Seasonalight

Tag: politics

  • The Real Threat

    Sometimes, the tragedy is in words. 

    Caroline Lucas’s latest series for “The Rest is Politics” podcast is a case in point: “When Nature becomes a Security Threat.”* 

    Perhaps it’s the “genius stereotype” or “brilliance bias” towards the Intelligence Community that is supposed to move people to act. Shock tactics? Why demonise Nature? If we are not moved by science, then threat to Nationhood ought to do it. How very Nationalistic.

    The Labour Government’s 13-page DEFRA-commissioned report upon which this series is based was published earlier this year, and apart from the drama of its Downing Street redactions and ultimate public release, researchers from MI5 and MI6 appear to have raised it on previous iterations of standard, modern, and extreme (Western) Anthropocentrism. Nature’s Contributions to People are central, acronym NCP applied (as you might imagine), and include ecosystem “services”, value = growth economy, and externalities to “Nation,” mainly, the Savannah-isation of the Amazon Rainforest and Inter-State competition for “resources.”

    Nature is not coming for anyone, and particularly the British. There is no intent. The real threat is human actions towards Nature, making it into the report as a small byline, and with no detailed critique of values and consequent behaviours.

    Our entrenched culture of mental separation from Nature deepens.

    References include quantitative measurements—taxa and tipping points (Natural History Museum), Natural Capital (The Dasgupta Review), IPBES “ecosystem services” inter-governmental agenda, and various scientific papers on exceeding Rockström’s 9 planetary “boundaries” (hint: they are not particularly separate)!

    Emphasis is on uncertainty and risk to the United Kingdom as a nation-state, threats largely “external” ~ food imports forcing dietary change, and, of course, “migration”. Risks generated by collective values and behaviours are absent, and a question largely left literally to “customers” who might use the document for legislative decision-making (but they do find moments to mention pro-growth AI, laboratory-grown meat, and insect proteins)!

    This highlights just how devoid of understanding our collective role within nature remains. Mentally separate, we are agents for catastrophic and rapid change of the complex system upon which all life depends, with ignorant cultural and social responses to those rapid changes on top.

    Again, serious discussion on values and ethics falls down the deep, deep chasm that still exists between science and politics.    

    Ethical framing matters; readers and interpreters should be aware that these conclusions ARE A CHOICE, and bad ones at that. They shape how the report is used, nudging along all the same-old corrupt and Earth-damaging e-motivators without a whiff of critical thought.

    I’m not going to critique the paper line by line here. Many of the risks it identifies have been predicted and observed for a very long time, and the geopolitical map of power now shifts too quickly for a fixed security reading to hold for long. As I say, my concern is instead with the report’s ethical foundation: treating ecological collapse chiefly as a “national security” problem, while leaving the deeper ethical questions of value, power, agency, and human separation from Nature largely untouched. Here, read it for yourself.

    Recognising barriers of language and value is only the beginning, because those barriers are sustained by power. They determine which harms become visible, which causes remain unnamed, and which responses feel politically possible. The harder question is who holds the power to define values, protect them, and turn them into collective behaviour.

    Critically, disproportionate power via capital has accumulated through markets, competition, and institutions that reward extraction. These systems protect values that shape planning laws, trade priorities, food systems, energy choices, land ownership, finance, and the distribution of risk. To remain uncritical is to intensify behaviours across anthropocentric society — extreme competition, expansionism, colonialism, and highly extractive industries among them — a continuity despite the exclamation! An endangering of all Nature, with the greatest harms falling on the most vulnerable lives and communities, locally and globally. The result is not a marginal side-effect but a widening spiral of cause and consequence, with many effects already unfolding and others still unknown.

    Recognising root causes means naming the actual structures of power and agency that shape value priorities and behaviours. A national-security frame may generate “flash” public interest, and the risks involved are numerous and serious, but it can also narrow attention towards state protection, territorial interest, and crisis management rather than the hierarchies, core values, and behaviours driving ecological collapse. The fact that evidence has been suppressed or redacted only underlines how central those hierarchies of control remain.

    Isn’t this just the expected politics of adversarial opposition? I’m afraid there are no sides, no “heroes”, no “saviours” or “leaders” who are going to singularly turn things around – these cultural ideas, particularly Eurocentric in origin, are also constructions by a minority, like Nationhood itself – a body, decapitated — to separate us from each other and the rest of Nature. 

    I’d like to see the full list of the 81 rationalist “experts” who contributed, voting and consulting through various workshops and meetings, because I suspect most of them are men, and none of them is widely versed in the broad canon that is “Environmental Ethics.”  Most of them probably still consider it “religiosity.” Blah!

