One of the most interesting things I’ve read recently was Rebecca Solnit’s excellent piece in Orion Magazine, ‘One Nation Under Elvis‘, a critical commentary on the way that activists have tended to marginalise themselves by erecting social barriers. This has meant they’re fighting against, rather than with, communities that might otherwise be sympathetic or even lead the fight.
The socialism and progressivism that thrived through the 1930s saw farmers, loggers, fisheries workers, and miners as its central constituency along with longshoremen and factory workers. Where did it go? You can see missed opportunities again and again. Some of the potential for a broad, blue-collar left was trampled by the virulent anti-communism and anti-labor-union mood of the postwar era. More of it was undermined by the culture clash that came out of the civil rights movement. By the 1980s, when I was old enough to start paying attention, the divide was pretty wide. And environmentalists were typically found on one side.
I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot in the last few months, spurred by the challenge that climate change activists represent to the Newcastle coal industry. The city still bears the scars of de-industrialisation. There are abandoned buildings, even on the ostensible mainstreet. This isn’t to say that there isn’t wealth; the northern beaches are loaded with conspicuous consumption. But coal exports are the lifeblood of the economy, and if they were ripped away, there is no doubt, in the short term at least, many people would suffer.
I think climate change activists are on the right side of the moral calculus, and that the effects of not acting will be catastrophic, and harm many more people than if we continue as usual. The poor and the working class are almost always the worst affected, even in the developing world. So this isn’t about abandoning the fight, or even watering down our demands to accommodate a compromise. But it does mean we have to think strategically about how we work, and build as many alliances as possible. We may be right, but if we continue business as usual we’ll be on the back foot here. The environmental movement has been coopted, often willingly, into being a vehicle of class, in which the rich who can afford “eco” and “organic” X,Y and Z, and offsets that allow them to pollute as much as they ever have, lecture the backwards poor. A recent entry in Tim Lambert’s otherwise excellent blog Deltiod illustrated this well. Al Gore, a millionaire with ample resources, chooses to use huge amounts of energy in his home, 18 times that of the already profligate average American. Rather than castigate him for not taking basic steps to reduce this consumption, his defenders maintain that with offsets and green-power, no substantial change is necessary, and that the rich can continue to consume vast amounts more than the poor.
Basing how seriously you take global warming on Gore’s personal behavior is just silly. On the other hand, Gore’s approach to tackling global warming is not some personal matter. His approach is representative of the establishment “green” movement and thus his conduct does indicate that AGW shapes up to be another front in the class war: placing demands on the masses (if not actual sacrifices, at least restraint, and in addition, awareness and political activity) but being merely a business opportunity for the rich.
I think that one of the more important struggles of the next decade will be fighting against “environmentalists”, but that will have to wait for another post.
Very often activists wield class-privilege, race-privilege, or educational-privilege without any awareness that they’re doing so. Most of us have the option of going back home, to our jobs (or benefits) and lives in other places, once we’ve protested in other places. We might not be able to fall back on money, but we’ve structured our lives in such a way that we’re not grounded in the place we’re trying to affect. Struggling for the place you live in has a lot of moral currency for me. Struggling to keep food on the table has even more, even if to do so you are causing harm elsewhere.
I think Asher’s attempts to build solidarity with the miners on the coast, despite being apparently objectively at odds with their way of life is a worthwhile effort. At the very least, recognising and dialoguing with the people you’re affecting is going to blunt some of the hostility.
One of the best environmental campaigns I’ve seen, although I was very much on the margins, was Greenpeace’s work on Dioxins. In Mangere, my community, the local population was brought on board and became a partner, sharing in the struggle to shut down the toxic incinerator at the airport. What this did was effectively demonstrate to the Government that the people would not accept dioxins in their community. I know that others have done similar campaigns in New Zealand, and respect their work. The toxics movement has invested heavily in building with communities for environmental justice. I also like that the Green Party is connecting publicly their environmental campaigns to the interests of the ordinary New Zealander. These connections have always been there, but are often neglected.
The other significant barrier erected, as Solnit notes, is the cultural divide that activists create for themselves.
[The DJ] would oblige with reggae, mostly, and we’d wave our limbs vaguely, dancing solo and free-form as white people have danced to rock-and-roll since the mid-1960s. Everyone else would sit down to wait this other music out. It was not a great movement-building exercise. How far were you going to get with a community when you couldn’t stand their music or even be diplomatic about it?
Their dress, music, and demeanor stand as markers. You are not with us, and you do not share our interests. And this is completely ridiculous. The environment and animals do not care what you are wearing or what your favourite album is. And yet these are things that I’ve seen people unwilling to compromise, aware of how they are perceived but willing to discount this as evidence of the stupidity of the people they are challenging. When I last went to Gore, (admittedly to visit their stunning gallery), the friends I told were full of scorn and abuse for its people and country music. I was pleasantly surprised by the city and Southland. I wished that the self-righteous Dunedinites could put away their animosity and pre-conceptions. They might even enjoy themselves.
Speaking of which, I had a question asked of me today, after offering criticism for the current Labour Government’s transparent attempts to coopt environmental rhetoric for their own purposes, the kind that out of touch Labour supporters swallow readily. I was asked if I have a fun life, what with being “perennially angry”.
I’m not mad, because a while ago I come to accept that this is how bad things are. It was a very comforting realisation. Now I just get on with the business of opposing things without giving myself anger to deal with. I did get particularly angry about the immigration bill however, as it is so obviously evil that I wonder how even Labour supporters can live with it. But the last few weeks have proven they can.
Many enjoyable and wonderful things exist in this world, and they exist independently of the political process, thank god, or this world would be a bleak or hostile place indeed.
Here’s one of them, Will covering Mariah:
