) are very interesting and are important to take on board.
I’d be interested to hear how Clare Fox supports her claim that any attack on the idea of economic growth is an “attack on freedom”. We live in a closed system with finite resources, finite energy and finite dumps. How can we possibly continue to grow indefinitely? It simply defies logic, surely? (unless we decouple economic growth from depletion of non-renewable resources).
on Nov 2nd, 2009 at 5:15 pm
A “range” of speakers? Surely you mean “a collection of speakers all with roots in the same tiny Marxist party, who have been dogmatically banging out the same tired argument for years.”
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=LM_Group
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Communist_Party_(UK,_1978)#RCP_and_later_organisations
on Nov 3rd, 2009 at 5:37 pm
So there was me thinking it was a battle of ideas then. Thanks for the link Bob. I was getting that strange sense that everyone was signed up to the same message. Now I know why.
on Nov 3rd, 2009 at 9:47 pm
I was one of the speakers at the debate. I am pleased to read that although you may still disagree with the speakers, you nonetheless sensed that they might have some point worth considering. But I am disappointed that all it took to persuade you to cease this reflection is a link to a compendium of internet innuendos, most of which are, at best, only trivially true, if not complete nonsense.
I cannot speak for the IOI. However, my presentation touched on many of the themes that you have identified in your post. The point of the criticism of environmentalism is not, as it seems some would like you to think, to say that there are no environmental or resource problems facing us, but that these problems have become the basis for a particular form of politics that has a distinctly anti-human and retrogressive character.
For instance, one of the things I attempted to argue was that environmental thinking had encouraged us to understand humanity in seemingly objective natural terms. But far from challenging the excesses of consumer society the natural account of humanity merely extends it, limiting the possibilities of politics. After all, once we see ourselves as nothing more than consumers of resources, what is there for politics to do, other than regulate consumption? Such a limited view of humanity doesn’t create the ground for a form of politics that makes it possible to be more than a consumer, and so frequently makes the apparent case for the constraint of development. Moreover, this view of humanity also represents the impotence of contemporary politics to overcome social and putatively ‘natural’ problems such as the lack of development elsewhere.
In my view, environmentalism may well be a response to this impotence, rather than to the reality of a looming crisis. Worst still, it seems contemptuous of politics itself, holding that as consuming beings, we are unable to make rational decisions for ourselves, either politically, or as choices that relate to our ‘lifestyle’. “The public might be the problem”, says Alistair Campbell on his blog today. Looks to me that it’s the politics that’s the problem, and that such contempt for people is expressed as political environmentalism.
There is no ‘green backlash’, but neither is there any substantial desire for environmental politics. The political establishment has absorbed green thinking, through and through, and presses forwards with it, in spite of its failure to win over the public. If there is a more progressive form of environmentalism out there, then it is incumbent on you to demonstrate it.
on Nov 4th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Worth reading Monbiot’s article on LM/Spiked also
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/01/13/flying-over-the-cuckoos-nest/
on Nov 4th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Or/and you could this…
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2009/01/georges-aga-ga-ga-and-the-heathrow-hoo-haa.html
on Nov 4th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Response to Ben’s frist comment:
That comment was a tad hasty. It reflected more of my frustration at the viewpoint – which undoubtedly is shared by the individuals mentioned on the link – rather than whether they are in some kind of cabal.
I stand by what I wrote as I think there are fundamental questions to answer in relation to environmentalism, particularly in politics. Bland consenus is masking some more difficult questions that you raise.
My problem with the view you express is this. If we believe we should take steps to stem CO2 how else do we do it but by examining our impacts and working out ways of controlling them, or finding out ways that we find less damaging ways of behaving?
Environmentalism is by no means perfect and I understand the criticism. If mistakes are made and we step too far in treading on rights and freedoms we need to pause and reconsider. But how can the goal of ensuring the continuance or our species (or others on the planet) be anti-human and retrogressive? And how much harm will be caused by those attempts?
on Nov 5th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Sandy Patience says
“An experience not unlike sharing a hall with a bunch of Christian evangelists – except substitute faith in God with faith in Progress, Civilization, Human Spirit, Economic Growth and other mantras that single out humanity as being something ‘special’, something that somehow puts the race apart from the rules that govern the rest of the planet.”
