Moving from Protest to Action

People’s Climate March — Tucson Solidarity Events

September 20, 2014

Coalitions of Mutual Endeavor Workshop
Moving from Protest to Action

Introduction

My name is Dave Ewoldt. I’m a systems scientist and a practitioner and researcher in applied ecopsychology, specifically its application to systemic change based on natural systems principles for the transition to a sustainable future. These principles are both necessary and effective for health and well-being at the personal and social levels, as well as with our relationships to and need for the natural world–which includes our own inner wilderness as well as our communities.

It must be understood that sustainability has an ecologically sound and legally defensible definition, and that sustainability is more of a social movement than it is an environmental movement, although it is impossible to disentangle those two concepts. It must also be understood that the core emergent attributes of sustainability are ecological integrity, social justice, economic equity, and participatory democracy. The guiding axiom for Coalitions of Mutual Endeavor is that true justice is not possible without sustainability, and without justice peace will always remain nothing more than a dream. One thing about having a guiding framework is that it helps you prioritize.

Natural systems principles–mutual support and reciprocity, no waste, no greed, and increasing diversity–provide an alternative to the dominator hierarchies and disconnection that lead to empire, exploitation, and destruction; to the toxicity that effects all the relationships necessary to support life and provide meaning, progress and fulfillment of potential. This alternative uses self-organizing networks of mutuality that share leadership. This is inherently non-hierarchical and provides the basis for reconnecting and relocalizing. This is the framework that multi-issue coalitions that can create the critical mass necessary for systemic, life-affirming change fit into.

How that relates to today

Our entire universe, from sub-atomic particles to molecules to weather systems, is based on attraction relationships. Brian Swimme calls them allurements. Ervin Laszlo refers to the subtle field, or 5^th force in unified field physics. Today’s quantum physicists talk about the Higgs Boson. But without interconnectedness nothing more interesting than hydrogen and helium atoms could ever arise. And what are multi-issue coalitions if not networks of mutual support? What these networks require to be successful are a common goal, a set of shared values, and a systemic framework their individual work can fit within as it contributes to the common goal.

So here’s the basic premise of my talk today, and the springboard for a much longer and deeper conversation.

We’re spinning our wheels with protests and marches.

Now, these are both perfectly valid methods to raise awareness about injustices, destructive behaviors, and what needs to happen in their stead. However, it’s long past time to move beyond that. Reputable polls show the majority–a simple majority in some cases, a supermajority in others, and damn near consensus in a few–are already in agreement. The numbers are even higher outside of the U.S. People support taking action against global warming; they’re willing to pay more for their electricity if it comes from clean, renewable sources; to stop pollution and make polluters pay; to get money out of politics and end the myth of corporate personhood; and are twice as likely to support a congressional or presidential candidate who strongly supports action to reduce global warming. We don’t see these majorities at the voting booth because there is a decided scarcity of candidates running on these issues–or any other issue that might upset the status quo.

Our greatest commonality is that we come from the Earth, which supports life, thus a sustainable future is in everyone’s best interests. At its core, sustainability is a community movement, and we all live in community. Further, the attributes of sustainability do not exist in isolation–the importance, indeed the essence, of their interrelationships cannot be ignored and must be developed. When you realize that life works by self-organizing networks of mutual support that maintain and enhance the web of life, a logical conclusion is that we will become much more successful as individuals and as a species if we embrace and model this basic process. In fact, when you truly understand interconnectedness, you become more afraid of hating than of dying. As a side benefit, it would also require an order of magnitude, at least, less energy than we’re lead to believe that we need.

One example of multi-issue coalition building is the Global Climate Convergence (GCC) made up of unions and advocates for peace, food security, economic rights, civil rights, housing, the environment, renewable energy and those committed to ending corporate power. The GCC organized ten days of action from Earth Day to May Day this year to show that all of our issues are connected and that the climate crisis is the ticking clock that brings urgency to our work.

What we actually need to do

There is really only one way to get greenhouse gas emissions down to zero–turn off Industrialism and get global population below bioregional carrying capacity boundaries. By Industrialism, I mean economic determinism; the concept that our highest calling in life is to be an economic actor, and that the market can cure every ill and fulfill every desire. Everything else is subservient to this, and nothing else could possibly provide the same degree of meaning and purpose in life. Production and consumption are the be-all and end-all of human society, and whether they are provided under the economic principles of socialism, capitalism or a mixed-market is irrelevant to Industrialism.

