A PERSONAL LOOK AT CLIMATE POLITICS

In recent years a new global perspective has emerged whose outlines are only just discernible. The impetus behind this new perspective is not merely the desire to combat global pollution, but the belief in the unitary nature of the Earth’s climate and, the idea of the Earth as a single entity, sometimes a life form in itself like Gaia or, somewhat less prosaically, as a unitary life support system. Unfortunately, most green radicals extol the importance of localism and have been quick to condemn globalism as elitist, reactionary, and a serious threat to (often non-existent) local communities. This article attempts to stress the importance of the new globalism through personal experiences.

For many years after the mid 1970s i was an avid admirer of the works of hannah arendt, a german-jewish political philospher. She emphasized the importance of politics and the need for societies to provide opportunities for people to participate in grassroots’ politics. When i moved to an inner city area in the early 1980s i discovered a lively community action group running a community centre just around the corner from where i lived and for most of the decade volunteered there in order to assess the feasibility of, and to promote, arendtian ideals. The end of my involvement in the group came when the community group from the other side of the main road which divided the community with a lava flow of molten metal, took over control of the community centre and, on the urging of local labour city councillors, closed it down because the city council wanted control of community work in the city and this particular community centre was under the jurisdiction of the county council. Soon after ending activities in the centre, the building itself was demolished - it was like a west bank punishment when the israeli army demolishes the homes of palestinians convicted solely of fighting for their rights. On the other side of the road arose a monstrous £500,000 community centre which was far beyond the management capacity of even the most active community let alone one which had little experience of community work.

From the mid-1970s the community group which managed the ‘old’ community centre had helped to dramatically transform local conditions; it provided many people with work experience which enabled them to get good jobs; and it generated a considerable range of local activities and services. During the second half of the 1980s, however, the community action group began to fade away. The reasons for this are multitudinous and go far beyond the rivalries of community groups and the suffocating role played by labour city councillors hinted at above. Despite the eventual collapse, dramatic changes had been brought about by community action. There had been real community work with people of different ages, different classes, different interests, and different characters, involving everything from putting up flyposters, obtaining insurance quotes, completing grant applications for equipment for the mothers’ and toddlers’ group, cleaning the toilets, etc., etc. The community centre was a place where some people found fame, some found notoriety and some died. This type of community action was utterly different from the so-called localism of those radicals who live in inner city cultural ghettos which consist solely of like minded people of a similar age, educational attainment, and cultural orientation involved primarily in campaigning on glamorous, high profile, city and nation-wide issues. The former entailed a level of commitment and duty which would be inconceivable by those who enjoy a good demo/riot and tearing things apart rather than building things up.

For four years in the mid-1980s a tiny group of us also tried to win support for the creation of a parish council in both areas of the community - it would have been the first inner city parish council in the country. In 1988, i joined the green party and wrote ‘Village Green’ advocating that, in the complete absence of any electoral success, green parties should focus on setting up, and getting engaged in, parish councils - not surprisingly six months later the green party won 15% of the vote in the euro-elections!. Ironically, my last involvement in community action was sabotaged by a group of local greens. My efforts to persuade the local green party to join the campaign to set up a parish council were blocked by anarcho greens who thought parish councils were too formal - they wanted something much more formal so that people could wander along at any time they wanted, and whenever they felt like it, in order to do whatever they wanted - which was usually sweet fa.

My experience of community work left me demoralized, appalled and disgusted. There were no dark satanic mills in this community except those in the minds of some its inhabitants. The slowly spreading poison of my traumatic experiences in community work had not yet afflicted my ideals.

