From now on I will only be blogging at Carbon Footnotes and for Earthscan. So it’s ta-tah from me at 10Ways.

Bye,

Rob

Despite their different qualities, forms and direct causes, there is an ideological concept that links the recent cuts in public spending, anthropogenic climate change and the banking crisis.

It is of pressing importance to get to grips with, to understand and to tackle in order to reclaim our shared future.

Its name is neoliberalism.

In my next few posts, I will take a closer look at neoliberalism in order to get a better idea of how it operates, in relation to people and nature and what this means for the future. Along the way I’ll show how there are social and ecological limits to neoliberalism, give examples of how its been previously challenged and describe the attributes that make it what it is.

The rise of neoliberalism

During the 1980s in the US and UK, neoliberalism took hold under the wistful gaze of a former actor, President Reagan, and the society denying gawp of Margaret Thatcher. Both of whom were influenced by economists such as Friedman, Hayek and Epstein, and championed a vision that stood as a counter to what it viewed as the failures of the Keynesian, state-coordinated model of capitalism.

A couple of academics, Peck and Tickell, termed this period in the 1980s as ‘rollback neoliberalism’, determinable by patterns of deregulation and dismantlement; the 1990s then went on to see an emergent phase of active state-building and regulatory reform, which they called ‘roll-out neoliberalism’. This can be seen in the new institutions created by Blair and Clinton in the 1990s following the dismantlement of Keynesian structures, and were designed to embed the neoliberal project more deeply in civil society.

I would like to suggest that we can now add a third phase. ‘Roll-over neoliberalism’ sees the influence of corporate power fully infiltrating every aspect of government in a deceptive, misleading and misguided ideological manuoevre that simply expects the public and the environment to roll over and take the abuse. Fast food chains are asked to come up with food policy, tax-dodgers give their input on tax and bankers smarm their way out of any punishment by holding the government’s balls firmly in their money-grabbing grips. Keynesian influenced ideas such as a Green New Deal in which a coordinated approach to stimulating the economy is taken with a focus on developing a low carbon infrastructure and green jobs, is simply ignored in favour of business as usual.

In the face of such ludicrous proceedings by our democratic representatives it is now of great importance that people seeking to improve this situation come together because although the powers that be may soak up our demonstrations in the short term, ignore our dissent and carry on as before, there are limits in the long-term that business as usual will break, bringing neo-liberalism and the global economy to its knees.

These limits are not just those of public tolerance, but are ecological. The people and the planet both have lines you shouldn’t cross, and neoliberalism is pushing both much too far, whilst simultaneously championing itself as the saviour to each in the eloquent hypocrisy that has become the mainstay of the west’s delusional political discourse. Tackling this situation means tackling social justice, poverty, equality and climate change all at once, for all are intricately interwoven and deserve a concerted effort in order to confront business as usual practices that have destructive effects to society and nature. Rather than ignoring global divisions of labour in national policies on poverty or framing climate change in moral terms, doom and gloom rhetoric or even scare tactics, they must be recognised in their true context. Issues such as social justice, poverty, climate change and equality, are situated in a discourse of power, wherein our shared environment is a critical context for shaping the debate the world over.

This is because the power of neoliberalism is in almost everything we see in the West and is itself made possible by the natural mechanisms of the environment and its ecosystems. Capitalism, of which neoliberalism is a shell, may have provided us in the West with considerable material wealth but it is critically flawed. For everyone on the planet to achieve the same standards of living as those in the US we would need another two planets.

There are two main responses to this problem and one is particularly more nasty than the other. One is to have an economic rethink and push for a more just and equal global society and form of human development where resources are utilised sustainably with an eye to the long-term rather than merely short-term political and financial gain. The other is to carry on as we are, securing and using resources for our own Western purposes, exploiting their increasing demand as supplies dwindle, emitting more and more CO2. Throughout history such competition for resources is played out over a backdrop of wars, droughts and famines and in our current trajectory we are potentially set on a course that sees a peaking in oil supplies, growing water scarcity and a potential food crisis that Lester Brown warns could cause widespread societal collapse.

From a cynical perspective, it would appear that this latter choice is a winner when you think about the timescales involved – decades perhaps – that might allow you to have an almighty blowout and then just pop your clogs before having to tidy up any of the mess. But as the baby-boomers start to retire and fade away, the younger generations might have a few things to say about all of this, as they are the ones who currently seem to be on course to get fewer and fewer benefits of business as usual practices as time moves on. The oldies might be about to shuffle of this mortal coil but the young have a vested interest in tidying this place up.

