Unless enough of us are able to embrace the path outlined below, human extinction in the near term is inevitable because our efforts will be wasted on actions that cannot have the necessary impact given the full dimensions of the crisis.
by Robert J. Burrowes
It has been satisfying to note the significant
response to two recent climate campaigns: the actions, including the recent
Global Climate Strike, initiated by school students inspired by Greta Thunberg
and the climate actions organized by Extinction Rebellion.
While delighted that these campaigns have finally
managed to mobilize significant numbers of people around the existential threat
the climate catastrophe poses to life on Earth, I would like to briefly raise
some issues for consideration by each of those involved in the climate movement
as well as those considering involvement.
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| Where are we heading? |
I do this because history provides clearcut and
compelling lessons on how to make such movements have the impact we need and,
so far, the climate movement is not doing several vital things if we are to
indeed be successful. And I would like to be successful.
So here are five key issues that I would address as
soon as possible.
1. Analyze the climate catastrophe within the context
of the ongoing and broader environmental disaster that is currently taking
place.
2. Analyze the climate catastrophe and environmental
disaster to better understand the political, economic and social systems and
structures, as well as the individual behaviours, that are driving them.
3. Based on these analyses, reorient the movement’s
strategic focus: that is, who and what is the movement trying to change?
4. And then identify the nature of the behavioural
changes we are asking of people and their organizations, and how these will be
achieved.
5. In what timeframe?
Let me briefly elaborate why I believe these issues
are so important.
1. Earth’s biosphere is under siege, not just the
climate.
There is no point mobilizing action to halt ongoing
destruction of the climate while paying insufficient attention to the vast
range of other threats to key ecosystems that make life on Earth possible. I
understand that most movements, whether concerned with peace, the environment
or social justice, for example, tend to confine their concern to one issue.
Unfortunately, however, we no longer have the luxury of doing that given the
multifaceted existential threats to life on Earth.
The biosphere is under siege on many fronts with
military violence, radioactive contamination (from nuclear weapons testing,
nuclear waste from power plants including Fukushima and Chernobyl, depleted
uranium weapons...), destruction of the rainforests and oceans, contamination
and depletion of Earth’s fresh water supply, geoengineering, 5G and many other
assaults inflicting ongoing and uncontained damage on Earth and its species.
See, for example, ‘5G and the Wireless
Revolution: When Progress Becomes a Death Sentence’.
This has critical implications for the strategic goals
we set ourselves in our struggle to save not only the climate but the many
vital ecosystems of Earth’s biosphere. In short, if we ‘save the climate’ but
rainforests are destroyed or nuclear war takes place, then saving the climate
will have been a pyrrhic victory.
2. Politicians are a ‘sideshow’ with negligible power.
Hence, it is a waste of time lobbying them to do such
things as ‘declare a climate emergency’, ‘phase out all fossil fuel extraction
and transform our economy to 100% renewable energy by 2030’, ‘recognize
indigenous sovereignty’ and ‘implement a Green New Deal’.
The global elite, which is insane, is ‘running the
show’, including the key political, economic, military and social structures
and the bulk of the politicians we supposedly elect. This means that the global
elite holds the levers of power over the world capitalist system, national
military forces and the major international political and economic
organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund. For brief explanations of this, with references to many more
elaborate accounts, see the section headed ‘How the World Works: A Brief
History’ in ‘Why Activists Fail’, as well as ‘Exposing the Giants: The
Global Power Elite’ and ‘The Global Elite is Insane
Revisited’.
But separately from the role of the global elite in
managing the major political, economic and social systems and structures in
order to extract maximum corporate profit, individual behaviours, particularly
the consumption patterns of people in industrialized countries, are also
driving the destruction of Earth’s biosphere. Why? Because our parenting and
teaching models are extraordinarily violent and leave the typical human living
in an unconsciously terrified, self-hating and powerless state and addicted to
using consumption as a key means to suppress awareness of how they feel. See ‘Love Denied: The Psychology
of Materialism, Violence and War’
and ‘Do We Want School or
Education?’ and, for more
detail, ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.
3 & 4. If we understand the above two points, we
can reorient our efforts.
This means that instead of powerlessly lobbying
politicians, we can change our strategic focus to maximize our strategic
impact. So, on the one hand for example, we can tackle corporations profiting
from the manufacture, sale and use of military weapons, the extraction and sale
of fossil fuels or the manufacture and sale of the poison glyphosate
(‘Roundup’), by designing and implementing thoughtful strategies of nonviolent
action to end their manufacture and sale of these life-destroying products. For
comprehensive guidance on campaigning strategically, see Nonviolent Campaign Strategy. For a list of the strategic goals necessary to
effectively tackle the climate catastrophe or end war, for example, see ‘Strategic Aims’. And for a brief explanation of how to make a
nonviolent action have maximum impact, see ‘Nonviolent Action: Why and
How it Works’.
