Please don't downvote this because this is a bad opinion.

Of course it's a bad opinion. I'm sharing this here because I want to talk about it being a bad opinion.

Why is it a bad opinion?

I actually agree with the basic premise but reject the conclusion. I agree that 100% renewable energy cannot bring about energy security in the context of endless growth, but I reject the conclusion that therefore we need to keep burning fossil fuels. The solution, I think, is for degrowth, a coordinated scaling down of production of worthless things while at the same time scaling up provisions of human well being. Make more homes, less golf courses. Make more vegetables and grains for human consumption rather than animal feed. Fund hospitals, not wars. If we scale back production while at the same time meeting a high level of human needs, 100% renewable energy will certainly be enough for human needs. 100% renewable energy will never be enough for capitalist endless growth, but it will be enough for a solarpunk future.

According to a complaint filed with the UK government by human rights and environmental advocates this week, Standard Chartered violated international guidelines for responsible business conduct by co-financing four coal-fired power plants that have devastated local communities in the Philippines.

The complaint was filed with the UK National Contact Point for Responsible Business Conduct, a government office tasked with investigating breaches of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.

Local communities have reported increased respiratory and skin disease, land dispossession, eviction and impoverishment directly resulting from the construction of the power plants.

The affected communities and NGOs are calling on Standard Chartered to contribute to the remediation process and strengthen its policy on remediation.

Capitalism’s grow-or-die imperative stands radically at odds with ecology’s imperative of interdependence and limit. The two imperatives can no longer coexist with each other; nor can any society founded on the myth that they can be reconciled hope to survive. Either we will establish an ecological society or society will go under for everyone, irrespective of his or her status.

It should first be noted that the communization milieu is indeed European in origin and largely does not address our settler-colonialist reality in the so-called Americas. Its largely European writers are conceptualizing from a different context than we live under in the so-called Americas (& other colonized lands).

Then why do we still talk about communization?

[…]

We can think about communization and decolonization as two aspects of the same weather system. Communization would attack the capitalist social relations which exist on occupied land, but clearly it would not go far enough. We’re writing from occupied Tongva territory, known by its original name Tovaangar, and to merely create communism (anarchy) and make no attempt to restore native lands to their original inhabitants would (once again) not be communism at all. Decolonization (anti-colonialism) reminds us that there is more to be done.

The coupling of communization & decolonization recognizes, especially with ever-intensifying climate change, that settlers do not deeply, or even superficially, understand the deep natural history of the land they are on. Here in so-called Los Angeles we are constantly facing the increasing danger of massive wild fires. But wild fires are an ancient part of this landscape. The ecology of the landscape made famous, via its mass particularization, around the world depends on fire for its rejuvenation. What has caused an increase of danger for humans is not just climate change bringing less rain and hotter weather, but also the fact that unmitigated capitalist development has made it profitable to build in places which would previously burn with little effect on human life: hilltops, in mountain forests, etc.

Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) describes an array of geoengineering techniques designed to partially block sunlight to mask the heating effect of greenhouse gasses. It does nothing to tackle the root causes of climate change, is inherently unpredictable and risks further destabilizing an already destabilized climate system with more and new extremes. It is neither insurance to ‘buy time’ nor any form of supplement to mitigation. Solar geoengineering is a recipe for disaster that delays climate action and real solutions, and puts our communities and ecosystems at unacceptable risk.

Widely discussed SRM techniques such as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) and marine cloud brightening (MCB) carry the further risk of ‘termination shock’ – the sudden spiraling of global temperatures if such injections were, for whatever reason, ever stopped. For SAI this means injections of chemicals into the stratosphere would need to be continued for several decades if not centuries, in effect requiring policy continuity spanning numerous generations – something that is virtually impossible to assure. In addition to severe environmental, social and political risks – which include serious threats to biodiversity and food security – SRM itself poses a clear ‘moral hazard’, risking delays to meaningful climate action that must occur in the near term.

The UN Human Rights Council’s Advisory Committee has warned that geoengineering technologies “could seriously interfere with the enjoyment of human rights for millions and perhaps billions of people”. It has also pointed out the disproportionate impact on Indigenous Peoples, peasants, fisherfolk and others living in rural areas. These same groups have been vocal in rejecting geoengineering as a dangerous distraction that would violate their rights.

I've been frustrated by some people's framing on the war on Gaza, as if the surrender of Hamas or the removal of Netanyahu and his lackies would stop a genocide. Israel is committing genocide. A Hamas surrender will not change that. The purpose of a system is what it does. If Israel's war is killing more women and children than Hamas, then that is its purpose.

What do you think?

On Sunday, February 25, we received an email from a person who signed himself Aaron Bushnell.

It read,

Today, I am planning to engage in an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people. The below links should take you to a livestream and recorded footage of the event, which will be highly disturbing. I ask that you make sure that the footage is preserved and reported on.

We consulted the Twitch account. The username displayed was “LillyAnarKitty,” and the user icon was a circle A, the universal signifier for anarchism—the movement against all forms of domination and oppression.

In the video, Aaron begins by introducing himself. “My name is Aaron Bushnell. I am an active-duty member of the US Air Force and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest—but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”