I agree that Progress, Civilization, Human Spirit and Economic Growth are not straight forward concepts.
However, I would suggest that unlike God they do all have a reality. Simply capitalising them is not sufficient grounds to dismiss them as unreal.
“Do I feel lucky, do I feel like handing over the future of my children to chancers who have such a faith in their own abilities that makes visiting church look like an act of pure reason?”
Of course luck is a factor in human affairs. But seriously, we are all in this together – us and our children. I don’t want you to ‘hand over the future’ to anyone. I want you to take an active role in creating it. I do think we will do better using the collective power of human abilities and conscious thought than we will by visiting church.
Jake Kelly says
“We live in a closed system with finite resources, finite energy and finite dumps. How can we possibly continue to grow indefinitely? It simply defies logic, surely?”
Leave aside that solar energy means that practically we live in an open rather than a closed system. The issue is not the simple logic of infinite vs. finite.
If the finite material character of the earth made development impossible then no growth would ever be possible. A population of 6 million would be just as unsustainable as 60 million as 6 billion as 60 billion. At every point one could say “We live in a closed system with finite resources … It simply defies logic, surely?”
Perhaps certain finite resources are a problem that we will need to find ways to overcome in the foreseeable future. To understand that requires engaging in specific debates.
It seems to me that when many environmentalists have a tendency to skip over those debates with the simple logic of finitude they are too keen to discover limits. They are presupposing that there must be limits.
on Nov 14th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Hi Phil,
so you have had a run in with the LM lot.. I was nearly caught out last year when I was invited to a Battle of Ideas event. It turned out that the chair, most of the panel, and two umbrella organisations were all LM fronts
it would be good to see more journalistic exposes on this lot… they really are dangerous. They set up loads of front organisations, and rig meetings (as you have now experienced). Their history suggests that they are a Marxist fringe group.. however… this too is actually misleading. They first engaged in Marxist politics in the 70s and 80s.. however, they were the most disruptive group imaginable… whilst the left has always been quite sectarian (a la ‘Life of Brian’) the RCP and LM crowd were always known as being a particular pain to everyone, and generally made sure that no other group made and progress. For many commentators now it seems that for the entire period (and still today) the group has actually been been financed by multinational corporate interests, probably with some establishment support. Their first task was to disrupt the left. Their task today is to disrupt the green movement, and to generally support anything that says unrestrained free markets are good. Just look at that journal Spiked. It is The Sun on acid. And no doubt financed by the same people.
They have been very successful in getting established within academic and journalist institutions. They are big in Blueprint, in the RCA, and judging by last weeks BD editorial (about which more later!), you should watch your back at work too!
Whilst the debate is really important, as the mainstream consensus on ’sustainability’ is completely incoherent – we really should not describe these people as Marxist, as they then win twice: by damaging both Marxists and Greens! In fact, some of the most coherent contemporary green thinking is coming from proper marxist thinkers (such as David Harvey, Neil Smith, John Bellamy Foster, (and me!))
We need to reveal this LM crowd at every opportunity, and try to get them exposed in the universities and journals that they manipulate. These people are financed by GM food companies, big energy and business. Their supporters tend to be rich kids who think they are being radical. We need neither. How about a discussion of this on the front page of BD rather than the appalling drivel that your editor is currently producing.
on Nov 14th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Just a few further comments. I actually visited ZeroChamp today after reading the shockingly naive article that Amanda Baillieu produced last week, and expecting there to be some debate about it here (although I am glad to see many robust responses to her confusion following the main site article.)
