[robbo203]

Not sure what  Asperger’s syndrome has to do with a discussion on Extinction Rebellion.   The matter shouldn’t have even been raised

[robbo203]

Came across this article on Medium.  Normally its behind a paywall so I thought I would grab the opportunity and copy and paste.  It might add something to the discussion though I think the writer is living in false hope if he thinks a solution will emerge from within capitalism itself

________________________________________

What Do We Do Now That We Know Climate Change is Inevitable?
https://medium.com/@glenhendrix

Glen Hendrix

Climate change experts say global emissions of CO2 must be reduced to 45% from 2010 levels by 2030. It must reach a “net” zero” level by 2050 in order to limit warming to 2.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees centigrade). The goal was originally set at 2 degrees centigrade (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), but the Paris negotiations changed it to 1.5 degrees C. to appeal to a broader base of nations. This half degree means 10 million fewer people are displaced by the ocean’s rising, a 50% reduction of people experiencing water shortages around the globe, 50% reduction in species losing half their habitat, and a 80–90% destruction of coral reefs instead of 100%. The level of atmospheric CO2, however, has risen from 387 ppm in 2010 to 413 ppm in 2019, a 6.7% increase.

For the first time, Saudi Aramco revealed its finances publicly. Although it was April 1, this was no April Fool’s prank. The company made $111 billion last year, twice as much as Apple, the most profitable public company in the world. ExxonMobil made $20.8 billion. Royal Dutch Shell made $23.4 billion. The financial inertia of the fossil fuel industry is making a mockery of world climate goals. It is not just the fossil fuel industry but the industries it fuels as well. Trucking, shipping, airlines, auto, steel and concrete industries must all switch to electric or hydrogen by 2050 for “net zero” to happen. That’s 31 years away. Can you see all of these industries making the staggering commitments necessary to switch over without laws in place to make them? Can you see all 195 countries on Earth passing laws to force them to do this? It is not going to happen.
If CO2 levels rose 6.7% from 2010 to early 2019, it’s safe to say that by sometime in 2020 it will be an even 7% for the decade and the CO2 level in Jan. 2020 will be 420 ppm, 449.4 ppm in 2030, 480.9 in 2040 and 514.6 ppm by 2050. This does not take into consideration the positive feedback loops evaporating mass quantities of natural gas (methane) into the atmosphere from melting permafrost. Methane is 21 times better at warming the atmosphere than CO2. The hotter it gets, the more methane injected into the atmosphere and so on.

So what would more than 2 degrees centigrade do in terms of damage to the world? It could kill 50–80% of the fish in the oceans. Ice melting could raise sea levels by more than three feet by the end of the century. If Greenland and Antarctic ice eventually melts, it could raise oceans 230 feet. While it is doubtful this could happen on Earth, positive feedback loops and runaway greenhouse gasses created the hellish conditions seen on Venus.

That is not going to happen on Earth. As soon as the general population realizes fossil fuel companies have been gas lighting (no pun intended) them for decades, it will become possible to overcome their propaganda efforts and the legalized bribery our congressmen and senators disingenuously call lobbying. By 2050, strict environmental laws will force the fossil fuel industry to change or die. Don’t feel sorry for them. They will build a lot of renewable energy plants and CO2 sequestration plants and still be making money. Taxes will have to go up to pay for research on how to do this. The U.S. saw marginal rates of around 70% to 92% from 1950 to 1981. When you hear rich people complaining nowadays about taxes, take it with a grain of salt. They will be bitching until it’s zero.
The political process will be too slow to mediate the effects of climate change. We must develop a slew of technologies and social standards to counter this lack of social progress.
1. Carbon dioxide sequestration and other technologies actively removing CO2 must be developed and implemented. Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies are already being developed, but more work must be done to make it economically viable.
2. Reforestation must take place on a grand scale. This will assist in carbon capture and restore habitats to insects and animals.
3. Cheap water technology will need to be implemented to offset the increasing scarcity of potable water.
4. We must find a way to capture energy from low temperature heat from industrial processes and server farms. This is a huge inefficiency in our global society.
5. Grants and prizes must be increased for the development of new technologies to mediate and reverse greenhouse gas levels.
6. Products will have to be designed to be recycled with the least amount of energy possible.
Our social evolution must strive to keep up with technology. Stringent laws concerning carbon output must be enacted on industry and society.
One half of the population acting as if nothing is wrong and living a huge carbon footprint is not going to work.
It is a sad commentary on humanity that the captains of the industries that have taken us so far so fast would play chicken with a world threatening event. It is our responsibility as citizens of this world to reign them in and redirect their efforts to the common good. The only way to do this is to change our leadership by any means, preferably democratic, to people that are clear-headed, logical, moral, and responsible enough to lead us successfully through this age of salvation and into a brave new society of technological marvels in balance with the natural world.

