#123 Blow up pipelines? Tadzio Müller and Andreas Malm on what next for the climate movement

00:00:00: I kind of broke my nose not just against German cold unions but also against the intransigence of Friday's a future in German.

00:00:10: But it was completely obvious that the next move would have been organizing massive experience themselves and the leadership.

00:00:19: And the base both stood against that there was a left-wing and Rise Of Future.

00:00:23: But it was not powerful enough and as his lovely quote everything was changed to everything can remain the same.

00:00:31: And that's I think largely what Friday's would have wanted to do I think that.

00:00:36: Those positions are in a state of flux and you see it quiet notably with Extinction Rebellion.

00:00:44: Which was so extremely committed to a very narrow definition of non violence in 2019 now starting to diversify into systematically smashing the windows of major banks in the UK.

00:00:56: Those Banks pouring trillions of dollars and pounds into fossil-fuel extractions and that confrontation is something that our side we progressives can't shy away from.

00:01:05: And when it comes to the climate we should try to act as radically as we can without going too far.

00:01:11: And Alan eating people before we have those mega-disasters where 20 million people are.

00:01:17: All right guys a warm welcome to all our listeners Welcome to The Descent podcast to this week's show.

00:01:27: And thank you for joining me and two of the leading thinkers of the radical climate movement in the global North touch your Mula and Andreas mom.

00:01:36: I think they need no introduction if you want to know more about them take a look at the show notes where link some information.

00:01:42: Dismal Miller debate is about what could and what should be the next steps for Friday's for future Extinction rebellion and the climate movement in general.

00:01:51: Guys thank you so much for joining me let's start with tattoo is it actually the first time that you're debating these questions with Andreas know in 2009.

00:02:02: I was traveling around Europe anticipating for.

00:02:07: Well Seattle style disobedient at The unfccc Summit in the climate Summit in Copenhagen 2009 the cop15 there was a.

00:02:15: I want to see fairly sort of Centrist climate activists in

00:02:20: Sweden who was extremely extremely irritated by the fact that some of us links Hadi Carla mobilizing for civil disobedience which may lead to violence that Centrist climate activists was

00:02:33: Andreas malm and he then was the activist and I was the academic

00:02:39: did you remember of course the Copenhagen yes and it's sort of funny how things kind of flipped by now

00:02:46: yeah it's quite funny what the journey you made Andrea so now you're proposing in your latest

00:02:52: book on climate change how to blow up a pipeline you proposing Disobedience on the scale of sabotage and property destruction so maybe take us back to the old Andreas mom and what led you to the Andreas mom that you know well I don't know how interesting my personal journey is but let me just point out that I.

00:03:10: Back then I mean they the incident under refer to I believe happened in 2009 yes and in Copenhagen I think in the run-up to cop15 I engaged in very

00:03:23: kind of gentle sabotage in 2007 in the form of.

00:03:26: Defeating SUVs in Stockholm and elsewhere in Sweden something I described in the book but I had in the run-up to cop15.

00:03:36: Fairly classical trotskyist Mass line that the.

00:03:40: Point should be to bring as many people as possible onto the streets and have a mass demonstration.

00:03:47: And we should focus all our efforts on yeah drawing in as large.

00:03:53: Parts of the population as possible into this thing and we organized the demonstration that was.

00:03:58: Until then I think the largest climate demonstration and that had occurred in the in the global North at least with around.

00:04:05: People on the streets and that gave absolutely no positive result

00:04:12: it yielded less than zero because the outcomes of course of that Summit were so disastrous and I was very far from the only one

00:04:21: who came home from Copenhagen.

00:04:23: With a sense that the climate movement needs to do something completely different and of course what then develop was much more in line with what Tojo and his comments were were suggesting in those debates and I'm very happy to admit that I was on the wrong side and those debates.

00:04:37: Okay guys I guess this personal episode and how it panned out this actually telling us something about where we are right now and I'll struggle against Global heating but let's leave personal matters should site and talk strategy guys simple question

00:04:50: what should the climate movement do from here on out

00:04:52: how about we tell the story a little bit historically because then we also come to that keeps us on the question of strategy maybe we go back for a second yeah in the north you have the global Justice movement also known as alter-globalization movement now the strategy of that movement or

00:05:07: look the ngos unfortunately called theory of change nowadays was that we as movements cannot really achieve Global effects

00:05:15: social movements we had two week but if the other side as it works sheaves effects at the global scale through generating institutional processes WTO Etc and so forth then we can piggyback.

00:05:28: On their globality globality to find us the ability to have Global effects and by protesting at the global Summits we can have Global effects

00:05:36: thousand of the idea of the altar globalization and in fact the climate Justice movement as sort of seen from the perspective of the Copenhagen Summit which came Ten Years After Seattle.

00:05:45: I was in a way another iteration of the global Justice movement

00:05:49: and I think there were folks that country ass whooping thinking about climate change for a long time but many of us Global Justice leftists only came to the issue

00:05:57: in 2007 around the Highland M G8 Summit and the idea behind Copenhagen the mobilization and I think that was the idea of moderates and radicals.

00:06:06: Was that you somehow put a lot of pressure on the unfccc and that they will then not engage in these stupid market-based regulations but something better.

00:06:17: Undefined better and obviously that completely failed because there is no Global Climate policy it's a complete Mirage and now I would like to ask and just how would you frame so basic Copenhagen was a disaster for kind of everybody.

00:06:32: Governments had a total disaster the demonstration was huge but it was so nice and friendly it was that could you guys do something about climate change please yeah alright cool and.

00:06:43: And direct actions were brutally repressed were tactical flops there were 2,000 people arrested with out cause preemptively treated really badly and.

00:06:54: Everybody failed no yeah so Andreas you said there was a shift in the movements after that how would you express that well I completely agree with your history of the climate movement here my account of this shift would be that.

00:07:07: Top 15 The Summit in Copenhagen ended the illusion that we could as you say.

00:07:15: Push the UN to implement the necessary measures and it prompted the climate movement to start targeting fossil fuel production

00:07:25: head on in the US this took the form of the divestment movement the campaign against the Keystone XL pipeline later the color axis Pipeline and of course the various indigenous struggles against pipelines in the u.s. and Canada as well in Europe the great Innovation that's the great strategic Innovation was my view and the calendar which really gave new life to the climate movement in Europe

00:07:48: if I can just I'll play this card only once since you're the one who's Kylie writing academic books.

00:07:53: Professor mom could you not Professor splane Indigo lender to one of its key organizer of course.

00:07:59: No yeah this is from my view but you can you can go and correct me but my understanding of it and my greatest praise is reserved for people like yourself.

00:08:08: Who actually built this movement because it's the best movement that we've had in Europe as far as I can say.

00:08:13: But this is just my understanding of the face that ended with coffee scene and the face that began after

00:08:20: very much in line since there were some anarchists who even stood to the left of us reclaim the power in Copenhagen who said we have to hit the production that was their slow

00:08:29: yeah and it's of course true if you can't if there is no political regulation that you can influence that makes any difference

00:08:36: and obviously we know that Global Climate policy makes no difference at all it is it probably the only policy field that doesn't affect the climate one way or the other so you have to go and as it were hit the production

00:08:47: but what happened the British climate movement was the strongest in the second half of the Nords

00:08:53: hmm but then they had financial crisis and the British climate Camp Road is famous transformation or metamorphosis statement basically saying we're going to solve ourselves into the anti-austerity protests

00:09:04: so that meant that the banking passed to Germany in the climbing world is in Europe so the climate Camp the first.

00:09:11: In the west of Germany was on 2010 the first in the east in 2011.

00:09:16: They did some small-scale actions against the point of production their problems however were twofold.

00:09:22: First they were tiny actions there was nobody there as a few hundred people and secondly.

00:09:28: They started encountering workers resistance not explicit are very strong.

00:09:34: So the strategy of going to hit the production was first of all.

00:09:39: As a sort of matter of we're going to use our bodies to shut down emissions so an unmediated direct action strategy.

00:09:46: Failed between 2010 and 2014 because we didn't even get more than five six seven hundred people to action.

00:09:56: And.

00:09:57: In the calendar was actually an attempt to bring set of tactics from other movements from the Outlook from from the anti-nuclear movement others to that.

00:10:07: And make these actions actually spectacular and symbolic actions this is what I want to get to I'm going to determine what our strategy or theory of change how do we think.

00:10:17: The.

00:10:18: Protests are actions we organized but actually reach the effect that we want them to have and that's what I really like to talk about how so I can explain to you the

00:10:27: theory of change that ending A lender worked with particular carotid and also because a lot of people myself included would like to know how the idea is that Andreas develops and how to block a pipeline

00:10:38: because they seem to be mostly tactical ideas and I'm not saying this as a sort of have a big a big row about it but that's fine understand each other because

00:10:45: I am no longer very hopeful that we can come up with realistic strategies that bridge the gap between what is necessary and what is possible.

