Shooting Down Free Market Fairy Tales and Building Movements for Climate Justice

(published in the Earth First! Journal www.earthfirstjournal.org) Nov/Dec 2005

By Harry Helios of London Rising Tide www.londonrisingtide.org.uk

‘We know that the white man has put a price on all that is alive…He trades with his own blood and he wants us to do the same with our sacred territory, with the blood of the earth which they call petroleum…In former times, the dark path of plunder, genocide and injustice against our people was lit by a candle in the name of God and His Majesty. Now it is lit by oil in the name of progress and money…The white man has declared war on everything, except his own inner poverty. He has declared war on time and he has even declared war on himself…We are children of the earth, help us defend her’.
Berito Kubara U’wa, of the U’wa indigenous community (Colombia)

Putting a price on the environment will not save it.'
Sharon Beder, The Environment Goes to Market, 1996.

Could it be possible that the market-based so-called solutions to the impending climate chaos crisis are the real threat to our long-term hopes for a sustainable, socially just, fossil fuel-free future? If bright sides are your thing (and they’re a heartily recommended means of maintaining hope in the darkness I reckon), here’s one to look on: the wake-up call is beginning to reverberate through the hallways of the west. (Let’s face it, the call was heard a long while back by people living with their heartbeat intertwining with that of the land, sea or sky, by which I mean people like the Inuit of Alaska or the U’wa of Colombia. They’ve known for longer than most us that something is deeply out of joint in the planet.

If I can convince myself that the current obsession amongst the wealthy of the western world with offsetting their guilt by paying spurious companies to pretend to lock in carbon by (often only) pretending to plant trees – pause for indignant breath – is merely a fleeting moment in our journey from oblivious destruction and exploitation towards a refusal to wriggle away from the effects of our actions and begin to take care for everything and everyone, not just our nearest and dearest…if I can convince myself of all that, then I am far less likely to dissolve into a fetid pool of bile and bitterness when there’s still so much more amazing, challenging, satisfying and terrifying work to be done.

Here’s a generalisation about the nature of resistance to climate chaos and its elite strike force, the oil industry: in the global south, where oil companies are at their most despicably rapacious, there is sporadic but spirited resistance, allied to an analysis that climate change is the symptom of a wider malaise based on inequalities of power and a deepening disconnection from the natural world. In the global north we are seeing widespread adulation of the business-friendly farrago that is the Kyoto Protocol, an explosion of green capitalism, serious amounts of NGO energy going into government lobbying, and a small but determined wing who are working to bring a tougher, anti-capitalist analysis to their actions and communications.

It’s not dishonourable to want to think the Kyoto Protocol is a shining beacon of salvation instead of a shabby scam, and that George Bush is the wicked witch of the west who is the only thing keeping us from reaching it, but this is still a very dangerous fairy story to be drugging ourselves with at seven minutes to midnight…

I live in London, one of the world’s most frenzied media hubs. Do I get to hear, read or see stories about southern-based resistance to the oil monster in the corporate media, or do I get glossy supplements telling me how celebrities I haven’t heard of are saving the world by recycling and “making the album ‘carbon neutral’”, and “hey! - you could win an eco-car!” The answer is, of course, blindingly obvious, and it shows how the (neo)liberal intelligentsia here is stifling dissent by implying that the way to climatic salvation is via green consumerism and some as yet unspecified ‘government action’.

The voices of those who see no future for the climate or for justice under capitalism, and who take direct action to prevent new roads and airports being built, and to revoke the oil industry’s ‘social licence to operate’, are rarely heard above this shrink-wrapped racket. Then again, they would be crazy to think the corporate media, mainstream NGOs, corporations or governments would want that message to beam out loud and clear for all to hear. That’s why they work closer to the ground, connecting struggles, talking to schoolkids, to anti-capitalists who still think climate change is only an environmental issue (and not about inequalities of power), the grassroots of unions and NGOs, communities affected by climate change and oil devastation, artists and any other crazies they can get to listen. (They also need to keep listening themselves!)

