Contours of Climate Justice - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

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Crisis as an opportunity for reorienting our struggles However, the current economic-fi nancial crisis also off ers an opportunity to reopen this discussion, since the old model of Keynesian class compromise and stabilisation of struggles aimed at changing ownership patterns of key means of production is dead, and in all probability will not be resurrected. Furthermore, unless the discussion on production is reopened, it is very likely that the ‘solutions’ found to the economicfi nancial crisis will be authoritarian. Starting with the economic and fi nancial collapse of Argentina in 2001, factory occupations and self-managed industrial production and exchange have returned to the political landscape. In the wake of the current worldwide fi nancial and economic crisis, a ripple of factory struggles, including worker occupations and kidnapping of bosses, have spread around the world, including in the US, the UK and numerous countries in Eastern Europe. Such struggles are largely defensive, related to redundancy conditions, rather than proposing a new model of ownership, production and control, and are still on a very small scale. Notably, the Detroit car factories have virtually been left to go under, or been given lifelines in order to draw out their demise. Certainly, they have not been taken over by workers and communities and converted into renewable energy production plants. Yet, albeit way too little, way too late, even the head of the United Autoworkers Union made a fl eeting and cautious reference to worker occupations of the plants. This is a rhetoric that has not been used in such places for many decades. In South Korea, workers in the car industry have recently sustained an occupation of a car factory that lasted over two months, involving close to 1,000 workers and armed self-defence. It was only defeated after a prolonged struggle involving several thousand riot police. For the most part, with the exception of the Korean car plants, these have been small processes. Nonetheless, they are of great importance and appear to be on the upsurge. Importantly, the industries in crisis are some of the key energy-intensive industries, such as cars and steel, that are especially relevant to the issue of energy transition and worker/community-led conversion processes. The stark reality is that we are very far from bringing about the kind of change in production and consumption relations that is needed to solve the climate/energy crisis. We may in fact never be in a position to do so. However, if we are to have any chance of avoiding a socially and ecologically disastrous process of climate change and enforced change in social relations, it will be important to at least pose the question of how this might come about. Until we face up to this, eff orts to tackle climate change will go nowhere. The task of collectively taking over the key means of production and decommodifying the major productive processes is immense. We are certainly not yet ready. However, what is both possible and long overdue is, at a minimum, to take some initial steps towards deepening a longterm strategic debate about how, and for what purposes, wealth is produced and distributed in society, and how people’s subsistence needs are met, as part of a shift to a new energy system. Through a process of debate, we will hopefully be able to slowly develop collective interventions that contribute to Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 99
these goals, so that in the medium term, as the economic-fi nancial and ecological crises deepen, we may be able to do what is not possible now and collectively plan the process of production and consumption based on a clear process of class struggle that brings together workers (both waged and Some useful literature on energy, labour and technology Caff entzis, G. (2005), No Blood for Oil – Energy, Class Struggle and War 1998-2004. www. radicalpolYtics.org Caff entzis, G. (1990), On Africa and Self-Reproducing Automata. http://www.midnightnotes.org/pdfnewenc6.pdf Corrigan, P., H. Ramsay, and D. Sayer (1978), Socialist Construction and Marxist Theory: Bolshevism and its Critique. London: Macmillan; New York: Monthly Review Press. Corrigan, P., H. Ramsay, and D. Sayer (1979), For Mao: Essays in Historical Materialism. London: Macmillan. Cowan, R. (1983), More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. New York: Basic Books. Headrick, D. (1981), The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press. 100 Critical Currents no. 6 unwaged), communities and users of energy and energy-intensive sectors across the hierarchically divided world-wide division of labour. This will already be an important step towards bringing about a profound democratisation of how wealth is produced and distributed throughout society. Headrick, D. (1988), The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850-1940. New York: Oxford University Press. Keefer, T. (2005), ‘Of Hand Mills and Heat Engines: Peak Oil, Class Struggle and the Thermodynamics of Production’. MA research paper, York University, Ontario. Midnight Notes Collective (1992), Midnight Oil: Work, Energy, War 1973-1992. Brooklyn: Autonomedia (Midnight Notes 11). Montgomery, D. (1980), Workers’ Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology, and Labor Struggles. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Noble, D. (1977), America by Design: Science, Technology and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism. New York: Knopf.
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critical currents Dag Hammarskjöld
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The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation pa
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Photo: Dag Hammarskjöld Preface
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quote above by Albert Schweitzer ha
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Radical climate change politics in
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competitiveness and maintaining and
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the UNFCCC are today a greater thre
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Emancipatory demands and confl icts
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A feminist critique of the climate
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ment in Johannesburg (WSSD), where
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for strategic intervention is, ther
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compulsion to reproduce itself. As
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Kyoto’s ‘fl exible mechanisms
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new criteria of competitiveness, wh
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A reduction of absolute emissions i
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ests. This would seem to be confi r
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Literature Altvater, E. (2008), ‘
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Climate change and capitalism’s e
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The problem is that this does not c
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tional and local environmental gove
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The deadly triad: Climate change, f
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is, through the creation and tradin
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REDD realities Simone Lovera Some s
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