Industrialism not just mechanistic factory automation; it is a way of organizing the world that reduces all the world’s substance to resources to be used as inputs to the industrial process, and reduces all the world’s people to either customers or workers. It is a system defined by ever-increasing growth and throughput, decreasing costs, and a narrowly measured spectrum of efficiency that externalizes all negative consequences–as if the poisoner had not intended the death of its victims. Industrialism turns nature into commodities while dismantling and creating compounds toxic to nature. The industrial growth paradigm sees Earth as both an endless supply of resource and a bottomless pit for waste. The scientific terminology for this process is turning low-entropy resources into high-entropy wastes. The consumer society merely provides a short little layover–a fondling period, if you will–to this process. The planned obsolescence and creeping featuritis of the throw-away society are manifestations of this.

Because of Industrialism, we cannot be inhabitants of a sensuous living world, but are reduced to customers of the theme park known as America, Inc. And we’re busily trying to export this model to the rest of the world, perhaps thinking that if the rest of the world shares our pathology, it won’t reflect so badly on us. The common rationalization for this is that it’s just “human nature” after all to let the pathologies of greed, selfishness, aggression, and arrogance merge into narcissistic entitlement. That concept, by the way, is false outside of a very limited context.

Today’s cultural story is built on an 18^th Century misunderstanding of human nature and the mistaken belief in Earth as a dead, linear, clockwork mechanism of perfect individual pieces in constant competition. Business As Usual means continuously growing production, consumption, and toxic wastes, which means the status quo is an unmitigated ecological catastrophe that requires war and leads to inequality and poverty. This is just basic physics and elementary math.

Here’s the summary of where we are and how we got here: the climate is changing because the globe we call Earth is warming. This warming is caused by human activities that create greenhouse gases (primarily from burning fossil fuels in one form or another), deforestation, ocean acidification, and fewer natural carbon sinks from sprawling urbanization, destruction of wetlands, intentional industrial wastelands, and industrial agriculture–global topsoil is depleted about 50% and soil is what actually feeds us. These activities are all carried out to further the cause of Industrialism and its incessant need for growth. Growth in a material economy requires massive amounts of energy of increasing quality and decreasing cost, and fossil fuels have been able to meet that requirement since coal fired off the Industrial Revolution in England.

This is where crises start converging. Quality fossil fuels are getting harder and more expensive to acquire. To keep the global economy growing, even at historical anemic rates, requires pulling low quality stuff out of increasingly harder to reach places that deplete even faster; that cause even more environmental damage and a larger contribution to greenhouse gases. The system must run ever faster against increasing odds just to keep up. The only other thing that’s been shown to work is illegally invading sovereign nations to steal theirs.

The peak in conventional fossil fuel extraction took place back in 2005. This is a problem because the future valuation, and thus the stock price, of shareholder corporations are based on growth, which becomes uncertain at best with increasing energy costs and decreasing availability over the long-haul. This doesn’t even factor in decreasing consumer demand for goods that are becoming less affordable and simply aren’t fulfilling anyway.

A related problem is that renewable energy sources simply don’t have the energy density. Fossil fuels used to have an energy returned on energy invested (EREI) ratio of about 30:1. This means for every unit of energy put into extraction and processing, you’d get 30 units of usable energy out. Today’s fossil fuel mix gives about 5:1, and the best of renewables are about half that. Hydro is actually close to today’s fossil fuels, but if you have to use long-distance transmission lines, the losses cause it to lose its advantage. The overall problem here is that modern industrial culture requires somewhere between 10-12:1 to keep the lights on and ensure you have toilet paper… and ample supplies of Prozac to ensure you don’t worry yourself over this too much.

We most definitely need to do something, and it’s going to have to be based on a different set of assumptions. Our current mode of thinking, the dominant paradigm of the Industrial Growth Society, isn’t going to get us out of the mess it’s created. But I believe there are a small set of objectives we can agree on to one degree or another if we’re willing to admit the anthropogenic causes of global warming, and that there is a rational, emotionally stable, and spiritually fulfilling alternative that can be shown to improve quality of life. Strategy and tactics will come next.

* We must stop contributing to global warming. This means all greenhouse gases, deforestation, sprawl, planned obsolescence, growth at any cost must be stopped.

* Gross Domestic Product (GDP) must be dropped from economic analysis. It was never designed to be a measure of economic welfare. It is, however, a very good metric of destruction. Using a GDP analysis, the most productive economic actor is the 30-something male who totals his BMW on the way to his divorce lawyer and spends 6 months in intensive care. The alternative is a measurement known as the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI).

* We must build true equity into the economic system. This is not a call for communism or central planning. The concepts of merit, skill, experience, craftsmanship, and ability to play well with others are all important factors in compensation, whether monetary or through social status. We are an inquisitive, innovative, and intelligent species. Entrepreneurship isn’t going to disappear because the incentive of owning a second private jet has disappeared. But piratization… err… privatizaton must be stopped, and the commons returned to the people and their duly appointed governments.

