10 Essential Things to Know about Nonviolent Resistance

Two traditions of thinking about nonviolence hold sway.

- Principled nonviolence: Adherents decide to use nonviolent means on ethical grounds. In the Gandhian approach, nonviolence is a way of living a moral life.
- Pragmatic nonviolence: Activists, seeking to win rights, freedom, or justice, choose to use nonviolent techniques because they are more effective than violent means in achieving these goals. Gene Sharp is a major proponent of this approach.

However, in practice, principled proponents, such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, proved to be adept at pragmatically using nonviolent methods, Equally, some pragmatists, in their hearts, are pacifists as well as hard-headed realists. Continue reading →

How Nonviolent is Nonviolent Action?

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The relationship between violent and nonviolent action is not as clear-cut as it may at first appear.

In principle, as nonviolence guru Gene Sharp repeatedly reminds us, violence must not be combined with nonviolent action. Why? For one thing, violence will undermine the legitimacy and moral high ground enjoyed by nonviolent resisters. Why is this legitimacy so important? Because of its effect in undermining the morale of the violent attackers, creating dissension among supporters of the invaders/usurpers, and building international support to sanction the aggressors/usurpers of power. Conversely, violence creates fear that not only scares off potential supporters or resistance, but also motivates the oppressor’s police and armed forces to fight back more determinedly. Thus, nonviolent discipline is a key to success, claims Sharp with few dissenting. Continue reading →

The Viability of Nonviolent Defence Today

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“Non-violent defense” is an oxymoron. Or so it appears to many people. You hear the word “defense”, you think of “military”. You hear the term “national security”, you think of a state’s military strength (and perhaps diplomacy). The military has hi-jacked the terms defense and national security. Consequently, it sounds absurd to talk about non-violent defense.

But is the idea so preposterous?

Consider the war in Ukraine. Civilian resistance to the Russian invaders is inspirational. Civilians have blocked tanks and convoys, berated or cajoled Russian soldiers to undermine their resolve, given wrong directions to Russian convoys, refused to cooperate, and mounted spontaneous protests in occupied areas. And all these tactics were improvised on the spot.

Think how more effective non-violent defense would have been if it had been planned, and if Ukrainians had been trained in non-violent methods. With a civilian defense system in place, the Ukrainian armed forces might have allowed the Russian tanks to enter the country unimpeded. No immediate deaths, no destruction. And what can you, the invader, do with tanks when you face a population united in defiance, unarmed protest and complete non-cooperation? Ukraine would be indigestible.

Whether non-violent defense would have worked cannot be known. But what is certain is this: the prevailing notion of national security is leading us to death and destruction, in Ukraine and elsewhere. Thus, a potential alternative — civilian-based defence — deserves critical scrutiny. My earlier reflection on this system reviewed its strategy and tactics, some limiting conditions and provisos, and its potential benefits. Now I turn to lacuna and obstacles in the theory and practice of non-violent defense. Only hard-headed questioning will mitigate the skepticism surrounding this approach.

This critical review emphasizes the work of Gene Sharp – sometimes referred to as the “Clausewitz of non-violent warfare”. Recent major contributors on the methods of civilian resistance – in particular, Srdja Popovic and Erica Chenoworth – follow in Sharp’s footsteps. They provide either updated non-violent methods for a digital age (and for young rebels) or empirical evidence of the effectiveness of such an approach.

Two issues strike me as pivotal in getting real about non-violent defense. The first is recognizing and overcoming major domestic obstacles, especially vested interests, partisan divides, and apathy. The second involves seeing beyond the static typologies of non-violent action to conceptualize its implementation as a dynamic, mutually reinforcing process. Taking civilian defense seriously confronts its proponents with several dilemmas.

Not Just an Abstraction

Non-violent defense is not simply a theory. Not only is there a long history of improvised civilian resistance to invasions, but also countries such as Sweden, Switzerland, Finland and Lithuania have institutionalized civilian defense at various times.

Consider Sweden: “Total defense” (military plus civilian defense) originated in neutral Sweden in the dangerous 1930s and World War II. Created in 1944, a Swedish Civil Defence Board undertook research on civil defense, organized training and oversaw the construction of air raid shelters. Sweden ran civilian-defence training centres in six cities during the Cold War. In 1986 the agency merged with the fire services board in a new Rescue Services Agency. The end of the Cold War led to a withering of the civil defence component. The initial idea – that all citizens had a duty to protect their country in an organized manner – fell into disuse by the mid 1990s.

The Russian attack on Georgia and seizure of Crimea however, revived the concept of total defence after 2014. Everyone between the age of 16 and 70 again has an obligation to respond in the event of an invasion or a natural catastrophe. “Everyone is obliged to contribute and everyone is needed” proclaimed a government pamphlet in 2018. Swedes were cautioned in the same pamphlet to prepare themselves for an emergency, though the emphasis was as much on peace-time natural emergencies as war. Nevertheless, in the event of war, the pamphlet declared that “we will never give up”. This basic idea is central to non-violent defence: an invader may occupy territory, but total non-cooperation and symbolic opposition will raise the costs of occupation, thereby discouraging invasion in the first place. In principle, all municipalities, voluntary organizations, businesses, trade unions, and religious organizations are required to prepare for civilian defence .

By March 2022, at the height of the war in Ukraine, one in three Swedes was fairly or very concerned their country would be attacked.. Furthermore, a 2021 survey registered popular support for the idea of civil defense: 84 percent of Swedes said they would be willing to play a defense role, so long as it was non-combative.

Sweden is not an ideal case of civilian defense. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the government talked of raising the defense budget and perhaps abandoning Sweden’s neutrality by joining NATO. But the idea of civil defense persists as a defiant complement, though not alternative, to military defense.

Partisanship, Vested Interests and Apathy

If a country were to experiment with non-violent defense, what obstacles would the experiment encounter?

Sharp in Chapter 5 of Civilian-Based Defense contends that non-violent defense, to succeed, must not only adhere to an all-of-society, nonpartisan approach, but also secure the cooperation of the armed forces. People of both sexes and all ages must participate, according to Sharp. They will do so out of patriotism, the desire to maintain their way of life, and an abhorrence of domestic and foreign usurpers alike. It will also be necessary to bring the military onside, claims Sharp. Civilian-based defense (CBD) may thus begin as a minor supplement to the armed forces, the former’s role expanding as it demonstrates its efficacy and popularity.

Is this a realistic scenario in today’s world? The establishment of CBD, from this viewpoint, is largely a top-down exercise, based on two assumptions. The first is that partisan cleavages are bridgeable. According to Sharp, civilian defense must be “trans-partisan”. It must accommodate conservatives as well as liberals and socialists. If it becomes the project of a radical movement, or any single party, Sharp contends, its appeal will be too limited.

Secondly, this scenario assumes that reason will trump interests. The armed forces, various security apparatuses, suppliers of weapons and military technology and the national-security intellectual wing, are apparently swayed by evidence. Sharp emphasizes the importance of research in demonstrating CBD’s potential effectiveness. If research on CBD is positive, if the training of the population proceeds, and if civilians show enthusiasm, the armed wing of defense will acquiesce to the ascendancy of non-violent defense. Reason and patriotism will prevail.