[robbo203]

Hi Schekn

 

I understand the point you make about the need to address the threat of climate change bluntly and I certainly don’t wish to come across as complacent about this threat.  Maybe we are biologically not hardwired to notice gradual change or to imagine change outside our immediate sensory perception  as you say. But if I might throw this point back at you, what kind of response are we hardwired to make on being informed that if we dont do something significant within the next ten years we will slide into “runaway climate change and societal collapse” as a result of which “several billion people will likely die”.

 

I suspect the vast majority of people on hearing that will either dismiss it as a dystopian fantasy or regard it with utter despair.  It is the latter group I am more concerned with who I think are more likely to be sympathetic to what we have to say than those who call for business (or even more business) as usual.  You are appealing to their reason with the (purportedly) hard facts established by scientists working in the field of climate change,  But that same reasoning ability that allows them to digest this information  and appreciate the magnitude of the problem also enables them to see that capitalists and their political representatives are not going to appreciably change direction in the near future.   In the near future we are stuck with people like Trump and his fellow moron Bolsonaro in Brazil with his utterly cavalier attitude towards the fate of the Amazon.   Also there is a recession on the way  and we all know what happens when a recession happens:  environmental standards tend to be relaxed in a bid boost economic growth and “create jobs”

 

So connecting the “fact” of a fast approaching Armageddon, if nothing is significant done within 10 years,  with the “fact” that nothing significant is likely to be done,  it is difficult to see how this cannot but result in a sense of utter despair and  disempowerment,   The more insistently  you push the facts of impending doom, I suggest,  the greater the sense of despair it is likely to elicit.

 

How would you address this point setting  the aside the question of whether the scientists you refer to are actually correct in predicting the likely die off of the bulk of humanity?

[robbo203]

All you write is just useless criticism. Why? What are you trying to achieve? Please stop this negativism and rather join our attempts at bringing more members to the party

I am sort of sympathetic to what you are saying here but I strongly agree with ALB and WEZ on the need for constructive criticism.  It does worry me that the kind of over-the-top alarmist apocalyptic language employed by some Green activists could prove hugely counterproductive and disempowering  and invite a sense of  fatalism and apathy.  What’s the point in struggling if the world as we know it is doomed to end in 10 , 20 or 30 years time and there is nothing on the horizon that is going to stop that happen?  Might as well binge on a diet of hedonistic abandonment while we have the chance

 

On the other hand, the site you linked to – https://greenanticapitalist.org/ – seems quite encouraging or, at least, makes a number of points with which we could broadly go along with.   It is always useful to acknowledge the positive in other people and not simply focus on the negative.   The Party could certainly do more in this respect – to brush up on its PR so to speak.  You don’t always attract people by being relentlessly negative.

 

However, while some of the points this organisation makes on its website sound promising I am not entirely surely what to make  of them in the wider context of challenging capitalism.  Most anti-capitalists despite the way in which they self define themselves, are not really anti-capitalists – they are anti-neo liberalism.   They identify capitalism with the free market and neoliberal policies and this demonstrates a major difference between them and revolutionary socialists.

 

You would know these Green anti-capitalists better than I as you are presumably based in the UK (I am not).  What is their take on capitalism and how do they define the socialist alternative to capitalism?

 

[robbo203]

An article that shows the same kind of binary thinking it accuses the “Hard Left” of espousing

From Syria to Venezuela: Mystifying Left-Wing Support of Dictators.

[robbo203]

You’re entitled, of course, to argue that ‘truth’ is something outside of social production, and that this ‘truth’ doesn’t have a history (which would imply that ‘truth’ changes), and that, outside of democratic control, there is an elite who can access this unchanging ‘truth’, because they have a method which is politically neutral.

LBird ,  though I oppose your idea that the truth has to be electable for the reasons given it does not follow that I conceive of truth as being outside of social production or that it is unchanging

 

Production today is more or less completely socialised process. The laptop that you are typing on is the direct or indirect product of the labour of millions upon millions of people around the world.  So is virtually everything else.   Does that mean the totality of production must be subject to democratic control by the entire global population i.e. society wide planning?  Obviously not.  Such an idea would be absurdly unworkable.  In case you haven’t read the Socialist Standard lately, I’ve written two articles on Socialism and Planning in this month and last month’s issue which will help you to see where I coming from

 

So just as socialised production does not require society wide planning , so in the same sense the social construction of truth does not require truth to be electable

 

 

[robbo203]

That is, it’s not a discussion about whether unqualified, untrained and uncaring people will be allowed to perform operations on anybody they like, whilst highly trained and qualified, dedicated surgeons will be treated with contempt and put in the stocks.