As well having our future threatened from the old school business as usual practices, our present is equally pushed and shoved. It’s not just the increasing cost of an education that has us buggered but also our relations with each other that are bound within shallow frames of consumption and identity, as well as our relations with nature. These relations have in many ways changed as a result of the ideological power of neoliberal capitalism which drives the politics, economics and culture of the world system, providing the context and direction for how humans affect and interact with non-human nature and with one another. Although we may perceive that we are disconnected from what made us, seeing nature merely as something to be bought, sold, used or overcome, we are in truth completely interconnected with it.

The ideology that has caused this disconnection or alienation has pervaded throughout modern Western living. Its power is evident, paradoxically, in its seeming elusiveness as neoliberal capitalist projects have become the norm, the way we see the world and often each other – they have shaped themselves as a set of objective, natural, and technocratic truisms, so that we can no longer see the wood for the trees.

In Part 2 I’ll be looking at the rationality behind neoliberalism and the effects this has on people and nature.

By Rob Plastow

Charlie Brooker said that you don’t really watch Mad Men, you just sit there and let it seep into you. I’m not the biggest TV fan, I put the TV on mute during the ad breaks and don’t watch many shows. Yet somehow I’m addicted to letting Mad Men seep into me and fascinated by the world in which the show plays out – advertising.

Recent reviews of the current series explain its popularity is due to its similarity to today – just how far have we really come? The anachronistic voyeurism we are allowed lets us maintain any distance we may need to not see it as a direct mirror of our own consumption habits and materialistic society.

The show is often filled with glitz and glamour, luxury products and decadent services but still populated by discontented, substance abusing middle classes who appear to want for nothing yet are modern men and women constantly in search of a soul.

In the current series, the agency has lost the contract with Lucky Strike and the creative director, Don Draper, openly dismisses tobacco companies in a full page ad in the New York Times. But back before he had even a single strand of moral fibre he was the man that had come up with the “It’s toasted” tag-line just as Lucky Strike were beginning to feel the scorn of medical researchers scrutinising the impacts of smoking.

Draper skimmed passed the health issues that were emerging in his 1960s America and went straight for the sensory cue, threw away the psychological research about death-wishes and clung on to the simple, shallow, highly effective call to indulgence. For Draper there was no point in entering the debate, just enjoy the taste of that smooth carcinogenic tobacco.

The same can be said of sustainability and climate change. We know the score and yet we keep on smoking. How do we make green living just plain living? How can behaviour change be beneficial to the individual and appeal to our self-interest?

These questions, in light of Mad Men, make me ask another: is news of anthropogenic climate change received today in the same way that news of smoking’s harmful affects were in the 1960s?

Back when that came out, some people quit. Many others didn’t. Today some people are trying to live greener and this want for sustainability has changed the political landscape, but many others remain resolutely unchanged.

Green living sometimes rubs people up the wrong way due its perceived want of altruistic behaviour which fuels a sense of self-importance that non-greens find sickening. Like a non-smoker with a smug grin telling a smoker cigarettes will kill them.

But what advocates of green lifestyles try to assert is that living green can improve your own feelings of self-importance through a qualitative change rather than a quantitative one and that altruistic outcomes can be a product of the process to living green – not always, but often.

Climate sceptics hold even firmer to their beliefs in the face of this and reason for their autonomy and independence from any ‘fads’ or unwanted changes.

This possible divide over morality, consumption and sense of self causes a lot of friction – both sides feeling wholly justified by their own beliefs, which more often than not are embedded or at least vitally attached to their own creation of self and what they perceive to be fair, right and important.

With such large implications for behaviour, stances on climate change and sustainability no doubt both inform and are created by identity of the self – how we see ourselves, each other and what we want to become.

Mad Men symbolises these aspirations for an entire ideology and culture based on modernity, consumption and progress; that are full of hope on the outside and despair within.

For all his elegant cool, Don Draper is also a philandering drunk who has no idea who he even is half the time. The story fluctuates between his efforts to change and his ignorance of his wrongs.

Making behavioural changes is different for everybody. Don Draper goes swimming and writes a journal, Transition groups try to live with less dependency on fossil fuels, and most people who want to do something about climate change make adjustments to their lives by shopping locally and reducing, re-using and recycling.

Consumption along with the desire it creates, frame our outlook (at least in the West) without us realising half the time. It is the lens through which we see the world most of the time; observing the world in terms of its potential to benefit ourselves, often through purchasing things.

It then becomes easy to understand how that desire is at the centre of consumer economies. All the credit crunch, recession, and climate change clatterings in the news media around the world all stem from a silent, invisible psychological origin that grows within us all.