Note that Sharp advocates “transarmament,” not disarmament. Presumably, it will be easier to sell CBD if it is seen not as pacifism, but as another form of struggle. The weapons in the new defence system are not munitions, missiles, warplanes, tanks; instead, they involve the subtle employment of 198 non-violent methods, their selection geared to the stage of engagement with the opponent, and the degree of the latter’s repressiveness.

I see three problems with this approach. The first pertains to interests. Sadly, we do not live in a world governed by reason; indeed, today people contest even what counts as fact. Interests shape dominant ideas, including those, or especially those, concerning national security. President Dwight Eisenhower, long ago, warned of the power of the military-industrial complex in bolstering military expenditures. Today, we would need to refer to an expanded military-industrial-security-intellectual complex. Thousands of billions of dollars are spent worldwide on the military and ancillary activities: on weapons, personnel, training, think-tanks, research and development. Many corporations, wealthy shareholders, employees and intellectuals are invested in perpetuating and extending the system of military defense. And defense budgets grow year after year.

In contrast, how much is spent on research on non-military forms of defense? Virtually nothing – perhaps the occasional grant for esoteric scholarly research.

Demilitarization will therefore involve a political struggle. It will be a struggle obviously in the superpowers. But even in in developing countries with weak institutions, the military tends to be comparatively strong. Much is at stake in defense policy for a range of powerful interests. No research results in favor of civilian defense are likely to persuade those whose profits, privileges or job depend on military defense. Non-violent defense – as more than a minor supplement to military defense – is a radical proposal.

Secondly, many societies today are riven with partisan divides and authoritarian tendencies. The United States is an obvious example, but the phenomenon is widespread, in Europe and beyond.

Is it possible to forge trans-partisan support for CBD in these circumstances?

Sharp notes in Civilian-Based Defence (ch. 5) that non-violent defence is more likely to work where social cohesion is high and democracy and civil society are strong. However, these ideal conditions are not, he claims, prerequisites.

But is Sharp correct? Can non-violent defence happen in the absence of social cohesion and strong democracy? It seems unlikely. The issue would be politicized and viewed with deep suspicion by conservative/populist forces. And autocrats would not empower their people via training in nonviolence.

Thirdly, alienation and cynicism are rife in many societies today; Yet Sharp emphasizes that non-violent defense requires intensive preparation and training of all or most of a country’s population. What will induce people to shake off their apathy and devote their free time to training? Motivation is a problem, magnified by deep partisan divides.

All these considerations – vested interests, partisan divides and alienation – suggest that a top-down, apolitical approach will not work. The reality is that non–violent defense is a radical democratic initiative. Nonviolent action is inherently democratic to the extent that it empowers people vis-a-vis their rulers or aggressors. Only a mass movement will be powerful enough to overcome the vested interests in militarism and motivate people to participate in training and preparation.

Of course, even if CBD fails as a national system, or is limited to a subsidiary role, people may, when the need arises, spontaneously take up nonviolent resistance. But a trained response would be so much more effective.

A Dynamic, Mutually Reinforcing Process

The prospect of non-violent defense is enhanced if it is understood as a dynamic process, rather than a static design. Don’t get lost in Sharp’s 198 methods of non-violent action and the complexities of relating strategy to circumstances. The key is this: CBD focuses on agency. People possess power to shape their own futures; how therefore should this agency be harnessed for the common good? People have power because rulers depend on the ruled. Rulers cannot rule if the latter withhold their consent (or perhaps more accurately, assent). Thus, Sharp and his followers explore the bases of consent, and how consent can be denied to internal usurpers or external aggressors through nonviolent means.

Sharp and the others adhere to an inductive approach. They draw principles of effective action from successful and unsuccessful cases. In their examples, groups and individuals improvised responses to attempted domination — for example, the passive resistance of the German population to the French-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr Basin in 1923, the heroic non-violent resistance to German occupation in Denmark and Norway during World War II, and the astounding non-cooperation and defiance of the Czechs and Slovaks that met the Warsaw Pact army’s invasion to end the Prague Spring in 1968. The point of these cases is obvious: if improvised strategies can work so effectively, imagine if they were organized!

Fine. But how do you begin the process? Enthusiasm for nonviolent defense may be limited at first, and powerful groups will not cooperate and may be actively obstructive.

The process seems to work like this. The more the government builds the capabilities of the civilian defenders, the greater the willingness of people to unite and resist, drawing on the learned repertoire of nonviolent strategy and tactics. And the more advanced the capabilities and the united willingness of defenders to resist, the less likely that enemies will attack or usurpers will usurp power. The costs of domination become too high.

What comprise the capabilities of non-violent defense? They include organizational structure, committed and shrewd leadership, training facilities geared to the general population, the proportion of the population that wants to participate, and ultimately the strength of civil society.

The final factor alludes to the importance of institutional involvement in civilian-based defense. What political parties, trade unions, religious bodies, school systems, municipalities support the system? Obviously, nonviolent action is much easier to develop within a democracy; indeed, it is inherently democratic. Again, CBD empowers people.

As the capabilities grow, the willingness to resist and the participation of the population expands. Concomitantly, the costs of asserting domination on the part of usurpers or aggressors rises, enhancing the prospects of peace – provided the society in question is willing to pre-empt conflict by negotiating jointly acceptable solutions to outstanding disputes.

Being Realistic

Demilitarization – reducing the budgets and roles of the armed forces – is a critical goal in today’s world. We face the rising probability of a nuclear holocaust resulting from accident, miscalculation, or escalation arising from a war like that in Ukraine. We are also very close to runaway global warming. The military, in the United States and increasingly elsewhere, is one of the largest institutional emitters of greenhouse gases. In addition, massive defense budgets are dedicated to waste – contributing neither to production not higher living standards – whereas we need to reallocate these resources to fighting climate change. Nonviolent defense, together with a renewed commitment to nuclear disarmament, is a potential way of achieving demilitarization.

Besides bolstering demilitarization, civilian defense has other positive outcomes. It reinforces civil society, builds democracy, discourages would-be tyrants and enemies, and extends norms of non-violent conflict resolution.

How then can we promote CBD? Civilian defense may proceed as a gradual process. Initially, it may be seen as only a supplement to military defense. Realism suggests that this approach is the most viable option. If popular enthusiasm grows and civilian capabilities advance, the military may be gradually reduced to a border control agency. But such a harmonious process is likely to be blocked at an early stage. Apolitical gradualism has severe limits.

Authoritarian states, for one thing, would balk at empowering their subjects. Civilian defense reveals the acute dependence of government on the assent of the ruled, together with the non-violent acts of omission and commission that withdraw that assent and paralyze rulership.

Nonetheless, in authoritarian systems, citizens have often improvised effective non-violent tactics. Consider the revolts of the people in eastern Europe and republics of the former Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s; the “Arab Spring” of the early 2010s, which featured in many cases massive street protests; the “color revolutions” beginning in 2004 in the post-Soviet countries of Eurasia, including Ukraine; and the non-violent revolts against military rule in Sudan, Myanmar and elsewhere. Indeed, nonviolent protest reached its apogee in the period 2010-19, inhibited eventually by the pandemic.

Nonviolence, at a minimal level, is just common sense for people with grievances but without deadly weapons.

