Categories
Activism Australia

The song remains the same: (they fap their meet)

I went to a student meeting. I am not a student. It was excruciating, obvs. Not because they were students, but because it could have been so much better but wasn’t, for the usual reasons. We are so doomed.

There’s a scene in George Orwell’s masterpiece (imo, ymmv) Animal Farm.  The animals – the chickens, cows, Boxer etc, have just received such a face slap that they can no longer lie to themselves about what has happened to “their” Farm and their beloved Revolution. They can no longer pretend to themselves that they have not exchanged the drunken boot of Mr Jones for the trotter and paws of the pigs and the dogs.  They walk down to a meadow and they start to sing what was the revolutionary song, Beasts of England.  This below is a very long quote, but I put it in because it captures what Orwell was aiming at so beautifully, and it is worth your time.

The animals huddled about Clover, not speaking. The knoll where they were lying gave them a wide prospect across the countryside. Most of Animal Farm was within their view–the long pasture stretching down to the main road, the hayfield, the spinney, the drinking pool, the ploughed fields where the young wheat was thick and green, and the red roofs of the farm buildings with the smoke curling from the chimneys. It was a clear spring evening. The grass and the bursting hedges were gilded by the level rays of the sun. Never had the farm–and with a kind of surprise they remembered that it was their own farm, every inch of it their own property–appeared to the animals so desirable a place. As Clover looked down the hillside her eyes filled with tears. If she could have spoken her thoughts, it would have been to say that this was not what they had aimed at when they had set themselves years ago to work for the overthrow of the human race. These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to on that night when old Major first stirred them to rebellion. If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak, as she had protected the lost brood of ducklings with her foreleg on the night of Major’s speech. Instead–she did not know why–they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes. There was no thought of rebellion or disobedience in her mind. She knew that, even as things were, they were far better off than they had been in the days of Jones, and that before all else it was needful to prevent the return of the human beings. Whatever happened she would remain faithful, work hard, carry out the orders that were given to her, and accept the leadership of Napoleon. But still, it was not for this that she and all the other animals had hoped and toiled. It was not for this that they had built the windmill and faced the bullets of Jones’s gun. Such were her thoughts, though she lacked the words to express them.

At last, feeling this to be in some way a substitute for the words she was unable to find, she began to sing Beasts of England. The other animals sitting round her took it up, and they sang it three times over–very tunefully, but slowly and mournfully, in a way they had never sung it before.

They had just finished singing it for the third time when Squealer, attended by two dogs, approached them with the air of having something important to say. He announced that, by a special decree of Comrade Napoleon, Beasts of England had been abolished. From now onwards it was forbidden to sing it.

The animals were taken aback.

“Why?” cried Muriel.

“It’s no longer needed, comrade,” said Squealer stiffly. “Beasts of England was the song of the Rebellion. But the Rebellion is now completed. The execution of the traitors this afternoon was the final act. The enemy both external and internal has been defeated. In Beasts of England we expressed our longing for a better society in days to come. But that society has now been established. Clearly this song has no longer any purpose.”

Frightened though they were, some of the animals might possibly have protested, but at this moment the sheep set up their usual bleating of “Four legs good, two legs bad,” which went on for several minutes and put an end to the discussion.

So Beasts of England was heard no more. 

[end of chapter 7, since you ask].

I think about that scene a lot, whenever I attend (okay, hate-attend) meetings of groups that say they are undertaking the difficult task of unfucking the world.  Last night I thought about that scene a lot.  “What’s my scene?” as the Hoodoo Gurus used to sing (probably still do?)

”I’m a betting man, but it’s getting damn lonely…”

The meeting started late. While we waited there was no invocation to “turn to someone you don’t know (well) – firm allies once didn’t know each other once, and we need to thicken the webs of loose (and close) ties, because you may have skills and resources that someone else could really use.” Or something warmer. Who cares. Something. Anything.

There was no gentle way to bring silence and commence the meeting. What happened to the chair raising their arms above their head and then other people following? XR used to do that and it was good – far better than tentative and then-more forceful/desperate announcements/shouts, which is what we got.

