THIS MARCH WILL FAIL - SO WHAT’S NEXT?

Plan A Is Killing Us

CO₂ emissions are rooted in capital accumulation. Over the past 400 or so years, the exploitation of ‘cheap’ labour and ‘cheap’ nature in pursuit of profit has led to the immiseration of people and the despoliation of the planet. 

Capitalist companies and their shareholders have belatedly recognised that climate change is a serious threat to the continuation of their system of accumulation. They have tried to blame ‘overpopulation’ rather than overconsumption. In fact, most people on this planet consume very little. We could easily meet the needs of all if resources were managed rationally. The production of useless, disposable things is way out of control and the lifestyles of the super-rich are astonishingly wasteful. 

The governments of rich nations are recognising that as more of the world becomes uninhabitable there will be millions of more refugees. Their response is more militarised borders and more incarceration. The nation-states that currently lack the infrastructure to produce much pollution may want to share in the riches and technology developed with their resources and their labour. The model imposed on them could be that imposed on the Gaza Strip: deny development at all, and reduce energy use nearly to zero, all the while increasing profits for the military. A system of exploitation is becoming even more brutal. 

Capitalists know there will be more extreme climate events, more pandemics, more famines. They know that supply chains will be less predictable. They are hoping to greenwash their operations enough to take advantage of the coming disaster while preserving enough stability for survival. Their vision of a new world retains all the old world’s colonialism, exploitation and prioritisation of profit. 

Plan B Won’t Save Us

If we rely on a model where we ask the government politely for small changes, we will not avert this disaster. Nation states are moving too slowly and too late. For years we’ve marched, protested and written to the papers, and our governments haven’t listened to us because they depend on capitalist investment to bankroll them. 

Nations are competing with one another to buy their way out of climate change while making the smallest possible adjustments to their economies. Just as the pandemic created a scramble for vaccines, with no consideration for where there might be the most need, the climate disaster is creating a scramble for mitigation measures and comfortable carbon efficiency. A ‘just transition’ with expectations of continued GDP growth is one that relies on a Eurocentric silencing of the suffering of the South.

Green technology isn’t a free ticket. The raw materials for the batteries in electric cars and wind farms are mostly under the land of poor countries with histories of colonial depredation. The land needed for solar parks to power the lifestyles of the wealthy will have to be taken from some of the poorest people on the planet. Biofuel monoculture forests will replace the carbon emissions of fossil fuels while continuing the colonial practice of clearing indigenous people off their lands and destroying the diversity of nature.

This is a problem that can’t be solved by better governance. The climate catastrophe exposes the reality of capitalism: it is voracious, inhuman and impossible to negotiate with. Attempts to create a kinder, softer capitalism are doomed to fail. 

We Need A Plan C

The question, as always, is, who owns the land? It will be on that land that decisions will be made which affect the future stability of our planet. We must ask, who owns the resources that will be extracted, chopped down or left alone? Who owns the technology that will be sold as the solution for this crisis?

It is clear that this ownership is massively unequal. Despite this imbalance, however, there is much we can do. There are many projects all over the world where people are using techniques of farming, of energy production, of building which show the way for a sustainable future on this planet. Many of these techniques and technologies are very old. They are rooted in the practices that enabled people to live for thousands of years on Earth without causing irreparable damage to the planet’s ecology.

They are also social and empowering. People work together to produce the vital resources that sustain life, meaning that production is social and communal and resources are shared. This is not a retreat into primitivism but an attitude to technology focused on human needs and planetary stability.

We are called Plan C because we want to find an alternative to capitalism that is not-state based, non-hierarchical, pluralist, liberatory and not led by any party. We intend to host an open conversation in Hackney after this march for people to discuss what can be done, what actions we can take now to bring people together, identify our needs and find ways to meet them together. Today, we march and demonstrate our refusal to endorse or condone this murderous system, intent on profit and pushing us to the brink of geno-suicide. For the longer term, we can establish stronger bonds with our neighbours and build communities of resistance.  

Even as we push for the bigger issues - reparations, an end to 3rd World debt, an end to neo-colonial exploitation, an end to the use of fossil fuels etc. - we can also come together to empower ourselves in an atmosphere of mutual care and respect. We may not yet know how to overcome the violent opposition we face as human beings who care for one another. But we can move in a spirit of exploration. We can share the knowledge we have and the questions we have for one another.

This march will fail but this movement will not.