00:10:54: Andreas are you more hopeful in this regard than tattooists and tell us about the strategies and tactics you propose in how to blow up a pipeline one of you recent books

00:11:04: well I think that it's some years ago

00:11:09: since hope about climate was an emotional fuel

00:11:15: I don't think that I or anyone else

00:11:19: powered by an accelerating sense of the great hope we have about the state of the climate and what way progress we're making well maybe Joe Biden and and Ellen musk and Bill Gates have those feelings but I don't count them really low into our camp so

00:11:36: the argument I make and how to blow up a pipeline for an escalation in our tactics and for considering things like property destruction and various forms is based precisely on the realization that we haven't

00:11:50: come anywhere near doing the difference that we make the difference that we need to make and I'm not suggesting that it is likely.

00:11:58: That we will win the struggle however that's defined but I'm making the case that you cannot base your.

00:12:06: Politics on probability assessments and if the likelihood of defeat is overwhelming.

00:12:13: That doesn't make it any more exigent to fight to the contrary the odds can be so bad that it's precisely there for that you have to find

00:12:21: and I think the fact that we have essentially failed in the climate movement so far and as Tanya has eloquently argued in in several contexts we have we have failed and even making a dent in the aggregate Global emissions curves.

00:12:36: We have failed mostly and local National battles as well whether there are local victories here and there but nothing on the scale of what we need.

00:12:44: But all of this is just a guarantee that we will have more.

00:12:48: Confrontations and more struggles in the years ahead not only about the emissions themselves.

00:12:54: But about adaptation about geoengineering about- emissions and there will be an explosion of proliferation.

00:13:02: Of political conflicts around climate precisely because the situation is so bad and that means that it's more important than ever to try to intervene in those various Fields because we can't just let the enemy

00:13:16: and its various guises decide about what forms of adaptation what forms of negative emissions what forms of genuine earring

00:13:23: we should have not to leave out the central question of.

00:13:27: How emissions themselves are going to develop could you elaborate a bit under is what kind of radicalization you think about that you put forward new book how to blow up a pipeline what kind of direct action are you talking about

00:13:40: yeah so you can approach this question from different perspectives but one thing that really stood out in 2019 and this this book was a product of the conjunction of the planning team was that we had a lot of social movement mobilization happening around the world in that year and

00:13:56: the climate movement.

00:13:58: Was the exception to the rule of combative and confrontational tactics in Chile in Lebanon.

00:14:06: In Hong Kong wherever there was social protest in 2019 it included property destruction and confrontation with the comms the climate movement was the only one

00:14:16: that's stage exclusively peaceful Mass protests and Civil Disobedience with nothing in it

00:14:24: along the lines of of even property destruction and I think that contrast is quite remarkable and it is not in correspondence with the viciousness of for some capital

00:14:37: and with the magnitude of the problem of a climate crisis so what the climate movement needs to do in my view is to catch up with some of the other social movements that have been developing recently including in the global North not the least the.

00:14:49: Glorious Uprising after the murder of George Floyd that it that is a kind of model for how we can mobilize in and the global North in my view.

00:14:59: Okay let me let me jump in there because those are some very very interesting points and it is certainly the case that the climate movement has been in the global North dominated by

00:15:09: I mean there was a sort of a normative

00:15:11: non-violence approach pushed very much by the early incarnation of XR which was extremely annoying not exactly the normal is nonviolent approach and the lender always had a tactical nonviolent approach as in were being nonviolent because that is what in the current.

00:15:26: Conjuncture here in Germany seems for us to generate the most effect and there's the

00:15:32: examples that you use these are not like gotcha questions I'm not trying to say oh my God you're so wrong to say

00:15:37: I see what you're saying however the examples chili Lebanon and Hong Kong and black lives matter all refer to people fighting.

00:15:46: Well for their lives sounds a bit pathos heavy but.

00:15:50: I'm not currently fighting for my life in Germany most climate activists in Germany are not fighting for their lives or their social and cultural existences so there must be take them to count it easier to mobilize with a more militant tactic.

00:16:04: When there's a sense that folks existence is on the line and that's ends.

00:16:10: Doesn't yet exist in large parts of the global North so so it seems to me that

00:16:17: while I have absolutely no problem with endorsing all manners of sabotage and of course there's also draws the line at but draws the distinction between infrastructure and people now human bodies as it were and that's very important to me too

00:16:31: say them anyway ironic that's an extremely rare and is an extremely important distinction.

00:16:35: But the things you could only be need to put the tactic into the context of a strategy and we need to discuss how that strategy refers to

00:16:43: broader social forces because in an argument make a bit of a junk later on surely in the debate we're going to end up with this question of the state what do we think the state is going to do.

00:16:53: So one of my favorites a theorist said that the state is the material condensation of social Force relations the material condensation of social Force relations that's to say.

00:17:03: False relations between social groups we need to work out who in the global North

00:17:09: which is where your book is largely aimed at on the SMS my organizing is taking place who in the global North actually has the interest and the capacity.

00:17:18: To stop the climate crisis because that was the move that the young Marx.

00:17:23: Made with the industrial proletariat when he was obviously terribly wrong but it was still an interesting intellectual exercise said

00:17:29: in the expropriation of the new industrial proletariat I see I see

00:17:35: everybody's expropriation so there's an interest but they also have the capability because that's sitting right at the point of production now again whether that was right or wrong it's not the point but it was the the right question and it seems to me that

00:17:47: climate activists in Germany we've always struggled with the fact that we actually went against most people's material interest

00:17:53: that's a question that isn't answered by giving an excellent and coherent justification of a tactical escalation

00:18:01: let me just say that they're there

00:18:04: there are so many problems at stake here and I have to say that I feel privileged to discuss them with touch you because I don't know any other interlocutor that have more insight into this yeah deserve to be out there and I've been trying to.

00:18:17: Convinced her to put them to paper so that we can read in in the English language and in book form or something because I think all your experiences and insights from the struggle in Germany of the past decade and more would deserve that and we will be a great views.

00:18:31: But let's leave the question of the subject and marks and the state to the side for the moment and just stay with a question of the contrast and weather.

00:18:40: The the reason the people don't fight as militantly for climate Justice in the global North has to do with whether their lives are at stake or not and let's do that let me just preface this by saying that

00:18:51: I'm totally aware of the difference between the kind of principled in my view started dogmatic

00:18:57: pacifism propounded by XR in its 2019 addition and the the Tactical non-violence used by ending lender which clearly is framed in another way.

00:19:07: And I think that and Amanda has of course done exactly the right thing in asking the question what tactics

00:19:14: are most useful for us in the concrete political situation we find ourselves in this country and that's always the question that should be asked about those things.

00:19:22: You should never deploy tactics for dogmatic Universal reasons but only.

00:19:28: If and when they can actually work on the ground that in itself is a deviation from any kind of Dogma about tactics that's where I think XR made a huge mistake and it's ideas in 2019 no

00:19:40: the question of life and death yes some of the struggles that I alluded to in 2019 and in 2020 as well or

00:19:47: obviously about direct physical existence notably the Floyd Uprising where it was a matter of a man getting killed in a way that

00:19:55: far too many African Americans have endured

00:19:58: for a very long time and people immediately saw that this is a question of life and death and therefore they were ready to go out and confront the cops and Destroy certain kinds of property and things like that when it comes to to The Climate crisis.

00:20:12: That sense yes you're right is still largely lacking in much of the global North I

00:20:19: I do believe that there are instances even in the global North when a case could be made to people

00:20:26: that your lives are at stake and one country where this has been quite conspicuously the case recently is Australia where people have suffered some quite serious losses

00:20:38: from one fires back in 2019 220 and more recently floods in the very same parts of that

00:20:45: and my reading from a distance is that there is quite a lot of distress and even anger about those losses and that people are quite

00:20:53: fearful for their lives the problem is that this doesn't translate into attacks on the sources of the misery with Australia still being the word's largest coal exporter and having a government that is banking on

00:21:07: even further expansion of coal and gas now as I've tried to suggest in a number of contexts after my book came out.

00:21:15: If I pathetically and the next moment of extreme climate disaster in Australia they will come we know that for a certainty some groups and activists were to call for a demonstration or some other kind of action

00:21:25: against a cold installation and go in and wreck it destroy it in one way or another

00:21:31: I think that could be very useful for people in Australia to get out of there paralysis and despair.