There was no gentle welcome, asking us to centre ourselves, to think about our responsibilities to make a better movement, and the opportunities the meeting held for that. Instead we were told things we knew, with jargon that would almost certainly alienate a ‘newbie’. Then we had two Zoom connections from interstate. These were mercifully not as long as anticipated, but neither were they in any way surprising. What was astonishing (to me – I am clearly old and out of touch) was that people responded to a guy on zoom who wanted them to repeat the second half of a (carefully chosen to avoid further legal imbroglios) chant.  I did not know that was a thing, and – to quote another song – “I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.”

He left us with the hope that he would see us at a ‘big mobilisation in the future.’  Everyone’s happy place, I guess.

Then – and this still staggers me – it was over to ‘debating’ two motions to some upcoming student congress or conference basically ‘demanding’ (yeah, good luck with that) the Australian Government do x or y that they were plainly, obviously, never going to do.  So, we were to debate things that 

  1. Nobody in the room was likely to have any disagreement with (certainly not one they show in public)
  2. Were never going to be enacted.

And this is how you build an empowered, strategic and competent movement.  Oh yes.

So, the speeches to the motion (nobody was asked to specify if they were speaking for or against – it was clear, man, that everyone was, you know, in favour) were all pure Dave Spart. As I said to a friend this morning, I had the fleeting thought that I was in some incredibly elaborate social psychology experiment where everyone else in the room was in on the gig – that this was playacting those scenes in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where the People’s Front of Judea you know, like, debate important motions about the Roman, you know, Empire, man.  There were, perhaps, people with clipboards and stop watches waiting to see how long I could stick it out (as per that early-ish episode of the TV show Community).

But no, it was all on the up and up.  “build a movement”, “class politics” “expose it as a system”  “full on orwellian um censorship.” “It’ really important, you know, strength of this movement”

It was mildly interesting that the entire first motion got ‘debated’ with only men delivering their pearls of wisdom. [Audience demographics – 50 people present, 45 under the age of 25, I’d guess. Male/female roughly 50/50. Overwhelmingly white] I wondered how long this would continue- the whole meeting?  But then in motion 2 some women piped up. Matters did not improve. Who knew that women could be just as jargon-y and dreary as the menfolk? It’s almost as if it’s the human condition.


We’re so toast. As per Frank Turner

Well it was bad enough the feeling, on the first time it hit,

When you realised that your parents had let the world all go to shit,

And that the values and ideals for which many had fought and died

Had been killed off in the committees and left to die by the wayside.

But it was worse when we turned to the kids on the left,

And got let down again by some poor excuse for protest –

By idiot fucking hippies in fifty different factions

Who are locked inside some kind of Sixties battle re-enactment.

So I hung up my banner in disgust and I head for the door.

Frank Turner – Love Ire & Song 

What could have been done differently

  • Start on time
  • Have a gentle way of starting, of centering people.
  • Design the meeting not around (non)violent agreement with two shitty motions (lobbying the Labor government is no more ‘radical’ than lobbying the Labor Party, my Dave Spartolescent friend) but around a set of questions that can be answered by a mix of on-paper answers (means good ideas don’t get discarded because they come from Miss Triggs) and small group discussions) around
  1. What are we doing that we need to do we need to more of and what skills/knowledge/relationships do we lack to do that?
  2. What are we NOT doing that would be good to do that we are not doing because we lack skills/knowledge/relationships – where do we get those?
  3. What are we doing that feels good, but actually doesn’t contribute to the likely success (or slower failure) of “our “movement” (‘man’) to like, you know, bring down, you know, the capitalist imperialist, you know, system, man.”

Shoot me. Shoot me now. NOW, dammit.

There is no hope

It won’t be done differently. We lack the absorptive capacity, the impetus to develop that. The incentive structures are all wrong.

These meetings are about managing our despair, about knowing that the pigs and their dogs have won, and that all we can do is soothe-sing to ourselves and each other. We sing Beasts of England. Some of the lyrics get banned, but the song remains the same.

We will never put ourselves under any pressure to innovate, because there is a stable system for the gaining of activist credibility tokens, and why upset it?

Meanwhile, the bodies pile up and the emissions pile up. I wonder what those in the majority world, on the receiving end of the slow violence and fast violence dished out by the Empire and its proxies would think of events like the one I went to last night. Nothing printable. “Building a movement” my very fat arse. No more hate-attending for me, methinks.

