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Conclusion to The Climate Trials: the Civil Society and the Great Turning
: by Prof. Greta Hultman, University of Uppsala
The world is now a very different place than it was when the Mikhail Bookchin organized the Climate Trials. It isn’t a Utopia---not by any stretch of the imagination. But if you had been able to show it to the people who lived back then some might have been excused for believing that it is. The world changes from generation to generation, sometimes in one way, sometimes in another. The rate of change sometimes slows down to an almost imperceptible crawl, sometimes it gallops like a runaway horse. Sometimes things seem to be getting better, sometimes worse.
It’s important to remember that “better” and “worse” are human categories that we impose upon the world around us. The world doesn’t care---it just “is”. Moreover, it’s important to remember that even though we talk about the “human race” or “the world” like it is one thing it really isn’t. What is seen as a catastrophe for one person or group, can be be a long-hoped-for change for the better by others.
The fossil fuel industry is a thing of the past. We travel on electric trains, buses, cars, bicycles, and, by foot. We don’t fly all over the planet anymore, simply because we haven’t yet learned how to do that without wasting huge amounts of energy in one form or another. This has been found to be no great loss anyway---tourism jobs were poorly paid, made housing way too expensive for the locals, and, tended to reduce local cultures to a sort of fake “Disneyfied” simulation of the real thing.
In exchange, people have learned to broaden their horizons through the growth of the World Wide Web, which has finally lived up to it’s potential as a means of spreading knowledge and bringing the world together. Once we broke up the tech monopolies and brought in regulations that destroyed it as a propaganda source what got left was on the whole much better.
Populist and Capitalist propaganda had convinced voters to support parties that fought tooth and nail against using the benefits of modern technology to benefit the masses instead of the elite. In addition to voter suppression, propaganda, “wasted” votes, and other “fiddles” that were inherent in traditional democratic societies, it was simply amazing how often people voted against their own best interests. Once people learned to vote more rationally, we got guaranteed annual income programs, the rich were taxed, housing declined in cost, and, the work week shrank. People realized that costly gee gaws were just shiny distractions that kept people from finding what they really needed---which was the freedom to find out just who they are and what they can accomplish if given half a chance.
And at the same time more and more parts of the economy transitioned away from artificially enforced scarcity to genuine abundance. The Open Source business model now generates half of the world’s GDP. And “General Purpose” Factories---based on 3-D printing technology---have sprung up everywhere. The need for huge amounts of capital to build commercial enterprises is drying up, and with it the need for wealthy capitalists. Computer technology linked up with the Web has finally given the edge to co-ops over corporations, art over marketing, craftsmanship over mass production, taste over price, and, wisdom over ideology.
This isn’t an end to problems---just the end to the old ones. New ones will arise after the first glow of “the Great Turning” is over. Dealing with them will be the task of future generations.
For now, academics have the task of recording and cataloguing the players who were there when the new world was born. Mikhail Bookchin and the Climate Trials were a visible player. He may or may not have been essential to what happened, but he was certainly a sign of what was going on. I am only glad that he---and what he represented---was there when we all needed him the most.
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Well, that's it for The Climate Trials. Next week I'll try to come up with something else for the literary supplement---simply because it seems to me that there were a lot of people who like it. If you like reading this blog, and you can afford it, why not subscribe? You can pay what you like (a dollar a month is fine), and Pay Pal and Patreon make it easy to do.
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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with.
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