grey green
Okay, I’m back. I think.
Complicating the post I wrote a couple of weeks ago about water restructions, Kernal (found via Ben) makes an important argument that environmentalism is a) a new kind of identity politics, and b) a new kind of conservatism. More broadly, that the panic circulating soforcefully at the moment in the media about global warming, drought, bushfire, dwindling water supplies and so on merely expands capitalism’s hold through fear of an apocalypse. Therefore, it’s not enough to respond politically to things like water restrictions on the level of individual water usage versus corporate use of water:
I do not believe that there is anything interesting in exploring ‘climate change’ along the lines of individual attitude vs corporate responsibility (or government sanction). The argument held here seems to be a false polemic. A more accurate and in the end more hopeful approach would be to view both these tendencies as ones common to a general effort by capital at expansion. We individually do our part and expect that companies do the same is perhaps more accurate as - companies expand, dealing with climate change is something to expand with/to, individuals need to be educated so as to allow for expansion (all three occuring at once)…
(Tangentially, there’s an interesting discussion in the comments where someone on Left Writes accuses Kernal of intellectual uber-urbanification — “these intellectuals, they have no soul, they’re disconnected from the earth”. What follows is, interestingly enough, the deployment of nationalism to shore up that ‘common-sense’ environmental collectivity that Kernal (and anyone who critiques environmentalists) so lacks. Supposedly, what connects ‘us all’ as Australians is the landscape: the rainforests, the flora and fauna, the beach… It shouldn’t have to be repeated that landscape is an ideological category, that it doesn’t exist in-itself. A connective disposition towards the so-called ‘virgin Australian landscape’ is also mediated by things as varied as the possession of a vehicle to travel to it; the cultural or actual capital to afford camping and hiking skills and equipment; various imperial senses of possession of the landscape through scientific knowledge or squattocracy, etc. Anyhow.)
Unlike Kernal, I think I am noticing the material effects of global warming. Things are changing. There is less rain. All the more important, then, to deal with these changes in a way that notices how already the political landscape has shifted so that ‘environmentalism’ and ‘doing something about global warming’ have become instruments to expand global trade. ‘Clean coal technology’ agreements with China, for example. Privatisation of water. And if you look a bit harder, it becomes evident that in fact, the work done by many environmentalists over the last 20 years was mere preparation for this moment. Let’s do a quick survey of how conservatism and environmentalism connect:
- Peter Garrett. No to nukes; no to abortion. (Except that first no is evidently negotiable, now he’s joined the ALP.)
- The scary number of previously-assumed-to-be-’left’ environmentalists advocating that water, electricity and gas be mae more expensive for individual consumers to ‘reduce wastage’. Imagine my shock when I realised that the CERES public position on water is that individual water consumption should be more expensive. (CERES, for non-locals is a public ‘environmental park’ on a creek, with a community garden, an eco-house, a nursery, a cafe, farm animals, a secondhand bike workshop etc.) Now, despite the fact that peastraw is always cheaper at the CERES nursery, and you know their plants are raised organically, and it’s lovely to walk through the park and along the creek, with the ducks and the goats, I think I’ve decided CERES is evil. The form of environmentalism on offer there is all about private consumption, and the more money you have, the more of a correct environmentalist consumer you can be. There are relics of communism scattered throughout CERES: the barter group, the shared space, the community garden (which is not really a community garden, because they sell their produce.) But they are relics, in amongst a corporate vision increasingly positioned to get home-owners to install expensive solar panels and rain-water tanks, or doing corporate sponsorship deal with energy companies. This is the way of the future.
- The calls to be good citizens and only water on specific days, on pain of a fine and public humiliation. Like this:
- The way that a lot of people used to argue against increased immigration to Australia based on the logic that Australia can’t handle higher population density. Why can’t it handle a higher population density:? Oh, that’s right, because most of the arable land is owned by a few farmers growing water-expensive crops like cotton and rice, because supposedly importing stuff is bad. Two kinds of protectionism interlock — in total contradiction.