    Answers are deeply interconnected, and in no way final. Human food “security” is more about localism as embodied nature than any intellectualised, separate planetary boundaries, and real change far more about inclusiveness, collective knowledge sharing (causes, effects, imagining outcomes, correcting trajectories), REAL care, and responsibility for ALL life.

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  • Neoliberal education, fall-out, and the rise of the Far Right

    …another appeal for R-evolution on values via the “software” of ecoliteracy running on the “hardware” of educational structures as both eco-logical and eco-emotional (hope, joy).

    Photo by Iceberg San on Pexels.com

    ~~~


    Today, I watched political economist, Professor Richard Murphy’s YouTube question and video titled – What is it about [the political party] Reform?

    Do find the video here, and rest assured, as you might imagine, I nodded along largely in agreement with his own ideas on the politics of care. I felt there was a stark omission, however, from his reply to the question, one that I find common to economists and conservationists alike, even on the political “left.”

    At the end of the broadcast, Richard asked for viewers’ comments, and I spent some time formulating my reply, though it will no doubt be lost in an ocean of other, more succinct or snap comments. For emphasis, I’m sharing it here on my blog too.

    ~~~

    “I hear what you say, Richard, and I agree with so much. However, I think it’s important to discuss neoliberalism and its impact on our education system (everything is connected/relational).

    Also, have you heard of feminist “Ethics of Care,” an established canon (see Gilligan, et al)? Its approach to social/medical/legal problem-solving, etc, is situationally relational rather than adversarial and universal (or utilitarian). This is in contrast to established Western norms imposed by hierarchies of power (predominantly, historically, decisions made by White, continental European men). In my work, amongst other things, I apply the Ethics of Care to the human/Nature nexus.

    I attach an interesting press release from NCSR summarising an evidential “driving” connection behind poor “educational” outcomes in areas specifically targeted by Reform, many of which are post-industrial and also reflect your observations about corrosive economic neoliberalism, insecurity, emotion completely overruling rationale (ethics includes both), etc. Educational experience is the primary driver of the UK’s divide on immigration and politics | National Centre for Social Research https://natcen.ac.uk/news/educational-experience-primary-driver-uks-divide-immigration-and-politics

    The “education” problem is utterly ignored in most public forums, for several reasons. Maybe most still have faith in the current system. Maybe tackling the soul-destroying juggernaut of a competitive, student/teacher race for academic qualifications seems too big and too slow for change. Maybe it’s a lack of imagination or attention to real alternatives, except for any political case for apprenticeships, work remaining within the neoliberal system. Perhaps it is for fear of accusing Brexit or Reform supporters of lacking “intelligence”, etc, rather than the truth of inequitable starting points or lack of opportunity!

    Apply an Ethic of Care to our comprehensive educational system, which has been deliberately hijacked by neoliberalism (individually, as well as ecologically/Earth) along with all other social mechanisms or “multipliers”. Tailor education towards the fullest diversity and inclusivity of our bioregional communities instead of a competitive race to the bottom. Cradle to grave, students, teachers, parents, communities, abilities – remove the structural problem of applying set doctrines across the spectrum of education and replace with bioregional, ecoliterate, local-national interconnected, community/expert hubs of exchange that reach the hearts, heads, and hands of every child, and every adult, to suit need and wellbeing, not capital GDP Growth.

    Without acknowledging a problem with this education system, including the false premise that everyone is the same, a disconnect with “joy” and “hope”, and in terms of curricula AND place (buildings/grounds/procurement), the self-interested will continue to exploit its failures and inequities, and living communities (all life) will suffer.

    A R-evolution should mean that every person and every community will be able to nurture the values (including care), power, and understanding required for transition (and adaptation), towards a better life for all.

    Before anyone suggests it’s too late and we have no time, I have heard that non-sense before, going back at least 35 years. If only this shift had been made 35 years ago… BUT it is NEVER too late. Our historical class system defined “education” towards stasis. Neoliberalism/Westminster centrism took a hammer to any post-war progress almost overnight, finishing it off with league tables, academies, and academic grants tied to neoliberal economic growth. We can explain and offer new, more joyful, therefore attractive, systems of shared knowledge “care”, right now, and communicate immediate, positive social-economic-ecological/climatic consequences, especially at a local level.

    Meanwhile, thank you for all you do – vital.”

    ~~~

  • On Climate as the Dominant Meme.

    Rain shapeshifts the trees and their unseen communities through glass. Photo by me.

    I’ve come to realise, friends, that even some of the most influential speakers and writers of words on climate do not understand even the basics of Earth as an entire dynamic system of systems.