Followers of Ayn Rand would even lift it up onto a pedestal and call it ‘enlightened self-interest’. But for many (especially outside of the Western world) there’s nothing enlightening about being deluded and at the whim of a silent, invisible ego that is goaded by people like Don Draper into consuming more and more in the faint hope of sating manipulated desire, or for a moment’s perceived happiness from having bought something.

And yet that is what our whole way of life, our economy and our socialisation rests upon. That psychological trick as it were, whereby PR companies, ad men and marketers have latched onto the mind and even the outskirts of the soul in order to get our money and make us work for more.

Spend, spend, spend to keep the machine working. Governments say they want to tackle climate change and social justice but at the same time they urge us to carry on consuming – the very thing that has caused our societies to be socially and environmentally unsustainable.

We are trapped, as Tim Jackson says, on a hedonic treadmill. Mad Men shows us getting on it to begin the run, and so far we are still on it.

We are encouraged by economies of consumption to take our problems and concerns and to ‘toast’ them with that good old ad man trick which has kept us smoking for so long.

I am a human being. There are billions like me. I can’t possibly be alone, the odds are stacked too heavily for that to be. My thoughts and feelings and outlook on life are not those of the men I have been aspiring to mimic.

I am without one to mimic and I’m sure there are plenty of other people who feel the same these days. Our myths and our stories have been rationalized and replaced with only that which is certain. Yet we live in uncertainty, the universe is uncertain. Particles and people, satellites and suns carry in every atom that which we know to be certain sitting on top of uncertainty, within uncertainty knowing only little about ourselves through increments of centuries. We have all grown from nowhere into this world of matter and things we see before us through a chain of humans, back to the very first one, and further through all organisms to the birth of life itself, and the pregnant planet that bore it. A force that must have its origin in all origin, and therefore akin to existence itself. Everything is then an emanation of a driving force of existence, the same force that at varying levels of complexity, through cells and motherboards or people and planes causes all things to be. Existence as energy and force woven into the fabric of space and time, there is no disconnection, merely words for one great thing. And we too are a part of that.

Humans are swimming in the universe as water within water. The universe, as its name implies, is one thing, of which we are a part. Words break existence as ideas do consciousness. They are all merely emanations of one thing, existence and the physical world we perceive. Our scientists are positive this is the case and so, in those extreme cases, choose to live only with the little we can be certain about. The rest is left to the unfathomable until it can be evidently shown otherwise. This time lag of assurance and promulgation of the nature of the world as it can be agreed upon is humble enough to withdraw its grandiose assertions of the understanding of the universe when eventually someone sees it all from a different place in space, time or the mind itself. Yet scientists seem so sure as if they’ve cracked it and seen through the eyes of God each time they claim to do so and in many instances that is the best way to describe it. But this happens in increments, someone else always comes along and reshapes the whole understanding of what existence even is given enough time.

But the worst times are when uncertainty looms overhead, becoming harder and harder to ignore, no one saying anything, the certain standing steadfast as loyal subjects or disciples of truth. That is where we are heading today, on a psychological passion of humanity and civilization and existence itself as it was before man emerged and named it. We have seen the Last Supper, Dali’s crucifixion, the ghost world of existentialism and the hard bloody reality of matter. What we are yet to see is the immaterial, the non-physical, the sub-atomic, the euphemistic and elusive dark matter, the depths of space and the light and dark therein.

The door out of certainty leads to the void. We are stood on its edge embracing our 20th Century fathers goodbye as his daughter in a kiss seen by Klimt, leaving him to the world our old God’s kept and searching for the one they lost. But this kiss is foreboding to our souls, we avert our eyes, there is too much beauty to be missed and so little certainty ahead, into which we must trust our selves only. Through us speak the lessons of evolution; silently, intuitively and unconsciously, as if they held no space at all and yet we feel them. What is man but thought and matter interlaced? My ideas hold no space, they only transfer through the material world in action. My brain activity in its physical sense is a reaction, an effect to a previous action or cause. The primary cause of an idea that did not heretofore exist in my brain must emanate from something else, something immaterial made possible by the material. It’s source can be burrowed through the labyrinth of my entire memory, or into the atoms of my physical brain ad infinitum. We know of no limit, nor has any other that has come before us. This space has been guarded by Gods or additional words created to map existence in any decipherable way it may present itself physically, even the tiniest of physical traces. There are always more words and labels for what we can see, each word is a flame that lights a thought.