00:21:38: Open the realization that unless we do something about coal extraction to begin with that we have in this country we're doomed

00:21:45: to burning ourselves and drowning ourselves to death

00:21:48: and I think the perception of whether life or death is at stake is something that is made or not and the task of the climate movement in these situations is to bring home the message that yes

00:22:00: your life is at stake

00:22:02: and it does it doesn't have to be your life it can be the life of multitudes Elsewhere and we know that climate disasters will kill millions of people in the years and decades ahead and that's when the climate movement has the task to demonstrate the people and then tell people that fossil fuel Technologies are a source of those people's death

00:22:21: and that death is mediated through the atmosphere unlike the death that was inflicted on George Floyd

00:22:27: but it is death nonetheless it is murder it is killing it is violence and it should be treated as such and our task is to show this to people in word and In Deed.

00:22:35: I agree with you but they were a number of sleight of hands in that like for example it is either their lives, all the lives of multitudes Elsewhere now you're saying this in a supremely racist world where

00:22:48: multitudes who skin color is different and by the way I'm not one of those critics who suggest that you're not aware of racism

00:22:53: with a second Collective I think you wrote the white skinned black feel exactly so I'm not saying that you're aware of that

00:23:00: but it seems to me that you're ignoring a little bit how that structures people's interests and of course I can convince people that their lives are at stake in some distant future to say that multitudes elsewhere are threatened.

00:23:11: I mean I live in Germany during the Euro crisis people in Germany started realizing that our wealth is the precondition for say the Greeks poverty

00:23:20: did people give a fuck no material interest is constructed relatively and the global North is essentially in that sense a set of global labor aristocracy know the the interests the material interests of the vast majority of people in the global North.

00:23:34: Such.

00:23:35: That they support the continued destruction of the biosphere in terms of their short-term use a material interest in and do not take this as a method of moral criticism I say this as a matter of fact and it seems to me a little bit that and this what you're saying is something what.

00:23:49: Klima movies have been doing for several years I mean that had lower on my my good friend from the Philippines she was at a at a Friday's demo in our hand in 2019

00:23:59: and she said that a thinker was were along the lines of my kids told me to tell you to kind of stop destroying their world or their homes

00:24:08: but Friday's didn't respond to that with a massive wave of Civil Disobedience though some of us were actually think was that

00:24:14: in fact Fridays for future I think in the end went with its interest as Northern middle-class activists.

00:24:21: For Whom the maintenance of the status quo is a better bet than the destruction of the status quo

00:24:27: and that's what we come back to Global North This Global South if you live in relative material comfort then the pitch hey let's just fuck this shit up and see what happens afterwards which is of course what we have left you radicals really.

00:24:40: Come through it for most people is not a good pitch is not a good sales pitch and I say this is somebody who's not as the strategies but also a public relations guys I'm a Salesman essentially

00:24:50: sure there's a contradiction of your argument though and that's that on the one hand you give up on change coming from within the global North because it's a labor aristocracy on the other hand

00:25:00: you want a message that can convince people in the global North to jump on board if you go with the line that the global North is essentially a laborer Stocker say and the people in Germany.

00:25:09: Or behold them to business as usual and there's no way we convinced them then the the implication of that would maybe.

00:25:16: A strategy somewhat along the lines of the blacking out the band or something like that that all your actions

00:25:22: inside the imperialist core should be designed so as to

00:25:27: support people in the global South and our political mandate as climate activists

00:25:32: and the global North stems from what people in the Philippines have to go through and that to me I mean

00:25:39: you're putting me let me just finish I'm not rejecting that argument I'm just saying that the political implication of that argument you put it would be impractical isolation and escalation of tactics and this now we're doing exactly what male academics tend to do shouting at each other Mouse first of all I do not

00:25:56: refer to the blinking you got on gang which is something that we need to maybe explain to the listeners bi you should as a kind of urban Guerrilla Urban third world is to gorilla

00:26:05: the weatherman action direct pretty got there also is picking up my position was so I'm going to go back to my own story

00:26:15: now and again lender in 2015 managed to.

00:26:18: Kind of revolutionized climate activism we made a super sexy we actually were tactically effective we created a massive sense of empowerment amongst the people who took part as a sense of empowerment that Andreas describes to me eloquently although parenthetically he was part of the

00:26:32: March of fools as we in the ending A lender Command Center called massively fucked with our PR strategy but I understand why you did it I would have been a little of her

00:26:41: in your finger as well now from 2015 onwards the German anti-coal movement essentially went on a power play

00:26:49: until 2018 we

00:26:52: played every move out of the Strategic rulebook that we took from the anti-nuclear movement we played every move at its best ending A lender was sort of the best example of event-based active machine a long time at the same time we have to come right in Hamburg evolved creating the kind of stable place occupation where

00:27:09: you can on the one hand generate sort of media activity but especially you can also train Cadre so you have that perfect yet events and places.

00:27:18: And you had an opponent fossil Capital which was really behaving incredibly stupidly I mean when and rwe said in the middle of 2018 we're going to cut down on the forest I was angry for three seconds and then extremely excited for three hours because I thought wow great.

00:27:33: They giving us exactly what we need.

00:27:37: Even defended Humber forest green managed to convince 75% of the German population of an early call phase I run 20 30 even half of the afd voters fascist party were in favor of that.

00:27:49: But still.

00:27:51: The political system driven by a coalition of coal unions coal companies and coal regions managed.

00:27:59: Beat us back we got a cold phase of in 2038 which is ludicrous

00:28:03: so at this point the strategy of small groups a but in the in the lower thousands are low tens of thousands

00:28:11: of highly trained activists contrary doing actions those actions creating media attention that media attention shifting public opinion and then some sort of political crisis like see Fukushima happens where the government is forced to act in the way the movement want

00:28:25: that's the theory of change their strategy that we inherited from the anti-nuclear movement problem was that the other side was too effective in the backyard in the corridors of political power

00:28:36: when movements are.

00:28:37: Very far away and very weak so at that point when the coal Commission in Germany gave out its report 2038 I fell into a political depression.

00:28:46: Until I saw Friday's two months later five days for future are a generational actor in a way you could do with Friday's for future the same thing that young Marx did with industrial proletariat say

00:28:58: in the theft of this Generations future is contained the theft of

00:29:04: all of our future and given that material interest is constructed relatively a generationally constitute an actor actually even in the global North as a material interest for fighting for some photos

00:29:14: climate policy or some climate reform it is

00:29:17: because again it's about to be constructed not these are as a generation acted when we constructed these are the folks in the South but these are the older Generations also

00:29:26: Marxism of the left on good with understanding generational processes 1968 was very much a generational revolt and I think we need to look at the possibility of a global generational revolt and what stands.

00:29:40: In the way of that.

00:29:42: I'm not talking about small scale Urban guerrillas but I'm talking about this hundreds of thousands of people engaging in ending A lender style that Disobedience and not

00:29:50: a few hundreds sorry guys I have to jump in here and give our listeners some perspective before you reply and Reyes at this point I like to mention that touches trying

00:29:59: not to force but from oh yeah he was loving Fridays for future to take up to Civil Disobedience and the Glenda style tactics

00:30:08: sort of scaling up more militant tactics

00:30:11: and so far he was not able to convince Friday so Futures leadership they refused to engage in that escalation on the grounds that they think

00:30:18: it will eliminate people and the climate movement will lose respect and support and to some extent I see that point if I think about smashing Windows of fossil fuel exporters right now destroying pipeline stuff like that at this moment at least

00:30:31: see the Notions of eco-terrorism popping up and dominating public discourse actually so Andreas what do you think about those two issues yeah I'll comment on what you said look at Somethin I want to comment on what Andrew said I think that.

00:30:44: Those positions are in a state of flux and you see it quite notably with Extinction Rebellion.

00:30:52: Which was so extremely committed to a very narrow definition of non violence in 2019 now starting to diversify into systemically smashing the windows of major banks in the UK.

00:31:04: Those Banks pouring trillions of dollars and pounds into fossil fuel extraction so you can see those videos from recent weeks where X are activists go up to the.

00:31:12: Windows of Barclays and hsps and Banks like that and and shattering their windows and I think that you will see

00:31:19: processes of radicalization coming out of the greater number generation as well when those kids realize that.

00:31:26: Business as usual still hasn't been you know tinkered with let alone terminated and when you see more climate disaster strike I think that position that you outlined as the one taken in response to tell Joe will start to crack

00:31:40: at least among some of the young caters of the finest for future movement now but I want to go back to what I just said because I think Tonya is getting at something really really important here first of all my reference to Black and got a league and the black and got a band was not to suggest that your

00:31:53: line of argumentation would end up with armed robberies of banks but what they suggested was that the working class in the global North.

