> We won't run out of oil, but we can
> very well run out of time to prevent
> the worst climate disasters if Hansen
> is correct. That is especially the
> case since there is no Left to speak
> of in the USA, the US working class
> are mostly politically inactive, and
> the US power elite have not sense of
> urgency of action. How do you propose
> to change these political facts and
> begin to "alter fundamentally the
> trajectory of global greenhouse
> emissions" in ten years?
There are several premises in this question that I believe are not warranted.
First, I don't think that the U.S. working class is politically inactive. Not at all. To be brutal, in many and fundamental ways, traditional working-class political action in the U.S. is subordinated to the interest of U.S. capitalists. However, the embryo of independent political action is also apparent, if we care to notice. It's been for too long, basically and until recently, political action of the defensive type. The class is terribly disunited. Basic solidarity towards the poorest, most vulnerable sectors of the class (immigrants, minorities) is lacking. The negative trends affecting the union movement haven't stopped. Etc. Etc.
But there's political motion. It may be not be to our taste or meet our personal standards of what working-class political action should be, but it is political motion nonetheless. Otherwise, things would be much worse.
A very clear example of a mix between political and economic collective action among workers is the growth in the demand for universal health care and, in general, for limiting the risk working families are exposed to. This opposition has been growing steadily. I'm not saying it's very coherent, but it *is* political motion. It finds political expression through a myriad of civic and partisan organizations engaged in electoral processes. The radical left has little or nothing to do with it (it thus therefore misses a chance to inform the process), but that's a debit for the radical left.
A most notable example of sheer working-class political action broadly understood is the popular opposition (with a majority of working class constituents) to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which led to the defeat of the Republicans in the midterm elections. Again, some things are still missing in that department: there's sectarianism and lack of unity in the movement. The movement is fragmented and has been slow to show results, but effective it's been. And I believe that the full results of the antiwar opposition are yet to be realized. There are opportunities for substantial political advancement.
Second, just because I emphasize that the future is not predetermined doesn't mean I don't realize that current social conditions set limits to what people can achieve collectively in a given period of time. I just insist that we shouldn't assume that working people are just passive shadows in the background. Given circumstances, people can take over the central stage in the political process. I repeat that these things don't occur without patient and long preparation, but I also think that this preparation (largely outside of the purview of the radical left) is currently taking place. Not in the extent one would like to see and, again, with the notable absence of the radical left, but things are moving along. These kind of things are not driven by ideology. They are driven by social needs.
Finally, with regards to your direct question, I think we agree on the answer: political action is what can turn things around: political action that engages the existing political system with the issues the working people are facing.
And this leads me to Carrol's reply:
> We need, simply, to focus on our
> political work of organizing against
> capitalism. If we are too late and
> cascading disaster occurs, so be it.
> Whatever disasters occur, our ability
> to handle them will depend on the
> strength of popular movements. So let
> us work at building those popular
> movements -- with whatever material
> may be at hand -- and avoid the certain
> disaster which comes from setting
> deadlines for ourselves.
It seems to me that Carrol implies that it is possible to build a popular movement by the sheer force of anti-capitalist propaganda. And he seems almost gleeful about the notion that such a feat can take forever. I think Carrol implies (and I base my conjecture on what I've read from him before) that popular movements can out-of-the-blue bypass the existing political system, rather than engage it in its own terms and transcend it organically.
I don't know of a single case in history in which a broad popular movement, capable of disputing national political power, has germinated outside of the existing political system, driven by pure leftist propaganda. None. It's always happened *within* and *through* the existent polis. And it's always been as a result of the inflexibility of the polis to adapt and channel the evolving needs of people that people have radicalized their claims. It's been the gradual realization of this inflexibility of the political system that have forced people to subvert or bypass existing political institutions. No sane person forces a door open when twisting the knob suffices.
For example, in Cuba, Fidel was until before Batista's second coup in 1952 a "traditional" politician running for office. He had a mildly Rooseveltian economic program and a strong stance against corruption. Then a strong stance in favor of full political independence from the U.S. evolved as U.S. intervention in Cuba's political affairs became more blatant, a stance that became more radical only after the Sierra Maestra, as the U.S. helped Batista bombed the rebels. His revolutionary challenge to the Cuban political system only arose in opposition to the cancellation of liberties and normal political dissent in Cuba, that is, when Batista staged a coup and tried to crush the opposition.
In Venezuela, Chávez challenged the political system from outside, with his failed coup in 1992. The people in Venezuela was expectant, and rapidly developed sympathy towards the golpistas, but they didn't second them massively. What Chávez's tactics achieved at the time, by sheer chance (Chávez negotiated his surrender and was allowed to address the nation on TV, taking responsibility for the coup), was mainly to let the Venezuelan working people know that he was serious about rescuing the nation from the neoliberal onslaught. At no point during Chávez post-coup televised address or during his first electoral campaign did he rail "against capitalism" -- as Carrol would have done it. When Chávez was released from jail, he didn't try to stage another coup. He switched tactics and ran for office through the existing political/electoral system, a process that led to his developing a strong connection with the popular movement that has taken it to where he is at now. It's been the latter process that has evolved very organically into the initial stages of a potential socialist revolution.
My point here is that, in the U.S., leftists shouldn't be trying to "build popular movements" on the basis of propaganda "against capitalism." Don't get me wrong. Radical, anti-capitalist propaganda has a important role to play. But it is no substitute for an actual political strategy. And I'll leave it at that.
Finally a comment on Miles' insistence that peak oil theories are good at predicting oil rates. I think he's confusing two things: the use of statistical inference to predict *short-run* changes in variables with strong auto-regressive components (i.e. on the premise that the inertia of the past will prevail) and the use of statistical inference to predict a structural break in a system.
I am fine with "predicting" today's weather by looking through the window and noticing the way people are dressed, whether or not they are carrying umbrellas or raincoats. For that purpose I don't need a structural model of the weather. I just use the association between the way most people on the street are dressed and the kind of weather I can expect during the rest of the day. And that suffices. I mean, there's self-reference here too, since it is not impossible that one day everybody relies on everybody else and nobody cares to check the weather channel before leaving home. But most days, one can rule that out.
However, if I'm predicting that there will be rain no more, that the weather will shift so dramatically as to fundamentally alter the climate. Then I need a structural model. Peak oil models claim that they can determine when oil production will collapse as a result of geological scarcity. I'm afraid that's a structural proposition you cannot support with a feeble regression model.
In any case, I remain deeply skeptical of Hubbert's peak oil theory.