- The Greens. Yes, the political party. Sure, they may be better than the alternatives, and their social policies may be great, but they’re a political party. They’re playing the game. Making the deals. And they still mention “pressure on the Australian environment” as almost the primary factor in deciding on migration policy, no matter how great that policy is.
It’s not that many people I know who think of themselves as ‘green’ would actually want capital to expand — or maybe not consciously. It’s more that in a way, it’s inevitable. Corporatism is seen as the only way to do anything. All the more reason for people to be consciously resisting that reappropriative drift towards assisting capital in its expansion: no work on green housing that isn’t public housing, for instance. No work on water preservation that submits the problem to a society of control dynamic. Grey and rain water usage programs that target and support house tenants, rather than home-owners, and that acknowledge tenants are at an immediate disadvantage in the government programs that already exist: no access to installation grants, leases that forbid renovation = total dependence on mains water. And so on.
On landscape (and much more), Allaine Cerwonka’s Native to the Nation: Disciplining Landscapes and Bodies in Australia is well worth a read.
Comment by s0metim3s — January 22, 2007 @ 3:18 am
can get link to open ange ????
Comment by woooo — January 24, 2007 @ 2:33 am
Yeah, the whole api-network site seems to be down. Ange is talking about this book. It’s great, you should definitely read it.
Comment by Az — January 24, 2007 @ 2:52 am
It’s been interesting how the arguments from some environmentalists about valuing limited resources has become a strategy for the further capitalisation of everything …
On Cerwonka, she talks quite a bit about the desire to make (assume) that nation-state and landscape coincide, that landscape is somehow a unity (when in fact, it is remarkably diverse). An excerpt from Cerwonka on the relation between talk of landscape and the assertion of (white) land rights:
I’m pretty sure you’ve seen the review already doc, but it’s also here.
Comment by s0metim3s — January 24, 2007 @ 3:28 am
Az, I found this post surprisingly troublesome. I guess the problem I have with this kind of discussion is that it’s so schematic and the terms of reference are som bombastic and ultimately representational. Yes, you can assert that environmentalism is a) conservative and b) a new kind of identity politics, but then I struggle to think of what might not be subject to that kind of critique.
Of course like anyone sensible I think of capitalism as a system, but to say that “Corporatism is seen as the only way to do anything.” simply doesn’t reflect my experience that people in normal white capitalist life have more or less investment in the system, and their taste in environmental activism basically reflects class position, and their activities reflect their social relations. These aren’t really rational choices that you’re going to influence.
One can complain about the reusable shopping bag as consumptive environmentalism, and ultimately fake, and that is plausible. But when one has, for example, had to deal with plastics management on the ground, any reduction is good. I think that the bottom line is that I don’t understand who you’re trying to reach with this post, or perhaps I feel like I do and that it’s preaching to a very small choir.
Great to see you back though!
Comment by danny — January 24, 2007 @ 10:31 am
Wow, bombastic? Ouch :)
I’m still chewing over the ‘new variation of identity politics’ suggestion, which I’m not sure about. You’re right, this could be claimed about anything. And I tried to be careful not to simply bag out (no pun intended) consumer-model enviro projects like re-using shopping bags, or council recycling programs, although many of those projects don’t solve the material problems of plastic use, they’re rituals that make people feel like they’re ‘doing something’ and that, therefore, nothing else is required. I take part on those rituals myself, and I’m really not sure how useful they are.
I didn’t think much about who I was posting this for, but I don’t necessarily agree that there’s a choir, or that it’s small. (Except because of low stats!) Really it’s the CERES example I’m most anxious about here — I was really shocked to open up the local paper and read that whateverhernameis, the Media Rep from this supposedly ‘left’ (ish) enviro org advocated raising the price of water. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.
On the other hand, while things ‘green’ are in flux towards the ‘right’, isn’t this the perfect opportunity to crowbar open the terms of the debate, at least for some people, somewhere? Maybe i should be talking to Zoe Sofoulis…
Comment by Az — January 24, 2007 @ 11:21 am
Sorry, a little harsh from a long day of editing :).