On the other hand, we can encourage responsible
and systematic reductions of consumption in all key areas – water, household
energy, transport fuels, metals, meat, paper and plastic – while dramatically
expanding individual and community self-reliance in 16 areas in industrialized
countries as outlined in ‘The Flame Tree Project to
Save Life on Earth’. Or, more
simply, we can encourage people to make the Earth Pledge (below).
Once enough people commit to one or the other of these
two approaches (to substantially reduce consumption and increase local
self-reliance), then three vital outcomes will be achieved:
1. it will progressively reduce resource extraction
from, and pollution of, Earth’s biosphere,
2. it will functionally undermine capitalism and the
ongoing industrialization process, and
3. it will remove the fundamental driver of the global
elite’s perpetual war: our collective demand for the goods and services made
available by the elite’s theft of resources from countries they invade and
exploit on our behalf.
I am well aware of the captivating power of turning up
in a shared space with a vast bunch of other people with whom we agree. Unfortunately, while it
might be a lot of fun, it is usually a waste of time strategically. Even the
largest worldwide mobilization in human history (against the imminent US-led
war on Iraq) on 15 February 2003, in which 30,000,000 people participated in
more than 600 cities around the world, was ineffective. See ‘Why Activists Fail’.
Of course, if you still want a large public action,
then you need to make sure the gathering has strategic focus. For example,
instead of using it to powerlessly beg politicians to fix things for us, make
it an occasion where participants can publicly commit to taking powerful action
themselves by signing the Earth Pledge.
The Earth Pledge
Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures,
and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:
1. I will listen deeply to children (see explanation above)
2. I will not travel by plane
3. I will not travel by car
4. I will not eat meat and fish
5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown
food
6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including
by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
7. I will not buy rainforest timber
8. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as
bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
9. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension)
funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved
in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
10. I will not accept employment from, or invest in,
any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow
human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
11. I will not get news from the corporate media
(mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
12. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as
food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
13. I will gently encourage my family and friends to
consider signing this pledge.
To reiterate: It is delusional to believe that we can
sustain the existing levels of consumption and preserve Earth’s
biosphere. Because, in the end, it is our over-consumption that is driving the
destruction. As an aside, this is also why the various Green New Deal proposals
being put forward are misconceived: each of the versions that I have checked is
essentially a wish-list of desirable changes ‘demanded’ of governments while
missing the fundamental point that if people still want to fly, drive, eat meat
and fish, or food that is poisoned, use electronic devices..., they are paying
the elite to maintain existing structures of violence and exploitation, to
continue killing people (to steal their resources) and to destroy the
biosphere. And this, of course, means that we are directly complicit in the
violence, exploitation and destruction. After all, why should the elite listen
to our demands for change when we spend our money supporting their existing
profit-maximizing, people-killing and biosphere-destroying behaviours?
If this all seems too challenging, then I invite you
to consider doing the emotional healing necessary so that you can act
powerfully in response to this crisis. See ‘Putting Feelings First’. If you want to help children to do so, consider
making ‘My Promise to Children’ which will require capacity in ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep
Listening’.
5. The timeframe to which we are working is vital.
Given the ever-increasing body of evidence that
suggests human extinction will occur by 2026, there is no point working to the
elite-sponsored IPCC timeframe, designed to maximize corporate profits-as-usual
for as long as possible. We do not have, for example, until 2030 to contain the
temperature increase to 1.5 degrees celsius above the pre-industrial level or,
say, mid-century to fully reign in carbon, methane and nitrous oxide emissions.
We have nothing like this much time. Moreover, anyone paying attention to the
state and ongoing destruction of the world’s rainforests and oceans, the
‘insect apocalypse’ and the accelerating rate of species extinctions (with one
million species now under threat) should perceive this intuitively unless
(unconsciously) terrified and hence delusional.
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| When are we going to help our wounded earth? |
But for a fuller elaboration of the short timeframe we
have left, if we take into account the synergistic psychological, sociological,
political, economic, climate, ecological, military and nuclear considerations
that each play a part in shaping this timeframe, see ‘Human Extinction by 2026? A
Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’.
Conclusion
By now, of course, many people will be overwhelmed by
what they have read above (if they got this far). So this is why those who feel
able to grapple with the evidence presented are also the ones most likely to
have the courage to join me in taking the action outlined and gently
encouraging others in the movement to reconsider and reorient movement strategy
too.
It also means that the climate movement and those with
whom we must work, such as those in the labour, women’s, antiwar, indigenous
rights and environment movements, have considerably more work to do if we are
to achieve the outcomes we all want.
Unless enough of us are able to embrace the path
outlined above, human extinction in the near term is inevitable because our
efforts will be wasted on actions that cannot have the necessary impact given
the full dimensions of the crisis.
Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes
has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has
done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings
are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.
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