Very Insightful, Zizek

So Zizek is warning the Left [thus, an empty room] that we must not be "co-opted" by the challenge of climate change, and that we must attack it as a specific symptom of the capitalist system within which we live. Treat the symptom, and treat the disease, too. He goes on and makes a number of points, some of which I suppose are insightful, whatever:

Žižek argues that, whilst it is true that the climate crisis is a universal problem -- one that affects all humanity regardless of social position or wealth, as well as the majority of all species -- and so cannot be reduced simply to a crisis of capitalism, it would be a mistake to attempt to address the environmental issue independently of its cause, namely, the global capitalist economic framework. In this sense, ecology is not the solution, as this often puts aside political differences for the "greater good" of the environment. Instead, we should deal with the specific problem of global capitalism, thereby addressing the climate crisis.

In many ways, this resonates with Tim Jackson's essay in the New Statesman Copenhagen supplement earlier this year -- the economic system contains within it the seeds of its (and all of our) destruction: capitalist economies depend on economic growth, and economic growth is unsustainable in a finite ecological system.

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As such, Žižek offers great insight to the those on the left who may feel dismayed at the co-opting of the environmental agenda by diverse conservative political (and corporate) forces. Žižek rightly identifies the global economic capitalist framework as responsible for both the financial and the climate crises, and poses a choice: we can put aside political differences to attempt to tackle impending climatic doom (with the inevitable resurgence of capitalist crisis under business as usual), or we can face the driving force of the crisis head on.

Now this is obvious, and frankly it's what Monthly Review and the left-wing of the ecological movement has been saying for years, with great insight, well before it became faddish. But Zizek seems to have missed something [at least, according to the blog write-up]: if the climate crisis erupts with enough horrific force, much of the Third World will die. This makes it a crisis of a different order than "the inevitable resurgence of capitalist crisis," because it is the ultimate in lesser-evil-ism--heading off the destruction of the eco-sphere, at the price of preserving a hierarchical system. Now Zizek might be an internationally-glittering philosopher and I'm not, but Zizek seems to have missed a couple other things, too. The global elite doesn't care, per se, about capitalism. It cares about privilege, and it cares about power. It will restructure the system so as to prevent growth, ensure stability, and save the ecology, alongside its privilege and leisure and social status. And we will go along with it if we have no other choice, if we are made to feel that there is no other choice, even if we are the driving force behind a different sort of proposal. A second point. Capital will not reconstruct in time to avert the worst on its own accord. Merely reducing US green-house gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020 will set the earth on the way to the oven. That is reportedly precisely the proposal that Obama is going to stuff in his brief-case to bring to Copenhagen. Even the Green Keynesianism that Zizek might mean what he speaks of "co-optation" would be a good bit better than Africa and South and Southeast Asia being wiped out. That's the tragedy of global climate change, and there's nothing to be done about it. That's its nature, it's a global crisis that will afflict, most unconscionably, those least responsible for it; and even Green Keynesianiam on the necessary time-scale won't come about without a massive revolt from subordinate classes. And a third point. Talk about agriculture. As Mumford and Morris knew well, the world's social problems aren't resolvable without acknowledging the Centrality of Agriculture, which, in a quite complex way, will, I think, make the question of co-optation eventually moot. Will Zizek talk about dispersed agricultural social reconstruction? No, at least not until someone packages it in a presentation with sufficient theoretical incandescence for him to look up from watching 24. Not waiting on it.

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Technorati Tags: ecology, green Keynesianism, Green new deal, Slavoj Zizek

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