“To what extent is this entire movement simply a green Trojan horse, whose belly is full with red Marxist socioeconomic doctrine?”
The author opens with report on the Heartland Institute’s 2011 Sixth International Conference on Climate Change. Although that may sound impressive, it is actually a get-together for people for whom science is not their job, but a hobby: county commissioners, lawyers, an even “space architect.” Rothschild, the commissioner of a county considered a Republican stronghold in which the largest city is Westminster, a suburb of Baltimore comprised of 18,000 of which 86% of white. In other words, Rothschild represents a predominantly white, upper-class Republican district which is precisely the demographic which dominates the climate change denial movement. And the part of the world represented by 97% of all those who actually make their living as scientists and believe in the factual evidence of climate change is “movement” which he is here designating a communist conspiracy. What is significant about this quote is that Rothschild’s view is not—by a long shot—the most extreme example of a conspiracy theory developed by climate change deniers. In fact, within that particular movement, Rothschild is fairly moderate.
Since we have only a few short years to dramatically lower our emissions, the only rational way forward is to fully embrace the principle already well established in Western law: the polluter pays.
Estimates for the cost of fixing the problems caused by global warming and climate change slice across a wide and varied range, but except for the silly ones proposed by deniers like Newt Gingrich, they all top out in the financial stratosphere. Who should foot the bill? Of course, everyone will wind up footing the bill because that is the fundamental way that capitalism handles mistakes and disasters. Klein forwards a politically intelligent proposition based on legal precedent. One should not bet the farm this solution will, in fact, ever come to fruition. Expect, instead, that those who cannot legally mount a defense as to why they should not pay will ultimately be those taxed with the bulk of the bill.
It wins when Canadians are told our only hope of not ending up like Greece is to allow our boreal forests to be flayed so we can access the semisolid bitumen from the Alberta tar sands… when a park in Istanbul is slotted for demolition to make way for yet another shopping mall… when parents in Beijing are told that sending their wheezing kids to school in pollution masks decorated to look like cute cartoon characters is an acceptable price for economic progress.
The “it” here is capitalism. The competition at play here is the ongoing battle between economics and environmentalism. Capitalist interests are being pitted against the interests of the future of the earth in a number of ways every single day and these examples are but a fraction of a fraction of a fraction. In nearly ever case in which the forces of economics are pitted against the forces of planetary salvation, it is the planet that loses. Although the text is ostensibly on the subject of climate change and environmental protection, the underlying subject throughout is really the impact of the global dominance of capitalist economics. Even when utilizing examples from non-capitalist countries (like the schools in Beijing) it is still capitalist interests that shape environmental response. Thus, the essential foundational argument is that in order to address the looming disaster of unregulated climate change, the essence of capitalism must be altered and fundamentally shifted.
Blockadia is not a specific location on a map but rather a roving transnational conflict zone that is cropping up with increasing frequency and intensity wherever extractive projects are attempting to dig and drill, whether for open-pit mines, or gas fracking, or tar sands oil pipelines.
“Blockadia” is an umbrella term used to define a new strategy in environmental activism that is unified more by the nature of the response than any strongly defined ideologically shared community. Blockadia is a reference to a metaphorical nation-state undetermined by borders or topicality. It is represented by communal responses to specific anti-environmental stances, policies and agendas through peaceful tactics seeking non-violent response. The key element which divides Blockadia from more directly-targeted environmental activism (like Greenpeace and similar organizations) is that these movements are characterized an organically developing groundswell of localized response neither ignited nor beholden to any radical or more hardcore worldwide green organization.