    I go further and say that a repetitive use of the word climate as the dominant meme is now serving LIFE poorly. LIFE is mutualism en masse, symbiosis as a continued wave down deep in the rock to surprisingly high in the atmosphere. This is why I have coined the word symbioethics. 

    Please, think about how you use the word climate, despite the big crowds in high politics going on and on because of pressure to “do” something as opposed to “nothing”. They aren’t system thinkers. Their goals are linear and flat. In terms of Earth Crisis/es, they are the Flat Earthers. Neoliberalism is particularly exploiting the situation; it’s raw like drawing blood. To these people, carbon and carbon dioxide are exchangeable units to trade, and mass electrification means Business-As-Usual in all other aspects of LIFE. There’s blood all over the place, and more to spill.

    All aspects of modern life, I’m almost afraid to say it, are what led to the invention of fossil fuel exploitation in the first place, and hence the unfurling, energized, continuing nightmare that is Earth Crisis. Climate change is a symptom, not the disease. You have to recognise this, surely, because those politicians and capitalists may have less of a clue than you.

    Earth is different as a planet because of LIFE. I’m animating LIFE in capitals, so as to know and perhaps feel your way into how things really are. I don’t care much about these competitive and anxiolytic obsessions with targets and meeting them, just please stop for a moment and take this in.

    LIFE came about because of LIFE.

    Sure, it took long-gone, variable qualities of non-organic systems, the chance events of matter, including water, reacting and compounding billions of years ago until an opportunity existed for the emergence of early RNA-like substances, DNA, viruses, and bacteria and cells. In certain conditions again, perhaps under a newly generated organic methane shroud, like smog to deter ultra-violet violence, these basic cells merged again, forming metabolizing and photosynthesizing cells, and in more than one place in similar timescales (symbiogenesis).

    LIFE then really took off in this swirling flow of abundance, and when these earliest colonies of dazzling (Lynn Margulis) living matter grew into and around others, more cells found novel roles and began to coalesce in the form of more complex organisms. You only need to understand lichen to realise how it is LIFE that changes the conditions for LIFE. Lichen turns rock into soils; soils are hotbeds for LIFE. And that’s just one example we can all see with our own eyes.

    Since those magnificent Earthly points in time and space, LIFE has gained strength by manipulating those very same inorganic and organic systems that produced them, changing them to suit more LIFE (Gaia Theory, even if weak). LIFE has evolved for billions of years subjecting, and being subjected by, the conditions of Earth as a system (Lovelock).

    Fast forward three billion years—and five previous extinction events—and here we are, and every living being is still a colony among colonies.

    Climate is just one of many interconnected systems that sustain LIFE, though inescapably critical. Its power under change is rage, but the rage should be ours because members of our own species created the volatility, and a minority still pursue it ~ for cash. Climate, on the other hand, simply describes the weather conditions that prevail in general or over a long period. Climate does have the power to let LIFE thrive or die out. But even the atmosphere is largely a product of everything else going on in the world, chiefly… LIFE. Climate is a symptom. As such, it isn’t just physics. The neoliberals, the corporate capitalists, deny it. They may have begun to engage under pressure, at last, but it is only on their terms ~ cash.

    Let’s look at LIFE instead.

    What are the LIFE supporting systems?

    LIFE on Earth is symbiotically related to several Earth and cosmological systems, which are mainly energized by the Sun, our aspect towards the Sun, but sometimes by sources from within the Earth itself. These are all intimately related in flows. We can try to separate them for the sake of study, but the reality is a giant existential, moving system, full of subsystems, cycles, and processes. All is relatedness, flow.

    On Earth, the main sub-systems are as follows.

    Hydrosphere
    Geosphere
    Biosphere
    Atmosphere

    Each one is interconnected to the other by processes and cycles, transforming and exchanging matter and energy over time from the nano-second into deep time.

    Evaporation, erosion, convection currents, transpiration, photosynthesis, weathering, erosion, rock formation, ocean currents, climate…no beginning nor end. Carbon, sulphur, salt, food, nitrogen, water, energy, cycled on into LIFE and back again, including human LIFE, which can’t exist without them all.

    There are even more systems and processes, macro and micro, even sub micro and meta macro, many of which we have no understanding nor measure. But we know the consequences of them – LIFE on Earth. Sometimes, we have to imagine. Or simply trust in them. But this means leaving soft imprints everywhere we go, or none at all.

    SIXTH Extinction Event – Humans.

    Scientists relay via peer review evidence that we are into Earth’s sixth extinction event. This includes leviathan climate change.

