Raising Hell: Issue 87: 'Within Scope'
'Pinching $50,000 from a son of a bitch is not theft, it's a good deed.' - Fidel Castro, responding to criticism after having taken money from Francisco Prío, lawyer and CIA asset
Every now and then there are moments in life where someone asks you to justify yourself on something that seems so obvious, so incredibly basic you don’t immediately have a good answer — like someone asking you to prove that 2x2=4.
It was during research on my most recent story for The Saturday Paper that one of these moments came up. We were talking generally when the person on the phone — who shall go unidentified — challenged me on the idea that climate change was even relevant to what we were talking about. I responded, as I have at other times, by repeating something Amy Westervelt of Drilled Media has long said: every story is now a climate story. My correspondent on the other end of the phone paused for the briefest of moments, before attacking this suggestion with a baffled incredulity. What does climate change have to do with, say, the building of a road? Or police use of force?
To me, the answer was obvious: a gung-ho and carefree attitude towards use of force by law enforcement has certain implications the next time those officers are directed to respond to social movements like climate protests. If we were to consider an issue like, for example, Aboriginal Deaths in Custody — of which there have been more than 500 — we suddenly invoke the long history of colonisation, marginalisation and dispossession of Indigenous people. In the context of climate change, these sorts of issues already influence how best to respond to climate change but in the context of law enforcement the connection is straight forward: it’s a lot harder to install solar panels, secure fresh drinking water supplies and build energy-efficient housing in ways that may improve material conditions when law enforcement agencies are spending considerable time and public resources arresting and incarcerating Indigenous people who are at risk of ending up dead in custody. And if it is next-to-impossible to hold anyone to account for these deaths, that suggests something about the broader chances of holding anyone accountable for their role in driving the climate crisis.
As for roads: the more roads you build, the demand you create for cars — not to mention that some of those roads will inevitably end up being used to grant access to previously inaccessible areas used for new, gas and oil projects. In the alternative, decisions about where to site a road, what kind of road it will be and how well to maintain it, are also going to factor into questions about how fast you might be able to make it out of an area when there a catastrophic fire approaches, or a flood rises.
I wanted to avoid an argument at the time, so I dodged the question, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve run into this sort of objection. Generally, in Australia, we’re starting from a low base. The failure to grasp how one issue may inform another speaks to a lack of basic climate literacy, imagination, and a failure to grasp context. This is especially a problem when it comes to climate change, a phenomenon which exists at the level of context — if the environment in which we inhabit is being rapidly re-shaped to the point where the specific ecological niche currently inhabited by human society alters, shrinks or disappears, there will be a corresponding effect on human action. It raises questions about how many humans we can pack into a city, or how feasible it is to live regionally in places with no water. Hotter and longer heatwaves, for example, increase aggressive behaviour, making violence more likely. The implications of this run the gamut from how we might deal with domestic violence through to insurgencies to excessive use of force by police — particularly against Indigenous people.
Climate deniers, conservative firebrands and the odd libertarian have traditionally mocked these sort of suggestions, largely because their worldview is blind to context and power relations. At heart, this is a mode of thinking that treats individual problems as discreet, and existing in isolation of one another. But there is another group who, I find, sometimes innocently falls into this trap: policy wonks. These are people whose job it is to deal with the nuts and bolts of decision making and who, by necessity, must engage in a process of exclusion to ensure they are focussing their limited time, attention and resources only on those things “within scope” in order to be effective. These are also the same people who have largely developed the patois used to discuss climate change as an issue — the entire concept of “net zero” springs to mind, as does language calling for “reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 43% below 2005 levels by 2030”. Though necessary, this language is an artificial way of talking and thinking about climate change, one that inherently lacks human feeling.
More importantly, it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what we are actually talking about when we use words like “net zero”, “transition” and “carbon neutral” beyond the specific policy proposals these phrases refer to — and that is a matter of macro economy.
The short version of a long, nerdy story is this: modern governments operate with a primary goal of public policy — this is the objective through which all other laws are considered and meant to help achieve. In the post-World War II world, the primary goal of public policy was zero unemployment and every new law or decision was considered in light of how it would help bring this about. During the 1980s, this goal changed to zero inflation — think Thatcher, Reagan and Keating. That world died in a fire during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, and the looming crisis posed by climate change now means the primary goal of public policy should be zero carbon. The reason it’s not been embraced in this way is largely due to a political dilemma we have faced for the last decade. What we are witnessing is one group of elites who find their wealth and support in the carbon economy — dubbed the “Carbon Coalition” by political economist Mark Blyth — fighting tooth and nail to fight off another group of elites who draw their wealth and power from the clean economy.
The result is that same clash of interests trickles down, filtering out through our language, constraining how we think about problems and shaping what we imagine is possible from the world around us. More to the point, the recognition that “every story is a climate story now” as a recognition of the changing teams. As climate change affects every aspect of life, viewing the issues through this lens becomes unavoidable — and to do otherwise is to operate blind.
Events
Reporting In
Where I recap what I’ve been doing this last fortnight so you know I’m not just using your money to stimulate the local economy …
‘Indigenous group seeks to overturn Burrup industry gag clause’ (The Saturday Paper, 7 September 2024).
Now the book’s live, there will be events — I hear you love events, so I got ‘em in droves. Below are a list of those which are confirmed. Check the website as I’ll be putting up the details of new events as they’re locked in.
A huge thank you to everyone who came out to the Adelaide launch of Slick at the Wheaty on Thursday night. Federal Senator Sarah Hanson-Young opened the event and we had a pretty packed ground — it was fantastic to see everyone there.
We’ve also got things cooking in Darwin and Canberra in the next couple of weeks. They’ll be posted up at the book’s website as soon as the specific are confirmed to check back regularly.
Before You Go (Go)…
Are you a public sector bureaucrat whose tyrannical boss is behaving badly? Have you recently come into possession of documents showing some rich guy is trying to move their ill-gotten-gains to Curacao? Did you take a low-paying job with an evil corporation registered in Delaware that is burying toxic waste under playgrounds? If your conscience is keeping you up at night, or you’d just plain like to see some wrong-doers cast into the sea, we here at Raising Hell can suggest a course of action: leak! You can securely make contact through Signal — contact me first for how. Alternatively you can send us your hard copies to: PO Box 134, Welland SA 5007
And if you’ve come this far, consider supporting me further by picking up one of my books, leaving a review or by just telling a friend about Raising Hell!