Tag: New York City

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United States of America

May 14, 2007 – another C40 large cities summit

Seventeen years ago, on this day, May 14th, 2017, the second “C40 Large Cities” summit was held. Backs were slapped, business cards exchanged, palms probably greased, and all the other things that happen at these events happened. And we are not saved.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the Climate Group had been set up in 2004. And this summit, well, I wasn’t there, but it was surely another interminable junket, people getting together to display their virtue and swap business cards and give each other copies of glossy reports full of carefully chosen smiling individuals with the solar panel on their roof. 

And it was 2007, being the year that the IPCC fourth assessment report came out, Al Gore, everyone looking towards Bali, for what would be the “roadmap to Copenhagen,” “gosh, we can fix this,” etc, etc. And in the meantime, get some nice contracts.

What we learn is there is an endless circuit of this stuff, this guff. And you can have a nice career feeling good about yourself, going from event to event, talking about how the cat should wear a bell. And some of it does actually happen. Because technology is improved, because social movements have success, because companies see a market. It’s not that nothing has happened. It’s that we smother ourselves in bullshit about how much will happen and how easy it will be to do in the face of obduracy and resistance.

Although the penny does seem to be dropping that we are screwed. So there’s that. 

What happened next C40 kept going. The caravan kept rolling. Occasionally the wheels would fall off and need to be glued back on, as after Copenhagen but it’s too valuable to too many people, too essential, in fact, to pretend that business as usual with some tweaks will get us out of the mess that business as usual has created. And to think or, even worse, say otherwise renders you unemployable and a weirdo who might infect others with their weirdo germs. 

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 14, 2002 – well-connected denialists gather in Washington DC to spout #climate nonsense

May 14, 2010 – a day of action/mourning on climate

Categories
Activism United States of America

February 12 1968 – The Motherfuckers do their motherfucking thing, with garbage in New York.

February 12 1968 – The Motherfuckers do their motherfucking thing, with garbage in New York.

Fifty five years ago, on this day, February 12 1968, New York City was the scene of an inventive piece of activism.

“On February 12, 1968, a group of radicals led by Ben Morea collected garbage on the lower east side, trucked it, then dumped it in front of the Lincoln Center on a gala night. The event coincided with a NYC garbage strike and was meant to express both the group’s contempt for the bourgeois establishment and its support of the strikers.”

 (Gottlieb, 1993: 350)

and

COMPARE NATHAN HALE “BLACK ECOLOGY”

“No solution to the ecology crisis can come without a fundamental change in the economics of America particularly with reference to blacks. Although some of the ecological differentials between blacks and whites spring directly from racism and hence defy economic correlations,44 many aspects of the black environmental condition are associated with basic economics. Blacks are employed in the most undesirable or polluted occupations,45 lagging far behind their educational attainment. About two-thirds work in unskilled and semi-skilled industries. Aggravating, and associated with, the occupational effects on the black environment is the consistently low family income of blacks which must generally support larger families. Since the turn of the century, the family income of blacks has remained about half that of whites” (Hale, 1970: 7)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 323.1ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

The Vietnam War, black civil rights, the beginnings of second wave feminism were beginning to kick off, and poor people were getting shat on (for once). At this exact point, Martin Luther King was planning for his march on Washington in the summer of 1968 (he wouldn’t be there). And the Motherfuckers and black Mask were in that milieu. The idea of bringing the unwanted waste back to the people who produced it, for them to deal with, was an inspired one. It has become a famous action. 

What I think we can learn from this

Why am I talking about it on a climate change website? Because of exactly this. The super rich – and the rich – enjoying their/our imperial way of living, don’t want to know about or think about the consequences. The costs are out of sight and out of mind. Activism can be about making those costs more obvious.

What happened next

Oh, to the Motherfuckers I suppose the usual schisms and splits and anarchist pathologies. Possibly/probably helped on by COINTELPRO. But the FBI could have saved its money except of course for them it was all about the lulz and the need to dominate and control, but I’m going off on a tangent here 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

References

Gottlieb, R. 1993. Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement. Washington DC: Island Press.

Hale, N. 1970. Black Ecology. The Black Scholar Vol. 1, No. 6, BLACK CITIES: COLONIES OR CITY STATES?, pp. 2-8

We Propose a Culture Exchange – garbage for garbage [1968]