Those statements directly parallel the ideas on climate that the U.S. government has been guided by, despite its possessing the off switch to the unparalleled pollution source that is the U.S. war machine. It's not been profitable to think in any way other than this, so that's the thinking that has defined the way the capitalist state acts. The consequence is that likely as of many years ago now, the globe has been on track to reach the point where multiple climate tipping points are reached. A recent Science research paper concluded that realistically, the atmosphere will be warmed to the point where several kinds of feedback loops become likely to get set in motion: "even the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to well below 2Â degreesC and preferably 1.5Â degreesC is not safe as 1.5Â degreesC and above risks crossing multiple tipping points. Crossing these CTPs can generate positive feedbacks that increase the likelihood of crossing other CTPs. Currently the world is heading toward ~2 to 3Â degreesC of global warming; at best, if all net-zero pledges and nationally determined contributions are implemented it could reach just below 2Â degreesC. This would lower tipping point risks somewhat but would still be dangerous as it could trigger multiple climate tipping points."
The Chan poster was objectively incorrect in their assessment of China's contributions to the problem. By China's current rate of climate action, its emissions will peak before 2030 and go down to net-zero carbon by 2060. The question is whether China's exceptional pace of meeting the Paris goals, in which it's a decade ahead of reaching its reduction pledges, will be enough to make up for the massive deficiencies on climate action that most capitalist states are creating. Whereas China and the other socialist states are operating according to a climate pledge far more radical than the heavily compromised Paris accord, most of the capitalist states are operating as if the accord were even more moderate.
India is the only G20 country that's well on track to achieve its Paris goals, a fact that also contradicts the argument of the Chan poster but which provides little comfort in the global context. If effective climate action remains overwhelmingly concentrated in Asia, at least until the labor movement grows strong enough to overcome much of global bourgeois power, how likely is it that 2Â degreesC will be avoided? And since we now know that 1.5Â degreesC is all it may take to bring several tipping points, how likely is it that humanity will manage to remain in control over the situation it's created? It's possible that we've already lost control over it, and become unable to stop the process of damage within the next several eons. That's what it means to create a climate-feedback loop, especially the handful of them that the paper says could soon be in effect.
This situation was realized due to the logic of capitalist realism, which has always viewed catastrophe as an acceptable outcome. If capitalism leads to crisis, says capitalist realism, that's not worth getting upset about, because supposedly capitalism is nothing more than an unavoidable reflection of human biology. Climate apocalypse is seen as no less of an inevitability than the expiration of the physical body. So capitalist realism's adherents have reacted to climate disruption the same way that human beings tend to react to the knowledge of death: by tying oneself to the cultural conventions that have been made familiar by one's conditions. The theme of these mindsets being self-reinforcing again comes up here. Capitalist realism, the ideological origin of climate doomerism, is itself a direct product of that death-denial mechanism Becker described.
Because the people have sought grounding in the face of uncertainty--much of which has itself been created by capitalist byproducts like the nuclear threat--they've clung to their culturally ingrained belief that capitalism is the only possible system. This fatalistic perception has become extended to the climate crisis, and to the other catastrophes capitalism is creating. This is apparent in the normalization of the attitude that Covid-19 should at this point be accepted as simply another part of life, not worth masking over or being treated as a serious threat.
If capitalism has proven incapable of addressing the virus, why not embrace an individualist mindset towards it? It's what our ruling institutions have consistently urged us to do. Such an attitude informs the demonization of China's collectivist effort towards combating the pandemic, which at its core comes from a libertarian view of how society should operate. The way to justify that view is by convincing oneself it's the only thing that makes practical sense; if capitalism makes climate catastrophe and plague inevitable, and there's no alternative to capitalism, one may as well "drill baby drill" or act like the virus doesn't exist. Millions of lives will be lost due to these crises regardless of what any one individual does, and acting collectively isn't seen as an option within capitalist culture.
These reactionary ideas are getting less widely held, as is inevitable when the socioeconomic order has been progressively detrimental towards younger people in particular. Due to this growing rejection of capitalism's supporting narratives, mass mobilization towards revolution is increasingly possible. But for that to happen, the liberation movements will need to overcome the reaction from the remaining elements, which won't give up those narratives. More and more of society is responding to our crises by abandoning its commitment to maintaining the current social order. Yet many others are responding to our crises by intensifying their commitment to defending that order. It's the latter category that is more inclined to use war as a death-denial tool, to view violence as a means for personal catharsis in the face of death on a global scale.
For the revolutionary side to win, it will need to avoid thinking about violence in that way. Revolutionary theorists have always viewed violence from a purely utilitarian, practical perspective. Che Guevara described the guerrilla fighter as a "social reformer" who only wages war because the people have mandated they do so, and Mao said that communists never engage in war just for the sake of it; they only wage war when the conditions show this is necessary to defeat the forces of reaction, and they view the abolition of war as their ultimate goal. They never do violent things out of pleasure or impulse. That's the collectivist way of thinking about violence, in which violence only is called for when it's the most appropriate tool for advancing the interests of the people.
The reactionary view of violence is that it's all about serving the individual. That's why even in a reactionary war, in which warfare is facilitated by a state, the participants are conditioned to view their participation as not ultimately being an act that helps their country's people as a whole. Otherwise they wouldn't be encouraged to climb up the power structure of capitalism, and to trample over their fellow citizens in the process. The promise of the United States is that one can have the opportunity to advance their personal interests, at the expense of those who are sacrificed by capitalism. When a war for the advancement of bourgeois interests is waged, that's the ideological incentive for citizens to fight for capital: that they could benefit from capital's highly exclusive rewards.
In the era of neoliberalism, where those rewards are getting ever more narrowly distributed, this atomization has been getting all the more severe. Community and relationships have been getting scarcer as society has grown more profit-oriented, and therefore more economically desperate for the average person. This increased isolation of the individual is behind the rise in male loneliness that those resentful online men decry. They're upset about a real social problem. Their mistake is in misdiagnosing the cause of that problem, which comes from not analyzing it in the context of the larger global crises that impact so many people other than them. Class analysis, a correct perspective on the nature of imperialism, and a dialectical understanding of how society can be changed are mental health assets. They provide a path different from the resentful and ultraviolent one that reactionary politics offers.
To address the crises of capitalism, we must learn to critically examine our primal psychological impulses. Death-denial can be seen as the emotional driver of reactionary politics, because reactionary politics are motivated by fear of losing control. Their arguments are comforting to a mind that doesn't want to venture outside of those parameters that the prevailing cultural ideas have provided. It's from the same fear that ultra-leftist adventurism originates, because what's adventurism but a coping mechanism for those who don't see any way out other than cathartic violence? These ways of thinking encourage one to latch on to certain ways of operating, without considering how they may not be best for the wellbeing of the collective. The way to overcome our crisis is by analyzing it scientifically, and acting according to what the circumstances demand.
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