    The five previous extinction events we know about because of the rock record, have been initially caused by activity outside of the organic experience. We know there are historic “orbital” rhythms to climate, which we call the Milankovic Cycles, named after the scientist who mooted the theory, and we know that vulcanicity, tectonic drift, and even giant comet strikes have all altered the stasis of Earth’s spectacularly unified systems that sustain a gradual flow of LIFE.

    The problem is that we humans have so manipulated all four of Earth’s main systems that we are changing global stasis and therefore climate (for the sake of argument, the conditions of life as we understand them) earlier and faster than it would otherwise do so. And it is happening so quickly, driven by a power-crazed minority that wrongly perceives accumulation of wealth as the aim. Climate is the global feedback as are ocean currents slowing due to melting ice, displacement of bacterial and photosynthetic drivers of certain cycles, including changing salinity. Yes. Climate change IS heating and weirding and will create more torment and suffering to LIFE, because of the feedback loops in linked systems, like the hydrosphere (flooding, drought, etc).

    Existential LIFE on Earth is inherently magnificent. It is so even without humans considering it merely here to serve our needs. But that magnificence is being killed off by humans through overreach in all aspects. All kinds of human development block the flows of LIFE, the processes, and relationships that sustain communities. Climate change so far (no nuclear winters just yet) is a result of the destruction of living and geological systems that trap carbon in long cycles.  Significant anthropogenic (human-caused) changes have happened since the emergence of human agriculture and cities, but sky-rocketing because of the industrial revolution, wide-scale fossil fuel emissions, and a rapid greenhouse effect. Smothering soils with tarmac and concrete, burning peat, harvesting woodland, churning out pollution and waste, fragmenting all kinds of ecosystems with hard infrastructure and agriculture, killing sea LIFE ~ all effects the carbon cycle. Space Capitalism is exacerbating all. This is not just about climate!

    Kill off LIFE, and we kill off ourselves. Remember, we are all communities within communities. Nothing is separate.

    There are signs and signals everywhere that something is seriously wrong with the systems that sustain LIFE as we understand them, the global COVID19 pandemic in humans being simply the latest. Many more exist beyond the human realm if only more of us understood.

    Words matter.

    Human words are critical in how we relate experience to one another, but are also significantly powerful over all other LIFE forms because that’s the state of play right now ~ human dominion over all LIFE. I’m sick of people suggesting to me that words do not matter, despite them using words to try to communicate that fact. Your words, my words, act as communication capsules fronting deep memory, transformation, emotions, belonging and doing. They can be used as weapons, salves, or instruments of new ways of thinking. Words do matter, especially those repeated and repeated in the public sphere. We should be way more aware of their power.

    I’d like to hear the word LIFE just as much, if not more, than the word CLIMATE. It is LIFE that is ultimately of profound worth, even though a clement climate is ideal for life in different regions as we understand it now. To avoid LIFE and its diversity in our language allows human power structures to focus only on CO2 in the atmosphere like a currency and climate as if it were still dissociated with all those systems that sustain LIFE.

    Climate this and climate that. Even critical areas such as justice and equity aren’t adequately served well by its narrow framing. Just look at water and food supply, and the terrible inequities of pollution streams. Some solutions to fit the climate narrative even go so far as to kill more LIFE when LIFE is the evolutionary response to climate warming. Curtail LIFE and you are doubling, tripling the problem.

    Systems thinking, please, and in the use of language. To continue isolating the language of climate is a folly. It is a kind of othering, something difficult to handle for almost everyone else. Too big, too ethereal. Something only for learned and passionate experts, or politicians.

    The way we live our lives in community, as community among many communities (human and teresapien), is the change. This will help steady the symptom of climate change, though we know the genie has already let rip. It will critically help LIFE in mutualisms and flows. Teachers can be a huge part of facilitating that community change by example. As can any local government, library or hospital officer with responsibility for public buildings and grounds. I’ve little faith in private, competitive interests (at the heart of Capitalism), but maybe there is some hope here. I will wait to see if the practice of locaceding is accepted. Meanwhile, Governments can help or hinder, but the change must be a groundswell. At the moment, voting records still show contempt and apathy from the ground. They will take heart from this, and carry on ignoring LIFE.

    It is my greatest hope that Fluminism, on the other hand, is a positive word from the get-go. As a symbioethic, it relates easily to all flowing mutualisms, processes, cycles, and systems that sustain and proliferate LIFE in diversity and abundance. As a word with meaning, I use it as a resistance to those Earth scarring ways of perceiving, being, and doing in this world. It’s a treatment of the disease and the symptom. Perhaps you might use it too. Once understood, it is do-able by everyone equally and daily, and a perception of the world that is then very difficult to un-know.

    ~~~~