In regard to some of the questions raised above, I can’t emphasise enough that the capitalist crisis and environmental crisis are the same thing. Regarding the question of growth and planetary limits, there are alternative models out there… they just require transforming capitalism into something more progressive. Here are a few very easy viewing videos that everyone should watch. The first describes the relationship of our current money system to growth and the environmental question. The second describes Cradle2Cradle (which most people imagine they understand – but which actually requires a total reorganisation of production and a new mix of markets and planning). The third link is to generally watch some of the recent lectures by David Harvey, where he goes through the intricate relationships between international finance capitalism, current models of urban and property development, and the environmental question…
Cradle2Cradle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzLd6dUmu70&feature=related
Money as Debt:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2550156453790090544#
David Harvey:
http://davidharvey.org/
on Nov 15th, 2009 at 1:19 am
It is interesting that Jon’s idea of ‘exposing’ the ‘LM crowd’ is to fail to identify what argument of theirs it is that he objects to.
So the ‘LM crowd’ were critical of the left, and now of the green movement. Are/were the left and the green movement above criticism?
And can the failure of the left really be blamed on the ‘LM crowd’, as Jon seems to be saying? Would we really have had the revolution by now, if it wasn’t for Living Marxism magazine?
What really surprises me, however, is that Jon seems to think it is ‘rigging’ a debate to invite people you disagree with to it.
No wonder the Left failed, then. And no wonder the green ‘movement’ isn’t a movement at all, but nonetheless enjoys the sympathy of the likes of Zac Goldsmith, Prince Charles, David Cameron, and a host of other millionaires, billionaires, and those remaining at the heart of New Labour.
“…probably with some establishment support”, says Jon, without a trace of irony.
on Nov 15th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Hi Phil. I saw your debate at the BOI on growth and I found you very impressive precisely because your line differed quite substantially from my impression of the green mainstream. I was pleased to hear an environmentalist talk about how we needed to be more ambitious, create new technologies to help produce more progress while mitigating environmental side-effects, and even (albeit somewhat more ambiguously) admitting the need for further economic growth. That is quite starkly different from the usual Malthusianism and anti-humanism of the green movement. I say all this, by the way, as someone who has spoken on BOI panels and written about the threat that mainstream environmentalism poses to third-world development and poverty-reduction.
I was also impressed to read this blog and see a ‘greenie’ who, when they encounter criticism, reflect seriously on what environmentalism has offered and argued and seems willing to concede that perhaps one of the reasons their message hasn’t ’sunk in’ is that it appears opposed to many basic human needs and values. I don’t think a concern for the environment need necessarily take this form, but environmentalISM often does, because it prioritises the environment *over* human needs, rather than recognising (as I would) that one important human needs is an environmental context that allows people to pursue their interests and enjoy a high quality of life. Anyway, I think we need more people like you, who are interested perhaps more in the latter, than the Malthusian lot who ramble on, in a pessimistic and anti-humanist fashion, about “too-long- running Hegelian projects”.
So, please don’t simply close your mind to the critiques you heard and reflected on at the BOI because of a few posters making cheap remarks about the “LM crowd”. Please continue to think about the merits of the arguments in their own right. Not because you should be distracted from some big conspiracy – there isn’t one. There’s just a few ex-cadres of a defunct, tiny party, who are still loosely involved in trying to spur meaningful pro-human debates on political issues. They continue to associate with each other not because they are a front for oil companies, GM or whatever, but because they happen to agree with each other enough to work together. Likewise, the people in the audiences who you encountered are drawn to the BOI because they think that IOI folks have something interesting to say, not because they are all part of a sinister cult, conspiracy, or corporate front. It’s all too easy to buy into conspiracy theories these days, because it provides a convenient excuse for maintaining prejudices or suspending critical judgement. I hope you won’t fall into that trap, because I think you have a lot more to offer public debate than this.
on Nov 16th, 2009 at 2:10 am
Ah, that old Marxist argument about “transforming capitalism into something more progressive”. Brilliant, Jon. Twat.
on Nov 16th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Austin: not sure how using the ‘twat’ really adds to your argument.
on Nov 16th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Firstly environmentalism or green thinking is not a one-party system. Secondly, whilst some greens may embrace the environmental issue as ideology, it’s the minority. The majority tries to find anwers to urgent questions, from thoroughly ‘humanist’ perspectives, it seems to me.
