George Monbiot at his best

I’ll understand your raising a sceptical eyebrow at my assertion that George’s is a powerful and cogent voice which, on one of the two greatest threats humanity faces, needs to be heard. Why wouldn’t you be sceptical, given all I’ve said of its owner’s views on Syria? But if you look back at my most scathing posts on the man – this for instance – you’ll see a tendency to sneak in a compliment where I can.

His piece in today’s Guardian – While economic growth continues we’ll never kick our fossil fuels habit – is a case in point. It’s lucidly biting, closely argued and at several points packs an eminently quotable punch. Since its subject matter is not Syria or Russia, it isn’t saying things I deem irresponsibly wrong, nor is it dismissive of people – former weapons inspectors, Syrian clerics, Russia experts and former UK ambassadors – who’ve damn well earned the right to a hearing. Insofar as we can compartmentalise his opinions, this piece showcases Cogent, Caring and Well Informed George, as opposed to De Facto Path Smoother and Unwitting Aide for War Hawks George.

Its title says it all. Economic growth is antithetical to any reversal or even slowing down of the criminally insane course our rulers are bent on. (OK, I added the rulers bit myself as antidote to popular, media encouraged notions that as citizens of planet earth we have what lawyers call ‘joint and several responsibility’ for said criminal insanity. In propagating lifestylist, better-light-a-single-candle-than-curse-the-darkness  complacency, such notions do more harm than good when the hour is so very late.)

An example or two. What’s the single most effective step we could take to curb CO2 emissions? Free public transport: everywhere, without exception. When? Tomorrow would be good, served with steely commitment to transformational improvement to bus and rail infrastructure.

Never mind for now the question of who will pay. Its specious common sense appeal is flawed in ideologically driven ways but here, since I haven’t space to show their ultimate circularity, I’ll focus on a question George sees, I think – but dimly. Take our own small island. A key indicator of How Well The Economy Is Doing is given by the much perused August car sale figures. Given a first rate public transport network, how do you suppose they’d be affected? Right, that’s the bloody point! But would the billlionaires sit back and allow such a move, when they control, in ways I again haven’t space to spell out, the levers through which democracy is stage managed to manufacture consensus?

Or take ‘Our Addiction’ to meat and dairy. Let’s set aside for now their Auschwitzian manner of production. (No, I’m not a vegetarian but see a massive problem in an arrogant and stupid but profitable belief, barely conscious, that our fate can be separated from that of other species.) Beef and dairy are up there with internal combustion on greenhouse emissions but this is not about ‘our addiction’. As many know, shifting from meat and dairy isn’t tough and comes with serious side benefits. But again, what are the implications for profits?

One last example, perhaps the most useful. Visit IKEA (or your retail therapy centre of choice) on Saturday; then, on Sunday, your privatised municipal tip. There, in those hungry skips, we  see in a nutshell how advanced capitalism – which is to say Western consumer capitalism – is irreducibly dependent on growth. Out with the old, in with the new.

Because you deserve it.

Which brings me to the “insofar as we can compartmentalise ” caveat I sneaked into paragraph two. And to the caveat in my opening sentence: “one of  the two most existentially threatening issues humanity faces …”

Bear with me while I draw the threads together.

Underlying Monbiot’s credulity re the West’s self-serving and unsubstantiated claims on Syria, a credulity which has him nevertheless insisting – I think sincerely – he does not wish to see it attacked by the West, is a stubbornly empiricist refusal to join the dots. This clever, articulate and caring but proud and blinkered man looks at Syria as if Iraq and Libya hadn’t happened; as if Yemen was not now being mauled to the ringing of cash registers at the heart of America’s and Britain’s military-industrial complex. Deeper yet, the truth he fails to see is that those wars on the middle east, which can’t entirely be reduced to hydrocarbon grabs – though it takes spectacular but depressingly widespread myopia to ignore this aspect – are driven by precisely that demand for growth he denounces, and which is capitalism’s absolute and non negotiable dynamic.

In short, that other existential threat – the thermonuclear armageddon Syria brought chillingly closer,¹ is also driven by a growth imperative inherent to monopoly capitalism in the age of imperialism.

(An imperialism not to be confused with its colonialist precursor. Indeed, modern imperialism is far worse, liberated as it is from even those minimal responsibilities direct rule incurred.)

Now back to the other existential threat, the one we began with. Monbiot’s piece skewers with customary precision the insane growth so vital to capitalism, before closing with a rousing call:

Let’s be embarrassing. Let’s break the silence, however uncomfortable it makes us and others feel. Let’s talk about the great unmentionables: not just climate breakdown, but also growth and consumerism. Let’s create the political space in which well-intentioned parties can act. Let us talk a better world into being.

George, George. Let’s be even more embarrassing. Let’s bring in a word your piece omits. Not once do you mention capitalism. I understand that, really I do. It turns folk off, especially nice liberals whose education has led us to see a world driven more by ideas than material forces. It isn’t though, and that’s why we can’t validly, for convenience, do away with words I agree are to be used sparingly. Words like profits, capitalism and ruling class.

And it’s why we can’t talk  a better world into being.

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1. Last week’s downing of a Russian plane, in effect by Israeli cynicism, has backfired. Russia’s announcement today – that it will replace Syria’s S-200 surface-to-air missiles with the vastly superior S-300 system – has my reluctant approval but only a fool would think the world a safer place as a result. In this respect I recommend a piece by Philip Giraldi: former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer with the CIA; one of many gamekeepers turned poacher in respect of the West’s aggression.