* We must put people and planet above profit and power. It’s time to write a new story that doesn’t idolize greed and selfishness and that celebrates cooperative networks. Corporate personhood must be legally abolished. Our legal fictions must not be allowed to rule us.

* We must accept that local ecologies, which are biotic communities, have been ripped asunder and that we must stop biodiversity loss. The main reason is pretty simple; no food chain means no food. For us or any other creature. This is where the ocean acidification aspect of global warming is so worrisome.

* We must start designing a sustainable future, starting with an honest accounting of carrying capacity, especially in foreign policy, aid, and trade. We at least need a ballpark figure, which we can determine, for what standard of living can supply an acceptable quality of life for how many people indefinitely?

Moving beyond protest to achieve climate justice requires building a people-powered movement of movements–creating multi-issue coalitions that can build critical mass–in order to have a significant impact on the outrageous wealth and power of the global financial, industrial, and political elites who currently control the system for their own selfish ends.

Which points directly to one thing we should work on right away. We either need to just get rid of money, which we could actually do, or base the way it is valued on an entirely different set of principles that don’t include an unrealistically elevated status that has no material foundation. The concept of money making money–speculation, derivatives, even compound interest–is simply a bad idea.

We don’t need an aristocratic class that purports to keep the lower classes in line. Dominator control hierarchies, historically expressed through the Divine Right of Kings up to today’s oligarchy (kleptocracy is a more realistic term), are opposed to the way nature works. Social status today is artificial and capricious.

What useful function to society do the 1% actually serve? They tend to dabble in fashion and act as patrons of the arts. I’ll grant that the former is still important, but it shouldn’t pay more than a schoolteacher, and the latter should be integral to our social contract. Corporate CEOs are just glorified logistics clerks who like to party and tend to have (actually select for) below average empathy levels.

We’ve built society on a set of principles that turn out to be false. The truth is we’re part of nature and we can’t escape the consequences of our actions. Systems science and an Earth-centric spirituality provide a foundation for a systemic alternative, where our actions can be congruent with the way nature works, and increase possibilities for reaching potential without destroying our life support system.

The overall project of transitioning into a sustainable future is not one of getting rid of all the pieces we’ve invented and the knowledge we’ve gained over the millennia, but weaving the majority of them into a different framework–one based on networks of mutuality instead of hierarchies of domination. The carrying capacity aspect of sustainability defines how far they can scale, or if they should even be allowed. For some items we may need to rethink the need it’s meant to fulfill and other ways of doing so.

What we want

In a phrase, reconnecting and relocalizing. What we want is to build a social system reconnected to the source of life and all that makes life meaningful. We’re tired of being offered, or coerced into taking, artificial substitutes for natural fulfillment that tend to be addictive. More than just an abstract concept, this connection can be personally experienced through methods in applied ecopsychology such as the Natural Systems Thinking Process. For the other half of this phrase, we can relocalize our lifestyles, communities, and economies through the Transition Initiative movement and other similar processes such as bioregionalism and ecocities.

There is still a place for protest. But marches and rallys need to be replaced by Chautauquas. In order to be specific in the actions we expect from world leaders to address global warming (if they plan on keeping their jobs) we need information, and more importantly, how it fits together–its context. This is known as connecting the dots, and while it’s an acquired skill, it’s not a particularly difficult one to pick up as we’re wired to think systemically.

Core organizers of the People’s Climate March say because the march is composed of hundreds of organizations representing environmental justice, faith, and labor groups there’s no one ask for policy change. But there should be, as they certainly share a root problem, as well as a common goal.

The common goal of all of the assembled single-issue organizations is a sustainable future, even if they’re not currently using that terminology. Here are the things we’re for:

* An Earth jurisprudence that, along with its environmental benefits, grounds industrial and financial regulation, and forms the basis of local steady-state economies

* An end to new fossil fuel extraction since there’s already enough in reserves to fry the planet. We don’t need to drill another hole in Earth, or blow the top off another mountain. Tar sands, off-shore drilling, and fracking are absolutely, totally, completely unnecessary and merely speed up the process of ecocide.

* Healthcare, education, and shelter for all

* A minimum living wage for 15 hours of socially beneficial work that can provide for a family of four. And because we have an economy that is about 75% waste, we can actually afford both of these last two points.

* Rational sex education that includes family planning and its intimate relationship with sustainability

* An end to planned obsolescence. We’re smart enough to build things to last and to be easily repairable.

* Ecological remediation and restoration. We need to start putting feedback loops to work for us instead of feeding the ones contributing to the rapidly converging crises.

* An end to empire and the militarization of local police. With a population whose needs are being met, neither are necessary. This does not, however, mean the need for police and defense will go away.

