Manifesto
Intro
Assemblies
Economy
Nature
Culture
Although as humans we are all part of the natural world, we are being increasingly alienated from it by the present system which is wreaking havoc. The world’s surface temperature will soon overshoot 1.5˚C, but the UN climate talks are a front for the fossil fuel corporations. Emissions continue to rise, alongside obscene profits. Governments (including the UK and Scottish governments) are retreating from previous commitments.
They are allowing drilling in some of the last remaining wilderness, rainforests, ancient forest and oceans. Since 1990, 420 million hectares of forest have been converted to other uses, mainly intensive agriculture. The oceans have absorbed about 29% of CO2 emissions since the start of industrialisation and are now over 30% more acidic. The effects include disastrous weather events, far quicker than scientists had previously imagined. There is an ongoing mass extinction of plants, mammals, insects, amphibians, birds and marine species. The web of life is losing its resilience.
Living together on the planet
A careful, democratic system of production that meets everyone’s needs is the only alternative we have. We are not deep down “consumers” and “customers”. These worthless, fabricated identities have been forced on us. We are natural beings living together with other species on a small planet.
We mainly relate to nature not as individuals but collectively, through our human society and the mode of producing and reproducing life we have constructed. Relating to nature through the capitalist system is making us poor and sick. And it is wrecking the climate and eco-systems.
Recognition of the dead end of consumerism and breaking from those shackles, will empower younger generations to build a new tomorrow, starting today. It’s time to go beyond protesting, instead defining a new economic culture, a new way of living together on the planet. That can spur people to action, and fill the current political vacuum, where young people especially see what is in it for them to commit to making this change.
We can advance towards a deep and just transition that decarbonises fuel and provides a basis for a society that can endure climate shocks that are now inevitable. A transformed relationship to nature is the answer to the current mental health crisis amongst the young.
People-run climate talks
There can only be an international solution to the climate crisis. In future, delegates from popular assemblies across the world need to run the climate talks, taking decisions back to their home countries for implementation. The first step must be a socio-political transformation in the main emitting countries – mostly former colonial powers but also now including China and India. That puts a big responsibility on us in the UK to transform our democracy.
Measures of economic success like Gross Domestic Product and other profit-focused measures, need to be binned. A process of “degrowth” does not mean “back to the stone age”, but changing the criteria of production towards meeting people’s needs, not generating shareholder profit. We could feed the world and protect nature too.
With the idea of a just transition, people currently working in polluting jobs could become the lynchpin of the new economy, building the green energy future.
Fuelling the change
A renewable energy system and grid is within our grasp, but the state’s approach is performative. For example, the climate cost of making steel for wind turbines using coal-fired furnaces in China and shipping them across to Scotland, is not considered at present. So long as coal, steel and wind-generated power can generate profit then all capitalism’s criteria have been met and the state can claim this as “climate action”. The energy companies are just brokers, putting layers of profit-taking between consumers and the grid. Taking energy and resources out of their hands is the only solution. Then we could measure real end-to-end climate impacts and minimise them.
Just 50 companies emitted 80% of greenhouse gases since 2016 – these should be our primary targets. It is possible to power industry without burning fossil fuel but the investment is not made, plus lobbying power of the oil corporations means business as usual.
We need an energy revolution in local communities, with co-operatives co-owning renewables for the benefit of citizens and local networks. These already exist on a small scale – they need to become the norm.
We need a transitional plan for plastics, made from oil but crucial for many uses. The first step is to ban all single use plastics and develop the alternatives. The remaining oil can be conserved for essential uses only. As a general principle, “leave it in the ground” has some merit.
Mitigation of climate effects
Even after we start to cut emissions, the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, plus the warming of oceans, mean extreme weather events will continue and worsen for years to come. We will be living in the new normal.
Scientists and public policy experts are collaborating on ways of mitigating the damage but their focus is skewed by corporate interests, with the focus on potentially profitable things like “green” cars, carbon capture and storage and even interfering with the atmosphere.
The new democratic, climate decision-making body can get expert help from non-partisan scientific advisors and take actions that are the simplest, most organic, natural and socially just.
Plans to deal with mass migration from areas made uninhabitable or non-productive for food, will be needed. Not only parts of Africa, India, Bangladesh and island states are under threat. Parts of the United States, China, India, the Middle East, Australia, and Europe are also suffering continuous land and infrastructure damage. For example, the population of New Orleans has halved since Hurricane Katrina.
