Challenging the Divine Right of Big Energy

Rebecca Solnit is Challenging the Divine Right of Big Energy.

How will we get to where we need to be? No one knows, but we do know that we must keep moving in the direction of reduced carbon emissions, a transformed energy economy, an escape from the tyranny of fossil fuel, and a vision of a world in which everything is connected. The story of this coming year is ours to write and it could be a story of Year One in the climate revolution, of the watershed when popular resistance changed the fundamentals as much as the people of France changed their world (and ours) more than 200 [years] ago.

Two hundred years hence, may someone somewhere hold in their hands a document from 2021, in wonder, because it was written during Year Six of the climate revolution, when all the old inevitabilities were finally being swept aside, when we seized hold of possibility and made it ours. “Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings,” says Ursula K. Le Guin. And she’s right, even if it’s the hardest work we could ever do. Now, everything depends on it.

Emphasis Mine

The primary lesson of the French Revolution was that people were willing to step into the unknown, away from the safety and comfort of the known. But it had taken the collapse of the familiar for them to attempt this. Before that, they had tried to convert an absolute monarchy into a constitutional one, and to curb the excessive privileges of the aristocracy and the clergy.

It was only when the modest reforms were rebuffed and resisted that reformism turned into revolution. Even though the radicalism of the Jacobians was crushed, and a new ruling class of bourgeoisie appeared, Napoleon Bonaparte had to acknowledge and contain the residual radicalism of the populace in a balancing act.

Even the restoration of the Bourbons was not secure against the agitation of the populace. Revolts flared up in 1830, 1848, 1870 with the latter giving rise to the first worker-led government in the world. This was the 70 day reign of the Paris Commune as the workers defended Paris against the Prussian army while the French army ran away.

We must go through the charade of carbon-taxes, cap-and-trade, RET, and other market-based instruments as Capitalism tries to assimilate environmental policies into its mechanisms. This is what Trotsky calls the old system trying to solve problems in its own way.

These are doomed to fail because they crash against the very foundation of Capitalism: the private ownership of the means of production. You cannot force an individual to dispose of their property in a way contrary to their wishes without encountering serious resistance.

Public ownership and democratic control of the means of production is the only way forward. It only remains to be seen how long it takes people to realise that this is the case.