Categories
Australia

May 3, 2001 – one in ten companies meeting emissions reductions targets 

Twenty five years ago, on this day, May 3rd, 2001,

The executive director of the GCP said in a Senate estimates hearing on May 3, 2001 that only one in 10 companies had met their emission reduction targets. (See also Report of the Senate Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts References Committee, “The Heat Is On: Australia’s Greenhouse Future”, chapter 8.)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 371ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that Australian political elites had been made aware of climate change as a threat in the 1970s; you had the Australian Academy for the Advancement of Science, Australian Academy of Science Symposium in September of 1980 you had the monograph that came out of that on the CO2 problem. You had the Office of National Assessments report. And, of course, from 1987 onwards, you had the CSIRO etc, banging the drum. Oh, you’d also had the Australian Environment Council, in 1986  

Business had defeated a couple of proposals to put a price on carbon dioxide, (which is the only language they understand), first during the ESD ecologically sustainable development process, and then in 1994-95 they had defeated the carbon tax, and instead the Keating government had created a worse-than-useless “greenhouse challenge” voluntary scheme.

The specific context was that the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had come out, and George W Bush had pulled the US out of negotiating the Kyoto Protocol. It was pretty clear that if Howard were to win the upcoming election, he would do the same, whereas Labor would ratify. 

What I think we can learn from this. This talk of “waking up” or “being woken up” has been going on for so long, and we prefer to be asleep.. And here we learn that, of the companies that had set emissions reductions targets, which was not all of them, by any means, only one in 10 were hitting those targets. So an adult government that gave a shit about more than its own comfort and power would change course. It would say, “we’ve tried the voluntary approach, it didn’t work,” and would legislate. That is, of course, reader, not what happened, and John Howard and his gang of fuckwits have condemned us all to hell. 

What happened next. The Greenhouse Challenge was rebooted with very similar effects and finally basically ignored. There was a fierce battle over a carbon price between 2006 and 2012 and then in 2014 the carbon price was abolished by Tony Abbott, the thug disguised as a prime minister. 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

May 3, 1978 – First and last “Sun Day”

May 3, 1989 “Exploration Access and Political Power” speech by Hugh Morgan – All Our Yesterdays

May 3, 1990 – From Washington to Canberra, the “greenhouse effect” has elites promising…

May 3, 2024 – Friends of the Earth and Client Earth win a court case – All Our Yesterdays

Categories
United Kingdom

May 3, 1979 – Nature editorialised on “costs and benefits of carbon dioxide”

Forty-seven years ago, on this day, May 3rd, 1979

Costs and benefits of carbon dioxide. Nature 279, 1 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1038/279001a0

Bondi, H. David Davies’ editorship ends. Nature 283, 1 (1980). https://doi.org/10.1038/283001b0

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 336ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that Nature magazine had been reporting on CO2 build up, or at least mentioning it in passing, since 1964, and had editorialised that it was a ‘scare’ in 1971 under the editorship of John Maddox. 

The specific context was that from the mid-70s onwards, there was a build up of awareness internationally, especially in Europe and the United States, about CO2 as a pollutant. And in April, as alluded to in the editorial itself, there had been a four day workshop on CO2 build up and societal impacts in Annapolis, Maryland. Among the British attendees were Crispin Tickell, who at that point was a consigliere for British European Commissioner Roy Jenkins, and Tom Wigley, who was head of the Climatic Research Unit.

And this is exactly the same time that obviously Margaret Thatcher is coming to office, and the report by the Interdepartmental Group on Climatology is working its way through the system. There’s no mention of the Nature editorial in the files I’ve seen National Archives, which does not, of course, mean that it was not discussed. It simply means that there isn’t a surviving minute of it. 

What I think we can learn from this is 

That intelligent people from the mid-late 70s were well aware of the CO2 build-up issue.

That our Lords and masters didn’t pay any attention and that they simply sought advice from the people who were going to tell them the things they wanted to hear

Or maybe they had the misfortune to go to the wrong advice-givers and would it have been different if they’d gone to CRU? I don’t know. We’ll never know. We can’t know history doesn’t provide those experimental points. 

