Inglorious Revolution - The Greening of Business as Usual.

I want to make it absolutely clear from the outset of this piece that I am not a climate skeptic. To me it seems axiomatic that when you burn stuff, you produce heat. Humans have been burning stuff since they discovered fire, and slowly heating the planet since the the dawn of the machine age. The short term impact of human activity over the last century or so is measurably distinct from the effects of normal warming and cooling cycles due to ocean currents, geo-cycles and other external factors such as solar activity. But climate science is about more than just carbon emissions. You only have to look around you to see how human activity leaves its footprint on the natural world. And it's not just our manifest pyromania. It's everything we touch. It's deforestation and land clearing, increasingly destructive methods or resource extraction, polluting the oceans, destroying aquifers and spraying poisons to grow our food, which has led to large scale destruction of habitat and loss of biodiversity. All of this impacts on the climate system. All of this would seem to be an egregious assault on the natural order, if such a thing exists.

Is collapse imminent? Are we currently facing an extinction level threat? I don't know, and neither does anybody. This is uncharted territory. Is human activity responsible? To me it seems obvious. But how do you even begin to talk about the 'anthropocene' without an explanation of human social relations? How do you explain that it's not so much plastic straws and single use shopping bags which threaten our existence as a species, but rather the deeply racist system of capitalist imperialism which exploits life and the natural world for profit? (Actually capitalism isn’t racist. It’s saving white people for last. We are dessert.)

If we are limiting the debate to carbon emissions, then surely we need to consider the fact that the US military alone pumps out more C02 than 140 countries, consuming 340,000 barrels of oil a day. It maintains hundreds of military bases and thousands of military aircraft which it uses to drop tens of thousands of bombs annually (27,000 in Obama's last year of office, 44,000 in Trump's first), mostly on innocent civilians.

Why?

The short answer is for control of the global oil economy, which underwrites the US dollar, the world reserve currency, the currency into which other currencies must be converted in order to buy or sell the world's most traded commodity, effectively giving the US a license to print money.

Pedophrastry: Argument involving children to prop up a rationalization and make the opponent look like an asshole, as people are defenseless and suspend all skepticism in front of suffering children: nobody has the heart to question the authenticity or source of the reporting - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I never planned to take part in the September 20 Youth Strike 4 Climate ™, but I found myself there, let's say in a semi-official capacity. There was a crowd of two to three thousand, some musical performances, a local indigenous person who gave the ubiquitous Welcome to Country, an 8 year old whose speechifying took virtue signalling to a new heights, a bunch of other speakers including primary, high school and university students, some union reps and a token greens member. Plus thousands of outraged teenagers screaming for 'climate justice'.

Lots of enthusiasm. Lots of moral indignation and a fair amount of narcissism it must be said. Lots of slogans. Lots of pseudo-religious chanting. Lots of self-congratulation. Lots of talk about 'science' and 'science-denial'. The word group-think comes to mind, except I didn't really get the impression there was much thinking going on. It seemed more like a cult convention. (It's funny you know, thinking about how ‘denial’ works as a cultural trope, three things come immediately to mind: Christ, the Holocaust, and 'science'.)

What struck me as conspicuously absent - on the very same day the US announced that it will be sending troops to Saudi Arabia to defend oil production - was any mention of war. Or resource theft. Or colonialism. Things that to me seem fundamentally important when talking about existential threats to human existence and the future of our planet. A friend reminded me that this was not an anti war rally. I had to ask, why not?

Banning plastic straws? Are you kidding me?

Not that there's really much to be done in the short term to redress 150 years of atmospheric warming due to burning fossil fuels. For starters, how do you even measure the inertia in that system? As we enter a new period of solar cooling, perhaps the coming 'mini ice age' will help to balance out the temperature spike while we try to our act together. Obviously, the single most important form of climate action we need to take is to put an end to war. Then maybe we can have a serious discussion about curbing our emissions in a way that does not impact human development. But to stop war you have to first dismantle the social relations which allow states to make war. Not something particularly on the radar for millions of outraged teenagers.

Something is clearly off kilter when 'climate change' can get people out into the streets on such a scale, while 27 million starving Yemenis don't seem to register. Like I said, there is something deeply narcissistic about this cult. The timing is also interesting, with the poster child of the new green revolution about to address the UN Climate Action Summit. I hate to sound like a crusty old cynic, but to me 'sixth mass extinction' reeks of 'problem, reaction, solution'. The solution being more taxes, higher prices, and further concessions on the part of developing countries.

The term "false flag" originally referred to pirate ships that flew flags of countries as a disguise to prevent their victims from fleeing or preparing for battle. You don’t need to research too deeply to find that the current round of climate alarmism is being sponsored at all levels by billionaires, mega-corporations and NGOs, from Richard Branson and Bill and Melinda Gates, to 350, Ceres and the Corporate Leaders Group, to JP Morgan, General Motors and Amazon. What solutions will be put forward at the UN Climate Summit? Presumably the focus will be on 'innovation', 'decentralised action' and 'private sector investment'. You can bet your bottom dollar it won’t involve challenging the capitalist mode of production and the social relations which reproduce it. You can bet that it won't involve letting indigenous people manage their own land and water. Rather it will be about new investment opportunities and ways of 'greening' our economies.

You see, amid all the hype and hyperbole, we missed the bait and switch. When they talk about 'climate justice', what they really mean is the complete financialisation of nature; a sort of green fascism. Rather than preserving nature for its own sake, the earth and its resources are to be secured for safe-keeping and parceled out for maximum profit by the movement's real leaders, the 'entrepreneurial' class. It really is a brilliant deception, also completely and utterly cynical and self serving. It is one thing to cry fire in a crowded theatre. Quite another to recruit an army of child soldiers to carry out your plan through mass hysteria and emotional manipulation. All part of business as usual for the ruling class.

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