Partisan divides and power structures also hinder the expansion of nonviolent resistance at the expense of the military. “The people united will never be defeated,” yes. But the people are rarely united, and vested interests are powerful. Partisan and other cleavages allow those who govern to divide and rule their subjects. Social cohesion, together with democracy, is a key ingredient of success with non-violence. Unfortunately, many societies today are riven by partisan loyalties and authoritarian tendencies. What to do?

Accept the reality: civilian defence, in its full manifestation where the military’s role considerably shrinks, is a radical proposal. It will probably be advocated only by a progressive movement, along with measures to9 achieve democratization, equity, and a Green New Deal for a just transition. Civilian defence, as a radical project of democratization and demilitarization, is the missing link in the programs of the left.

What sort of states are the best candidates for CBD? Nuclear-armed states are unlikely candidates. From the strategic viewpoint, it is assumed nuclear weapons deter attacks. We know the logic is strong. How else could a nuclear power such as Russia, without the deterrent, get away with attacking and devastating Ukraine, the second largest country in Europe? States will be reluctant to surrender their nuclear weapons.

Non-violent defence can still play a supplementary role in the US, the UK, France, India and Israel, acting as a major deterrent to domestic usurpers of power and building civil society for the longer run. In addition, the more states adopting CBD, the lower the international threats; the lower the tensions, the more likely are agreements on limiting and eventually abolishing nuclear weapons. There is an indirect benefit of civilian defence.

Clearly, CBD would be easiest to introduce in small democratic countries and territories that lack a military. Cases that come to mind include Costa Rica, Mauritius and Iceland.

Countries bordering on a Great Power could also benefit from civilian defence. These countries could not hope to defeat an invading force from the superpower – or at least not without inflicting enormous damage and casualties upon themselves. Besides training the population in the principles and methods of nonviolent defence, civil society organizations would need to build strong links with peace groups internationally and with dissident groups within the superpower. The aim would be to precipitate internal dissent in the aggressor’s country and international condemnation of the invader, together with sanctions, in the event of a conflict. This strategy would proceed along with a willingness to negotiate to resolve conflicts with the great-power neighbour. Ukraine would have been a major candidate for such an approach. Smaller countries would be in a more dangerous position with CBD. They would face the prospect of forced assimilation to the dominant ethnic group of the superpower, as has happened in Tibet and the western regions of China.

Democratic middle powers, especially the Nordic countries, also offer an opportunity. Sweden is an exemplar. They would begin with civilian defence as a supplement to military defence. As CBD is a dynamic process, it might expand over a decade as it demonstrates its viability. Given catastrophic climate change, civilian and military defence would both expand to encompass preparation and training in handling “natural” disasters (extreme heat and storms, floods and forest fires). The body in charge might be termed a “civilian protection agency.”

Nonviolent defense is one element in a broader program to allow humans to live and thrive in an increasingly dangerous world. Politics is key.

Richard Sandbrook is professor emeritus of Political Science at the University of Toronto and President of Science for Peace.

Demilitarization: Is It Time for Civilian-Based Defence?

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“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

Albert Einstein’s famous comment is more profoundly true today than when he uttered it in 1946. As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists explained in 2015, Einstein’s understanding of this old mode of thinking still defined the prevailing national security doctrine of all major states. It’s time for a change in thinking. Continue reading →

Climate Emergency: Getting Out Alive

Jim Morrison observed that nobody gets outta here alive. Though Morrison had a point, Kim Stanley Robinson sketches an optimistic scenario in which we – or many of us – do get out of the climate emergency alive. Robinson, in a book of 530 dense pages entitled The Ministry for the Future, mixes sci-fi with hard science to make his case. It is a tour de force, though a book of such demanding complexity that it is more likely to be talked about than read.

Despite the author’s touching belief in the sanctity of the rule of law, democratic representation and social and ecological justice, the book raises disturbing questions. Success in mastering climate change depends heavily on violence to deter carbon-intensive enterprises and life-styles and on extensive geo-engineering. Is this really what a just transition will entail? If so, how do those committed to non-violence and skeptical of geo-engineering respond?

Fiction….or Non-Fiction?

Taken as a work of fiction, The Ministry for the Future is unconventional. Robinson blithely breaks all the rules of novel-writing. For one thing, very little character development takes place. For another, he stands the maxim, ‘show, don’t tell’ on its head. ”Tell, don’t show” prevails in the form of a series of mini-lectures ranging from the Jevons Paradox and cognitive behavioural therapy to the depredations of rentier capitalism and the promise of Modern Monetary Theory. So be warned: this is not a novel for leisurely reading.

Do enjoy the sheer audacity of the book’s shifting points of view, however. The novel shifts back and forth from third-person omniscient, for narrative and idea-development, to the first-person viewpoint of an amazing array: a photon from the sun, a reindeer, a carbon atom, Gaia, the weather system, and my favourite, the market. This zany approach entices the reader, but also makes us reflect on phenomena far outside our experience. This is, after all, only sci-fi.

Or is it? If it were sci-fi, we might dismiss it as a lark. We cannot dismiss this book, however, because it is heavily based on scientific knowledge and on existing climate trends. The mini-lectures are there not only to inform readers of complex realities, but also to persuade them not to dismiss the dangers he sketches as mere fiction. He harnesses the imaginative power of fiction to alert us to the imminent threat of climate disaster and to a potential pathway to safety and justice.

We begin the book with a searing portrayal of what lies just ahead. It describes in graphic detail a horrendous heat wave in central India that kills 20 million people. It is a horrifying event, yet the risk of such a deadly heat wave occurring in the next few years is high, according to climate scientists. As I was writing this article, NASA and NOAAA issued a report announcing that, in 2019, the earth trapped nearly twice as much heat than in 2005. Already, hundreds of thousands have perished from the heat throughout the world, including hundreds in France in 2003. Today, a headline caught my eye: ‘B.C. Records Hundreds of Deaths Linked to Heat Wave’. If a heat wave can hit Vancouver, where the weather is usually cool, no one is safe. Meanwhile, people in the Persian Gulf and the Indus Valley now regularly experience brief episodes of wet-bulb conditions beyond human endurance. We may know the facts, but Robinson’s fictional account brings home the terror.

So, what does Robinson propose? How do we get out alive?

The Survival Scenario

We observe the climate crisis and the halting response to it mainly through the eyes of Mary Murphy, the thoughtful and committed head of the Ministry for the Future. Established under the Paris Climate Agreement, the Ministry is based in Zurich. Its mandate is exemplary: to work on behalf of children, those yet unborn and animals in pushing for measures to create a just and stable climate Predictably, the Ministry is poorly funded. Its international staff is over-stretched and ineffectual at first. But the ministry has a greater impact following a devastating global depression in the 2030s.

The survival scenario is too complex to summarize. Suffice it to say that there is no integrated program that rallies the world in concerted action. Instead, the world muddles through to the 2040s and 2050s. The concentration of carbon in the atmosphere begins to decline from a dangerously high 450 ppm, half of the world’s surface returns slowly to the wild, and the human population declines to a sustainable level. Robinson offers a decidedly democratic-socialist perspective, though his scenario involves no revolutionary upheaval. Instead, we witness a gradual movement to practical forms of cooperative organization and democratic representation. Strangely enough, the conservative central banks play a key role in this scenario. Mary and others persuade the bankers that, if we fail to conserve the world, worrying about inflation is pointless. Central bankers, tentatively at first, and then enthusiastically, embrace quantitative easing to support a new carbon coin currency, with one ton of sequestered carbon worth one coin. This stable currency persuades even petro-states and energy companies to accept complex compensation for leaving their hydro-carbon assets in the ground. All the parts of the puzzle fit together, though with many false starts.