What happened next. Nature fell back under the editorship of John Maddox, and in 1988 he was still at his bullshit games of publishing editorials about “jumping the gun” and getting chided by Wally Broecker this time. 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

May 3, 1978 – First and last “Sun Day”

May 3, 1989 “Exploration Access and Political Power” speech by Hugh Morgan

May 3, 1990 – From Washington to Canberra, the “greenhouse effect” has elites promising…

May 3, 2024 – Friends of the Earth and Client Earth win a court case

Categories
United States of America

May 2, 2006 – “While Washington Slept” by Mark Hertsgaard…

Twenty years ago, on this day, 

While Washington Slept article by Hertsgaard

The Queen of England is afraid. International C.E.O.’s are nervous. And the scientific establishment is loud and clear. If global warming isn’t halted, devastating sea-level rises will be inevitable by 2100. So how did this virtual certainty get labeled a “liberal hoax” in the U.S.? Try the same tactics Big Tobacco used to deny the dangers of smoking.

“http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/05/warming200605

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that American journalists had been writing about carbon dioxide build-up as a potential problem for a very long time. One of my favourites is from the Chicago Tribune front page in March of 1982, but there are others.

And here we see Mark Hertsgaard, author of Earth Odyssey, among others, doing a magazine feature at a time when the Kyoto Protocol has finally been ratified, and there was clearly going to be an international process to replace it with something “better”, and at a time when the Bush regime had lost all credibility because of both international factors such as the resistance to the occupation of Iraq, and its useless response to Hurricane Katrina. It was at this point, nine months since New Orleans…

What I think we can learn from this. that there have been think-pieces in chin-stroking liberal magazines for a long time. but the question is always, “who’s going to make something happen?”, which is then a question of “who is going to mobilise what resources and find new resources and intervene how in ‘the system’ (man)?”

What happened next.  Everyone kept writing chin-stroking pieces. One of my favourites is the one about Australia in Rolling Stone by Jeff Goodell.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

References

Xxx

Also on this day: 

May 2, 1989 – a DC forum about “Our Common Future” – All Our Yesterdays

May 2, 1990 – Nairobi Declaration on Climatic Change – All Our Yesterdays

May 2, 2009 – Australian Liberals warned of wipe-out if seen as “anti-climate action” #auspol

May 2, 2012 – CCS is gonna save us all. Oh yes.

May 2, 2019 – Committee on Climate change report on net zero by 2050

Categories
United States of America

May 1, 1978 – Comprehensive plan for CO2 effect research and assessment

Forty eight years ago, on this day, May 1, 1978, 

Comprehensive plan for carbon dioxide effects research and assessment. Part I: the global carbon cycle and climatic effects of increasing carbon dioxide

Technical Report · 01 May 1978 as cited in CO2 Newsletter Vol 1 no 1

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 335ppm. As of 2026 it is 4xxppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that scientists had been aware of carbon dioxide build-up as a definitive fact since the late 50s. Through the 60s and into the early 70s, it had slowly built up momentum as “something to worry about.” In the mid 70s, that changed because of new science, a consensus that we were on the brink of a pronounced global warming, as per Wally Broecker in August 1975.

 The specific context was that the Energy Research and Development Agency, which was transmogrifying into the Department of Energy, had funded by this stage, a bunch of studies into CO2 build up, some of which had been published, but most which had not. The obvious one is Oliver Markley.

And you see here in this scientist trying to figure out who should study what, or what should be studied, when and how, what assessments etc.

What I think we can learn from this. 50 years since the work began, and here we still are, 50 years later: “how many angels on the head of a pin.” The caravan should have moved on to “Why haven’t we been doing anything about it?” and perhaps even to “Why didn’t we do anything about it?” And here we are still not tackling those questions, because they would be way too painful. 