This majority is being ‘ideologised’ by the likes of LM (and not just them, alas the sound of their tune is never far away in architecture/academia, although the BD leader topped everything I’ve heard in a long while) when they are the ones who genuinely try to get their heads round the human predicament, through a) rational scientific analysis and exploration (not techno-adverse; not malthusian; and appreciating the workings and make-up of the eco/human-system in its complexity and intricacy); b) political-economic analysis (theoretically as well as empirically; and finding, by and large, that capitalism is not working for the majority and that there are alternatives, see http://www.feasta.org, http://www.neweconomics.org, etc.); and c) ethical considerations: what’s the good life, socially, psychologically, culturally, spiritually (incidentally, Ben Pile seems to mix up consumption for subsistence and Consumerism) (see http://sustainable-everyday.net/manzini/)?
Thinking a, b, and c together is the task at hand that environmentally concerned groups have taken on: e.g. with regard to the nuclear power question, where there is a constructive debate that pitches CO2 emissions, safety questions, the issue of centralised and/or decentralised energy futures, relative distribution of tax money and political effort, cultural attitudes, and so on, against one another.
They’re also doing a rather good job at coming up with new solutions and models and (perhaps not-always-entirely-)new values (whence the easy but ultimately redundant accusation of conservatism and reaction). In architecture these include transition towns and productive urban landscapes, solar farming and high-tech engineering, new conceptual approaches to urban community, etc. etc.. The supposed narrowness and miserableness posited by LM (and, strangely, conceded by Phil Clark) is a caricature of what’s going on out there. Shame that a mix of self-interest, anti-environmental ideology and irrational fear of change leads those ‘Marxists’, neo-liberals and ‘architects/academics stuck in their ways’ to stiffle the debate, and in the case of LM apparently in less-than-good-faith.
on Nov 16th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
oh dear! talk about enemies of progress!! and there was me thinking that one of the most exciting and important enlightenment dynamics within capitalism was its potential to constantly transform itself, and that our constant social and political task is to make this as progressive as possible!
Can all these ‘new libertarian humanists’ really not see how they are just reproducing neo-liberal ideology in some remarkably dumb and un-enlightened forms?
anyway… re Ben Pile’s response.. of course I don’t think the LM mag influenced the “failure of the left”.. as I thought I made clear, I think ‘Life of Brian’ is a pretty accurate account! And yes, I did repeat rather lazily repeat the kinds of rumours that surround the ‘various LM front organisations’.. but honestly, if you are not being paid by developers and corporations, you should start asking for some donations!
And of course, I should not have lazily referred to ‘the green movement’… there isn’t one in any coherent sense… in fact, it is the tendency of the ‘LM’ type position to suggest that there is only one environmental position, which is my main objection. I respond to this in detail in my review of a James Woudhuysen lecture (‘The Politics of the Future: a review of James Woudhuysen’s lecture, ‘Thinking about the Future’) on http://www.thepolytechnic.org (and I have discussed the problematic nature of the concept of sustainability elsewhere on Phil’s site) so I won’t go into any further detail here… suffice to say that it is outrageous and absurd to present the entire green debate as anti-humanist, anti-technology and malthusian… it is not, on the whole, even anti-capitalist! In fact paradoxically, it is highly likely that ‘green tech’ will provide the basis of the next bubble of finance capital speculation!
The challenge for those of us who really want to facilitate human progress is to make clear that ecological and technological questions always have social and political dimensions, and that it is impossible to really confront the profound reality of the emerging environmental crisis without confronting the limited conceptions of human value promoted within contemporary consumer capitalism… to quote David Harvey:
“if you want to understand who you are and where you stand in this maelstrom of churning values, what you have to do is understand how value gets created, how it gets produced, and with what consequences, socially, environmentally, and all the rest of it. And if you think that you can solve the environmental question, of global warming and all that kind of stuff, without actually confronting the whole question of who determines the value structure, and how is it determined by these processes, then you have got to be kidding yourself.”
on Nov 16th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Jon,
You say, “of course I don’t think the LM mag influenced the “failure of the left”.. as I thought I made clear”
But you said, “they were the most disruptive group imaginable… whilst the left has always been quite sectarian (a la ‘Life of Brian’) the RCP and LM crowd were always known as being a particular pain to everyone, and generally made sure that no other group made and progress.” And, ” Their first task was to disrupt the left. Their task today is to disrupt the green movement, and to generally support anything that says unrestrained free markets are good.” You advised Phil that he “should watch your back at work”. And you said that “These people are financed by GM food companies, big energy and business”, and that they “manipulate universities and journals”. You said that “they really are dangerous.”
