Knowing and not knowing – a call for disobedience
JVL Introduction
A passionate article by George Monbiot in the Guardian as COP26 gets underway, on the environmental catastrophe we are facing but not facing.
We know what is about to happen, but we are offered hundreds of ways to divert us from facing up to the truth of what we know.
- “We focus on what I call micro-consumerist bollocks (MCB): tiny issues such as plastic straws and coffee cups, rather than the huge structural forces driving us towards catastrophe.”
He is crystal clear:
- “I’m not saying the small things don’t matter. I’m saying they should not matter to the exclusion of things that matter more. Every little counts. But not for very much.”
As Monbiot argues, the focus on micro-consumerism aligns with the corporate agenda. And lets capitalism off the hook
It is the environmental protesters who demand systemic change, says Monbiot, who have also grasped a fundamental truth – that our very survival now depends on disobedience.
This article was originally published by the Guardian on Sat 30 Oct 2021. Read the original here.
Capitalism is killing the planet – it’s time to stop buying into our own destruction
Instead of focusing on ‘micro consumerist bollocks’ like ditching our plastic coffee cups, we must challenge the pursuit of wealth and level down, not up
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I am particularly concerned that all our communications depend on mining which is immensely destructive in human as well as environmental terms, as seen in last Friday’s C4 Unreported World from DRC. How do we run this website, send these messages to each other about saving our world, or hold zoom meetings for social change, let alone ‘switch to electric’ as if making a new car and its battery had no impact –without using these rare earths and metals? In the past Monbiot has also highlighted our longing for travel, our longing to taste out-of-season fruit, our conscious or unconscious willingness to destroy every other species on the planet. The problem for organisers and activists is that these luxuries are the newish normal and a future without them wouldn’t be seen as ‘public luxury.’ at all, even if we then had the best services. Maybe as older activists (most of us in JVL are older) we can at least be helpful in remembering what it was like to organise before the electronic revolutions. But I have been concerned to realise since the pandemic lockdown how many ‘ordinary’ people I know have more than one home. This is absolutely not a message to do nothing and I am glad JVL will have an environmental justice strand now as well as its anti-racist work because these go together.
“Our survival depends upon disobedience”.
I seem to have been thinking and saying this for most of my life. The greatest diobedience would be to transform political alignments so that environmentally aware and climate change activists begin to break up the hold that pro-business parties have over political decision-making. Does anyone seriously believe that the British Labour Party is going to become that force for change in the dis-United Kingdom?
Absolutely! Bollox to insulation companies and by default the crazies of ‘Insulate Britain’ wanting to hermetical seal us all up in our gasping homes that were built to breathe easily with porous cavity walls for facilitation of aeration and the dissipation of dangerous consumptive condensation. If you’re cold in or out of the house during wintry climes the wearing of cotton under-layers and on top woollies, jumpers, pullovers, cardies and quilted body-warmers is to be wholly recommended.
Luxury life is treated as normal. the establishment media encourages the folly and establishment politicians, such as most Labour MPs and the LP hierarchy, go with it and deliberately exaggerate side issues to get and maintain control.
A really good article and having much in it with which I can agree. However, the notion that we can address these issues by – for example – a wealth tax omits to mention the class nature of society. The capitalist class will fight tooth, nail and other body parts to defend the system that provides them, most of them anyway, with their wealth, power and privilege. So, instead of just tinkering around with MRB (Micro Reformist Bollocks) measures – albeit useful in the short-term – we need to be clear that socialism must *replace* capitalism and not just try to work within it.