Is all well that ends well? Not really. The scenario depends for its success on many strands, but two are controversial.

Geo-Engineering?

We may recoil at the geo-engineering, which is undertaken on a massive scale. The Indian government, following India’s devastating heat wave, resorts, without consulting other governments, to ‘solar radiation management’. It seeds the upper atmosphere with sulfur-dioxide dust to emulate the effect of a major volcanic eruption. The experiment reduces global temperatures marginally over three years. A second complex engineering feat, which I will not attempt to explain, is to stabilize glaciers in Antarctica. ‘This effort succeeds in slowing down the movement of glaciers into the sea, thus reducing the rise in ocean levels. Finally, the Russians dye the ice-free areas of the Arctic Ocean yellow to reflect solar radiation and impede oceanic warming. All experiments seem to have a positive effect.

The justification for geo-engineering is that global warming exceeds the point where it is reversible through conventional methods. Will this indeed be our predicament? Most of us harbour strong doubts about geo-engineering. We believe it is impossible, in complex systems, to gauge the unintended, and possibly devastating, effects of major interventions in climate dynamics. We may, however, be forced to rethink our position. Global warming is proceeding much faster than expected. Three or four degrees (Celsius) of warming would be disastrous. How many of us would survive as the tropical and semi-tropical regions become uninhabitable? If we are headed in that direction, we may have little choice but to consider geo-engineering as a last resort.

Violence or Non-Violence?

The second controversy concerns the legitimacy of employing violence to deter carbon-intensive activities and life-styles. In the novel, characters who have earned our respect condone the use of violence.

Attention in the novel focuses on a shadowy international ‘terrorist’ group based in India – the ‘Children of Kali’ – and a ‘black-ops’ group associated with the Ministry for the Future. Mary Murphy stumbles on the secret operations established by her deputy at the Ministry. She struggles with the morality of violence; Mary is depicted as a well-balanced, fair-minded democrat. Eventually, she accepts the necessity: ‘The hidden sheriff, she was ready for that now, that and the hidden prison. The guillotine for that matter. … The gun in the night, the drone from nowhere. Whatever it took. Lose, lose, lose, fuck-it – win!’

What transpires is a cascade of violence. Underground groups commit widespread sabotage of pipelines, polluting power stations, passenger jets (60 crash in a single day) and private passenger planes. Air travel ceases as dirigibles return. The Children of Kali assassinate billionaires who profit from hydro-carbons. Drones sink container ships and factory-fish ships, and pulverize cement factories, Cattle ranching ceases as a bovine fever fatal to humans spreads among cattle and other domestic animals. Direct attacks – such as an operation that kidnaps the rich and famous at an Economic Summit at Davos – strike fear into the hearts of the powerful. And the violence succeeds in lowering emissions. The age of carbon-intensive industry and travel ends, while vast tracks hitherto dedicated to animal agriculture revert to wilderness. As the human population dwindles, the natural world undergoes a renaissance. Consequently, the concentration of carbon dioxide begins a steady decline in the 2040s or 2050s.

Considering the beneficial outcomes, is violence justified in the fight for a just transition?

Those of us committed to non-violence would answer in the negative. Yet, whether we like it or not, violence is likely to come. As extreme weather events multiply, as these events destroy agricultural and other livelihoods, the resulting panic and anger create conditions for extremism and ‘terrorism.’ In fact, adverse climatic trends are already exacerbating violent conflicts in tropical regions; in Syria, Sudan, Mali, and Central America, for instance. Security agencies in the United Kingdom and Canada have already identified such non-violent groups as Extinction Rebellion, Greenpeace, and PETA as potentially subversive. Extreme climate, loss of livelihoods, growing criminality, and collapsing governments are fuelllng a growing stream of climate migrants/refugees. If we do not take decisive action to halt carbon emissions, with dangerous tipping points in the offing, we invite instability, conflict and violence.

What Might Happen, Must not Happen

Combating global warming is thus not just a fight for climate activists; it is a fight for peace and justice activists as well. Kim Stanley Robinson shows as what might happen. But we have agency, and the violence and chaos that might happen, must not happen. Robinson’s final words are not exactly a consolation, but at least ground us in the reality of our situation: “We will keep going, we will keep going because there is no such thing as fate. Because we never really come to the end.”

Futureproof? Artificial Intelligence and the Human Prospect

New York Times technology reporter Kevin Roose begins his new book with some good news.

Futureproof: Nine Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation, (2021) adopts an upbeat tone in proposing how we might live well in this age of automation. “Artificial intelligence could be unbelievably good for humankind, if we do it right. A world filled with AI could also be filled with human creativity, meaningful work and strong communities.” Furthermore, artificial intelligence and automation “could bring us together, armed with new superpowers, to solve some of our biggest problems.” What problems? Big, big ones: to “eliminate poverty, cure diseases, solve climate change, and fight systemic racism.” Great!

But his repeated use of the conditional verb “could” evokes caution. Is this vision only hypothetical?

It appears to be so: Roose notes that “none of this will happen without us.” Well, that’s not a surprise. What do “we” need to do?

Therein lies the rub. Roose offers no plan because he lacks a problematic. Yes, he is rightfully skeptical “that the private sector will save us.” Yes, he thinks a strong welfare state and extensive retraining programs are needed to handle the disruptions. Yes, he implores us to stop bowling alone and recreate community in order to back “collective action.” But how do we overcome atomization, and for what sort of joint action? No answer, except for a stirring call to “arm the rebels” within the high-tech oligopolies – the usual suspects: Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, Alibaba, Microsoft, and others. Well, that’s something of a political nature.

But very thin gruel. Roose’s idea of arming tech rebels fighting for “ethics and transparency” is to provide them with “tools, data and emotional support.” That doesn’t sound promising, though further revelations of algorithmic manipulations and the unsavoury military contracts of big tech are important.

Not surprisingly, with little to offer, Roose concludes by urging his readers not to get “too discouraged.” If “we” are determined, “we” may still harness technology for the common good.

Am I too harsh in my judgment? You judge. Roose’s approach is emblematic of what we might term a “progressive neoliberal” stance. That stance deplores certain social trends, hopes for good social and ecological outcomes, but it hasn’t a clue how to bring them about. The failure stems from avoiding an analysis of systemic power relations, of which technological development is one pillar. The analyst turns instead to the easier question of how individuals can best accommodate existing trends. The author’s “Nine Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation” enumerate common-sensical ways in which humans can individually adapt to, and perhaps even thrive with, this runaway monster. Believing that another glorious world is possible leads nowhere if you lack a strategy.

But you may ask: is there really a problem with AI that requires a problematic? Can’t we just keep clicking happily away on our phones while hoping for the best? After all, learned economists claim that, in the long run, everyone benefits from automation because more and better jobs are created than are lost. Overall, living standards and satisfactions allegedly rise. Let’s click and be happy!