I don’t think it is clear at all that you don’t think that the LM mag/group was responsible for the failure of the left. They “made sure that no other group made any progress”, they are “dangerous”, you say.
I think you’ve trawled Monbiot and sourcewatch articles for rumour. What I don’t understand is why, because just two years ago, you were asking James Woudhuysen to “align himself with this debate, rather than worrying about whether the demands of environmentalists are the return of an ascetic morality”, and that “his reasons are interesting, and could be an important contribution to a more radical environmentalist critique of contemporary capitalist production methods” But today, you say that the “LM group” are dangerous, and need to be “exposed”.
You have changed your tune, Jon. At some point in the last two years, something has made you see “the LM group” differently. You can’t have beleived that “they were the most disruptive group imaginable” while being generally supportive of what Woudhuysen was saying in 2007. Judging from your first comment here, it appears to be when you were “invited to a Battle of Ideas event. It turned out that the chair, most of the panel, and two umbrella organisations were all LM fronts”.
Now, I have no idea what an “LM front” is supposed to be. But it appears to me that you don’t either. It is no more unusual, in my view, for there to be people gathered at an Institute of Ideas event who were once colleagues, than it is for there to be equivalent connections between people at a Green Party conference, or a conference put together by any organisation.
The point of conferences is to bring people together, isn’t it? The point is to share ideas, isn’t it?
The fact that you were invited, however, far from suggesting that there is anything nefarious going on, speaks much more about the Institute of Ideas’ desire to have ideas – including those of its own membership – challenged. That is why Woudhuysen and Deichmann, in the IOI debate referred to in Phil’s blog post above, were met in debate by chief executive, Friends of the Earth Scotland, Duncan McLaren, David Strahan, and Dr Jim Watson. Can we imagine a Friends of the Earth inviting such “deniers” (as they would no doubt be called) to any of their events? I very much doubt it. Environmentalists, in my experience, are reluctant to debate any substantive matters at all, preferring to defer to the ’scientific consensus’ as though it spoke a priori about the necessity of environmental ethical imperatives.
Which brings me to the next point you raise: “The challenge for those of us who really want to facilitate human progress is to make clear that ecological and technological questions always have social and political dimensions”
You make it clear here that you are ignorant of any of the work of the “LM fronts” you are so hostile to.
If I am to be lumped into the “LM crowd” for being one of those hostile to environmentalism speaking at the Battle of Ideas, then I would direct you to my blog, where I write endlessly about the “social and political dimensions” to “ecological and technological questions”. I argue there that, by its human cost, the measure of an environmental catastrophe is more determined by social than environmental conditions. That is to say that poor people are more vulnerable to climate. So the contemporary claims of environmentalists (of all sorts) that “Climate change will be worse for the poor” naturalises the problem of poverty, rather than allows a political understanding of it, such that “tackling climate change” becomes the priority of the development agenda at the expense of development. This is epitomised by the Global humanitarian Forum’s report earlier this year, which claimed that 300,000 deaths a year can be attributed to climate change. What the headlines this generated omit is that if these are effects of climate change, they are Nth order effects, the first being poverty and disease – both of which can be abolished as first order effects. But what the GHF reports implies is that they can’t be abolished, and that the 7.5 million+ deaths attributable to poverty are ‘natural’ and cannot be tackled, and that climate change ought to be the priority. It is as if, as long as we didn’t drive cars, our responsibilities to others would be met, and ‘our bit’ had been ‘done’.
You say, ” it is outrageous and absurd to present the entire green debate as anti-humanist, anti-technology and malthusian… it is not, on the whole, even anti-capitalist!”
