Wednesday May 16, 2007

There's only one movement now

energybulletin.net :

There's Only One Movement Now...

... perhaps you are anti-globalization, pro labor or anti-free trade or just one of the millions of ordinary people on every side of the political spectrum who have noticed that despite all the claims, you aren't getting any richer - in fact, things are getting tougher every year. Well, there's no question that climate change and peak oil are going to drive globalization into the ground - we simply can't keep transporting things around the globe that we can perfectly well make where we are. The only question is whether we'll all be driven into the ground or not in the process - we need to localize our food and manufacturing, we need to rebuild local economies. These issues are inextricably linked with the future - climate change alone could eat up 20% of the *World's* GDP - and we are not acting fast enough.

Perhaps you've been a long-time environmentalist, always concerned with climate change, but you don't understand peak oil. Or perhaps you are worried about peak oil, but think climate change isn't definite yet. Time to get over those misconceptions. The two are going to intersect in painful ways - we have to start planning for a future that is both lower emission and simply lower in every other way. Let's be honest, there's no real difference.

If your concern about peak oil is based on the science - on that actual study of the material that's out there, you know that the science of climate change is far less controversial, and far less debatable. That's not to say peak oil isn't real - just that I think you have to be kind of a nutcase to look at the evidence for peak oil and say, "yes, that makes sense to me, but I'm not buying climate change." And if you are any kind of environmentalist, you know that finite things run out - period. So who cares whether the peak is 2010 or 2005 or 2015 - we all know it isn't going to be a thousand years from now. Let's remediate together.

Saying there is only one movement now does not mean that things like the struggle for economic justice or civil rights is over - it just means that every single person who believes that there is hope for a decent future, and who has some investment in that future now shares the same basic goals. We must remediate and adapt to what is coming. We must deal with peak oil and climate change. We must get over our stupid prejudices and divisions and form a whole cloth movement of universal JUSTICE. Peak oil is about Justice. Climate Change is about Justice. They are about the most basic questions of human justice - who eats? Who lives? Who has water? Who decides? Who gets health care, and to have their kids live to grow up, who gets enslaved and impressed into military service? Who decides to let someone die, and who actually does the dying?

If any of this seems revelatory to you, if it has never before occurred to you that poor black women in Kenya or New Orleans are like you, and are the face of your future and your potential allies, time to wake up! If you've never thought of peasant farmers and people who are shot for trying to unionize in Ecuador as your brethren, people whose rights and needs should be a part of your focus, it is time to wake up. If you don't see the problem of immigration and the loss of manufacturing jobs for poor white people in the south as linked to each other and to you, wake up. If you don't recognize that Justice for everyone means justice for you, it is time to WAKE UP!

- This short excerpt hardly does the article justice. Really. Read the whole thing. Like the Limits to Growth folks say, it's a system dynamics thing. Peak oil, climate change, globalization, and fewer talk about it, but yes, also, population. They are all inter-related.

- Yes, this is also a backblog (21 Apr 2007).

(2007-05-16 12:58:09 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

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