Let me put it this way - when you take on gender issues in your writing I think you are always very careful (if even unconsciously) to situate yourself in the terms of discussion and you give what seem to me to be analyses that make me think “yes, that’s true”, even when I hadn’t thought of them before.
When you’re crowbaring open the terms of this debate, which I agree is an important debate, you seem to be drawing upon quite large generalisations where it’s really unclear to me what your experience is in the terms of this debate and therefore the experience that motivates your critique. Neither you nor I are, I think, taking Peter Garrett seriously on his social policy perscriptions, even if we might feel discomfort about how they are performed in public life.
So here’s something that’s probably a bottom line: I disagree with you on the CERES example. Part of it probably has to do with the fact that I live with a water tank (and not an expensive one), but more that my experience of Australia is that it has always treated water not as a resource but as a right, totally ignoring the situation in the rest of the world, and for me the expectation that I should just be able to flush my toilet and not care where the water comes from or where it goes to is fucked up and unsustainable (and occasionally, means that I can’t gather shellfish or surf where I live). I believe that until the early 1990s in Sydney it was actually illegal to have a water tank. That is just crazy! That said, I believe in the public availability of water and think it should be a public resource, but there is a difference between “getting some water from a public stream for consumption” and “hosing a lawn in the middle of a hot summer day”. Personally, I think most people could easily reduce their water consumption through non-yuppie means but they have been actively discouraged from doing so by a government which ultimately wants control of the water supply. (there is now a water-industrial complex perhaps, with desalination plants being socially acceptable public spending, not requiring behaviour change, where the more effective version of just giving everyone a water tank would entail a loss of state control).
anyway! this one over a drink sometime. Could be in Melbourne in a week and a bit.
Comment by danny — January 24, 2007 @ 11:45 am
Well, my position here is that we’re renting our house. I would rather drink rain water, actually, and we’re already doing some grey wate conservation for the garden. But as tenants, we’re obliged not to install a rain-water tank, because lease agreements generally prevent major renovations. We couldn’t afford one even if we could install it, because rebates are only for home-owners, and our gutters are so old that we’d need to replace the gutters, too. The landlord won’t even replace our limping hot water system; I doubt he’s going to install a rain water tank and get new gutters just because we ask.
I agree that treating water as a right isn’t viable, but I don’t think the only solution is to treat it as a commodity. Water privatisation is happening globally, and it’s not actually about preservation; it’s about the creation of a water market, and the ability for corporations to profit from its trade. Raising the price ’so people value the resource they’re using’ is, I fear, just the first step towards all-out privatisation. And the Howard government is all “Yay! Let’s privatise the water!”
I think we agree, actually. But if the folk from CERES would say, “Just give everyone water tanks,” rather than advocating more expensive mains water, that would help. Because raising the cost is about controlling the supply.
And yay, see you soon perhaps!
Comment by Az — January 24, 2007 @ 12:15 pm
do you know of a public library with the book ?
Comment by woooo — January 24, 2007 @ 9:47 pm
No, doc, I don’t - but that’s not saying it isn’t. Though, Az may be kind enough, and take the time to scan parts of it, if you ask perdy pleese.
Comment by s0metim3s — January 25, 2007 @ 1:52 pm
perdy please with sugar on top.
here’s a review of it. just new
http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol5no2_2006/niewojt_cerwonka.htm
Comment by woooo — January 26, 2007 @ 3:13 am
Okay okay! I’ll scan some.
Comment by Az — January 26, 2007 @ 4:52 am
Incidentally, the link you have to The Greens immigration and refugee policy page now reads: “All policies of the Australian Greens have been reviewed, and the revised documents are nearing finalisation. As a result, our previous policy documents are no longer operative and have been withdrawn. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.”
Comment by benjamin rosenzweig — January 28, 2007 @ 2:07 am
Well, it is an election year.
Comment by Az — January 28, 2007 @ 4:58 am