00:32:01: Is not in a position to oppose the imperialist world order because the material interests of the working class are in line

00:32:10: with the capitalist classes and therefore

00:32:13: everything we do in the global North will have to be on the Mandate of National Liberation movements in the global South and there's an affinity with that logic and the logic of Summer what you've said tantrum.

00:32:23: I'm not saying that the logic is necessarily wrong empirically because I actually think that you're quite right in particular about some of the trade unions in German and here's where I have a problem with quite a few of my trotskyist comrades or upset with what I've written because I don't

00:32:39: put any emphasis on Trade union struggles and some of them argue that

00:32:44: what I suggest what immediately Eileen ate the trade unions and still what's important if we're going to make any Headway in the climate struggle they argue is to win over the trade Unions that's kind of a bitch

00:32:53: the default trotskyist argumentation and I see some point in there too but it's very hard for me to see how trade unions in the global North can articulate a material interest that leads workers Into Climate Consciousness instead what a joy is is arguing and it's in his latest intervention here is that

00:33:11: the other subject that we have in the global North that can potentially be a subject for change is the youth and that it's based on age.

00:33:20: And that is the foundation for the movement that we saw in 2019 and I think there is some truth in this and I think we need to when we think about the formation of a climate subject in the global North I think we can see three things that can Propel people into.

00:33:33: Forming such a subject one being knowledge about the crisis and that knowledge doesn't have to be based on having any kind of academic credentials or anything it can be very basic knowledge

00:33:44: so basic that even kids at a very young age could have that knowledge or it could be the experience

00:33:49: of climate harm or alarm or it can be third solidarity with people in the global South and I think it's so all those three factors.

00:33:57: At work in the movement in 2019 and I think these factors will intensify in the coming years including the experience of actual.

00:34:05: Harm from climate disasters we saw that in 2018 and that was a very important factor in triggering the mobilisation in 2019 the extreme heat.

00:34:15: The drops the wildfires really made people quite scared and even in affluent countries like Sweden and Germany think of the summer of 2018 that will happen again we don't know if it will happen this summer but it's coming again or in different forms and you will have.

00:34:28: Hopefully hopefully but this is a matter of movement.

00:34:32: Mobilization and tactics and ideology production hopefully you will have solidarity with people in the global South when they suffer even worse disasters these are some foundations for funding a climate subject in the global North

00:34:44: not necessarily the point of interest at the point of production in the workplace which is the one that trotsky's such as myself.

00:34:51: Normally by default refer to but it's very very hard to see how cold workers and lausitz or for that matter.

00:34:56: Car workers in Sweden would from their workplace position Express their material interests in a way that translates into climate Consciousness so yes the subject needs to be from somewhere else.

00:35:08: It's not just hard to see Andreas let's not I mean I appreciate that you're so self-critical of trotskyist tradition which in this regard we need it plays very irritating role I have to say

00:35:18: but it's not so much difficult to see but it's basically a realistic strategic analysis also based on the experiences we've had in Germany and elsewhere.

00:35:26: Shows that the trade unions Express

00:35:30: this but another trotskyist can add that the Trade union leadership is a reactionary and the workers at the base are all this year Progressive radical oh my God have you actually talked to factory workers and the coal workers stood the center of the and I ain't they stood solidly behind their Union and it's radical

00:35:48: anti-climate position Iggy metal

00:35:50: which is the German well the German car you essentially it's the corporatist union that organizes Germany's largest sector

00:35:59: I mean they are part and parcel of the capital release let's spend a few minutes on knocking out that workers.

00:36:05: Thing out of the ballpark because I'm so bored by it I mean I worked at the Rosa Luxemburg foundation and honestly they made me waste so much time

00:36:12: now you talk to Cole works and I gotta talk to Coal workers and their interests are not up to our construction like it's not I'm going to go there but anyway comrade you know what you have you've got a false consciousness like what the fuck but seriously

00:36:26: it is very clear that their immediate material interest is against

00:36:30: us shutting down their jobs and the same with the car unions they already articulating a position where they're saying well the only way we can do climate is to build loads more electric cars

00:36:41: so basically we're getting a to problem of productivism and essentially provide workers in the global North want to produce more because more production means more jobs now.

00:36:51: I am a think unlike under SD growth so that might be an interesting issue to talk about but from an ecological perspective the problem with capitalism is not the capital struggle between capital and labor that capital is so mean to labor

00:37:03: from an ecological perspective the problem of capitalism is that is so expansive needs to constantly take new parts of the world into a space of accumulation and thus destroyed

00:37:12: and the capital relation consists of capital plus labor.

00:37:16: Show you have to be a crazy dramatic Marxist to say we can somehow convince these workers whose objective I can interest is in producing more stuff so that they can continue working because the W3 and therefore need a job to survive

00:37:30: you just can we just start saying

00:37:33: almost certain industrial workers in the global North not just not be our Alice they will be our enemies in Libya most effective enemies because unlike fossil Capital fossil fuel workers are actual people and cantor's reinvest themselves into a hedge fund

00:37:47: until.

00:37:48: So every action a position on this under the S because I've spoken to so many people on the left who can't get over this thing it's got to be the workers like no that is just wrong

00:37:58: yeah what fact I do disagree with some of this I don't think that

00:38:02: organized labor and the global North and countries like Germany or Sweden or the us if there's any organized labor left in the country will be in any way

00:38:10: the driver or the prime mover of a climate movement which some people seem to think but I don't think that there are

00:38:18: enemies because I don't think that cold workers are necessarily wedded to

00:38:24: working in a coal mine there is a recent example of this happening in the US where one of the coal miners unions.

00:38:32: Agreed with the climate reformists who is now occupying the White House Joe Biden that yes we're happy to desist from coal mining if we are guaranteed other kinds of jobs the enemy here

00:38:44: is the kind of capital that makes profit from fossil fuel production because that capital in itself cannot be reinvented.

00:38:53: The process of accumulating Capital through fossil fuel production.

00:38:58: Cannot be transferred to renewable energy is what I mean by this is that if you have an oil platform you can't turn that oil platform into a centralized solar power plant or a wind turbine or something else and a late-night mind the money that is invested into lignite coal mine.

00:39:13: Is invested into producing coal and a coal mine cannot become a renewable energy plan.

00:39:20: Or something like that so the capital that is embodied in fossil fuel production that.

00:39:27: Is our enemy but the workers themselves precisely because they are people as you said don't have that identical interest in that particular

00:39:36: work that they're doing and they might very well find other more fruitful work more stimulating work and other things and I think the point that we shouldn't lose in the green New Deal and similar projects is to make our interest

00:39:48: compatible with workers and make them potential allies not the drivers of the climate struggle but on our side

00:39:56: sorry but that is the same twaddle I've been hearing sorry to I'm not insulting you I'm insulting makes bosses at the resolution book Foundation I hope that listening to her that is the same time wasting crap I've spent.

00:40:08: G is on in Germany you say the workers aren't necessarily our opponents I don't care at some level of abstraction whether they may or may not add some point in Another Universe maybe our opponents they

00:40:21: the coal Union was the single most effective player in Germany and shutting down the coal movement or a rapid cul-de-sac fact fact yes I agree

00:40:32: also they said

00:40:33: sure we'll start working on if you can offers other jobs now I have done a lot of reading on this subject of just transition just transition a term comes that comes from North American Trade unions from the 80s and 90s when you have the first Rebels between environmentalists and labor.

00:40:47: And they said oh just transition is one where everybody is Happy the environment workers.

00:40:52: The global South the only ones who might be unhappy I like the 0.1% or something

00:40:57: now it's sort of I call this a left-wing Pareto rule where redistribution is sort of okay if only if the one percent suffer now.

00:41:06: The thing is

00:41:07: the large fossil fuel infrastructures are almost all industrial monocultures he will no doubt agree Andreas you literally wrote the book on fossil capital and since you said such nice things about me before I say I actually don't have climate debates anymore

00:41:21: I really largely have lots of gay BDSM sex and work as a sex worker and find that a much more interesting to talk about currently than the climate but under yes.

00:41:30: Is a sort of single-handedly as I said a saved Marxism from irrelevance in the climate crisis with powerful writing that addresses concerns of actual activists and resonates with the sense of urgency that drives this movement and.

00:41:45: What county happened in the bay that over the last years has helped the German climate within back a lot because we basically invested energy into moving people.

00:41:53: Coal workers from the active opponent category in the Alinsky spectrum of allies to sort of allies but.

00:42:01: Which is impossible to pause you can't move people from active opponents to allies in a short time

00:42:06: back to why that's the case so having written a book and also Capital you know that fossil fuel infrastructure are largely Industrial monocultures

00:42:14: now and just imagine industrial monocultures a bit like agricultural monocultures if you take a field you.