I wait patiently for there to emerge a pro-human, pro-technology, and non-malthusian form of environmental politics. But I am not holding my breath, and I am not impressed by your assertion that such a philosophy exists. It seems to me that environmental crisis has become the organising principle of political ideas because the notion of progress has been degraded to merely the avoidance of catastrophe; survival has displaced the concept of development. Thus, both ‘capitalist’ and ‘anti-capitalist’ frameworks are entirely premised on catastrophe, posit themselves as the only way to mitigate a hostile future, and can only advance their arguments by making claims about the urgency of their cause. Accordingly, the legitimising basis of these frameworks is the putative objectivity of scientific authority, rather than active, subjective engagement with the political ideas being proposed. That is the fundamentally anti-human principle of environmentalism, because its premise, albeit scientificly framed, is the impotence of human politics to overcome natural/biological constraints and its conclusion is life organised within those constraints. As I say on the blog, environmental problems may well exist, but they do not call for special politics, and special political institutions to overcome them – especially such politics and institutions that are ‘above’ normal political engagement.
So when you say “but honestly, if you are not being paid by developers and corporations, you should start asking for some donations!”, I think Austin has been so much more conscise than I.
After all, it’s not as if your clients aren’t “developers and corporations”, now, is it? And it’s not as if the sustainability agenda hasn’t been entirely profitable, what with grants, subsidies, and corporations’ desires to present themselves to customers as ‘ethical’.
This ‘new libertarian humanist’ thinks it’s just a little bit rich for the sustainability-prophet to talk about ‘reproducing neo-liberal ideology’. What does the prophet think he is ’sustaining’?
on Nov 17th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
When did Karl Marx get involved with the ecological / climate change movement? Sure his name came up debating with my class-mates who escaped the terror of the Nazi’s and their sham doctrines on nature and man during my blitzed London Northern Polytechnic days when as a building and architectural student the seeds for thinking in a more ecological sense were planted.
Since those early days of the 1940’s I trained to become first a heating and ventilating engineer with a good knowledge of the use of fuels, coal, oil, gas and later in the 1950’s after a period as a soldier in the desert where I designed a workable solar device to produce clean hot water (no derv polluted stuff for us REME boys).
Onto the coal-face of the industry. Learning how to measure up bombed buildings. Seeking to apply energy saving ideas. Knowing how to design and supervise every type of building you can imagine both in construction and then later as a consulting engineer with his own practice. Yes a guy who could design all the services and think architecturally, energy concious wise and then more and more as I saw that we would be creating an energy poor if we allow the large suppliers of fossil fuels (includes nuclear) to become controlled by a few big players and now those country’s that still have the source. Yes, an engineer thinking politically, socially and environmentally and who was a Class One welder and could make a weld test in a site trench.
I bet there are few of you who can do this? How many of you understand the laws of thermodynamics or any other laws that are part of our daily working skills.
In 1966 – yes an article in The Guardian BLUE PRINT FOR A BETTER LIFE I called for the creation of environmental engineers.
One bright society lady so keen to wonder what this person was- and asking me during my time that I was also involved with dance, theatre, political action and co-founder with playwrite Arnold Wesker of a nationawide movement of the arts- Centre 42, told her that it was to create the right atmosphere for making love. Phew!
So here is an engineer who has designed solar installations, designed one of the first district heating schemes in the UK using dual fuels, who has designed and built workable wind turbines, designed the first operational thermolabrinth that allowed the theatres, sound and music rooms and the whole building of London’s Royal Academy of Music to be cooled without the use of refrigeration. This was in 1972.
Oh and much more. Read my books, read my hundreds of articles. At 80 I have been advising Tesco plc as an independent engineer to think beyond the box on a whole tranche of ecological and environmental designs to seek as close as possible to zero carbon solutions.
Throughout my life I have tried to bend the cloth ears of politicians and orther so-called prime movers.
The lack of thinking coming from our current Climate Change Minister of a mix of wind, nuclear and so-called clean coal will not bring to the people of our nation or others the ability to be able to control their own energy supply.
It can be done. Time for Claire Fox (who I heard on a Question Time programme and wondered on what planet whe had come from) and others got real. As a working engineer I believe that we can help to create new jobs, industry and quickly overcome the devastation wrought by mindless bankers and their kin.