Beyond there is only darkness, as decipherable as death. In the West we know not what death is, we have held that experience of death in life is unobservable by definition, you can’t come back. Therefore we hold that no living person can know of death. Yet we know it to be certain. And it is all around us, constantly becoming, changing from one death to another through each thing that comes and passes – that which is held in the eternal present’s eye, kept moist in life. It knows no past or future, only timeless immediacy where letters fly off a spinning target with every name we try to throw.

Very happy to say a previous post on this blog has been reposted on the Earthscan Blog.

Many thanks to Rachel and the folks at Earthscan publishing for picking up the article and posting it on their excellent blog. It is very pleasant to be posted alongside writers such as Tim Jackson, whose Prosperity Without Growth is a must read.

Thank you Earthscan.

For a start, it’s not about saving the planet, that’s not going anywhere and has dealt with more than we can imagine over billions of years. The world is us, our cultures, our societies, which all rest entirely upon the natural world, its ecology and all other life on earth. And our world most certainly depends on how each of us affects an other.

When it comes to saving, well, maybe that’s not the best word but it sticks. It’s about stopping ourselves from doing nothing and destroying things we can’t get back once gone. It’s about not taking things for granted and making things better where we can. It’s about not taking the status quo as immutable and omnipotent, instead seeing it as dependent on all of us determining what it is through the way we think about it.

With that in mind here’s 10 ways to save the world that will be running themes throughout this blog:

1. Reform our economic structures
2. Reduce consumption
3. Become less dependent on fossil fuels
4. Participate: get involved, be heard and listen to others
5. Question everything
6. Reduce, reuse and recycle
7. Embrace co-operation, not just competition
8. Stand up for social justice
9. Fight for global fair trade
10. Remember that everything is interconnected

Following on from his book Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet this video is of Tim Jackson at TED earlier this year.

By John Vidal, Jonathan Watts and Suzanne Goldenberg

http://www.guardian.co.uk

Hopes for a strong deal on climate change appeared slim last night with countries so far failing to agree on fundamental issues and blaming each other for the descent towards a humiliating end.

Last-ditch efforts by the UN to get the 120 world leaders to at least commit to targets on temperature rises, emissions cuts and deadlines to finalise the treaty appeared gloomy, barring a late-night change in positions. With the talks stretching into the evening, some delegates held out the prospect of a weak, political agreement emerging, but on that would fall far short of expectations at the start of the two-week meeting.

The day saw successive versions of a draft agreement circulated with each version becoming less ambitious, until the evening when a slight increase in ambition was detected. Only weak, long-term aspirations for an overall global emissions cut of 50% by 2050 and an 80% cut by 2050 for rich countries appeared to be agreed by all. These commitments, and a pledge to keep temperature rises below 2C, were assumed to be givens at the start of the summit.

Officials suggested Gordon Brown would convene a smaller group of countries and ask them to sign up to a “plan B”. This might include the proposals for a $100bn fund for climate protection which the prime minister had first proposed. There was a “good deal of agreement surrounding it” he said.

An official said a plan B was possible because “there are not thousands of variables in this [negotiation], there are a handful. It is only the 2050 target and the issue of how to verify [emission cuts countries pledge].”

The two most serious stumbling blocks were demands from rich countries that developing countries should peak their emissions within a few years, and that the legally binding Kyoto protocol should be abandoned before a new legal treaty was in place.

By evening, no commitments were being sought for any of the major areas of dispute, such as a mid-term 2020 target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The European Union’s plan to raise its pledge from a 20% cut to 30% cut in emissions by 2020 was being blocked, dashing hopes of prompting a series on increased offers from other nations. One version of the text even dropped a deadline for reaching a legally binding treaty by the end of 2010. At the start of the week Gordon Brown was insisting that six months was the maximum acceptable delay.

A financial package intended to raise billions of dollars to help poor countries to adapt to climate change and develop green technology was also in doubt as rich countries declined to guarantee the money, simply affirming that they “supported a goal of mobilising $100bn by 2020″.

The lack of ambition and near total absence of commitment from the leaders is a bitter disappointment for the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, and the UK government which has led worldwide efforts to forge an ambitious, legally binding global agreement to stop the rise in carbon emissions by 2020 and reduce them dramatically in the following 30 years.

Negotiators will now continue to work on individual agreements like deforestation, technology, finance but without strong political leadership it could take years to complete.

Hopes that Barack Obama would deploy his authority as the leader of the world’s largest economy — and his political charisma — to try to broker a last-minute deal were also frustrated. A visibly angry Obama told world leaders that it was past time for them to come to an agreement. “The time for talk is over,” he said.

