What does “backing the climate movement” mean? What movement, anyhow?

This year I am going to write something short, daily, about what is going on – “2 cents on the Arrived Ecological Debacle” (2cotAED). I have to write it; you don’t have to read it. If you DO read it, feel free to tell me how wrong I am (and hopefully why). Re: the debacle aspect: in 2004 the English writer Sara Maitland  wrote about the “pending ecological debacle.” The expression stuck with me; it’s a debacle because it was foreseen, warned about and was avoidable. Well, it’s no longer really “pending” is it?

I used to be able to pretend to believe that “civil society” – and especially “social movements” could help us cope with climate change. Blah blah abolition of slavery, blah blah suffragettes, you know the rest (1). And there have always been people with intelligence, dignity, courage trying to make things better. But this one, this “climate thing” is too big.

And what we get instead, is exhortations to “back the climate movement” (or else?)

No reflection on why “it” has failed, repeatedly and spectacularly and predictably (see my Conversation piece about this here). No definition of it. Just pleas as we face the abyss.

Why would it be any different? (2)

Footnotes

(1) I’ve gone from terrible infant to grumpy old man in a couple of depressed years. Or maybe I was always both. Who cares. But the point is, that “social movements” (including but not limited to protest) were okay, I guess, for social problems (racism, sexism, homophobia, to some extent class), and had some initial “successes” on environmental issues (helped by technological developments, catalytic converters etc). But the isms are one thing, they could be folded into an expanded “elite.” The environment/climate things (and so so many things ramify) were not assimilable. Yes, the ideology could cope (greenwashing, double think), but the material reality could not. And it didn’t, hasn’t ad won’t. We are about to get smacked very hard in the face with the consequences of our actions.

(2) In October last year I thought about asking people to answer the question “what would it mean to honour the soup throwers?” I didn’t, in part because I don’t trust anyone to have any good answers (coupla people, sure, but the other ‘deep thinkers’? not so much). And my usual lack of follow through blah blah. Look, we lost Perhaps we were always going to lose, for Various Reasons. But attempts at emotional blackmail to “back” some undefined “climate movement” are pure jibber jabber.