00:42:22: Screw it for 40 years with industrial agriculture mono cropping and pesticides it on so forth you're not going to get a permaculture Garden that the year after

00:42:32: after you shut that down there is not an example in the world where a large dirty industrial sector

00:42:40: will shut down in such a way that was considered just by the workers in such a way that they didn't fight against its closure

00:42:50: now I'm not saying this in any way in normative way and the same there is not a single empirical example not even the Chinese government.

00:42:58: Based on salt attorneys and probably has fairly High degree of control over its workers was able to reduce steel production very easily.

00:43:06: Because you can't just shut it down.

00:43:09: Industrial monoculture sector and in hopes that the new grows there they were like the feels will lie fallow for several years every X industrial region is a poor read

00:43:19: Northern England the Rust Belt that it does through parts of Eastern Germany if you have a dirty industrial monoculture first of all.

00:43:27: It's going to be a poor area so the workers

00:43:30: if you say they're going to stop working code if there are other job understand position but it's also a ploy to the Union's know that there is no alternative they've been fighting against Alternatives in those reasons for 30 years at the very least so just

00:43:44: we're doing the same thing that has driven me out of the time you'd we are wasting time on questions that have empirically been answered

00:43:52: in the mines and intellectuals are probably easier

00:43:55: it's sort of jump over but there is simply no alternative that you can offer folks in lusatia one of these the East German coal region or the Rhineland there is no alternative they will fight as and somebody explain to me how we change the German car sector at current levels of productivity

00:44:09: because that would be no job losses to something better there is no way and the question isn't an abstract one but a concrete one

00:44:19: let me say that to suck each other's dicks in a metaphorical fashion for another moment let's also look forward to the not metaphorical dick sake about half an hour or so I hope you'll excuse the matter.

00:44:33: I mean I think this is one of the things that are so valuable with your experience that it needs to be brought out because it would.

00:44:40: It's not poker Hall at least create some doubt in much of the global discourse around green you dealing all these things that this actual struggle with the unions that you've had in Germany.

00:44:49: Needs to be brought to a wider audience because there is still a lot of Illusion around how these things can work out now having said that.

00:44:58: If I were committed Swedish Social Democrat I would point to the example of the policies that were in place and this country in the 50s and 60s where you had.

00:45:08: Very rapid industrial technological development shaking out one sector after another but you had a Social Democratic state that.

00:45:15: Quite smoothly managed to move a part of the workforce from those industries that were shaken out to others that were on the rise

00:45:23: through re-education retraining training and the geographical redistribution in a more or less planned manner

00:45:29: now I am not that very committed Swedish social Democrats I'm not calling point to this actually KitKat but I don't I'm not I'm not sure that the situation is.

00:45:39: Ty Lee as Bleak as you suggest but I think you're right on one very Central strategic.

00:45:44: And that is that the climate movement really will waste time

00:45:49: if it's designs and Taylor's its methods and tactics and interventions exclusively to win over to the Trade union so that's a kind of Mirage that serves as a distraction.

00:46:01: Of for the movement and it's a very very important point that you're making there but I'm not I'm not entirely prepared on giving up on the idea that there can be some compatibility

00:46:10: between a climate transition and working class material interests even in the global.

00:46:17: That's as much of a trotsky's that's I'm still uh okay I got to say that at least so far I have not given up on the working class in the global North at least to be an ally

00:46:24: um but touch you before you reply to Andrea's I would you Andreas like to describe where you see possible points of intervention where we can align the interests of workers the global North with the climate Justice movement I think I've

00:46:38: I think for example of the labor.

00:46:40: I think for example of Labor time reduction or the conversion of certain fossil fuel heavy Industries yeah we can look at the dirtiest sectors of all such as oil production

00:46:51: now I have argued that Central demand in every country where.

00:46:57: Where all companies are privately owned would be for their immediate nationalization

00:47:02: but those entities do not have to be liquidated physically because in the oil companies there are the chemical and engineering and technical skills that we need.

00:47:14: To start draw CO2 down from the atmosphere

00:47:18: through direct air capture now this opens onto another venue of debate namely our views of negative emissions Technologies and in this case more particularly direct are capture but I think that one of the advantages of that idea is that you can keep.

00:47:33: Employees of nationalized total nationalized shell nationalized Exxon Mobil in employment you just set them to work on something that they are technically.

00:47:42: Capable of doing namely draw Seattle CO2 down and pump it down into the ground and reverse.

00:47:50: The accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere when it comes to the Auto industry I do think and here I'm in alignment with with my comrades in the 4th National in Sweden to work in the Auto industry.

00:48:01: That you can imagine converting the production of cars into something else

00:48:06: I mean the the Auto industry is an incredibly versatile technical apparatus that could Justice well produce.

00:48:12: Deck machines or solar panels or something as that hasn't happened yet I know

00:48:18: and the union caters that have proposed have come nowhere so far but we have a lot of political projects that have failed I mean the Palestinian Freedom struggle has been a failure for a Century doesn't mean that we should give up on it and so on and so forth

00:48:29: there's a few differences first of all conversion is another of those terms

00:48:33: that has no empirical referent at all there is no example those

00:48:39: of the kind that would lead to workers in these sectors to not fight against that conversion these are all

00:48:46: just the empty signifiers around which the unions can manage to convince us industrial unions that they are not our enemies while at the same time.

00:48:57: Lying in bed and really awfully submissive ways and I say this as a submissive with the car industry

00:49:03: I mean my submission is much more sight or sound of the trade unions that basically with that right hand that working with the kinda Street to expand production and they send their left hand the one guy or girl who knows about conversion to speak to us climate activists I mean

00:49:17: I have basically been screwed over in ways that I don't appreciate by the trade unions way too often also I'm way too impatient and

00:49:26: given that there's not that much time to do these process cause we're going to have to talk a bit about the corona demobilization

00:49:33: because obviously in 2020 would have been the point when Friday for future would have had to fight back against the inaction of the German government and of course nobody could fight but essentially the idea that say the German kind is true.

00:49:45: Which makes its money from.

00:49:48: Overproducing illegally dirty hyper large cars yeah the idea that that can be turned into some sort of socially useful industry

00:49:57: but you would have to massively reduce the level of production that would mean you'd have to match either redistribute work.

00:50:05: Let people go so again all the things you're saying under is they've all been said for about 10 years we've tried all of these things.

00:50:14: And it turns out that they didn't work people for example I mean thinking the career in the corona lockdown do you think it's really attractive for people to say hey you can have more time.

00:50:24: For folks in the industrial sectors work Remains Not as the primary source of income but also of identity.

00:50:31: Of central connections of how disease will tell the tale Hub participating in society now we can talk to them about conversion projects until the cows come home all the while the Trade union leadership.

00:50:43: Plot with the leadership of capital how to produce more German SUVs this exact is exactly that it's not an abstract question empirically what you're saying isn't happening now of course you can say it may happen

00:50:57: as a strategist I have to figure out how it can happen and I don't see a pasta water I agree with much of what you're saying but the first thing you said I disagree with them that was that none of these conversions have ever happened I mean

00:51:09: parts of the Auto industry in Sweden and in the US during this pandemic did convert into producing.

00:51:16: Material for the hospital sector in treating the in the victims of the pandemic and of course that was much smaller than the enormous conversion of the auto sector in the US.

00:51:25: To fight the second world war and all this happened without the workers protesting in fact the thing I believe quite a few workers in those factories were quite happy with the conversion that happened during covid-19

00:51:35: but yes you're right.

00:51:37: Again I stress this we cannot given the awful state of the labor movement in our countries.

00:51:45: Depth are strategies to the single focus of winning them over we just have to

00:51:50: keep that as part of the transition that once it gets underway if it ever does the workers will have to be on board not our enemies now we need to recognize I think her also that

00:52:01: the generally dismal state of class struggle and are part of the world and our moment in history is a major obstacle to any progress on the climate front

00:52:12: if we would have had the 1970s as the time when we had to deal with with acute climate catastrophe the parameters would have been very different that was when the working class would add its

00:52:23: at its peak of political and economic strength in our part of the world and that also open the working class.

00:52:30: At least it's more more advanced caters to questions around quality of life quality of Labor reduced labor time and all of these things that are now so incredibly difficult to talk about because the working class is.

00:52:42: A decomposed social political force that is fragmented.

00:52:46: That is completely under the control of its bureaucracy and that is fighting to maintain its material interests which still include which should look of course acknowledge and that's the laborer stalker component quite a few material Privileges and the combination of this means that the working class in our country today

00:53:02: isn't necessarily that emancipatory force that we would like it to be on the climate front and we really should should get away from that traditional illusion about the working class without I hope giving up

00:53:14: completely.