Rising sea levels mean requires reorganising water use. Aquifers are becoming depleted and rivers salty, but using renewable energy it is possible to do desalination, while local water co-ops can improve gathering, storing and fair distribution of water. To achieve this, water must become a common resource, shared by all and owned by nobody.
We are seeing an increase in landslides, flooding and climate change, nationally and internationally. Flood defences and risk assessment must be a legal requirement prior to all land/ housing development. Land use must work with scientists, recognising the ever-changing landscape of our rivers and sea.
Flood defences can be improved by planting trees, mangroves and reed beds, which will also help to fix carbon. But there is no point planting new forests if the last of the ancient forests is still being cut down.
The most important mitigation will be the signing of an international treaty on the rights of nature, which will bring all extraction and development under international laws, enabling us to conserve what is left, and make the transition in the shortest possible time.
Greening the city
Over 56% of the world’s population live in cities and that figure continues to rise. Our planet’s future rests on making them places that do not pollute the atmosphere, with green space and public transport brought into public ownership. They need to grow some of their own food, instead of being parasitic on hinterlands.
Money is wasted building homes, schools and hospitals with poor insulation and a short life. The emissions from manufacturing concrete, cement, steel and other raw materials are massive. Yet instead of making places that last, we are building future slums.
Everything in the city should be built to last with proper sinking funds for maintenance and repair required, plus strict regulations on insulation and heating. All new buildings should be carbon neutral. Retrofitting older buildings can become a massive public programme.
A fifth to a quarter of global CO2 emissions come from road transport. Cheap or free public rail transport in cities as well as rural areas must be a priority to reduce emissions and wasted resources. The fifteen-minute city concept and interconnected transport systems can reduce car dependency, benefit citizens and revitalise town centres.
Hundreds of towns and cities already have municipal socialist movements and co-operatives developing plans for this kind of city – they need the power to implement them, which popular assemblies can deliver.
Growing food – protecting nature
We can quickly change from unhealthy processed food to healthy, mostly locally grown food. As a society we should support small and medium sized farms and market gardens and bring the big agriculture owners under democratic control.
We need measures to reduce air miles. That does not mean future children in the UK can’t have an orange or a banana. It means replacing the current chaotic system with food transported needlessly across the globe, often to exploit cheap labour.
It is claimed that pesticides and gene manipulation prevent starvation – a terrible irony coming from those responsible for the current growing famine. We need to proceed carefully, learning from history where reckless changes have led to famine.
Natural resources
Corporations will push against limits to their right to exploit natural resources and human labour. Alongside the criteria of not-for-profit production, we need to kick the corporate giants – Rio Tinto, Glencore et al – out of Africa and Australia and everywhere else and take decisions about extraction out of the hands of corrupt politicians and gangster warlords.
The private ownership of minerals needs to be banned and alongside the new “not for profit” production system we can conserve precious resources, using them sparingly so they last. The universal waste of minerals must switch from the present accepted policy of moving waste from town and country to offset their individual responsibilities.
A massive new system of safe recycling needs to be developed. Current recycling is largely fraudulent and more greenwashing by the state. We need global chains for recycling and new and safe methods to replace the current system where the health of children in poorer countries being damaged by dismantling poisonous components from rich countries.
Global communication and data systems play a huge part in this future, but computers and server banks need rare metals and plastics, and they require a lot of power, land and water, so their development and purposeful use needs to be decided collectively. The internet should be a collectively owned resource, not a means for generating profit through traffic, monopoly ownership, or monetising our personal data.
We will no longer squander resources and energy on wars and preparing for wars. It is estimated that militaries are responsible for 6% of global emissions. The new international law on environmental protection must include banning the use of planetary resources to make more and more weapons.
Priority Actions
- campaign for an end to anti-protest laws and the criminalisation of climate activism
- support actions that seek solutions to the ecological crisis, in particular global warming and climate change, including curbing all forms of pollution: carbon, air, water, light, noise
- support and expand initiatives to diversify industries to put extractive skills and technologies and workforce to better purposes
- unleash the power of the countless individuals and organisations who realise that it is a systemic crisis and that it is the present state that keeps that system in place
- form an international non-partisan federation of climate scientists to advise international talks and strategies
- campaign for mass resistance linking climate, human rights, poverty, inequality and poor housing, showing how they connect to the system, and can only be tackled by changing it
- form popular assemblies in every town and city to challenge non-democratic local councils and mayors. Develop community plans to improve environments and empower people.
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