Chaudhary at the baffler: Who is "we" ?
"In this story, there is no universal “we.” Climate change is not the apocalypse, and it does not fall on all equally, or even, in at least a few senses, on everyone at all."
" Right-wing climate realism then, in its simplest form, is a political-ecological scenario of the concentration, preservation, and enhancement of existing political and economic power."
"A world we can already see coming into its own in Fortress Europe or at the U.S. border and in increasingly direct and punitive post-democratic governance in places like Puerto Rico, Greece, or Flint. We can observe interstitial border states, like Turkey and Mexico, adopting the control of migrants as an emerging geopolitical lever, but for a permanent “tier” below, providing a key service for the preservation of power in a world already experiencing migration on a scale not seen since the Second World War "
"The Rex Tillersons of the world have taken a look at the same data, the same trends, the same underlying social and political conditions, and they have noticed that in the probable world in which nothing changes for them, business-as-usual, they end up on the “winning” side of a sharp global and local dividing line. Every structural incentive serves to reinforce such thinking. The best outcome in such a position is to push on with business-as-usual; the costs of climate change will largely be borne by those who already bear the cost today. Indeed, as I will argue, that other people will be bearing those costs helps keep the system going as long as possible and makes the Rex Position of maximal extraction for maximal maintenance, or cashing out, that much better. Even modestly successful climate mitigation and adaptation for the vast majority of people would require socioeconomic and political changes that would pose a steep loss to the Rex Position."
"Right-wing climate realism can seek to embrace the shell game but just choose the shells—to help, no matter what the cost, maintain capitalism in the twenty-first century."
" Through an ecological lens, what Thomas Piketty describes as “patrimonial capitalism” becomes a horrifyingly distorted mirror-image of the steady-state or circular economies often posited as goals in ecological literature. Wealth is held, maintained, and recirculated back to itself in close kinship networks. This is, of course, already a characteristic of the world as it is."
"Neofeudalism is also a steady-state economy—one in which growth is essentially nil or close to it—but characterized not by some harmonious socially sustaining socioeconomic life ... a handful of distinct—if almost certainly overlapping—surplus populations: First, a massive number of socioeconomically expendable people (no longer needed for the basic stable reproduction of the sated and well-off) who face direct, permanent ecological adversity ... second, an over-large body—also facing severe economic and ecological constriction—of what one might term “neoserfs”: people who work in basic production and extraction, maintenance, and non-essential service functions. In between these groups and a ruling class would be a third mass: loyal retainers, if you will. Those who perform high level services, especially governance and security."
"Approximately 25 percent of the American workforce is already employed protecting wealth and surveilling other workers. This is a trend one can see in other countries; it tracks inequality. "
" “if climate change is allowed to destroy whole economies and nations, no amount of walls, guns, barbed wire, armed aerial drones, or permanently deployed mercenaries will be able to save one half of the planet from the other.” But this is highly uncertain, not particularly likely, and certainly not automatic."
" left-wing climate realism is the politics of a world relieved from social, economic, and ecological despair and exhaustion ... This is absolutely possible in the same way, right-wing climate realism is hardly “bound to fail.” "
"Existing inequalities and inequities increase exposure to climate impacts, even while, through exploitation, extraction, and enclosure, they are simultaneously drivers of further inequality and ecological stress ... But, at the very least, as climate change continues to intensify, the geographical maps of the global caste system will continue to be redrawn."
" There is no universal “we” whose present benefits are being maximized. Profits, rather, are maximized for the few at extraordinary socioeconomic and ecological costs to the vast majority. Climate change does not negatively affect only prospective “future” generations but is already exacting costs from most people currently alive while benefiting a rather smaller number immensely."
" diverging “climates,” diverging interests, and even diverging times ... it is the case that for billions of people and even majorities in Global North countries that they have strong interests in immediate and radical transformation ... At the same time there are those who have no rush at all. This is not about people’s moral character per se but actually just a straightforward comparison of structural interests. Nordhaus is, in a weird way, right; it’s not worth the trillions of dollars of losses or the trillions of dollars of costs to mitigate so quickly. It’s that he’s only right for one of those images, for one small set of people with inordinately large amounts of power ... two diametrically opposed worlds, where even ecology does not unite all people. Simply put, we’re not all in this together."
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/were-not-in-this-together-chaudharysidd