We have the tools. Everything is within reach. But to make it work we may need some form of revolution. Oh dear Austin Williams will say, “Told you so. I knew that bloke Holdsworth was a ruddy marxist all along”.
Just ask me to come and speak and I am not miserable but very much hopeful, although when I read some of the coments I groan and know that many of the doubters are the same as the people who don’t believe that we could soon become a controlled fascist state. Now that’s put the cat amongst the pigeons.
on Nov 17th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
No doubt ‘it can be done’, Bill. The question is, why, and what and who for? Who is this ‘revolution’ for? Who is creating it? Why?
You see, the people arguing for an environmental revolution, in those exact terms, are people like Peter Mandelson, and Charles of Wales.
Nobody is against efficiency, or for pollution. The question I and others have is making such concepts the organising principle of politics.
I don’t know who your question about Marx and ecology was aimed at. But my attempt at an answer would be that Marxism and ecology became conflated when some Marxists failed to make an argument for Marxism on its own terms, and so sought a deeper crisis with which to illustrate a criticism of capitalism.
That’s not unique to the Left, or Marxists, of course.
“many of the doubters are the same as the people who don’t believe that we could soon become a controlled fascist state.”
I have no idea what that means, who who it refers to.
on Nov 17th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Ben Pile is correct. The Marxists and others of the 60’s /70’s New Left movement never saw that climatic impacts would affect our environment to the extent that we are witnessing. I attended many meetings and found a total lose of understanding when I tried to make the case about a creeping environmental poor and that future wars would have an environmental element to them.
The same was true of the Conservative right and many a time when I tried to explain was met by negative and uncontructive replies usually in terms, \It’s unaffordable. This lead to me creating a design matrix ECHOES (Environmentally Controlled Human Operational External-Enclosed Space) in the early 1970’s which has found its way into various aspects of modern day design thinking.
It was Austin Williams one time editor of Architects’ Journal who brought in the reference to Marx.
To explain why I believe that the people who believe in keeping the lights on by using nuclear, so-called clean coal and allowing our energy sources to be controlled by outside nations is because as the costs of energy rise and we find ourselves as people without any control on how we can reduce this by local community actions.
Fixing houses with PV’s; using the technology of solar roads [ yes the UK Highways Agency did a test and proved it was viable based upon real-time working schemes in Holland and Sweden and now with a London based company in the UK]; and a whole raft of other solutions.
To protest or demand to change the shape of governmental decisions which are increasingly undemocratic we find ourselves deemed as enemies of the state. Ben it has already happened.
Surveillance of our everyday life and actions has increased several hundred fold since 9-11. Environmentalists are on the hit pages of private companies who are in league with both private and governmental agencies. Ben become alive. You know this to be true.
During the coal miners strike as well as helping (my father was a coal miner) I also sought to convince the NUJ and coal mining communities at Welbeck and places to start to see that they had the skills to create a new environmental set of industries-one’s that were not polluting. But even as I tried to convince miners and the myopic leftists who thought they were in the vanguard only to later become New Labourites, Mrs Thatcher and her people were hand in glove with the large corporations who did not want any alternative movement or educational programmes.
We lost nearly 30 years of experienced solar ( using this term in its widest sense) engineers, designers and strategists when she cut the funding for the creation of Britains first specialist university to be built in Sheffield. The architects were to be Sir William Whitfield and partners. I was to have been the building services and energy engineer. had the project gone ahead I could have withstood the huge economic debacle created by the Tories (worse than we have now) and would not to have been forced out of business when the slump in the construction industry took place.
This subject covers more than energy solutions. It covers transport, health, economic well being, the ability to stop the creation of an underclass. It deals with the way we create waste and where consumer capitalism produces little joy. It extends to every aspect of out life on this planet.
Sure, the term revolution has some nasty overtones. But change and radical change is necessary. Very unsure about Peter Mandelson but Charles of Wales is somebody who at least has a more positive side to himself. But then I would not mind having a talk to Peter Mandelson especially about the negative attitudes of his old relative Morrison.
It’s a broad subject.