Sorry, no. The techno-optimists’ view is suspect. Although saying a good word on behalf of the machine-wrecking Luddites is considered a mark of intellectual ineptitude, we may at least understand their anger. The following questions just touch the surface of what is at issue:

Why should we assume that what may have happened in the past –new jobs and higher living standards for most – will recur in today’s different circumstances?
Is there an ethical case for sacrificing a generation or two for the long-run gain of future generations? What happened in the first industrial revolution in the West, and what is happening now in many countries of the global South, was and is brutal. The “satanic mill” involved exploitation, child labour, shortened life-spans – until the advent of trade unions, labour solidarity and the first stirrings of democratic government. Can we justify sacrificing lives for technological change?
Can today’s workers aspire to fill the new and better jobs that are created in this” fourth industrial revolution” powered by AI? In general, no. According to various reports, massive numbers of jobs are being lost – albeit, as Roose suggests, “invisibly.” Currently, the pandemic is providing both motivation and cover for companies to replace disease-prone humans with machines. The job losses are occurring at all levels, though particularly hard hit are the low-income occupations. Most of the new, good jobs involve high-tech/advanced-skills. Can unskilled and semi-skilled workers be retrained to fill these jobs? Probably not, unless exceptional retraining and income-replacement programs .exist, which is not the case except in the Nordic countries. Thus, many displaced workers end up in the insecure and poorly remunerated livelihoods in the gig economy, providing services for the winners of technological change and financialization.
If AI is our master rather than our useful servant, do we want it? As Roose points out, AI and automation have not made workers happier. Just the opposite: they suffer more stress than 30-50 years ago. Futureproof tell us why. AI is programmed to squeeze the last bit of productivity out of every worker. The Amazon warehouse is the paradigmatic case. The lot of growing numbers of workers is constant surveillance and monitoring by machines. The aim is “algorithmic management” – machines with the capacity to monitor, assess, reward, and even fire workers. Employees effectively will work for machines. And surveillance does not stop at the factory/warehouse/mine/office door. ”Surveillance capitalism” denotes a society in which advanced surveillance equipment (such as facial recognition and cellphone tracking) allows intelligence agencies to keep tabs on anyone deemed suspicious. Artificial intelligence is generating a cornucopia of tools for monitoring and controlling dissenters and dissidents – a boon for authoritarian leaders worldwide. Not to mention the latter’s new capacity for censorship and online disinformation campaigns. The latter are used to discredit opponents and reinforce extremist political identities. Advanced algorithms using globally networked digital technology spread conspiracy theories and deploy memes to reaffirm the false beliefs of virtual communities. Fascism gains a new lease on life.

Yes, there is a problem with AI. We live in a world faced with destruction from new generations of nuclear weapons, hatred spawned by the manipulated identities of those left behind by technological and social change, and accelerating global warming. All these problems grow worse as companies devote billions of dollars, thousands of PhDs, and millions of hours to perfecting algorithms to control our shopping and political preferences. From a societal viewpoint, it’s mad.

Thus, we return to the issue of a problematic. Lacking a problematic is a debilitating weakness when it comes to harnessing technological development. If you don’t understand the dynamics, you can’t think through feasible means of taming the beast.

So what is the problematic? It is devastatingly simple. I learned this truth years ago when I taught the political economy of technological change. Technological development is not a force of nature; it does not just happen. There are many innovations and inventions that could be harnessed. Those that come to fruition – receive finance and nurture – are the ones that suit the economic and power interests of the dominant elites. This self-evident truth increasingly applies to university-based research as well as commercial research. The incentives make it so.

Strategically, the implication is that if you want to change the pattern of technological development, you have to challenge the power structure. Roose is right: artificial intelligence could be “unbelievably good for humankind.” With enhanced productivity and new ways of interacting, we could solve our major problems and extend the realm of freedom for all. But not by following Roose’s nine rules of individual adaptation. Yes, “none of this will happen without us.” Yet that admonition requires substance.

Can “we” take on power structures? Can we organize a progressive mass movement that avoids the usual problems of sectarianism, identity clashes and schism? Can we develop a program that might have wide appeal, despite the rise of populist-nativism? It is a daunting challenge, especially in this age of surveillance capitalism powered by AI. But we have no other option but to try – if we want to be “futureproof.”

[header image: Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay]

The Pandemic Within

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Strangely, reading Albert Camus’ The Plague (1947) during the pandemic did not depress me (further). Instead, I felt exhilarated. Yes, Camus depicts widespread despair in Oran (Mediterranean city in Algeria) as it undergoes months of quarantine. Fear and unrest rise as bubonic plague kills thousands each month But, as usual with Camus, his ideas are engaging.

Camus has intrigued me since undergraduate days. As a young man, I identified with his defiant attitude in “The Myth of Sisyphus” and L’étranger. Yes, our lives are utterly absurd in the sense of meaningless. But, despite all, including an empty heaven, we live. We may be Sisyphus with his futile unending task of pushing a boulder up a hill. However, we endure, and we can even imagine Sisyphus happy. Why? Because we devise our own meaning.

As an older man re-visiting these works, I found that defiance less satisfying. Perhaps age dulls the sense of possibility. In any case, in The Plague Camus is less defiant, more humble, and distinctly chilling.

The crux of the novel arrives at the beginning, when the narrator (Dr Rieux, as it turns out) observes that people consider themselves free, but “no one will be free as long as there are pestilences.” This observation has both an obvious, and a less obvious, meaning.

Obviously, epidemics and pandemics curb the freedom of everyone. People spend aimless days of high tension, mourn their dead, and are restricted to concentration camps if exposed to the virus. Even so, the experience of the people of Oran is, in some ways, not as dire as ours: people flock to bars, restaurants, cinemas and beaches, despite the contagion. No social distancing there, surprisingly.

People wait to be freed from the pestilence. Religion offers little consolation. Father Paneloux, his own faith in doubt, pleads for people to surrender to “God’s will”, not to question a fate that is all part of His design. Dr Rieux, the good doctor, is unpersuaded. We can count only on ourselves, he thinks. God remains mute in his heaven, in the face of all atrocities. Rieux, the model of an ethical and thoughtful person, acts to heal the afflicted purely out of common decency. That is all one can rely on.

At the less obvious level, the plague represents the propensity within humans for violence and murder. Tarrou, a visitor to Oran of mysterious origins, develops this idea in conversation with Rieux. Other reviewers have represented the plague as fascism, but I see no evidence for this interpretation. Although the story is deliberately obscure, a youthful Tarrou apparently participated in a radical left-wing group that assassinated people to advance a Utopian future. He later realizes a bitter truth: not only is killing never justified by any principle, but also, and more unsettling, “we all have the plague, and I have lost my peace.” The virus – the propensity for violence – may remain dormant for a while, but it never disappears. It will become virulent again and the contagion will spread.

So how do we live? Only by being perpetually on guard against the resurgence of the pestilence and taking the side of victims. “While unable to be saints but refusing to bow down to pestilence,” we must “strive our utmost to be healers.”

Are we humans worth saving, if our basic natures are so debased? Yes, says Camus, in a carefully balanced judgment . “There are more things to admire in people than despise.” We hope he is right. We hope to encounter many Dr Rieux, to become Dr Rieux. But one thing is certain; indeed, it is the key lesson. To achieve peace, both in the political and the personal sense, we must be true healers. We must be alert to, and act against, the pandemic within.

