I’d recommend a close listen to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s barn-storming speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos just now. (Video with adverts here). Transcript here.
On a superficial level, because it’s nice to see someone kinda-sorta getting up on their hindlegs against the Trump gang.
On a slightly deeper level because it’s nicely done rhetoric (it’s plausible enough that he wrote it himself – there’s the obligatory Havel/greengrocer schtick, etc. Channelling his inner Michael Ignatieff etc).
But most deeply, for – as usual – what is barely mentioned at all (there’s glancing references to ‘sustainability’, the closest an economist can really come).
Climate change.
I GET it. There is only so much ground you can cover in 15 minutes. You mustn’t dilute your message, your battle cry.
But holy shit, there are battles and there are wars. The world is melting and burning and I thought we were supposed – as per Obama – to do two things at once, to walk and chew gum at the same time.
Carney has made noises about climate in the past, big ones. And here he is, pointing out the dangers of Hegemons Gone Wild (the line about not being able to monetise hegemony directly was nicely done) without pointing to well, excuse me for shouting, but THE IMMINENT POSSIBILITY/LIKELIHOOD OF THE END OF ORGANISED HUMAN “CIVILISATION”.
Blah blah obligatory reference whenever talking about Davos to flag that you have read (or skimmed) Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, about people unable to stop pretending until a great war forces them too. Blah blah blah.
I’m just going to go and have a lie down.
P.S. Our “smartest” leaders, our “bravest” “leaders” are not going to get us out of this. If from the late 1980s they’d figured out how to grow, learn, organise and win, climate-centric social movements with true intersectional perspectives and tactics MIGHT have got us out of this. That ship sailed a long time ago. Last time I heard, it had sunk.
marchudson.net 
Leave a comment