00:53:15: Okay guys let's move on we agree that workers will not be the driving force in the struggle against Global heating the question remains whether we can win them over as allies or not sure

00:53:26: okay but where do we go from here okay so the workers will not lead the struggle.

00:53:32: They may be opponents all they may be passive we couldn't decide

00:53:36: small groups of activists highly specialized Cadre by small groups I mean in the thousands or low tens of thousands trying to shift public opinion in such a way that the political system responds at least the most powerful

00:53:49: European climate movement the gym one failed with that strategy which takes us back I think to the generational Act.

00:53:57: You mentioned various struggles at the beginning of this conversation of the rest in terms of their tactics now if you draw so you've got tactics strategy and debase I would start from the base strategy and then tactics who were the base of

00:54:11: most of the large Progressive struggles in the last year's

00:54:16: and so by the way it's not about age it's about events in the but you sent it's the financial crisis shaped a generation not because people are now 30 years open without from there things that happened

00:54:25: the cheap the identities I really recommend the book back here Milburn generation left amazing now.

00:54:32: Chili was the Henry Russian sonido the generation without fear those were the people

00:54:37: who didn't have relatives thrown out to finish as helicopters and black lives matter although it is careful to point out that it is not a youth.

00:54:47: Bass movement are youth-led movement partly because African American Beauties have strong emotions of Elder leadership is nonetheless empirically very much a young people led move

00:54:58: the Bernie Sanders movement young people the climate with young people in fact it isn't workers.

00:55:06: For small groups is radical activists it is I venture

00:55:10: largely generationally constituted actors that are leading the largest Progressive struggles in the world.

00:55:18: And I'd like to just stop for a moment and I want to hear and read what do you believe that

00:55:23: my contention here is correct or not and how do you relate no I think it's correct but I wonder how much of a historical novel tears that this is because I think you can make this argument to virtually any historical episode of social struggles because it tends to be young people who go and find I mean in the Bolshevik Revolution or any Revolution its young people

00:55:41: that happened in 1968 it happened in Palestine in 87 anywhere you go it's young people who struggle is he but that is exactly interesting.

00:55:49: This is basically like we're Marxist you and I so we're like Okay so we've got this crazy sort of intense theorization of workers and their struggles and the interest and where they live and let me years and learning.

00:56:03: You and I know fuck all about Generations I'm going to say I read this book back here Milburn as you know okay Karl Mannheim wrote something consumer Generations

00:56:11: if you say it is obvious that young people are the ones always leading struggles that I'd say okay so why haven't we theorized that yeah I agree I why is that my position was

00:56:23: I was depressed when we got 2038 then the young people came to the street and I realized that their call

00:56:30: the for future as abstract as that may have sounded and as empty as that that was that was a call that resonated I've been working two term climate Justice

00:56:41: for 12 years I will stand with that term but is very unattractive sales pitch again.

00:56:47: Because Justice is a term that social Democrats have made very boring this is like different in the US.

00:56:53: We in Europe don't have the environmental justice tradition so column just was a term that didn't really catch on but when price for future went on to the street I mean there were demonstrations where you had

00:57:03: my my my my husband and I formed packets for future there were psychologists if you to the Pentagon for future and.

00:57:11: Basically the for future call resonated it was.

00:57:15: He get money face it was capable of creating a societal and Germany because we all remember the times when it was one of the most frequent leftist sentences was

00:57:25: it is easier to imagine the end of the world and the end of capitalism when Fridays for future showed up just for a very brief moment

00:57:33: it became possible to imagine a future again because until then capitalism seem to have stolen not as the present all of the futures from us and when I realized that you could then fill this idea of a future

00:57:46: also with other stories than just about climate for example I think the future.

00:57:52: Is for example the future is much much more trans the future is more queer stories about a future that is attractive that people can fight for.

00:58:01: First the generational basis material interest contained in that and then a story that allow people to.

00:58:09: Opt-in as it were that made them into the actor that mobilized 1.4 million people in Germany on the 20th of.

00:58:17: September vastly dwarfing any other climate protest at ever happened now.

00:58:24: At that point I thought okay this is interesting except that then the German government at the very same day of the demonstration had the chutzpa

00:58:32: to publish its clima packet its climate package climate policy package which was a spit in the face.

00:58:39: I was actually on the stage when that came out in the center next coaster some Fridays Cadre and I was looking at them thinking okay now they're going to have to like stop calling for some form of sabotage Masters Adidas or whatever.

00:58:52: And they did.

00:58:54: And I spent the next half year calling sort of a massively business-to-business and then Corona happened and a year later I dropped out of the climate.

00:59:02: Because you're disappointed in the Young Generation or I mean marks was also at some point disappointed in the industrial proletariat because the story that I told about them accident that essentially

00:59:11: they are the universal actor that's going to bring about emancipation was just as silly as magical realism is dialectical motto

00:59:18: of course you do you're a trot but basically dialectics is actually a religious idea that something.

00:59:25: Instead of creates its own negation.

00:59:28: And then those two meet and create a synthesis that is literally an idea that comes out a late mediaeval scholasticism yeah it's where they had to explain why God would create the Earth sorry but as literally the origin of dialectics is religious claptrap.

00:59:43: And sure I knew that I was engaging in some kind of magical thinking I was aware of that and I wrote that but the problem is.

00:59:51: The thing is no other way to bridge the gap

00:59:54: between what is possible and what is necessary then with magical thinking in Andreas I think thinking there is some magical thing around Technologies I mean any form of carbon capture out of the air is the only form of carbon capture out of the air.

01:00:08: That is commercially viable it's in its use for enhanced oil recovery.

01:00:12: That is the only commercially viable carbon capture project so that said

01:00:18: for me the magical element is provided by movements father's its green hydrogen or the green economy and we all need a magical element

01:00:27: that allows us to bridge the captains or necessary and possible because.

01:00:33: Is necessary it's just not possible at this point I cannot see a part and it'll be my last one last one for now and yes you said at the beginning that means we have to fight even more.

01:00:42: Things I don't fight to feel good about myself nor do I fight to defend my own life.

01:00:47: I'm fighting to defend other people's lives and if I'm not doing that then why should I fight.

01:00:53: I will of course continue fighting but in a way Raymond Williams said what is truly radical is not to make despair convincing but hope realistic

01:01:02: I have lost the ability right now to make hope realistic and the reason under the eye so I wanted to talk to you is because I think you

01:01:11: currently other one.

01:01:12: With that ability and that's why I was so frustrated with that workers story because I thought no no no it's completely uninspiring like I've been debunked those arguments 1500 times like let's go somewhere

01:01:26: where we can find Hope again okay so it's not going to be the workers we're going to lead it

01:01:30: what that position is unclear the the generations interesting but they are largely Bushra and in that sense their class interest is to maintain the status quo.

01:01:38: Where is

01:01:40: source of Hope Beyond a sort of crass volunteerism that says let's just all fuck sugar I'm in total sympathy with that feeling and I don't pretend to have an answer to it that doesn't have that magical component that you pinpoint

01:01:52: but I mean if we if we leave aside the the sort of existential questions here and and the ones about personal choices and all that and are different

01:02:03: everyone's different experience with movement and all that I'd like to go back to the question of where do we go from here.

01:02:11: Given the wave that we had in 2019 and that was so abruptly ended by the onset of the pandemic.

01:02:19: And how shall we assess the paralysis that the climate movement has been in over the past year in the global North.

01:02:25: What's it can it can it regain any of their momentum from 2019 or is that now a cycle that has come to an end and I will have to be a completely different cycle.

01:02:35: When that mean that there would have to be another person like that tune by something else than the Fridays for future.

01:02:40: A new Extinction Rebellion kind of initiative following on another kind of climate disaster also I think we need to in relation to the the idea of but your style events.

01:02:50: To think a little bit about our experience that is so frustrating I think in recent years with those.

01:02:56: Options of demonstrations activism around one topic or another that then dies down.

01:03:02: And doesn't leave a trace in any kind of political lasting dynamic.

01:03:08: What how can we plot some kind of strategy for the climate movement where one cycle feeds into the next and can we.

01:03:16: Imagine an escalation also in terms of like organizational capacities and structure so that we don't have to reinvent the wheel every time.

01:03:23: What are the limits that social media imposes on activism in in our time these are some of the things that I think we should we should grapple with as well and I'd like to hear what your thoughts aren't on your own.

01:03:35: What should the movement do in its present state of coma she would just continue to stay home as long as this pandemic lasts and what do we do once it's over or what I don't know if you have thoughts on.

01:03:45: I have to preface this by saying that.

01:03:48: I'm quite manly character and when I'm up I'm up when I'm down I'm kind of down and I'm currently in a political depression I do not.