What happened next. Well, the DOE and AAAS held a four day symposium in Annapolis, Maryland, April 2 to April 6, 1979 which should have been an important event for UK climate. Tom Wigley of CRU was there, as was Crispin Tickell, and there was an editorial, presumably by David Davies in Nature of May 1979, which we will come to in a couple of days. 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

May 1, 1971 – May Day anti-war actions in Washington DC

May 1, 1972 – Walter Orr Roberts and the need for black climate scientists

May 1, 1980 – ABC talks about atmospheric carbon dioxide measurement

May 1, 1981 – scorching editorial about Energy and Climate received at Climatic Change

May 1, 1996 – US Congressman says climate research money is “money down a rat hole

Categories
technosalvationism United Kingdom

April 30, 1986 – “Industry: Caring for the Environment”

Forty years ago today, there’s another of those well-catered greenwash events…

INDUSTRY: CARING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

HRH, JOHN DAVIDSON, ANTHONY BIDDLE, BRUCE FALKINGHAM, JEREMY QUICKENDEN, PATRICK WEATHERILT, WILLIAM WILKINSON, BRIAN LETCHFORD, NICOLA LYON, JONATHAN FRANKLIN, JOHN HINCH, MARTIN HOLDGATE, MICHAEL SPURR, GEOFFREY LARMINIE, RICHARD LINDSELL, ANTHONY CLEAVER and WILLIAM WALDEGRAVE 30 April 1986

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 347ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that  the environment concerns had never really completely gone away after the early 1970s. Industry had created various astroturf and greenwashing initiatives at an international level, things like the WICEM that had been meeting in, I think, Versailles, I want to say, in 1984.

 The specific context was that the ozone hole had been discovered. Amazon rainforest, deforestation, oil spills, fairly regular industrial accidents and disasters and so industry was always wanting to claim that it was a responsible corporate citizen, blah, blah, blah,

What I think we can learn from this is that you will always find politicians, especially on the right, but also centrists, which is pretty much everyone these days, are willing to play along with that, because that’s who donates the campaign funds, and that’s who provides the non-executive directorships once the party or the electorate finally tire of you. 

What happened next:  The greenwash really kicked into gear from sort of 1990 onwards. We need to think of greenwash and denial as two cheeks of the same arse.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

April 30, 2007 – Rudd hires Garnaut – All Our Yesterdays

April 30, 1985 – New York Times reports C02 not the only greenhouse problem

April 30, 2001 – Dick Cheney predicts 1000 new power plants

Categories
Australia Science

April 29, 1997 – the “Challenge for Australia on Global Climate Change”

Twenty nine years ago, on this day, April 29th, 1997, 

“The challenge for Australia on global climate change”, 29-30 April 1997: summary of proceedings

 One of those chin-stroking talkfests organised by

National Academies Forum, Australian Academy of Science, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Australian Academy of the Humanities, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, Australian Academy of Science, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Australian Academy of the Humanities, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, 1997.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 364ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that the Australian political elite had been warned about carbon dioxide through the 70s and 80s, and had chosen to ignore it until it couldn’t really be ignored any more, in ‘88. After an initial signal of willingness to be proactive and constructive, they had fairly quickly retreated into the asshole position that they hold today. 

In 1995 they had grudgingly signed on to the Berlin mandate – meaning they would come to the third COP (in 1997) with some plan for emissions reductions, and then had decided that they were not going to do that under new Prime Minister, John Howard. And most of 1997 was taken up with the Howard Government, sending diplomats around the place to try and get “differentiation” (an exemption for Australia).

Anyway, these sorts of conferences and seminars and events were happening because middle class people and so-called intellectuals want to believe that they are contributing to the betterment of the species and of its future. This is how they sleep at night, because having to admit that they were passengers on a train straight to hell would offend their amour-propre. 

The specific context was that it was obvious that the Prime Minister (John Howard) was scientifically illiterate and a climate denier who was doing everything he could (which was a lot) to fuck shit up (to use a technical term).  “Awks” as the kids used to say.

What I think we can learn from this is that we’ve been doing yakkety yak on climate for a very long time, and we will continue to do yakkety yak.

What happened next:  Australia got an insanely generous deal at the Kyoto conference, an emissions reduction quote, in quotes of 108% actually closer to 130 once you took into account the land clearing clause, the emissions kept climbing. Australia’s fossil fuel exports kept climbing. The atmospheric concentrations of CO2 kept climbing. And after a certain delay, the despair and the fear of people who can read the Keeling Curve began climbing as well. 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

April 29, 1967 – Canberra Times reviews Science and Survival – All Our Yesterdays

April 29, 1970 – Washington DC symposium talks about carbon dioxide

April 29, 1998 – Australia signs the Kyoto Protocol

Categories
United Kingdom

April 28, 1987 – meeting between NERC and DOE 

On this day 39 years ago April 28th, 1987, 

In a 1987 meeting between UK climate scientists organised by DoE and NERC, it was considered “crucial that the UK supports truly global and multi-disciplinary approaches to studying the climate system. Clearly, the potential local impacts of any suggested climate change are of paramount importance to the UK but we must guard against any suggestion that climate-change issues can in general be studied from a parochial regional viewpoint. Regional studies should be conducted with proper regard being paid to results stemming from a global approach.”