In the late 1980s i was asked by some local residents to help save a small area of overgrown land in this inner city area which, quite remarkably, had been completely cut off and left untouched for nearly 25 years. Some student architects and ‘homeless people’ made a grab for the land and proposed a self-build housing project (in co-operation with a local multinational construction corporation) to provide cheap rented accommodation for homeless people (with generous car parking space provided). At this point in time, after thatcher’s infamous green speech to the tory party conference in 1988 and the green party’s rupert murdoch inspired euro-election success in 1989, green issues had once again become popular. During the campaign to save this green site one of the members of the campaign group opposed my proposal to adopt a green rationale for saving the site, by declaring, "We’re just trying to save some land, we’re not trying to save the planet." As someone who was still in the process of thinking about green philosophies, this statement came as something of a shock. I’d been thinking about the dangers of global warming and saving the Planet without realizing that i was no longer doing what i’d been doing for most of that decade. Some of the faces involved in this campaign were the same as those who’d been involved in the community centre; the places where we met to discuss how to protect the green site were in the same community; but for me, quite unnoticed, the local had slipped away into the global. I wanted the young people supporting the housing project to have their local needs met, but this could have been done in other ways without destroying this particular green site. What was paramount was saving the Earth - without a Planet there was no chance of these people, let alone any other, having a home. It dawned on me that this green site was not local, it belonged to the Earth. The state of the Earth should determine whether this site should be built on not the incessantly expanding demands of self-centred humans. If this plot of land was built on then other countries wwould want to build on their plots of land. We were not merely destroying a piece of land that was helping to prop up the Earth's life support system, we were legitimizing similar levels of destruction in all other countries around the world - and if other countries suffocated as much of their land as we had in brutland then an ecological disaster would be inevitable. The local was not merely becoming less of a priority than the Planetary, it was evaporating altogether. Trying to maintain that this green site was local, to be treated in whatever way local people decided, was just plain wrong. It was Planetary and people on the other side of the world had just as much right to say whether it should be built on as local people - and, of course, these no locals would all say that the land should be built on because they would realize all too clearly that the more development that took place in this already over-developed country the less it would be possible to carry out development in countries where poverty was widespread without triggering off a global warming disaster.

Another important factor in this process of developing a new Planetary philospohy was a point made in an article written by a green parish councillor. He was wondering about how his local parish council should decide on whether there was a need for an additional lamp-post in his parish. A lamp-post could almost be used a symbol for all that ought to be local. This was exactly the sort of issue over which local people, through their parish council, should have full control. But, despite its intention, this article provoked the realization that even such an obvious local issue was Planetary in scope. Ordinarily, the decision as to whether there should be a lampost or not would depend upon cost (could the parish afford to pay for it?); human safety (would it increase security for vulnerable members of the parish?); and, priorities (could the money be better spent on something else producing greater benefits?). As far as i was concerned, these local issues were still important, it's just that they'd become irrelevant in comparison to the global ones.

Firstly, if the world had a limited quantity of resources then if this particular parish got the lamp-post then other communities around the world would have to go without. What was involved here was the issue of global equity - lamp-posts ought to go to the most lamp-post deprived communities. Secondly, lamp-posts do not materialize out of nowhere. They are made from materials which need to be mined, processed, manufactured, retailed and transported. This causes pollution and ecological devastation at each stage in the process. From this global ecological perspective it became apparent that another egalitarian issue was involved; if one community was purchasing entitlements to large amounts of pollution and ecological devastation then all other communities would be left with a much smaller entitlements - unless it was tacitly agreed that every community had the right to use its financial power to cause as much damage to the Earth’s life support system as it desired - which, is, of course, exactly the prevailing situation and exactly why a global warming disaster is looming. Surely, if humans are to protect the Earth’s life support system which means only a limited amount of pollution and ecological devastation, there has to be equality between the world’s communities over such entitlements. If there was no agreement then, once again, the scale of the pollution and ecological destruction caused by one community would be used as an excuse by all other communities to cause as much pollution and ecological devastation as they wanted - which could end only in the destruction of the Earth. The local was once again meaningless. What gave an area its meaning was the global situation, the Earth. Without this equality the poor in third world countries would have no reason to protect their share of the Earth’s geophysiology, which to a large extent is what has kept the Earth’s life sustaining processes alive from collapsing over the last couple of centuries given the extent to which the over-industrialized nations have destroyed their part of the Earth's life support system.

Finally, there was another issue whiich reared its head - not a global one so much as a Planetary one concerning how much of the Earth’s ecology needed to be protected in each country, and thus in each town, to ensure the healthy functioning of the Earth’s life sustaining processes. A geophysiological analysis could determine how much land ought to be left free of development in each country without damaging the Earth’s life support system. Given the over-developed nature of this country and the particular twon in which this one green site existed, it was blatantly obvious that it would be an act of ecocidal folly to build on this land - which is exactly of course what happened.

One of the ironies of this new global perspective is that although it is inherently egalitarian, promoting the equality of all peoples (and species) around the world, its most vociferous opponents have been green radicals supporting decentralization. Globalism has become so entangled with global institutions such as the imf, the world bank, multi-national corporations, the global village, and the prospect of a world government, that the egalitarian nature of geocentrism has not yet been appreciated. Meanwhile by focusing on the local and turning their backs on the global they are making it less and less likely that the poor will ever obtain the equality they deserve before the earth's life support system for humans collapses.