Capitalism must change because the biosphere it exploits is dying…
The Earth, as we know it, is fucked. We’re currently at 417 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, up from 280 ppm pre-capitalism. And that’s still not enough to satiate the shrieking, sucking mouth of the market.
Russia sees the melting Arctic and has decided this is a wonderful opportunity to extract the region’s hitherto inaccessible oil. Burning this will melt the Arctic further, making more oil available, in a virtuous circle of suicide. While making false promises in the fight against the climate crisis, America took the lead in crude oil production last year. Right behind us are the world’s other oil producers, from the despots of Saudi Arabia to the bland democracy of Canada. It’s like a “Murder on the Orient Express”-style mystery, where humanity is killed by every passenger.
It’s getting pretty close to night-night time for ocean life, most of the insects on Earth, half of the birds, too. Oh, and a third of the trees. When this will take out people is hard to predict, just as you never know which piece you have to remove to cause everything to collapse in a game of Jenga.
If you find this distressing, consider the more distressing fact that even if we develop massive amounts of green energy and stop global warming, capitalism will still probably destroy a livable biosphere.
…we are so far off the maps in terms of pollution and what that dramatic sharp increase in heat will do to our biosphere.
Nothing else matters in politics right now more than radical adaptation for the climate crisis that is upon us.
Watch for more climate refugees and the inability for some places to rebuild in time for the next storm as agricultural calendars are irreversibly disrupted.
…I didn’t need any crystal ball to predict that we would see climate change wreck NZ and the usual push back from the industry that creates most of the climate change pollution because that’s the kind of denial we New Zealanders love.
Unfortunately we can no longer pretend to be in denial.
As Kiwis we are a very laid back culture and we are fastidious about ignoring things that might lead to conflict, until conflict is upon us and then we are unrelenting in fighting for a righteous egalitarianism.
I believe we are at a turning point on climate change.
For many of us, climate change has been a theoretical argument about something that might happen in the distant future.
It is no longer that.
It is now a present on going risk factor.
I’ve been following the IPCC reports on climate change from the beginning, and the criticism made against the IPCC was that due to its strict need for only unilaterally agreed science to make the official report, it was always underplaying the urgency and severity of the climate crisis.
There was always a section in each report where the science was presented that wasn’t universally accepted but included to show the reach and scope of debate.
Increasingly over the years, the worst case scenarios in the IPCC are playing out in real time.
The scientists were wrong, but only in their optimism.
You understand that each year that passes now will get worse or remain as starkly bad as they are now right?
You get that it doesn’t go back to normal after this right?
The extreme weather will get worse and worse.
More extreme than these extremes now.
Consider the baseline extreme current normal.
Sure the war run Ukraine is hurting food prices, but that’s damage on the baseline reality of a mega drought that has interrupted the agricultural calendar of major food producers globally!
The radical adaptation required to get us ready for what’s coming will splinter the political spectrum whether we like it or not.
Why shouldn’t we have our own basic pharmaceutical industry?
Engineering industry?
Industrial industry?
The supply side shocks caused by Covid and war are not going away, and they are being compounded by catastrophic climate change.
Radical adaptation and communal community resourcing alongside a Big State approach to lynchpin infrastructure for basic self-reliance as an Island country facing enormous economic shockwaves is the only means to build the muscle mass to respond to the ever intensifying external disruption of late stage capitalism.
The need to increase military spending to 3% alongside the new costs for this infrastructure must be funded via new taxes aimed at corporations and banks.
A financial transaction tax and windfall profit tax would take the yoke of taxation off working people and place it upon the shoulders of the wealthy.
National and ACT see mass immigration as a means to create fake growth at a time when we should be focused on de-growth.
Climate Crisis is here and adaptation is now.
We need to start rethinking Isolationism as a strength and Hyper-Regional Think Big as Economic Sovereignty.
The geopolitical shock waves are only getting more intense.
As you look around at the devastation these extreme weather events have caused, doesn’t being carbon neutral by 2050 look pathetic now?
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All this is commendable but it’s finger-in-the-dyke stuff until the world addresses the “supply side” of climate change. To do that, fossil fuels have to stay in the ground. How do countries pay for their damage control measures? Apart from the financial transaction and windfall taxes suggested, big oil and coal must pay reparations as they have known of the damage they’re causing for decades.
People need energy. Just existing requires a lot energy. 8 billion people requires an incomprehensible amount of energy. Let’s say all of the coal and all of the oil stays in the ground: how do you expect to replace all of that energy with enough to provide for the needs of 8 billion people (and rising)? I think most people who advocate Net Zero think that we can achieve this simply by transitioning to so-called “green” energy and going on as we did before. This is delusional. “Green” energy is neither abundant nor reliable. Where is the infrastructure? Where does all of the extra electricity come from to supply everyone’s EV? It doesn’t come from anywhere, and it’s not supposed to. Climate change initiative are meant to remove personal autonomy and replace it with technocracy-based servitude.