Rapporteurs’ draft notes, ‘Man-made Climate Change: Planning the UK Research Strategy’, Institute of Hydrology, Wallingford, 28–29 April 1987. Provided to the authors by David Carson.

Citation for published version (APA): Mahony, M., & Hulme, M. (2016). Modelling and the Nation: Institutionalising Climate Prediction in the UK, 1988–92. MINERVA, 54(4), 445-470. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-016-9302-0

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 349ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that after the Villach conference, and with the Met Office making more and more of a noise, it became obvious that sooner or later, carbon dioxide build-up would hit the policy agendas, and these sorts of meetings were presumably happening through ‘86-87.

The specific context was that the Conservatives had put carbon dioxide build-up in their manifesto for the 1987 election, and things were beginning to move. A bit.

What I think we can learn from this is that before Thatcher did her u-turn, responsible people were beginning to think about what the state response should be.

What happened next: In September 1988 Thatcher gave her pivotal speech at the Royal Society, and then it was on for young and old…

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day:

April 28, 1975- Newsweek’s “The Cooling World” story.

April 28, 1993 – Australia to monitor carbon tax experience

April 28, 1997 – John Howard says Australia should not have signed climate treaty (UNFCCC) – All Our Yesterdays

Categories
Uncategorized

On this day April 27 – First Ecology Party TV broadcast (1979), Our Common Future released (1987). Coal-bashing campaign ends (2007), Rudd seals his fate (2010)

On this day, April 27 –

The Ecology Party (briefly “People” in 1975) had fought some by-elections, and now, ahead of the 1979 General Election, was on the idiot box…

April 27, 1979 – Ecology Party first TV broadcast ahead 

Thirty nine years ago, all the warm platitudes about “sustainable development” and “North-South partnership” got their final big run.

April 27, 1987 – “Our Common Future” released.

Nineteen years ago today a controversial “coal is filthy” campaign by a natural gas provider ended.

April 27, 2007 – Coal-bashing campaign by gas company ends

Sixteen years ago today, a dickhead Australian prime minister sealed his fate by showing that all his fine words about climate as a “great moral challenge” were empty PR. Turd.

April 27, 2010 – Rudd says no CPRS until 2012 at earliest. Seals fate – All Our Yesterdays

Categories
Smugosphere Social Movements

“Like a Keystone around our necks…” On the responsibilities of large organisations within social movements

Ten days ago I went to the latest in a long long line of excruciating activist events (1).  I wrote a cathartic blogpost which was liked by about half the people who read it (i.e. it was liked by two people). 

Catharsis is fine, but then the question comes up – what should we expect of big organisations that act (whether they understand that or not) as a Keystone Species (2)?  

Before you say, yes, I know that it is dodgy af to import ideas from biology/ecology into discussions of human activities, but hey, a) we all do it and b) life is short – so here goes.

Keystone species have a ‘disproportionate’ role in the shape/size/day-to-day actions of the ecosystem they function within. Not ‘deliberately’, because (most) creatures don’t (most of the time) have intention beyond eating/avoiding being eaten/fucking.  But if you have enough of the keystone members, then they create a kind of dynamic stability (3).

So, there used to be a phrase (perhaps still is?) “check your privilege” , which sought to remind people that they often walked around with advantages that shaped the social interactions they took part in (4). Anyway, privilege applies not just to us white able-bodied middle-class hetero men but also to organisations.  If you are a big outfit, that has been around a long time, and has got a media profile you have a kind of  ‘heft’, a kind of – well, privilege. Crucially, you may not feel this, because there are always budget worries, always policybattles you are losing because you are outnumbered and outgunned by the lobbyists for the EFTAs (Evil Fuckers Trade Association). You are always being smeared by stenographers to power in the right-wing press. It doesn’t FEEL like privilege, but then that’s the point – it never does.