It could be that this trend is beginning to creep across the Atlantic, under the Republican radar and into the hearts and minds of many of those troubled wealthy American souls who see and fear the future, but who are reluctant to let go of that short-haul weekend on the coast or that comfortingly macho Cherokee. Enter the perfect solution: hand over your dollars and your guilt to a carbon offsetting company and carry on as ‘normal’. There’s an explosion in the market, and the products that will triumph in that market are those best designed to anaesthetise that carbon guilt.

And this, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, (for those of us who haven’t moved beyond judging the wilful blindnesses of our fellow men and women), is part of what is now dressed up as ‘activism’: the replacement of inspirational collective action by the lonely-as-hell use of our personal power as individual consumers - and that alone - to change the world. But what do we lose if our definition of ourselves climaxes in the contents of our shopping baskets? (And how the hell will it get us to 60-90% cuts in CO2 emissions before the day after tomorrow?)

Which brings us to the uplifting material: people are risking their lives to stand in the path of the oil industry in places like Ecuador, the Niger Delta, West Papua and Pakistan. In Brazil, the dark truth about monocultural eucalyptus ‘carbon sinks’ is being exposed as the ‘forest deserts’ are reclaimed; (sinkswatch.org). The Ogoni of the Delta have now been joined by the ‘Bogoni’ of County Mayo, Ireland, in saying no to the petro-imperialism of Shell; at the time of writing (21.9.05), five local residents have been in jail for 85 days for ‘contempt of court’; (shelltosea.com).

In Bolivia, Peru and Iraq, successful campaigns to prevent the privatisation of fossil fuel reserves are mobilising social movements. Interesting alliances are being forged between these groups and climate activists with a strong social justice plank in their analysis, as the climate activists realise that while hoping oil and gas reserves in the hands of the people won’t become CO2, to deny them the right to self-determination would be an insidious form of eco-colonialism. Groups in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey are refusing to let BP get away with its Baku Ceyhan pipeline (baku.org.uk). (It’s worth pointing out that oil-producing governments are often more repressive when they come across anti-oil action, which tends to make campaigning there more cautious for the sake of self-preservation.)

Now here’s a pesky limey question for you: where is the direct action to prevent drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)? I can find any number of requests to fax my senator or congressman, and there are some beautiful photographs and inspirational indigenous Gwich’in quotes, but whither the monkey-wrenching? Elsewhere in the US (and worldwide), fenceline communities – working class, usually black communities living alongside highly polluting oil infrastructure – are campaigning hard for justice and clean air, but climate change is often low down on their list of priorities (foe.co.uk/campaigns/corporates/news/shell_fenceline/ & refineryreform.org).

And while I’m at it, what is up with US resistance to Big Oil? We hear about the occasional SUV dealership going up in flames, and you could argue that an anti-capitalist or anti-war action is more than likely going to reduce carbon emissions (unless it involves setting things on fire!) and join the dots between the issues, but where’s the concerted oil industry dismantlement programme? If it’s happening, I’d love to hear about it…

And on top of all this are the visionary attempts to unite the many struggles for climate justice, the most established being the Oilwatch network of southern-based groups resisting the oil industry, which has just issued a declamatory call for a ‘global campaign against a civilization based on oil’ (oilwatch.org.ec). Take a look also at the Durban Declaration on Carbon Trading (carbontradewatch.org/durban/durbandec.html), and Rising Tide (risingtide.org.uk), a network for climate justice direct action with groups in the UK, Australia and New Zealand and a strong link to Peoples’ Global Action (agp.org). Rising Tide was one of the groups promoting a global day of action against climate change on July 8th 2005 (londonrisingtide.org.uk/?q=node/13), coinciding with the last day of the G8 Summit (see Sept-Oct 2005 Journal, p.13). And if you want to be excited by an alternative energy project with a radical analysis, take a look at escanda.org, the site of a collective based in northern Spain.

So, beneath the empty rattle of the establishment’s hypocritical posturings on climate change, a healthy roar of indignation is starting to be heard. Time is short, and the roar is still far from fierce enough to get where we need to go, but the seeds are sown and the inspiration is there to draw on. Let’s get out there and start building a post-oil world of peace, freedom and climate justice!