,
10 tweets,
3 min read
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“The climate crisis is not a tragedy of the commons. The culprit is not our individual impulses to consume fossil fuels to the ruin of all.”
Powerful argument by @mmildenberger. A must-read with one caveat...
1/n blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/the-tra…
Powerful argument by @mmildenberger. A must-read with one caveat...
1/n blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/the-tra…
In his worthy and necessary desire to put then blame for climate change on oil and gas companies (and, more obliquely, politicians), Mildenberger opposes these bad actors with a flat category of “individuals” who he claims lack all agency to remake the economy.
2/n
2/n
But this category is in reality inflected by class and race. “Individuals” is a complex group of people with stratified levels of social and political power.
There are individuals in his category with more political and cultural power than he admits.
3/n
There are individuals in his category with more political and cultural power than he admits.
3/n
Which is to say that (as I put it elsewhere) there are degrees of complicity.
slate.com/technology/201…
4/n
slate.com/technology/201…
4/n
People with power should not let themselves off the hook because they’re mere “individuals.” They help produce and shift politics with their behavior: journalists, celebrities, professors, politicians investors, “influencers” of all sorts have a unique responsibility...
5/n
5/n
The responsibility of the powerful is to live, to the extent they can, in the way that we all need to live to stop warming.
It’s a moral responsibility and IMO it’s a political necessity.
6/n
It’s a moral responsibility and IMO it’s a political necessity.
6/n
When folks together in a room smell smoke, they often look around to see how the people “in charge” are reacting before they decide whether or not to evacuate.
If we’re going to take down the powerful deniers, everyone will need to understand we are in a climate emergency.
7/n
If we’re going to take down the powerful deniers, everyone will need to understand we are in a climate emergency.
7/n
That means powerful people will need not only to tell the truth about the climate emergency, but also, as @MobilizeClimate says, ACT LIKE THE TRUTH IS REAL.
9/n
9/n
That shifting of class norms is an unavoidable part of climate politics. It itself follows from the insight that there is no commons to which individuals have equal and uninflected levels of access.
10/n
10/n
Anyway that’s my caveat. But his general point stands: time to get rid of the concept “tragedy of the commons” as a way to describe climate change.
/fin
/fin
