On climate movements and pathologies, cities etc.

Just got a lovely Twitter reply –

Marc. I’ve decided I’m going to get into your stuff on climate movements. Where do I start? What has worked, what doesn’t, what’s needed next. That kind of thing. Especially anything practical at city level. This request sounds lazy but I’m very time poor. Thanks!

So, this is a very first draft of a reply to that. Other things will come to mind. There are four key places (all online) where I’ve published stuff on these questions, plus a bunch of videos etc. They are (drumroll please) – my Dwight Towers blog (from about 2008 to 2013), Manchester Climate Monthly, Climate Emergency Manchester (co-founder and left in late 2021) and also marchudson.net.

In terms of local government stuff.

Key concepts would include the constraints on them, at an international and national level. For me the master concept was a variation on David Harvey’s notion of the Spatial Fix (short version – capital is footloose, government and labour is fixed in one place. In order to attract investment you have to offer policy/political ‘stability’ (predictability), nice infrastructure, an educated and disciplined workforce and other nice to haves (sports, arts, and ‘green’ vibe). That variation is the Sustainability Fix – video here. Can’t find the better one yet. No, wait, here it is.

In terms of understanding the internal dynamics of administrations, you need to know about a) the culture , myths and formal/informal power structures of both the dominant party (in Manchester, that’s Labour) AND b) about how civil services work (so there, evaporative cooling, the Peter Principle etc etc). And how bureaucrats will always work to defang/neuter troublesome groups… On class, egofodder and control: Manchester City Council versus #climate action and democracy

In terms of climate movements (and their pathologies)

There’s LOADS of various bits and pieces I’ve written) at both the ‘movement’ level and b) the ‘how to run a group’/what can and will go wrong level (and believe me lots goes wrong, a lot of it being my fault).

The key three concepts, I guess (there are others, but they are perhaps second [or third] order, like decruitment) would be

• the smugosphere (you can search marchudson.net here) –
• the emotacycle
• ego-fodder – of the many blog posts, see here, here and here.

In terms of social movements failing to prepare for an upsurge in concern, and wasting the opportunity, see here (Peace News).

I did a bit of “how to deal with this”, for a while, but it’s not worth my time… See here.

Then, in terms of how to run meetings so they aren’t so soul-crushing there’s

This from the Conversation and this from Manchester Climate Monthly about meetings being institutionally sexist.

And these videos about, well

Here’s a piece from April 2019, that XR Manchester was aware of, and ignored, with predictable results.

see also here. And this about Q&A sessions.

In terms of how you might run a film showing and discussion there’s this.

In terms of activist pathologies, well three of my favourite pieces

• Get your fucking game face on (on Dwight Towers, 2010)
• Dear New Climate Activist (from 2018)
• Just Stop Oil – anthropologically fascinating, politically terrifying (2022)

And a fourth – Cher, Incentive Structures and Our Inevitable Doom (also 2022).

Okay, there’s plenty else, and I should really really write that book…