But Obama did not offer any new pledges of action — either in increased emissions cuts or clarity on America’s contributions to a climate fund for poor countries. He also held the line against China, saying America would not yield on the vexed issue of measuring and verifying emissions cuts promised by developing countries.

“I don’t know how you have an international agreement where you don’t share information and ensure we are meeting our commitments,” he said. “That doesn’t make sense. That would be a hollow victory.”

Chinese premier Wen Jiabao was said to be very offended by Obama’s speech, in which the president made a point of reminding the delegates that America was the only second largest polluter – after China.

Wen told the summit that developed nations had failed to live up to their Kyoto protocol promises and have now set new emissions targets that fall considerably short of the expectations of the international community.

“It is important to honour the commitments already made and take real action,” he said in a defiant speech. “One action is more useful than a dozen programmes. We should give people hope by taking credible actions.” However, late in the evening Obama and Wen were expected to talk again.

The dismal mood inside the conference centre reflected the failure to deliver the strong political deal promised by leaders. Yesterday was originally the deadline for a legally binding treaty. Hopes of that vanished months ago, but reaching political agreement in all the major areas in Copenhagen was seen as essential.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/18/copenhagen-treaty-failure

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8412483.stm

By Richard Black

http://news.bbc.co.uk

Negotiations at the UN climate summit have been suspended after developing countries withdrew their co-operation. Delegations were angry at what they saw as moves by the Danish host government to sideline talks on more emission cuts under the Kyoto Protocol.

As news spread around the conference centre, activists chanted “We stand with Africa – Kyoto targets now”.

But talks between the parties were expected to resume in the afternoon and informal discussions continue.

The countries that have suspended co-operation are those which make up the G77-China bloc of 130 nations. These range from wealthy countries such as South Korea, to some of the poorest states in the world.

The G77-China bloc speaks for developing countries in the climate change negotiation process.

Blocs representing poor countries vulnerable to climate change have been adamant that rich nations must commit to emission cuts beyond 2012 under the Kyoto Protocol.

But the EU and the developed world in general has promoted the idea of an entirely new agreement, replacing the protocol.

Developing countries fear they would lose many of the gains they made when the Kyoto agreement was signed in 1997.

They point out that the Kyoto Protocol is the only international legally binding instrument that has curbed carbon emissions, and also that it contains functioning mechanisms for bringing development benefits to poor countries such as money for investment in clean energy projects.

Previously during this meeting – formally called the Conference of the Parties (COP) 15 – developing countries have accused the Danish chairs of ignoring their concerns.

G77-China chief negotiator Lumumba Di-Aping explained why the bloc had taken the decision to withdraw its co-operation.

“It has become clear that the Danish presidency – in the most undemocratic fashion – is advancing the interests of the developed countries at the expense of the balance of obligations between developed and developing countries,” he told BBC Radio 4′s The World at One programme.

“The mistake they are doing now has reached levels that cannot be acceptable from a president who is supposed to be acting and shepherding the process on behalf of all parties.”

Last week, the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu forced a suspension after insisting that proposals to amend the UN climate convention and Kyoto Protocol be debated in full.

‘Losing time’

At a news conference earlier in the day, UK Climate Secretary Ed Miliband said that for the developed world to commit to further cuts under the Kyoto Protocol would be “irresponsible for the climate”.

He said it would leave some of the world’s biggest emitters without targets for cutting emissions.

Many developing countries have been arguing for a “twin track” approach, whereby countries with existing targets under the Kyoto Protocol (all developed nations except the US) stay under that umbrella, with the US and major developing economies making their carbon pledges under a new protocol.

Kim Carstensen, director of the global climate initiative with environment group WWF, said that much more movement was needed on the Kyoto Protocol negotiations here.

“The point is being made very loudly that African countries and the wider G77 bloc will not accept non-action on the Kyoto Protocol, and they’re really afraid that a deal has been stitched up behind their backs,” he told BBC News.

While understanding the G77 position, he said the suspension could affect progress towards a deal.

“We’re losing time, and that’s a serious matter; because for every minute we lose on one issue, the chances of getting to the bottom of the next issue diminish.”

The Danish government has yet to make any formal response; but Australian Climate Minister Penny Wong described the suspension as “regrettable”.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN climate change convention, predicted that the negotiations would get back on track in the early afternoon.

“The vast majority of countries here want to see the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol,” he said.

“I’m not aware that any countries are trying to block anything.”

An African bloc walkout during prepatory talks in Barcelona in November proved unpopular with other developing countries, in particular some small island nations.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8411898.stm