So, after a decade and a half  of having seen these Big Outfits put together various events and claim to be “building a movement” while absolutely failing to do so, I’ve grown a little cynical (see also “smugosphere”, the smugotariat, “emotacycle”, “ego-fodder”, “potemkinclusivity”, Sophisticated Hopium Ignoring Trajectories, etc).

The purpose of this blog post is to outline five things Big Outfits could do to be better keystone species.  I am not expecting any of this to happen (see below). If two of the five happened, that would be quite amazing. I reckon if four of these happened, it would be transformative within that Big Outfit’s wider ecosystem (while still, obvs, merely being deckchairs-on-the-Titanic of a global ecosystem being apocalypsed by hairless murder apes with opposable thumbs).

So, drum-roll please.

  1. Set a good example

Obvious, huh? In practice this means –  

  • Start meetings on time. Nothing screams “unserious hippy” like unexplained delays to start-times, especially if you then cry off the advertised activities because of “lack of time.”
  • Don’t waste time with endless blandishments and self-promotions. If you have specific information to impart then a) the internet and b) some dead-tree format leaflets for those who don’t use the internet.
  • Keep your promises (so, to choose an example entirely at random, if you advertise something as a Q&A, then do a Q&A. This is not rocket-science
  • Avoid cringe displays of emotional virtue-signalling.  Especially in situations where first nations peoples are being shat on from a great height. 
  • I could go on. But the apocalypse is at hand.
  1. Convene (for weak ties)

“The less I say, the more my work gets done” Philadelphia Freedom.

Make sure that when you create an event, you are making it easy for new relationships to form, for new “weak ties” (as per Granovetter) to form.

That is to say, make it possible for various individuals to find each other on the basis of their shared interests, age, geography.

Obviously there are dangers here which need managing.  Women, especially, will worry about being compelled to engage with strangers (esp male) who may then get the wrong idea.  If you open a space for these relationships to form, you also run the risk of various political sects and groupuscules to try to recruit during your events. These are not, however, insurmountable difficulties. 

 Big Outfits could lead by example (see above) by designing events so that they are not (always) the goddam centre of attention, sucking up all the oxygen and attention. They could keep comments by their staff and guests to a reasonable length and then then implement the design effectively (there’s no point designing an event and then – because of the lack of skill/awareness of the facilitator/compere – you revert to the bullshit).

So, for example, between the end of speeches at a Q&A and opening the floor to questions you could give people two minutes to compare notes/hone questions etc and then ‘accidentally’ select some – gasp – women to ask two of the first three questions.

“Meetings are institutionally sexist”; discuss. (White-knighting by #Manchester #climate bloke)

There is also a crying need for structured skill-audits and skillshare events, so that people who have skills can share them with people who want them, and organisations that realise they have either a single-point-of-failure or an absolute gap can get help to plug those gaps.

Social Movement Learning: Partisan Collective and “Activist Skills and Knowledge”
  1. Innovate

Big organisations could investigate/invent/borrow/steal ideas for better events (marches, rallies, meetings etc) and test them out. Big organisations are more likely to be able to take people a little bit outside their comfort zones.

This would require some courage (not selected for within most formal organisations, obviously)  but would set the tone – that responsible innovation is essential.

  1. Remember the past

We live in a perpetual present, where the lessons of yesterday are forgotten, and ancient victories (the fucking Franklin Dam? Really? Invoking that in 2026? WTAF) are stripped of their context and turned into myths.

Part of the problem for social movements is that so much of what happens is never recorded, or recorded and then lost.  Memories shift, fade, and useful tactics and tools have to be endlessly re-invented.  Big Organisations could at least try to be a repository for broader memory work.


There are costs (not-insurmountable) and dangers, but without memory we are living in Punxsutawney without remembering the day before. That ain’t no comedy, it’s a tragedy.

Practically – this could mean digitising old posters and content, doing periodic oral history interviews. These may not hit the dizzying heights of ‘academic’ practice, but srsly, who gives a damn – is it USEFUL?

  1. Help people and small organisations think about the future(s)

Big Organisations could do better “horizon scanning” for the current trends, so that smaller groups/individuals get the opportunity to think strategically.