 

OK so I take it you do now accept the need for specialists in a socialist society in the sense of individuals who undertake intensive study to become competent practitioners of a particular profession.  Good.  This is a step forward.   You are basically agreeing that there must be to an extent a social division of labour in a socialist society involving specialisation.  That does not mean , as I said, that a specialist will only do work relating to what he or she has been trained for.   A trained neurosurgeon could also, for example , take part in the vital work of hospital maintenance and general cleaning.  And why not? But as I said we can’t all become neurosurgeons. only a tiny minority.  This is not because most of us do not have the potential to become a neurosurgeon,  rather it is because a socialist society cannot afford for most of us to become neurosurgeons For such a society to function effectively it is vital the vast majority of us do NOT become neurosurgeons and that we concentrate our time and effort in equipping ourselves with the skill sets involved in  all those other numerous occupations that socialism would require  to effectively function.

 

 This can be summed up quite easily as the question ‘who controls science?’.
In the building for socialism, we’d need to discuss what ‘science’ actually is, what are its purposes, aims, assumptions (especially those currently hidden from us, and often unknown to the so-called ‘specialists’), concepts, theories, methods and practices. Again, to simplify, to give us some focus, for example, what is the purpose of ‘science’?

 

I wouldn’t disagree with your point that the answer that “democratic socialists should be giving, is that the purpose of science is to build a better world“.  This is indeed where the democratic control  of science can be realised – in defining the agenda of the scientific endeavour, so to speak.  I have never disputed this.  I have also constantly made the point that the fact that you have small  groups of specialists in a socialist society who have particular skills and knowledge that the general population do not possess in no way gives these groups elite power over the general population

This is because

1. any one group of specialists would be technically part of the general population vis a vis any other. Molecular biologists would tend to know as little about Astrophysics as any random  member of general population
2.  The core features that define socialism – free access to goods and services and volunteer labour completely dissolve the material conditions under which elite power could be exercised anyway.  They remove any leverage one group could exercise over another.  In this sense socialism is the only basis on which a truly free and democratic world can be constructed

 

There remains however your claim that ‘science’, just like all social production within socialism, must be under our democratic control. ‘Truth’ has to be electable

 

I will grant (as I have above) that the purpose of science has to be under democratic control but truth? No I cant see any rhyme or reason for that at all (unless you mean by this something quite different that has completely escaped me).   I reject your view, as I understand it, for these reasons:

1. To vote on the ” truth” of a scientific theory you have to know what it is about in the first place and be sufficiently interested to vote on the matter anyway. If you agree that the various branches or scientific knowledge are likely to be subject to a significant degree of specialisation then by default if not design the great majority of the population are just  not going to be acquainted with the more esoteric theories pertaining to these various branches.  Nor does it matter on jot that this would be the case. I am not that much interested in or knowledgeable about astrophysics, for example, and I have no motivation whatsoever to go out and read up on some theory in the field of astrophysics in order to knowledgeably vote on it.  I have other priorities and interests which are much more pressing to me.  I suspect 99.9 per cent of the population would think the same.  This doesn’t make us thick or inferior.  Nor does it give astrophysicists any power over us as I’ve explained
2.  There is the question of the mechanics of voting anyway.  Its unrealistic to canvass the entire population on the truth value of literally thousands of new theories churned out every year
3.  There is no point in voting on the truth value of a theory anyway. Why do you say “Truth’ has to be electable“?  What is the point of the exercise? If you want to take a straw poll amongst those interested in a particular theory out of curiosity then  fine but you are not going to stop a minority from continuing to press their own rival theory against the orthodox theory accepted by the majority.  Nor indeed should you.  This would be wholly against the spirit of scientific endeavour as fundamentally self-critical  – at least in theory.  Ironically it is bourgeois science that tends to suppress minority alternative viewpoints via such well known mechanisms as withdrawing funding.  Socialist science, I suggest, will be all the more stronger and vital by permitting the free exchange of ideas – not clamping down on discussion and dissent through the imposition of orthodoxy and “elected truth”

[robbo203]