Richard Sandbrook is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Toronto and President of Science for Peace Canada.

Image by Random House.

Making the Impossible Possible: Coalitional Movement Politics in the Decisive Decade

This is the decisive decade for humankind and other species. We tackle dire trends now. Or we face a bleak future in which our constricted pandemic life now becomes the norm for all but the wealthiest. Our rational and technological prowess, in combination with market-based power structures, has brought us to the brink of catastrophe. Can movement politics be part of a solution?

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Racism, Class Solidarity and Systemic Change

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Martin Luther King’s observation in the late 1960s regarding the black rebellion in the United States remains sadly pertinent. Continue reading →

From Coronavirus to the Green New Deal: Navigating the Perilous Passage

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When we have dealt with the coronavirus crisis, we need to address the climate emergency. We have learned a lot from handling the pandemic that will help in tackling climate change.

It is critical to tackle the crisis early, based on the best scientific evidence. Indecisive political leadership pushes the crisis quickly out of control.
The most vulnerable citizens are the first to die, so ethically we have a responsibility to move fast to protect those who suffer through no fault of their own.
Social cooperation is critical in overcoming the crisis. Each person plays a part in limiting the common danger. We must all sacrifice cherished pursuits in the short run in order to save ourselves and societal order in the long run.
Resolution of the crisis requires massive state activism, a willingness to do what is needed to stave off disaster, whether economic or health related. Emergency situations require mobilization of all resources.
A crisis that is global in scope requires a global organization, such as the World Health Organization, to provide timely information and expert advice and coordinate a global response.
In an emergency, a lot can be achieved quickly. For example, the sharp contraction in greenhouse gas emissions as a result of the shutdown and social distancing occasioned by the pandemic soon cleared the atmosphere in some of the most polluted cities on earth.

Having learned these lessons, one hopes that recovery from the pandemic-recession would be the ideal time to leap to a green economy. Carbon emissions have fallen, as has consumption, and fracking and oil-sands production are no longer economically viable. The battle against the coronavirus has demonstrated the importance of public goods such as health services and unemployment benefits and the centrality of collective action in an emergency. To reverse the economic slump, create good jobs and decarbonize the economy, we could massively invest in green energy and green infrastructure.

We could do so. It makes good sense to do so. Many people might now be willing to support such measures. But the problem is that global heating is primarily a political problem. Even with existing technologies, let alone those that will be available within five years, we could attain a carbon-neutral economy in a decade or two. The 2017 book Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. presents a hundred ranked solutions to global warming, drawing on the work of about 200 scientists. Climate activists and scientists have reason and evidence-based projections on their side, but power structures and the culture of possessive individualism buttress the existing carbon-intensive system.

The problem is not that we don’t know what to do, but that we don’t do it. What we should do is implement a Green New Deal that combines socioeconomic transformation with ecological protection. This is rapidly becoming the defining position of the broad left, as ably presented by Naomi Klein in a recent book. But achieving such a goal is fraught with political dangers and obstacles. We need to reckon with these now in order to avoid the shoals. The passage is inevitably perilous.

It is a widely believed, at least by those under 40, that only a mass movement creating a lot of disruption can prevail on governments to take climate change seriously. Few readers of The Bullet would disagree. And this is an era of mass protests, many successful. In 2019, these protests occurred on every continent and across 114 countries, in the global south and north. But forming a mass movement, though a difficult challenge in itself, is just the beginning. In a turbulent and polarized era, spontaneity must give way to strategic planning.

Recently, the climate movement has gained considerable momentum.The ramping up of campaigns to divest from carbon stocks, the climate strikes organized by school students throughout the world, the worldwide protests of Extinction Rebellion and other groups. the flurry of dire reports on climatic trends – all these events have brought climate issues to the forefront in rich countries. In the US, there is evidence of a cultural shift that has fossil fuel companies running scared. And media outlets are also reporting more and more urgently on climate issues, in some cases (for example UK’s The Guardian) adopting the phrases climate crisis or climate emergency in reportage. We are making progress. But much more is needed.

Green New Deals

Reversing global warming at this late stage requires deep changes in production, distribution and consumption. You don’t need to be a socialist to accept this statement; it is common sense. If we had seriously responded two or three decades ago, when the science of climate change was already established, more minor actions might have sufficed. A robust and progressive carbon tax, if instituted then, might have been enough. But remediation at this point demands more radical measures.

Consider the magnitude of the challenge. The “safe” concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is 350 ppm. In February, readings recorded 413 and 414 ppm. According to NASA, this concentration is higher than it’s been in 3 million years. Although there is a lag between high concentrations and climate heating, that heating will come even if we achieve a carbon neutral economy. The challenge is not just net-zero emissions but drawing carbon out of the atmosphere. And to hold warming to under 2°C (the maximum tolerable change), according to the well-known estimate of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, requires cutting carbon emissions in half in a decade and attaining net-zero by 2050. And that in a time when emissions were rising (until the coronavirus-induced recession).

This urgency has given rise to the advocacy of a Green New Deal (GND), Green Marshall Plans, and Just Transitions. The Leap Manifesto, the forerunner of these programs in Canada, contained most of the elements. They included a transition to 100% renewable energy by 2050, the building of a more just society in the process, the enactment of higher, and new forms of, taxes, and a grassroots movement to back the needed changes and to deepen democracy.

Although Green New Deals (the most popular formulation) vary in their ambition from one iteration to another, the logic is the same. Ecological transformation cannot be achieved without deep economic and social changes, both as an end (to cut emissions) and as a means (to win popular support). The transition to a net-zero carbon economy must be just and systemic to be effective.

Famously or infamously, the GND sponsored by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey in the form of a resolution in the US House of Representatives in 2019, follows this logic. Denounced as a socialist plot, the plan is closer to a Rooseveltian New Deal for the 21st century. It calls for a “10-year national mobilization” to achieve 100% renewable energy, giant investments in infrastructure and a carbon-free economy, and jobs for all who want to work. Accompanying the transition are measures that are mainstream in Western welfare states: universal health care, free higher education, affordable housing, enhanced labour rights, a job guarantee, and remedies for racism. Enforcement of anti-trust laws would, if successful, weaken the economic and political power of oligopolies. We can argue about the degree of systemic change that is needed. Any effective plan, however, must garner support through a vision of a better life, not just fear.

Conservatives, especially right-wing populists, have become climate-deniers, partly on the grounds that combatting climate change is a socialist Trojan horse. They are certainly right that the GND is a progressive project, but whether it is necessarily a socialist project is debatable. It depends partly on one’s definition of socialism. For the sake of unity in a diverse movement, that debate is one we should avoid.

Regardless of one’s position, we can agree the stakes are high. Powerful interests will lose out, and they will resist.

Challenging Plutocracy

The deep economic and tax changes required to drastically cut emissions will saddle major corporations and wealthy individuals with major losses in assets, income and power. As reported in the Globe & Mail on 12 Feb 2020, “Canada’s banking regulator says the financial sector should assume the transition to a low-carbon economy will be ‘sharply negative’”. A few brief illustrations suggest why.