01:03:56: And we may have a difference on the idea of whether the climate can tip or not I do not see that there's any path to us preventing the climate from tipping into an unstable State and if the global climate system tips into an unstable state.

01:04:08: We basically believe in the kind of comfort zone that is allowed for the last twelve thousand years of human civilization came to call it that I don't really see a realistic path towards that so that's kind of my preface you sort of.

01:04:21: Asking

01:04:22: somebody who's dying of alcoholism how to stop drinking and I was a terrible metaphor polling please cut that out she sent me a post production edit that thank you very much one of the reasons why I miss movement so much

01:04:35: in the corona age is because movement for us is also a sense of identity and productivity.

01:04:40: It's a sort of a little bit our commander our community is almost similar to a kind of Church community movement was kind of my God like.

01:04:50: Movement was the actor that could make everything good I mean I would say I would go to events and say social movements are the source of all that is good true and beautiful in the world and so.

01:05:02: And I thought they were the one to always sort of make good stuff happen and then we did our best and we failed to make good stuff happen my current position.

01:05:11: Is this the psychic last cycle is broken because Cycles really also just follow in a way laws of physics and if a forward momentum is completely stopped.

01:05:21: Say a wave crashes against the wall once you take down that ball the wave doesn't just restart mmm so the cycle is definitely broke

01:05:30: many of the contract like me who pushed it are licking their wounds to my having kids various forms of not withdrawing the spending less time with the struggle

01:05:40: I believe the last climate Justice movement possessor next iteration of the global Justice movement of the 1990.

01:05:46: I think that the Young Generation generation climate as I sometimes called it I think they have to create their own stories and they never really

01:05:56: got down with the term climate justice so much they used it but they never really owned it

01:06:00: by the way I distance myself from these dark Mountain Proto fascists who just because some of the words I might say that might sound similar if you don't know them don't look them up

01:06:08: so applicant lipstick people in the global North who say well everybody is going to die so I'm just going to retreat to a mount the SEC a Huguenot fucking dare you

01:06:16: white rich bastard but so I do believe that the world is going to become a darker place in this century.

01:06:25: And I think that the stories that we told in the 1990s were still kind of residues from 1970s where there still was a perspective for us a real Global Justice

01:06:35: even some kind of revolution in a positive sense I think we may have to say goodbye to that perspective and ask ourselves

01:06:43: what our stories have week until now in a world that will get darker

01:06:48: this isn't the only pandemic that will happen and we're all watching news and some of the stories about how this may be the new normal.

01:06:56: I think the new cycle will be led by a global generation and it'll tell stories not of global Revolution.

01:07:04: Maybe of moments of empowerment of moments of emancipation or of moments of Joy or in my case they'll be a lot of moments of horny and hotness

01:07:14: that doesn't sound very hopeful but I kind of broke my nose not just against German cold unions but also against the intransigence of Friday's a future in German

01:07:26: it was completely obvious that the next move would have been organizing massive experience themselves and the leadership.

01:07:34: And the base both stood against that there was a left-wing and Rise of future but it was not powerful enough and.

01:07:42: As is lovely quote closet Buy in from the leopard everything the reformist sort of a Dodge.

01:07:48: Moto everything was changed everything can remain the same and that's I think largely what Friday's would have wanted to do.

01:07:56: But the world will get worse and they will therefore have to create stories that motivate people to fight.

01:08:03: Even though the big major sort of global revolution of Utopia won't.

01:08:08: Happen it just means that I can tell these stories because I'm an old-school leftist and I need the big macro Utopia

01:08:14: let me just say that Utopia has never been my genre or in line with my temperament but when it comes to storytelling

01:08:23: I have to say that the one

01:08:25: big resource that we have right now is a novel by a Storyteller Kim Stanley Robinson that being Ministry for the future that I think is take the greatest book on climate politics published since normal clients big one and the story that it tells is other world that's getting darker.

01:08:41: It starts with this hyper lethal heat wave that kills about 20 million people in Northern India in 2025 in the course of just the week.

01:08:51: After that.

01:08:53: The dams burst and young Indians form a group called The Children of Kali and fans are across the globe in a way that we know is logistically and technically possible.

01:09:03: And start attacking fossil-fuel installations and in fact also

01:09:08: Executives on all Trilogy Ultra rich people so they gon go beyond proper instruction and started killing people this novel is so great because it

01:09:17: outlines a kind of best case scenario for the next decades as Robinson's himself has advertised it but even in this best case it's of course punctuated by this these horrendous disasters.

01:09:31: But they Propel people to fight not so much in a state of Hope or if with a desire to achieve some kind of Utopia but in the case of those Indians.

01:09:40: It's even the desire for Revenge I think that animate them to attack

01:09:44: fossil fuel Technologies and their profit shares around the world Public Enemy I have this line in the great album apocalypse 91 the enemy strikes black it starts with the future holds nothing else but confrontation and I think that has never been true or them now.

01:09:58: And that confrontation is something that our side we progressives can't shy away from.

01:10:04: And when it comes to the climate we should try to act as radically as we can without going too far.

01:10:10: And Alan eating people before we have those mega-disasters we're 20 million people are killed and things that not because we think this would bring us communism.

01:10:18: I mean struggle for communism will be that for survival in the in the coming century and here at my position is completely in line with that outlined by the Salvage Collective.

01:10:28: Which I see as the antidote to dark Mountain while at the same time being a representative of a kind of a revolutionary Marxism with that

01:10:36: any optimism without any Illusions about us being on the

01:10:39: on the cusp of Victory or anything like that but I think stories of these kind can be told and we'll be told and this novel by Robinson is a great exercise in how can actually tell those stories and I think there will be there will be new faces in the struggle where new stores on that kind will emerge and a few of them will be will be totally in the utopian key.

01:11:01: Yeah.

01:11:02: I'm going to link to that novel for sure guys I wanted to talk to you or wanted to hear your opinions on the role of the state the question of the state

01:11:13: we missed that so far compared to the climate crisis that states are acting fast and decisive in the face of the Coronavirus

01:11:21: you compared that response andreasen you're in one of your recent books to kind of a war communism and there's a question right now

01:11:31: how we could

01:11:33: how we should use the state in the face of the climate crisis so and it's obviously a contested question on the left as well so

01:11:42: maybe you both can elaborate a bit what's your position on that well I mean the question of the state

01:11:49: it's kind of complex one and in my Corona book when I spoke about ecological War communism and things like that that was an argument that I made I sketched over a week and a very crude fashion and that needs a lot of elaboration but

01:12:04: but generally I just think that if there's ever going to be any transition away from fossil fuels.

01:12:11: States will be the actors to make

01:12:15: V necessary decisions at the end of the day as in I don't think and I think this ties in with the strategy of Ender galindez Thunder oh I'll find it earlier and correct me if I'm wrong here but

01:12:28: we don't entertain the idea that we as activists or we as we in the climate movement.

01:12:34: Can on our own by our direct actions shut down the entire fossil fuel infrastructure and replace it with whatever alternative we want to see our task is to.

01:12:45: Initiate a process and build mass pressure outside the state and our wager is that at some point the balance of forces will be sufficiently on our side to set in process some kind of a.

01:12:59: Now there yes there might share with be a magic component to that but the political Point here to me is that we cannot have that kind of anarchist hyper confidence in our

01:13:12: own.

01:13:12: Abilities as activists to execute everything that is necessary by the way I wanted to say another thing on something that's had you said and and it's on how the climate system works well I don't see it as having one specific threshold or Tipping Point

01:13:27: that we're nearing and once we've crossed that.

01:13:30: At we're doomed to spiraling chaos and there's no point in action and longer I think the climate system has several different tipping points and for everyone that is crossed the situation gets worse.

01:13:41: But it's not like we're in a mode of climate stability and then it flips over into hotels Earth and we're doomed to Venus or something like that there are intermediate stages in that process and for every line that is crossed.

01:13:53: It becomes more urgent not to cross the next one and so on and so

01:13:57: State action if it ever starts will be the Victor through which change ultimately happens because you can't accomplish something like a 10-percent emissions reduction year on year in Germany or Sweden or in the US.

01:14:10: By any other actor than the state leading that process.

01:14:13: Hear it now the problem is that our states are not doing this they're not they're not going to do it of their own volition of their own accord on their own initiative they will have to be pushed into doing it

01:14:23: of course someone could argue in objection to my line of argument here but if we were ever to get as strong as.

01:14:30: As this would require and we would be able to sort of remote control the state to do.

01:14:34: Our bidding then we could just as well to take over the state to reconstitute ourselves as the state and I would have would be open for that too but it's it's a distant Prospect.

01:14:43: So first of all the point about the climate system tipping now I am by no means the scientist of any sort really if there's a political scientist I kind of sucked but as far as I understand

01:14:56: the global climate system is a complex system.