* Integration of carrying capacity into local planning, zoning, and land use

* Instant Runoff Voting, proportional representation, a paper audit trail on open source voting machines, election day a national holiday, public oversight on exit polling, public campaign financing, and reinstatement of equal time laws.

Global warming is indeed something all of us, and all of our movements, need to be concerned with. It’s a fight we must all take on. Even more important, however, is what we’re all building toward–a sustainable future that improves quality of life (for all life) and enhances the project of human progress. These are not mutually exclusive; they are complimentary and reinforce one another.

A common mindset of liberal greens is that all we need to do is make some personal changes (get your veggies from a farmers market or buy a green global warmer… err… I mean hybrid or electric vehicle) but don’t address the system causing the problems because of all the negative energy you’ll subject yourself to and besides the system won’t allow it anyway–we just need to make overconsumption and shallowness sustainable and peacefully commit ecocide.

Here’s the thing. There is a controlling paradigm that is destructive to life and desire. It thinks love is just a marketing slogan and not the underlying force in the universe. This paradigm must be stood up to and stopped. Since we could both stop the system and replace it with something better, according to the Bodhisattva ethic, if we don’t we’ll earn some of the bad karma from all the suffering it’s causing, and we’ll deserve it. Of course, the individual and lifestyle changes are actually part of a rational response to mitigating global warming. They are necessary but not sufficient. Analysis shows that they only get us about 20% of the way to where we need to go just in the realm of greenhouse gases.

We have a whole set of tools at our disposal to carry out this work that are based on or congruent with natural systems principles. There are non-hierarchical methods and processes for organizing (organizations, teams, events, communities even), for communicating in inclusive ways that bring out the quiet voices among us, for sharing leadership, and for making democratic group decisions and running meetings. You never have to suffer under Robert’s Rules of Order again–unless you’re just masochistic, I guess.

For those who worry about the economic cost, or who even have the audacity to openly complain that doing the right thing is just too expensive, I have a question. We managed to “find” trillions of dollars to bail out the banksters (sold to the public as a matter of collective survival), we fund the surveillance state and the militarization of local police, and there’s lots of money made available to wage wars to get more oil so we can wage more wars. But to fund an actual crisis of collective survival, you say the money can’t be found? Sorry, folks, but money is not an actual object, it’s just a set of agreements. It has all the substance of fairy dust. We can print all we want and arbitrarily declare that it’s not inflationary. The financial spinmeisters of the current administration are pros at this.

Conclusion

The positive energy generated by this weekend’s events must not only survive, but be channeled into productive actions that address these issues in a manner that contributes to a sustainable future. This starts by stopping the factors contributing to both global warming and to social and resource inequity. These factors include exploitation, empire, industrialism and their underlying worldview of dominator hierarchies and disconnection from ourselves, each other and the rest of the natural world. From this worldview emerges a pathological sense of the other. We have been intentionally separated (it’s not a conspiracy, it’s a philosophy) from all that is naturally fulfilling in order to keep us addicted to substitutes for emotional and spiritual health and well-being.

So, the bottom line is that since we now know we’re already the majority, let’s start acting like it and stop compromising with the forces of evil (that which doesn’t support the web of life) under the mistaken belief that political feasibility (no change, but a bit of window dressing reform) is necessary to keep civilization from collapsing. This is merely one way the status quo protects itself.

One necessary action is from this day forward, commit to only voting for candidates who promise to restore sovereignty to the people. The climate crisis is also a democracy crisis. This means an integral aspect of any rational response to global warming is reclaiming sovereignty from the elites who have usurped it. For the toadies of the elite, vote them out–better yet, don’t wait for elections and just start recalling them. Get the organizations you belong to to start advocating the same to their general membership.

Because we can’t scare our leadership into removing themselves from power. They are not going to be suddenly instilled with a fear of ignoring our demands simply because we managed to turn out 100,000 (or however many) people from a thousand organizations. They’re happy as clams as long as we restrain ourselves to free-speech zones and just march around in circles instead of to anywhere of any significance.

Corporations won’t be removed from the political process when they own the politicians, the regulatory process, the media, and just to add insult to injury, the voting machines. The current congress won’t remove corporate and financial influence until we remove them. Fossil fuels will not be removed from the energy mix until fossil fools are removed from power.

The democratic sovereignty of the people will not be regained until one of two things happen–violent revolution or replacing the politicians who adhere to Industrial ideology with those who realize the gains that can be made by adopting a paradigm grounded in the cooperative networks of life itself. Otherwise we’re going to end up exactly where we’re headed, and the collapse of life on Earth as the 6^th Major Extinction winds down will make all the rest of this moot.