Averting climate disaster – conscientious objectors needed

Millions of people have been inspired by the young environmental activist Greta Thunberg. Aged 15, she painted her simple sign, sat outside the Swedish Parliament and began a ‘school strike for the climate’.

Her uncompromising language of warning and challenge has inspired a global movement of school strikes and forced EU leaders in Strasbourg and world leaders at the Davros World Economic Forum to listen.

To attend the World Economic Forum in Davros Greta undertook a grueling 64 hour round trip train journey, while 1500 private jet journeys conveyed the other delegates – supposedly our leaders and betters.

Many now agree that climate change and ecosystem collapse constitute an emergency far worse than anything which generated food rationing, the blackout, conscription and ‘dig for victory’ in wartime Britain. Now that the UK parliament has declared a climate emergency, one wonders quite where the emergency measures are.

Of course, there won’t be any meaningful action. Amidst all the self-congratulatory cheer of declaring climate emergencies, the Realpolitik of getting elected still pivots around satisfying consumer demand, increasing wages and growing the economy. Even employees of railway operator Network Rail eschew their own trains and fly on internal UK flights – perhaps they didn’t get the memos about climate change.

A recent poll by Sky News illuminated what most of us already know: a majority of Britons will refuse to unilaterally give up, or even reduce their car journeys, air travel or meat consumption to avert climate change.

The current moral temperature seems to be this: while people worry about climate change and demand that ‘someone else’ should sort it out, the majority are not willing to even slow down their participation in our consumer economy. To be fair, some can’t because they are flat out just trying to survive, but for many (most?) the rat race supports a lifestyle they are unwilling to change or even examine.

It occurs to us that what is needed now is a new generation of conscientious objectors. Their withdrawal will not be from fighting forces as in times of war, but from participation in a global economy which is leading humanity to extinction.

This needs a lot of careful thought. A peace activist can refuse to shoot guns and still live, but participation in the contemporary economy is at least partially mandatory.

Divorced and locked out as nearly all of us are from any land or means of production, we cannot survive a total withdrawal from our fossil fuel driven society. Nearly all of us are grateful to have any employment, regardless of its impact on the environment.

There is much (welcome) talk of a green new deal – essentially a series of techno-fixes to economics, politics and the fuels of industrialism. This is a fantasy however. The impacts of contemporary materialism and consumerism run far beyond our hapless and dangerous reliance on fossil fuels: only the most radical downsizing of our global economic activities will avert a mass extinction event. 

The virtual impossibility of being entirely economically inactive in our atomised and individualistic modern society is an enormous obstacle to dealing with climate change. Bereft of supportive  communities, how can any of us get off the merry-go-round of fossil fuel driven employment and consumption that supports every aspect of our daily lives?  

The truth is we can’t – at least not yet. There are however degrees of withdrawal both from harmful consumption and employment which will be variably possible for people dependent on their circumstances.

Such balances won’t be at all easy to strike and none can be perfect within the current paradigm, but some of us are going to have start modelling a new kind of conscientious objection soon or all will be lost.

Online pledges about carbon footprints etc already exist but a new movement of conscientious objection will have to go much farther. All current and future aspects of consumption and employment now need to viewed in the context of their impact on the environment.  

It simply can’t be sane to forgo flights and then work for a travel agent. No consumer act is climate neutral and no job is climate neutral: all now invoke moral choices critical to the future of humanity.

While some jobs are unquestionably beneficial and vital to our survival, the overwhelming majority of the work that most of us do belongs on a scale which ranges from merely useless to actively harmful. When a society is economically growing itself to death, we either stop playing Monopoly or die.

A new generation of conscientious objectors – eschewing participation in the economic engines of the modern paradigm – is desperately needed.  Objectors  will need ways to support each other through the inevitable abuse and economic precariousness they will have to endure.

What is needed in short is not just a solitary teenager sitting outside the Swedish parliament on her school strike for climate – but a global network of conscientious objection for the climate. 

Sodium Haze will be exploring many of the practical, ideological and philosophical issues that need careful consideration in this context.

I earnestly encourage (without judgement) all readers of this article to do the same.