Periodic workshops involving scenarios, role-plays etc.  Yes, most of the people who come will be the usual suspects, but not all of them, and in any case, skills and knowledge can percolate.

See here – 

https://peacenews.info/node/8767/2019-how-we-blew-it-again

CEM says – What’s going on, what’s going wrong (and why), and what is to be done?

These – and it isn’t an exhaustive list – all these amount to “services to the movement.” 

They are things that individuals and small organisations struggle with (or don’t even try to do). 

What “we” – as social movements/civil society/a species killing itself –  require is a) the repeal of some laws (mostly laws of physics) and

b) Big Outfits within the “movement” to do things that the smaller organisations – and individuals – can’t do.  If they don’t do them, then these things won’t get done and you don’t have a movement, just a bunch of Brownian motion billiard balls, going nowhere fast. 

The problem is – well, imma just quote myself:

It comes down to what your definition of “movement” is.  

If you believe, as Adam Bandt and his colleagues seem to, that a movement is a bunch of people from a Big Organisation, jetting in from their HQ and standing on a stage, offering “hope,” authenticity and validation to ranks of people who are sat mutely in rows, wanting their (begging) bowls filled up, then Friday was another success in a long line of successes.

If you believe, as I and a few (many?) other people do, that a movement is made up of individuals, small groups, large groups, pulling mostly in the same direction, as frenemies, helping each other out, learning from each other, sharing ideas and resources, then Friday night was another catastrophic shit-show/missed opportunity in a world that can’t afford any more missed opportunities.

What is to be done?

They (the Big Outfits) are not going to do any of this themselves. There is no money in it, it’s not in their direct short-term interest, and those running the show have built careers on being on the stage doing the right talking and public displays of emoting.  


There’s a hole in my movement, dear Liza.

So, if we want these big organisations to act as decent keystone species, then sorry, but it has to be persistently and insistently EXPECTED of them.  Publicly.  (I know, I know,  “activism about activism” – as if we have time for this shit… But also, as if we can get anywhere useful without this shit. We truly are caught in a trap…)

Apply what pressure you can. Explain that you will not be participating in ego-fodder events. Privately – and publicly – call out exploitative and extractive behaviour by Big Outfits. Offer practical suggestions – training, etc etc – for how to do things better.

But dammit, this is so hard. Knowing that everything is falling about. That no matter what we do, Punxusatawney is getting warmer. 

None of this will happen.  It is a stupid fantasy. We are all going to die horrible premature deaths. Oh well.

Footnotes

  1. Living where I normally do, I don’t have many opportunities for “hate attending” (a variation on hate-following).

(2) As per wikipedia –

A keystone species is a species that has a disproportionately large effect on its natural environment relative to its abundance. The concept was introduced in 1969 by the zoologist Robert T. Paine. Keystone species play a critical role in maintaining the structure of an ecological community, affecting many other organisms in an ecosystem and helping to determine the types and numbers of various other species in the community. Without keystone species, the ecosystem would be dramatically different or cease to exist altogether. Some keystone species, such as the wolf and lion, are also apex predators.

The role that a keystone species plays in its ecosystem is analogous to the role of a keystone in an arch. While the keystone is under the least pressure of any of the stones in an arch, the arch still collapses without it. Similarly, an ecosystem may experience a dramatic shift if a keystone species is removed, even though that species was a small part of the ecosystem by measures of biomass or productivity. It became a popular concept in conservation biology, alongside flagship and umbrella species. Although the concept is valued as a descriptor for particularly strong inter-species interactions, and has allowed easier communication between ecologists and conservation policy-makers, it has been criticized for oversimplifying complex ecological systems.

NB These should NOT be confused with foundation species. Thanks to HS for the distinction, which I will try to follow-up in a different post.

(3) If we’re abusing ecology (and clearly I am) we could argue that civil society organisations have become “functionally extinct” after 45 years of neoliberalism.  That is, there are still isolated shell-shocked individuals staggering around, but they don’t “do” the things they used to. But that’s another blog post.

(4) At which point, as a white hetero able-bodied man I can say “I did, it’s still there, and it’s fabulous!”). 

(5) Very non-complete list of blog posts about this here –