“Net Zero” means a dramatic reduction in standard of living and the ability to exercise personal agency. “Net Zero” means everyone living in heavily surveilled and controlled “15 minute cities” wherein your movements are heavily curtailed, and currency in the form of centrally controlled CBDC’s that can decline your purchases if the government sees fit, as well as being able to cut off your access to funds should you express any dissent regarding your new “green” open air prison you advocated for.
Nuclear energy would of course solve the fossil fuel issue and provide abundant energy as an alternative. But that isn’t the point: being able to provide abundant and reliable energy would mean that, as a consequence, there would be no justification for centralised control of everyone’s life, under the pretext of “reducing emissions.”
Think it was just a deep low that tracked the northeast of the country. The rest of the country is not in emergency. The lesson is to don’t build in riverbeds, around cliffs, on flood plains and on beaches. The takeaway is to build roads and bridges like they do overseas, structures which can handle large volumes of water and the elements. The advice to the government is to stop playing politics with the weather and look after the 30,000 families already on the house waiting list as well as the 3000 just added to it.
So why bother building roads in those areas if you are not going to live there/build houses there?
Wonder if the government will treat this emergency like they did with the covid human experiments, lock the country down just because they can and then wheel out dancing roadworkers like we saw with the nurse flash mobs.
Hey, nobody said that removing people’s rights and restricting their agency under a confected sense of emergency couldn’t also be fun. Thank goodness for TikTok and teddy bears in windows.
Usual waste of space comment.
Good analysis. Thanks for your input.
What Martyn is suggesting will inevitably become an unstoppable political force for one simple reason — everything he is talking about has been done in this country before, and existed at scale up until the mid 1980s.
However, the number of people who actually remember the ‘glory days’ of the 1950s-1970s is rapidly dwindling. Clearly the plan is to prevent the corporate media from ever discussing the achievements of the labour movement (which they don’t, and haven’t for 30 years).
Any new generation of organised labour can then be prevented from being mentored by the veteran union leaders, so that their institutional knowledge dies with them.
Martyn is right that people will demand an end to globalist trade policy, and that high value-added, high-wage production of complex goods will inevitably return. However, building a largely self-sufficient economy will be a slow grind if there isn’t international collaboration.
Countries such as China, the Gulf States, Japan and Russia can all assist in rebuilding a modern industrialised economy. They have large amounts of money and modern machinery which can be immediately deployed — and, crucially, they are all countries with substantial state owned industries.
As such, unlike the Americans, they will be willing to work with another country trying to rebuild its self sufficiency and state industries.
Right on Brother, the future has arrived! NZ has to lead in the ethics of climate stability, we also have to be prepared for what may come- be independent and self reliant. New Zealand is at the end of the global supply chain, our provinces doubly so. Give communities the power to take action, Civil Defence for example, fund the folks on the ground directly and back them up with a nation wide government department. Same with roading- local contractors for small jobs, ministry of works depart for the big jobs. Regional resources for anything bigger than that. It needs a total shift in thinking for the future.
Many of the people who like to lecture everyone else on climate change (btw all “capitalists” who, you argue, are the ones resisting the idea of AGW) also own extremely expensive beach front property. If only they’d have looked into “The Science” before they wasted their money on what will inevitably plummet in value in the next few years.
Whatever way we look at this, it gives us two good reasons to ignore their alarmism:
1) Either they believe what they are saying and yet are so dumb they still invested in beach front property (thus we shouldn’t listen to them); or
2) They are not being honest about what they are saying, as evidenced by their choice of investment (thus we shouldn’t listen to them).
“De–growth” is a rather good way to put it. Localisation, winding down industrial dairy, etc. will likely lead to a more pleasant and viable life for working class NZers. Farmers–wake up! Grow some Cannabis and Hemp and vegetable crops.
But…the biggie in the room is…mainstream “people’s politics” needs to leave Parliament behind and become anti capitalist, including anti finance capital bollocks like stocks, shares, hedge funds and crypto.
The dye has been caste and the genie cannot be put back .No matter how many buy EV the world is not going to improve the weather . Messages are mixed like FIJI asking for more money to fight climate change then advertise in UK to fly there for a holiday and ever get married there .
We need to build with resilient to combat the worst weather just like Chch has with the rebuild .Building were built to stand while people evacuated now they are built to still be there .We have the technology we just need the will
Yes we need to be honest. This storm started thousands of kilometres away from us. Anything we do here would have a minuscule effect on climate change. Meanwhile we punish our economy can’t afford to pay for welfare, education, and Health.
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