Some of the other posters who participated in these political discussions were ALB, robbo203, Brian, DJP, Young Master Smeet, twc, alanjjohnstone, and others – if you contact them, perhaps they can give you the information about who came up with the elite political concepts of ‘Specialists’ and ‘Generalists’. I’m not sure if these terms are widespread or official within the SPGB (perhaps not), but they were used to combat my political arguments that ‘science’, just like all social production within socialism, must be under our democratic control. ‘Truth’ has to be electable

I am quite happy to stand by the claim that there will be both specialists and generalists in socialism.   We can’t all become qualified molecular biologists in socialism because that takes many years of dedicated study.  The opportunity costs of everyone striving to become a  qualified molecular biologist, is that there will no structural engineers , agronomists, astrophysicists  or dieticians in society which also require years of dedicated study.  The consequences of that will be devastating for obvious reasons

 

Thus , a social division of labour is, to that extent, unavoidable in any advanced system of production.  That does not mean that molecular biologists in socialism will not try their hand at various others kinds of job. Nor does it mean they will have any power over non molecular biologists.  Free access to goods and series coupled with the institution of voluntary labour, dissolves the very basis of elite power and removes any possible leverage any one individual or group could possibly exercise over another.

 

Unfortunately L Bird has never understood or even addressed this point and continues not to do so

 

[robbo203]

That’s excellent Matt. Hopefully this will encourage more people to become actively involved

[robbo203]

Going back to the original topic, judging by the activity on here and the interesting debates about a range of topics, clearly not. I think the forum is beginning to get back to being a bit more like it was before it was hacked. It’s certainly more active and more interesting than many of the forums of the “left”

Absolutely and as I write I note that there have  1397 visits to this site in the last 24 hours.  That’s not bad.   We just need to more forcefully  promote the SPGB website and forum on other sites like FB sites.  A little bit of effort can yield a surprising big return (if you will excuse the capitalist metaphor)

[robbo203]

Sorry, I should have said  “I cannot quite see how you can propose to both mend capitalism and end capitalism”.

[robbo203]

I AM for reforms and palliative measures until we can replace capitalism and public banking is a good one. Yes, they all hit the limits of operating in a (militant) capitalist system as ALB wrote.

Hi Admice

If you go back in history to the late 19th/early 20th century there was a controversy raging at this time within the German SDP  over reform and revolution with the revisionists led by Bernstein arguing that revolution was in effect no longer necessary since capitalism was in the process of transforming itself.  Rosa Luxemburg and others opposed this position

Criticising, Bernstein’s fellow revisionist, Konrad Schmidt, for his suggestion that the appetite for reform “grows with the eating,” and will ultimately end up in the socialist transformation of society as a consequence of an” apparently mechanical movement”, Luxemburg sought instead to emphasise the importance of the subjective factor in this socialist transformation. It was not true, she contended, that “socialism will arise automatically from the daily struggle of the working class”. Rather, it was the growing awareness of the “very insufficiency of capitalist reforms” that would help produce this outcome

I am not to clear where you would position yourself in this debate  but speaking for myself,  I cannot quite see how you can propose to both mend capitalism and capitalism.  The one thing surely has to be at the expense of the other.  If the reforms you have in mind run up against the limits of capitalism how does this transmute into the desire to overthrow capitalism.  If anything I would have thought it just leads to a feeling of disillusionment and helplessness

 

 

 

[robbo203]

Hi Admice

 

Perhaps the idea of installing a chat facility on this site could be considered?  Matt, how feasible is this?

 

 

[robbo203]

Interesting article from Nicky Snell, Matt (what became of her BTW Is she still a member?) This bit I find a bit iffy, though

 

I became disenchanted with the feminism which holds patriarchy to be the world’s primary problem, because I did not like the logical conclusion to which this kind of thinking would lead. If men are simply women’s worst enemies, what should we women do? Shoot men down in the street? Or simply withdraw’?

 

Is she saying feminism logically leads to misandry? If so,  I think most feminists would disagree strongly and would themselves oppose misandry.  Depicting feminists as a misandrists is a complete caricature which in a sense assists those who stand to gain from  a state of affairs in which women are discriminated against.  See for example this article https://www.itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2012/12/reasons-people-believe-feminism-hates-men/

 

At its 2019 Annual Conference the Party membership  voted by a large majority  in favour of the resolution that “This Conference is of the view that a person can be a socialist as well as a feminist.” With that in mind I do rather question the view that being a feminist necessarily  means holding patriarchy to be the “world’s primary problem”.  I think all socialists would agree that that problem is capitalism

 

 

[robbo203]

Here’s a piece on another Democratic candidate, Andrew Yang, who wants a “human-centred” capitalism  LOL

 

Andrew Yang’s “The War on Normal People.” Book Review

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