/168/ Corona, Climate, Communism ft. Andreas Malm
Added 2021-01-05 08:01:01 +0000 UTCOn the 'war communism' solution
As we enter the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic and its attendant turmoil, suffering and lockdown, inevitably the search for systemic causes and systemic responses grows more intense. Swedish ecologist and social theorist Andreas Malm joins us to discuss one possible response - a crisis communism modelled on the War Communism of early Soviet rule, as discussed in his new book ‘Corona, Climate Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty First Century.’ We discuss the nature of our contemporary crises, and how far the left needs its own distinctive form of emergency politics.
Readings:
- “To Halt Climate Change, We Need an Ecological Leninism”, Jacobin interview with Andreas Malm
- Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century, Andreas Malm, Verso
- Nature Defends Itself, Dayton Martindale, Boston Review
Comments
Loved this episode.
Blake
2021-03-01 22:04:06 +0000 UTCThe point was, which I'm sorry wasn't very clear, was not that all that is at stake is slightly cooler temperatures in the next few decades, but that that is all that an environmentalist revolutionary upheaval could promise its participants given the dynamics of the climate system, which is not the type of promise that inspires a revolution from below. However, civilization is not at stake either, given that the average predicted peak warming we are headed toward without policy is ~3C degrees, and significantly less with the policies in place. 2-3C peak warming will have some quite bad effects, but not only will it not threaten the survival of civilization on its own. The question isn't whether this level of climate change (or the risk of warming in excess of the models) is morally acceptable but what it determines about the possibilities of emancipatory politics versus other more pressing factors. The idea that you need a Messmer Plan-style nuclear buildout to decarbonize the grid is inconsistent with the energy systems literature (the most accepted and cited research, not just Mark Jacobson). Without cheaper energy storage, firm generation makes this easier, but it doesn't need to be a high percentage of the grid, and there are other sources of firm generation that don't require large upfront investments (geothermal/EGS, biomass, natural gas with carbon capture). Existing capitalist economies are of course perfectly capable of making some investments in nuclear as well, and this capability will likely increase as small modular reactor technology develops.
Joel
2021-01-16 20:39:46 +0000 UTCOf course liberals are 'excited' about solar panels and fighting climate change, they have to be. That veneer of positive propaganda is like, what they're for. That capital can actually navigate the Capitalocene, well - do you really want to wait to find out? We already know that capital can't/won't/hasn't built the nuclear infrastructure necessary for a de-fossilized energy grid. We also know intermittent power sources like solar/wind/tidal can't and will never be able to satisfy baseload in anything resembling a contemporary power grid mix - not without regular brownouts and rationing anyways. We also know every country missed its paris accord targets - perhaps there is some kind of political-economical explanation for this? We also know that the stakes aren't 'slightly cooler global temperatures in a few decades', but the survival of anything resembling a civilizational project. You guys are falling for myopic selective stats aggregation on the level of Stephen Pinker. Of course capital is eliminating poverty, when you define it as a static abstraction. Of course capitalism can make a climate energy grid transfer - when all you look at is the declining price of solar panels. We're getting climate-wartime command economies - this isn't optional, it's going to happen, and it's being tested with the covid response as we speak. It's not going to be pretty or nice or good, and it certainly won't be communist, but it's going to happen. It's not like any kind of class power transfer or storming of the winter palace is a conceivable outcome of the current state of affairs.
sploof
2021-01-15 19:15:05 +0000 UTC