01:15:00: Complex systems have two kinds of States stable and unstable and once they.

01:15:10: Tip out of unstable States they can stay for a very long time

01:15:14: in unstable state in which we do not know what happens so I believe that you're right Andrea is talking about these specific tipping points within the Earth system

01:15:22: but the global climate system as a whole

01:15:25: is a system with two kinds of states that are going to be stable or unstable and it's been in a stable state for 12,000 years and in the so-called Holocene we're going to get to the anthropocene versus capital or seen debate but basically

01:15:39: there are individual tipping points but the last twelve thousand years of human civilization have all taken place within a period of unusual climatic stability the Honda scene where the average mean temperature doesn't divert more than two

01:15:54: degrees from the know and if that space is left in fact that's actually a global unitary phenomenon

01:16:02: not the weather changes but whether there is stable or unstable climate in the world because the global climate system is an interconnected system so I do not have the references to now have this debate with you on the rest it seems we have different positions here.

01:16:16: But we probably both sense assertive have a sort of sense of urgency and that's where the question the statement in I probably

01:16:25: I think actually that this idea that there are kind of

01:16:27: anarchists who want to do everything in this small scale backyards is more prevalent in Sweden where anarchism I lived in Sweden for a while and I guess is more prevalent there there's actually a politically relevant and of his Union

01:16:40: as a see unlike Germany's FAU which is

01:16:43: three people it's quite politically irrelevant here too I have to say but I'm happy that you this is your diagnosis I'm hopeful that you're right okay simply curl it seems to me that that sort of your tree tree people in the identitarian reflexes like

01:16:59: the way I always do it is all right can your Collective produce my HIV medicine.

01:17:04: No alright so unless you can produce my HIV medicine in your backyard of the back of the collective we need to scale up Solutions.

01:17:13: I think of it I do think when you say I'm against it of Anika's small scouting just leave out the term Atticus and say like the idea that you can have these small-scale non-state based Solutions a sort of absurd and I'm not even the spend time on it.

01:17:27: I see that there was a lockdown of parts of the economy which was politically driven.

01:17:34: And by politically driven I of course dissolved the question of the state as it were or ignore it.

01:17:39: So I don't have to deal with the old State Theory questions can the state do stuff against Capital whare but.

01:17:45: Politically driven lockdown that at least ideologically in some countries was justified with the solid eristic is retarded sort of argument

01:17:55: both German and Swedish have an adjective for solidarity English does not which must be the result of weaker workers move from here and basically.

01:18:06: What that is.

01:18:08: A place I would like to start thinking about to the two things I'd like to put together the possibility for large-scale Generation mobilization.

01:18:17: Bass with a strategy that aims at the state.

01:18:25: As the agent that even as the ideal General capitalist if that's what it's called in English TDL exam capitalist could shut down other capitals

01:18:34: in the ideal general interest of capital you're absolutely right and I don't think that it's inconceivable that it could happen when climate disasters reach the level of intensity that the pandemic

01:18:48: had was at least perceived to have the measures that the that states took early on in the pandemic and I agree with you that they caught the missions they get it even.

01:18:57: Even steeper than what we've argued for in the in the first months then there was a rebound of course but

01:19:03: I mean these measures were put in place by states without any social movements in any way

01:19:08: prompting the states to do so it would probably need to be different under under conditions of climate disaster but the danger of course is that when the crisis becomes as intense as the pandemic was perceived to be a year ago.

01:19:22: The risk I think is that states jump for something completely different and that is sort of geoengineering

01:19:28: because that is the kind of measure that works similarly to lockdowns or vaccines that you can have an immediate effect or so it would seem.

01:19:38: And you don't need to Tinker with business as usual and you don't need to challenge any any propertied classes or dominant class interests or anything.

01:19:47: So that's something that I think we need to be to prepare for much much more in the climate movement that that is an actual risk that states can can jump on that

01:19:57: some state or another yeah some agent jump on that as a pseudo solution and what do we do then.

01:20:04: At this point I probably have to say that I've been discussing questions of climate strategy for 13 years now.

01:20:13: 14 I started thinking about this climate stuff into a 2007 around the The Hiding dumb G8 Summit because Angela Merkel cell talking about it and

01:20:22: position that she ate as a non new liberal institution which may or may not have been the case but essentially I'm so tired because basically after we lost against the coal industry.

01:20:34: We started planning the next fight against the car industry and there's some amazing comrades working on that here sometimes they call me and say hey do you like talking about this in a moment I sort of partly sort of I co-authored the strategy that lost against Cole

01:20:47: coal is only a fraction of the power of car's engine how do we challenge that at this but I don't know I and this is where we come to the fact where I am

01:20:57: incredibly tired and kind of and if I start trying now it's because I'm General emotional person but I feel so.

01:21:05: Beaten and battered and wounded and traumatized and and like I mean the trade unions by they were the reasons why I can't stand them is because they contributed me being essentially bullied out of my job let's just some person point.

01:21:19: Just for just a moment I don't know I want to have the luxury of saying

01:21:25: I know that's a luxury in the privilege I don't know the answers to those questions because I spent 14 years thinking about them and writing with men traveling on the world and fighting and getting my ass kicked and and and sometimes you know briefly winning as but then they'll end.

01:21:38: I need a break I'm currently set of going through a whole bunch of really interesting powerful and beautiful I am freshly in love with this amazing set of.

01:21:48: BDSM driven trans love and bigger than driven transformation and my head is on those.

01:21:54: That's fun to do and you just serve your brake more than anyone else and it's perfectly fine to have a break-even in this struggle I just hope that we can get you back

01:22:03: because I assume that ending and another German kind of movements will need your capacities

01:22:08: let that be in 5 years into the future or 10 or 15 hour however long you need the struggle will be on for them by then as well and I.

01:22:17: Who sit in Sweden and I'm not an organized and haven't been in many years I mean it's part of my privileged position to continue to write and discuss about those things.

01:22:27: I haven't paid the prize of an activist banging my head against the wall of Trade union bureaucracies.

01:22:33: And making all the kinds of personal sacrifices the way that you have in recent years so I'm not going to try to convince you too

01:22:41: to stop with what we're doing what you like to do and get back to exactly what you've been doing for 13 years I hope there are other Conrad so can take over and the quality of the end again indicators to me seems to suggest that it there aren't quite a few comrades that

01:22:54: I don't know if they can step into your shoes but they're they're probably can continue to do some great work and

01:23:01: my I guess magical hope is that.

01:23:05: With coming events coming a climate impacts you will see more people not fewer.

01:23:12: Plunging themselves into desperate climate activism and well yeah that's just that's the only thing I can hope for.

01:23:20: Yeah I miss have trying to say a conclusion convincing.

01:23:24: And that doesn't just mean I'm going to go off having sex so never mind the rest of the world global in justices will multiply and if we do not fight against them the global North we are the worst kind.

01:23:36: We are the kind of white liberals that Martin Luther King hated who said that his problem isn't so much the sort of Hardcore racist but the white liberal who doesn't.

01:23:44: Realize that his position in life is.

01:23:47: Connected to what that white race is does so I'm not saying stop fighting I'm saying we have to adjust.

01:23:55: The way we think the fight.

01:23:58: To the possibility of none of it winning in the way we imagined it and we have to write new codes stories and songs.

01:24:09: And I meant is in the metaphorical sense I'm not sure I'd like most activist songs but nothing

01:24:15: for a world that's going to get darker we should have been at that point before but one that's not the dark Mountain sort of retreat and so I haven't read the Salvage collected for a while

01:24:24: but maybe that's some stories in that but they're amazing young Cadre and in a way I'm also just stepping back from a movement where I'm incredibly.

01:24:33: I'm going to start crying when I'm incredibly proud to have contributed to the to the creation of something like ending an end to vinspired all these people and now.

01:24:41: Now I just need to take a break and light a joint because I'm bleeding and if I look back at the battlefield.

01:24:51: I get scared and I just need to be away for a while that's that's perfectly fine and I hope that yeah.

01:25:00: You'll be back in some point and in the meantime other people will step forth I know and those would mostly be they will be younger.

01:25:09: More more more female and less pain they are going to address and cop that's absolutely something abs.

01:25:18: Some good final words that show and Andreas thank you so much for being on the show thanks Lucas organization thank you at various much-loved thank you thank you much love from.

01:25:28: Music.

01:25:41: Okay everybody this was the mom Milah debate on the dissens podcast thank you so much for joining us here and if you want to know more about dissents or my work and if you want to support my work which you can do

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01:26:02: And every possible way to support my work here again thank you for tuning in and we hear each other next week with a new episode of descent.

01:26:11: Music.