Phasing out of coal, oil and gas fields. Coal fields would need to be shuttered quickly, but oil and gas fields would phase out as demand declines. One expert estimates that holding global warming to 2°C would strand more than half of the assets of fossil fuel companies, while the 1.5°C target would strand 80 percent. The first oil and gas fields to close would be the dirtiest and most costly to operate – including Alberta’s oil sands. The consequences would be mammoth losses to shareholders and job-holders (the latter replaced by green jobs) and defaults on loans.
Reducing the impact of the modern food system. This system is the biggest single source of global warming: with its 60 billion livestock to be fed and processed, with industrial farming using copious quantities of chemicals and sucking the carbon out of the soil, and with industrial fishing vessels denuding fish stocks. Twelve of Drawdown’s top 30 solutions to global warming involve the food industry and transitions to organic, regenerative agriculture. But agribusiness, factory fishers, petrochemical producers, and suppliers will resist such moves.
Fall-out for the financial sector. The financial sector has seen its power and profits grow during the past two decades with the lifting of controls on cross-border financial transactions and domestic banking. Investment banks are heavily invested in fossil fuels. Bloomberg financial data reveals that they provided financing of more than $US2.66 trillion to the fossil fuel industry since the Paris Agreement (2016-2019). A GND would involve major losses for the banking sector, as well as the likelihood that banks would be subject to anti-monopoly legislation. New investment opportunities of investing in the green economy would mitigate these losses, however.

These threats to the profitability and even survival of major corporations add up to a major challenge to plutocracy.

“Plutocracy” is a term now widely used, in this neoliberal era, to describe the fusing of economic with political power in Western liberal democracies . The result is that economic and other policies are skewed to the advantage of the top one percent. This idea is so widely accepted that even economists, mainly the maverick variety such as Paul Krugman or Branko Milanovic, employ the concept.

Its applicability, however, should not be restricted to degraded liberal democracies such as the US and the UK, but extended to authoritarian cases such as Russia and China. In the latter cases, political power has encroached on economic power, a reversal of the process in the West. But the outcome is similar: a power structure highly resistant to the major changes proposed by Green New Deals. True, some investors are attracted to the investment opportunities offered by the green economy. However, the threat to key industries may cast climate activists not as benign tree-huggers, but as security threats.

Even a cursory Google search uncovers disconcerting evidence that security services view climate activists as threats to national security. In the United Kingdom, an anti-extremism briefing issued by the government to all schools and other institutions in late 2019 included environmental groups and anti-racism organizations along with neo-Nazi and Islamist groups in the list of suspects. Greenpeace, Extinction Rebellion, Sea Shepherd, Stop the Badger Cull, PETA and a vegan organization – all respectably non-violent in tactics – appeared. Readers were advised to be aware of the symbols employed by extremist groups and report any concerns to counter-terrorism police.

In Canada, documents released under Freedom of Information Act revealed that, during the era of Conservative government under Stephen Harper, the two main counter-terrorism agencies regarded environmental and indigenous activists as extremists. Security and police services regularly monitored these activists. Security agencies regarded protests and opposition to Canada’s resource-based economy, especially oil and gas, as “national-security threats” (Guardian, Feb 14, 2013). The National Observer, an award-winning digital newspaper specializing in human-rights issues, reported in 2016 and 2017 that surveillance of environmental activists (which includes indigenous activists) was undertaken by the RCMP (the national police force), Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, provincial police forces and, in some large cities, municipal police forces. Jeffrey Monaghan, a Carleton University criminologist studying espionage, Identifies a “petro-security apparatus” linking security agencies to energy corporations in Canada. This collaboration flows from the alleged threat to “critical infrastructure” posed by environmental activists. So the warning signs are there.

It’s a safe bet that climate activists, albeit engaged in legitimate non-violent action, are under surveillance in plutocracies both western and eastern. And that’s in a time of relative calm. Perhaps that’s just par for the course in what has been dubbed “surveillance capitalism.” What is troubling is that the means of surveillance –facial recognition and tracking of individuals via their cell phones – is now far advanced. Should it come to a crackdown, security agencies will already know who is involved in climate activism and where they live. Civil disobedience will be seen as extremism.

Climate and the Multi-dimensional Crisis of Neoliberalism

What makes this outcome probable is that the climate crisis is not a stand-alone crisis; it is part of a multi-dimensional crisis of neoliberalism. This unbridled variety of capitalism has fostered problems it is unable to solve. That of course is one reason why the Green New Deals normally advocate social and economic, in addition to ecological, transformation. The Green New Deal is an alternative to neoliberalism, though not necessarily to capitalism. It is a reasonable and just response. That matters little, however, in a context increasingly characterized by dislocation, insecurity and polarization. The multidimensional crisis threatens disorder and therefore property rights. The deeper the disorder and polarization, the more likely a right-wing reaction becomes.

We might describe the simultaneous crises in various ways. They afflict the countries of the global south even more than the north, but here I’m narrowing my attention to the latter. In the West in particular, three trends are asserting themselves:

global heating and its deleterious effects;
the robotics revolution that, in the short run at least, augments precarious employment and inequality;
the decline of democratic institutions and rise of authoritarian tendencies, especially right-wing populism.

These trends in tandem produce a treacherous environment.

Consider the robotics revolution. The significance of this technological shift is best understood in the context of recent history.

Neither digitalization nor the more recent “sharing” economy lived up to its early promise of ushering in shared prosperity or more flexible working arrangements. Instead, the neoliberal age has seen inequality and insecurity rise to new levels. This story is well known. The gig economy with its precarious and poorly paid jobs has expanded – to encompass one-third of all jobs in the US, according to some estimates. Millennials in particular have had trouble finding good jobs, as well as being saddled with high debts from post-secondary education. Moreover, the economic collapse of 2008 dealt a heavy blow to many in the middle and working classes. Their recovery took years, and it is now threatened by the recession induced by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

The “fourth industrial revolution” of robotics is wreaking further insecurity. The higher productivity wrought by artificial intelligence could lead to a greener, more egalitarian future where available work is shared and working hours shrink. But that will not happen automatically, especially in societies already characterized by inequality, precarious employment and weak democracy.

The employment impact during the next 30 years is likely to be major. Artificial intelligence, as it well understood, displaces workers not just in routine activities in the industrial and service sectors, but in professional occupations as well. A 2017 report by the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that just over half of the waged tasks in 2017 could be done by robots and computers by 2050. In the next decade, 14 percent of the global workforce will lose their jobs according to the institute’s mid-way estimate. The job loss in industrial countries such as the US, Japan and China are much higher than the world average. These estimates, of course, simply tell us what could happen, given technological developments, not what will happen. Political trade-offs and union power, where it exists, may intercede to save jobs. Nonetheless, a lot of people in good jobs as well as bad are going to be out of work.

Economists are confident that the economy will develop new jobs to replace those that are lost: in the longer run. There will be a lag. And will those who lose their jobs be qualified for the tech-savvy, knowledge-based jobs that do emerge? Perhaps – if the governments were willing to invest heavily in retraining people for the new economy. However, we can’t expect that expensive path to be taken in plutocracies responsive to the demands for the wealthy for lower taxes. We are more likely to see, in many Western countries, further marginalization and inequality.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist, or even a political scientist, to foresee the political dynamics of the unfolding crisis of neoliberalism. Social stress is rising. A growing sense of marginalization and precarity is likely to produce higher anger and resentment, especially at times of recession.

