Those in Charge Have No Plan
either we create our own plans or we follow them to our graves
I’m writing you from the haze of a 35 degree day (95F) after a muggy night with two hours of sleep. We don’t have any A/C units, but it didn’t help that our fans slowed down and dehumidifier shut off because of the brownouts. Why were there brownouts? Given the heatwave, a lot of homes and businesses had their A/C on full blast and the grid couldn’t handle it. Across the Midwest, the Mississippi Valley, Appalachia, and along much of the East Coast, government agencies issued extreme heat warnings and power grids went down.
Clearly, it’s a sign that global warming is unfolding faster than the major scientific agencies predicted, which also means the overall impacts of the ecological crisis will be worse than they claim.
Hopefully, the implication is just as clear: in North America as in Europe, where a recent heat wave killed thousands, governments do not have the infrastructure to deal with even the early, relatively easy stage of the ecological crisis. And that’s in two of the richest regions on the planet.
We can be even clearer: those in power and those with access to the media and to significant funding have absolutely no feasible plan for getting us through the ecological crisis that they helped cause.
Currently, *only* 10-20 million humans are dying every year as the result of the crisis. By the century’s end, that number will be in the billions, together with extreme habitat loss and one of the largest mass extinctions in the planet’s history.
Still, every major world government, whether they call themselves communist, democratic, nationalist, or what have you, is pushing the fantasy of green growth and the climate movement itself—an interlocking machine of big business, non-profits, media, research institutions, and middle class activists—are pushing the entirely false idea that industrial scale green energy and carbon capture can become adequate responses to the problem.
We already have all the data we need to show that in a growth-based economy (i.e. capitalism, whether it’s the US version, the Brazilian version, the Norwegian version, or the Chinese version), more green energy investment causes an increase in fossil fuel consumption and existing carbon capture methods make things worse, not better.
We also have substantial and convincing evidence—including the entirety of the historical record—that states are not neutral instruments, they are intrinsically ecocidal, and they can’t be effective instruments for mitigating the ecological crisis, maximizing the chances of human survival, and helping species and habitats migrate, adapt, and survive.
A few of us have published about this, but most of the media and the well funded parts of the climate movement maintain a blackout. They don’t engage directly with the facts we’re presenting. They don’t have to. They have power, and we don’t (except for… those moments when we’ve shut down pipelines and airports, those moments when we violate the laws of private property and transform vacant units into collective housing or vacant lots into community gardens, those moments when we send the cops running and affirm, these are our neighborhoods and fascists of any kind are not welcome).
Those who advocate green growth and who claim we need the State to solve this problem are lavished with media interviews and major book deals, grant funding, tenured positions, highly paid advisory roles with major corporations or governments, leadership in big non-profits. It doesn’t matter if they’re neoliberals or Marxists – the difference is not very substantive. What they are is mercenaries, they are working for those who have so much money and power they believe they are immortal, they are the lackeys of the very dictators and oligarchs who are murdering our home, our world, and planning to run away to Mars when they’re done. Everything coming out of their mouths is shit. They have long ago sold out the last token of credibility they had. We have absolutely no reason to believe them.
Whether they call themselves progressives or environmentalists or socialists, we need to stop listening to them, stop validating them, stop supporting them, and treat them like the shameless mercenaries they are. The only reason they preach what they preach is because the institutions destroying our world are paying them for it.
Our best hope to minimize the suffering and death that is already here and that is pushing us straight over a cliff is to develop paths of struggle and creation that follow the basic principle of rooted networks. You can read more about that in the “Rooted Networks” article linked at the bottom.
Please share this with everyone you know. Please try to convince them to stop giving money to environmental non-profits. It doesn’t matter if they vote but please try to convince them they should never trust in a politician, a party, a government because those are intrinsically harmful institutions and one of the principal causes of the problems we face. Please try to convince them there is no remedy for capitalism, and a growth-based economy painted green or pink or red is still capitalism.
Convince them to educate themselves.
Here are some sources I can contribute, they’re written for a variety of audiences.
A mid-length article about why green energy won’t save us: “$300 billion into Biden’s climate plan, emissions are worse than ever”
A short article about what realistic solutions to the ecological crisis might look like: “Here’s How We Can Build a Livable Future”
Three earlier newsletters that accompany these articles and provide a lot more sources and details: “The mainstream climate framework is only making things worse,” “The Facts that Back an Ecological Revolution,” and “Rooted Networks”
A video trilogy I made with those brilliant videographers at sub.Media, “It’s Revolution or Death”
Two mid-length article about inspiring examples from Brazil, in urban, rural, and Indigenous settings: “The Real Models for Sustainabililty” and “The COP30 Isn’t a Failure, It’s a Farce”
A podcast episode about inspiring examples from Brazil, from The Final Straw: “Voices in Brazil for Radical Ecological Struggle”
A full length book I wrote describing the real dimensions and causes of the ecological crisis, and a detailed examination of comprehensive and anticolonial responses to the crisis that deserve our support: The Solutions Are Already Here: Strategies for Ecological Revolution from Below
A full length book about the history of state evolution, how states evolved to centralize power and not to meet human needs or improve quality of life: Worshiping Power
In the comments, please leave additional suggestions for sources you’ve found really effective and accurate!
The mainstream climate framework is only making things worse
These last couple years have seen a huge boost in funding for industrial-scale green energy, the Paris Agreement, the IPCC, a growing chorus of highly paid “green growth” academics… but carbon emissions are still increasing. The sad truth is, the whole official framework around climate change isn’t actually designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The Facts that Back an Ecological Revolution
Today’s newsletter is a companion piece to my new article with In These Times, “Betrayed by Green Capitalism, Here’s How We Can Build a Livable Future.” It’s here for anyone who wants to dig into the data, check my sources, learn more, or understand how fraudulent the official climate framework really is (that’s the framework centered around the Paris A…
Rooted Networks
A decentralized, ecological revolution is not only necessary, it’s our best chance for survival. To understand what that even means, we need to explore the concept of rooted networks. Once we understand how such networks are uniquely potent, intelligent, and resilient, it becomes clear that the entire mainstream spectrum—even what is considered radical …
The ones at the tip-top of this pyramid scheme do have a plan though. It's a plan to deliberately drive climate collapse by increasing emissions with their forever wars in West Asia and increasing fossil fuel consumption and water theft by industry so billions of us will die. They think they'll get to define humanity according to their white supremacist ideals when that happens. They're foolish enough to think their luxury bunkers and "AI"-automated surveillance states will keep them safe from the fury of a burning planet.
Further recommendation:
Mordecai Ogada on YouTube!!
He worked in the conservation sector in Kenya (that being where he is from) and talks about it (along with other things) on his channel