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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Inaction by governments in the face of climate change is often attributed to a lack of political will or a denial of the seriousness of the situation, but as Mark Alizart argues in this provocative book, we shouldn't exclude the possibility that part of the reluctance might be motivated by cynicism and even sheer evil: for some people, there are real financial and political benefits to be gained from the chaos that will ensue from environmental disaster. The climate crisis creates its winners - individuals who orchestrate environmental chaos and bet on the collapse of the world as they bet on declining share values. In the face of this veritable 'carbofascist' coup targeting humanity, modifying our behaviour as individuals won't suffice. We must train our critical attention on those financial and political actors who speculate on catastrophe and, in the light of this, we must rethink the strategy of ecological activism. This is a war to win, not a crisis to overcome.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
1 A New Front
Notes
2 Short the World
Notes
3 Reichstag Megafires
Notes
4 ‘So They Knew ’
Notes
5 Carbofascism
Notes
6 ACT UP for the Climate
Notes
7 This is Not a Crisis
Notes
8 The Green Army
Notes
9 Gaia Must Not Be Deprived of Her Hopes
Notes
10 The World is Ours!
Notes
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
Begin Reading
End User License Agreement
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The Climate Coup
Mark Alizart
Translated by Robin Mackay
polity
Originally published in French © Presses universitaires de France / Humensis, Le coup d’Etat climatique, 2020
This English edition © Polity Press, 2021
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press101 Station LandingSuite 300Medford, MA 02155, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4615-2
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Title: The climate coup / Mark Alizart ; translated by Robin Key.Other titles: Coup d’État climatique. EnglishDescription: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, 2021. | Originally published in French (c) Presses universitaires de France / Humensis, Le coup d’Etat climatique, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: “How the rich and powerful stand to gain from the climate crisis”-- Provided by publisher.Identifiers: LCCN 2020057907 (print) | LCCN 2020057908 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509546138 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509546145 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509546152 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Global warming. | Environmental policy. | Human ecology.Classification: LCC QC981.8.G56 A34413 2021 (print) | LCC QC981.8.G56 (ebook) | DDC 304.2/5--dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020057907LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020057908
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
Acknowledgements
This book includes material from three lectures given at the Kirchner Cultural Center of Buenos Aires on 29 June 2019 and the Brooklyn Library on 2 February 2020, which were updated after the COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020 and Joe Biden’s win in November 2020.
All my thanks go to the French Cultural Services in Buenos Aires and New York, who invited me to the two venues. I also thank Laurent-Henri Vignaud for having agreed to review my text, Brune Compagnon-Janin, who encouraged me to publish it, Laurent de Sutter and Monique Labrune, who published it at the Presses Universitaires de France, Robin Mackay for translating it into English, and John Thompson for publishing it at Polity.
In its final phase, catastrophe is the intrinsic, normal mode of existence for capital.
Rosa Luxemburg (1913)
1A New Front
Ecology has come a long way.
Forty years ago, only specialists and political militants were worried about global warming, loss of biodiversity, and pollution by pesticides or plastics. Only twenty years ago, people were still dismissive of organic food. Today everyone has a view on climate issues. For the first time in a US presidential election, the topic of climate change was addressed during the debates. Joe Biden has committed to a great plan to fight it and even appointed a ‘climate czar’. Indeed, it is now laid bare for everyone to see with each new hurricane and wildfire that hits us that climate is changing, for the worse.
Nevertheless, environmentalists have only won a battle, not the war. Despite the commitments made at successive Conference of the Parties (COP) summits, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is higher than ever. Despite displays of good intentions here and there, the use of pesticides continues to increase, as do deforestation, urbanization and ocean acidification. The Greens are still political minorities in political majorities. Worse still, climate denialists are still overwhelmingly powerful. The US election results were tighter than expected. The Senate is tied. Seventy million Americans are still fed fake news and propaganda on a daily basis by the Republican party and Fox News. Along with the first wave of Trumpism that hit America in 2016, politicians with heavily climate-sceptic agendas have been voted in in Brazil, in the Philippines, in Australia and in Hungary and are still very popular.
Some of the reasons for that are well known. Big corporations continue to oppose climate policies for short-term profit, if not up front then behind the scenes. Bad habits in agriculture and the food industry are tough to rein in. Pandering to populations aggrieved at the new norms and constraints called for by any politics with a vague sense of social responsibility is still fruitful. But this book argues there is more: all these years when environmentalism was gaining traction, the rejection of environmentalism has grown too, that is, the rejection of the very idea the world needs to be saved from climate breakdown. Some people now embrace climate breakdown; they desire it.
A huge driver of the Trump vote relied in both presidential elections on the idea that climate change is not only not real or not dangerous, but actually ‘does good’, to quote former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott,1 inasmuch as it ‘does bad’ to others. With characteristic political flair, the former president mused, to the great satisfaction of his electoral base, about the fact that rising sea levels would wreak havoc upon his enemies, the ‘coastal elites’.2 Likewise, there is no other way to understand why Jair Bolsonaro, in Brazil, would encourage the burning down of the Amazon forest, all the while knowing perfectly well what kind of a disaster it is for the rest of the earth. Or why Australia’s current prime minister, Scott Morrison, watched the bush burn from his swimming pool in Hawaii as if it were some kind of reality show to be enjoyed rather than a disaster to be averted.
This new perspective on climate change is, in effect, a huge shift in the politics needed to fight it and a new front environmentalists have to fight upon. We can no longer believe that convincing the public that climate change is real and dangerous is enough to make a difference. Neither can we imagine that the only resistances to overcome in order to fight it are technical or financial. As crazy as it seems, we now have to address the fundamental question as to even why climate change should be averted. Unless we manage to do it, the earth is – literally – toast.
Notes
1
.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/oct/10/tony-abbott-says-climate-change-is-probably-doing-good
.
2
. ‘A massive 200 billion dollar sea wall, built around New York to protect it from rare storms, is a costly, foolish & environmentally unfriendly idea that, when needed, probably won’t work anyway. It will also look terrible. Sorry, you’ll just have to get your mops & buckets ready!’, @realdonaldtrump, 19 January 2020.
2Short the World
Greta Thunberg declared before an assembly of heads of state at the UN in September 2019 that inaction on ecology could only have two causes: ‘ignorance’ or ‘evil’.1