Simultaneously – unless we respond swiftly – global heating will precipitate extreme weather events that wreak widespread damage. More extensive heat waves, floods, droughts, fresh-water shortages, inundations of coastal cities and islands, falls in agricultural and fishing yields and declines in human health are rendering certain regions uninhabitable while inducing panic.

The consequent population movements add another element of instability. The global south, suffering a more extreme climatic shift than in the north, will witness a growing stream of climate migrants to join the existing refugees displaced by war and disorder. Estimates of the numbers of climate migrants vary, but the most frequent estimate is 150-200 million by 2050. This total includes temporary as well as permanent migrants, and those who are internally displaced as well as cross-border migrants. At the minimum, several millions will join political refugees in heading for sanctuary in Europe, North America and Australia in recurrent waves.

These migrants are the victims of a climatic shift for which they bear virtually no responsibility. The rich countries, having generated most of the carbon in the atmosphere, have an ethical duty to be generous in their reception of these migrants. And yet…. The movement of just a million migrants to Europe in 2015-2016 amplified support for right-wing populist parties throughout the continent. The new waves are likely to be far more numerous.

The political danger is clear. With threats to property posed by mass movements and the radical policies of the Green New Deal, concentrated economic power may ally with reactionary political forces. Conservatives feeling under threat from social movements and generalized anxiety will be tempted to turn to reactionary political forces as a means of re-establishing order and safeguarding power and property (as in the 1930s). Hitherto climate-deniers on the right may see in the unfolding of climate change an unparalleled opportunity: to appeal to the ethno-nation, casting migrants and immigrants and their elite enablers as the enemy.

The situation is the more dangerous owing to the decline of democratic institutions. Trust in government has declined during the past two decades world-wide according to numerous surveys. The Edelman Trust Barometer 2020, which surveyed population in 28 countries in late 2019, concluded that a “global trust crisis is deepening.” More than half the population of developed liberal democracies felt that democracy is losing its effectiveness and 56 percent believed that capitalism does more harm than good. The far right thrives on declining trust, fear and lies.

Fortress America or Fortress Europe is the opposite of the Green New Deal. It means restricting liberal freedoms, closing borders, blaming “aliens”, repressing dissent and regulating national economies while safeguarding existing property rights and ethnic and class hierarchies. It involves abandoning the global south to its fate and reversing globalization. Fascism has no viable answer to the climate crisis or the socioeconomic crisis except repression.

Our future could indeed be dark, but our task is to ensure that what could happen, doesn’t happen. Within limits, we can make history.

An Alternative Scenario

Reversing climate change is a hard sell in societies where right-wing populists have gained a following among the less-educated and more rural elements of the population. Climate change is as much a threat to these elements as to cosmopolitan elites, but the former do not see it that way. Climate change has become entangled in political polarization. Conservative populists have cast climate change as a hoax allowing governing elites to impose new taxes, expand state intervention and welcome new waves of migrants. The populist message resonates with those who feel left behind. Inequality, the exodus of good jobs, and a loss of status in multicultural societies generate resentment, anger and mistrust. Populists have shaped this anger; the left has not.

How then can the climate movement break through the class division? How can they dispel the mistrust to expand their support beyond affluent urbanites and the more highly educated? The only feasible strategy is one that attacks inequality and precarity together with global warming. hence the importance of the Green New Deal. It envisions a more desirable and feasible future than that offered by nationalist populists.

The GND provides a vision of universal well-being to counter the hateful message of ethno-nationalism. We – all the people – are vulnerable to climate change, and thus must work in unison. We have a common enemy threatening our future: an economic system that is out of control. We can win the struggle by making a just transition to a net-zero carbon economy through measures that also create an egalitarian, secure and democratic society. That story-line may not work, but it’s the best available.

But can we forge a broad coalition of progressive forces animated by this vision? Unity and coherence are key. Civil society encompasses a variety of social movements, each with its own agenda, whether social, economic, or ecological. Furthermore, the movements operate at different levels. Some are local, some regional or national, and others transnational. Consequently, there is a cacophony of voices: how do we make them into a choir, singing the same hymn? Presumably, a political party tries to organize and channel the demands. Which party, however?

That raises the issue of the political hue of the GND. Naomi Klein contends, and I agree, that the climate movement is inherently a movement of the left. It seeks social and economic change to achieve its climate objectives. But what left? The fact is that the left has never been good at creating unity (unlike the right); some factions seem more engaged in attacking back-sliders in their own camp than engaging with the real enemy. Achieving an accord is a major challenge.

Can this change, as the threat from the far right escalates? The coalition, to be successful, would surely need to unite most climate activists with left liberals, human-rights defenders, trade unions, social democrats, socialists, indigenous activists, and identity-based groups seeking justice. Perhaps the most fruitful coalition-building strategy is to articulate a powerful vision but offer a program that remains vague in details about the future sustainable society.

But we can all agree that, in means as well as ends, the Green New Deal is a democratic project. Democracy, unfortunately, does not now favour the project of halting global heating. When given the opportunity, electorates throughout the world have voted against, or even rebelled against (as with the gilets jaunes in France), carbon taxes and other inconvenient climate measures. Political polarization and widespread alienation are having this effect. So democracy is a gamble, but a necessary one. Only if the Green New Deal is popular will it succeed. Yet if the polarization deepens, the struggle will ultimately be waged between a democratic and egalitarian new deal and an increasingly authoritarian, ultra-nationalist populism.

Finally, we need to counter ethno-nationalism with progressive internationalism. The fight for a Green new Deal cannot be exclusively fought at the national level. Climate change is a global issue and requires global cooperation. I cannot broach the many issues surrounding a progressive international order here. But one contentious issue – “open borders” as part of a just transition – does require comment.

Presumptive admission for all climate migrants is ethically correct . The emissions that have caused the crisis in the global south have emanated largely from the global north (in addition to China and India more recently). But presumptive admission would likely be politically disastrous. It would provide the Far Right with an issue it could exploit.

If open borders is a policy that is right in principle but disastrous in practice, one is obliged to discuss other options. Winning power or influence is crucial for our success. Certainly, we must support a generous immigration policy. But that will not be enough to fulfill our moral obligation. Major transfers from the rich countries to the global south for mitigating climate change are critical. The Paris Agreement obliges rich countries to make financial and other transfers, but governments have shirked their obligations. A Green New Deal must include provisions for a generous immigration policy (though not presumptive admission for all), together with major transfers of green technologies and financial resources to the beleaguered populations of the global south. Even those pragmatic measures, however, may not be enough to stem the popular appeal of Fortress Europe and Fortress America.

The climate movement, with its allies, is called upon to make history at a critical juncture. The threat posed by climate change is more complex and, in the longer term, more deadly than that posed by the corona virus. But the pandemic has shown what can be done in an emergency. Can we harness the lessons we’ve learned? Whether we succeed cannot be foretold, and a livable and just world hangs in the balance.

Richard Sandbrook – PROGRESSIVE FUTURES BLOG

Reflections of the ecological, social and political mess we're in, and how we might deal with these challenges.

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