I just found out that last year’s Nobel Prize winner was cancelled by the IMF for stating that there’s no climate emergency.
The part that interests me in this is the IMF. Back when we had the “climate strikes” on campuses, the people who participate thought they were rebellious, countercultural and cool. And in reality they gave their time and effort to the IMF. For free.
This is really funny. I mean, earnest progressives doing grunt work for the IMF. You gotta love this.
“in reality they gave their time and effort to the IMF. For free.”
I’m not understanding your outlook here. But I believe I understand the outlook of climate activists. That outlook says, the Earth will fry in the second half of this century unless technological society changes in certain ways, above all in its reliance on fossil fuels. The activist view towards the global political establishment (including institutions like the IMF) is that its climate policies are half-measures that are too little too late. And the activist view of Dr Clauser (the physics Nobelist) is that he’s an 80-year-old academic who is out of touch with reality.
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When the IMF is doing your dirty work for you, you aren’t an activist but a useful puppet. That’s all.
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I don’t want to be too annoying about this, it’s really just a matter of curiosity, but normally I think I understand you, and here I don’t. What is the dirty work? Is it deplatforming an eminent climate skeptic? If the IMF is doing the activists’ dirty work, wouldn’t that mean that the IMF is the puppet of the activists?
I must be missing some background assumption of yours. Maybe it’s related to your take on neoliberalism and liquid modernity and so on, but I’m not sure.
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IMF is too strong to be anybody’s puppet. 🙂
But let’s think this through together. Every billionaire, every major corporation, every global organization, every financial giant really, really wants us to believe that “climate change is an existential threat”. So what’s more rebellious and countercultural, to agree with them all or to say, “wait, I wonder why they are all saying this so aggressively”?
Well, let me start by quoting a page conveniently entitled “Why Rebel?” from the group with rebellion in its very name, Extinction Rebellion:
https://rebellion.global/why-rebel/
“What actions have been taken by governments are clearly not enough when you truly grasp the enormity of what we are facing. The Paris Climate Accord should have spurred governments into drastic collective action. It hasn’t. We recognize our institutions are not taking this crisis seriously, and therefore we must shift the power back to the people to make the bold decisions needed through Participatory Democracy and Citizens’ Assemblies.”
So there you have it from their perspective. All those rich people and powerful institutions just talk about the weather but don’t actually do anything about it, so the people need to rise up, take wealth and power away from the wealthy and powerful, and institute a superior and ecologically sane people’s democracy, etc.
Evidently you and they have a different analysis as to what the establishment is doing, and why. They would say: the establishment isn’t trying to make us believe that climate change is an existential threat; they’re trying to make us believe that we can deal with the threat via piecemeal reforms and actions which don’t require anything fundamental to change, and which in particular preserve (or even increase) the wealth and power of those who are already wealthy and powerful.
I’m sure I could say that more concisely and vividly. So: the elite which profits from the system which is destroying the planet, is dealing with the imminent disaster by fake green reforms so as to preserve its profits, and is thereby actually guaranteeing the disaster.
You know, I think I’ve finally discovered a matter of potential agreement between you and them – you both think badly of the establishment’s motives. That all the establishment talk of a climate crisis is a cover for something. They think it’s something like wicked greed and negligence. What do you think the hidden truth is?
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Both things can be true at the same time. Climate change is an existential threat (to those who are not rich), and the rich will not give an inch to ameliorate its effects on everyone else.
The powerful people are pushing this narrative to prepare the non-rich for the coming deprivation.
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How can you be deprived if you don’t exist? This doesn’t even make sense on your own terms.
It always helps to avoid these cliches (like “existential threat”) and try to think it through for yourself.
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I can’t reply to Clarissa’s comment below because it would be nested too many levels deep.
Clarissa, I understand you’re trying to insult me, but the not existing thing doesn’t make sense. Please explain what you mean so I can feel properly shamed and owned. It’ll make you feel even more superior, I promise.
The Earth is a bunch of interconnected systems. When pushed far enough, they will fail. They are being pushed by the combination of climate change and humans using up resources at an unsustainable pace.
If any of the existing climate patterns collapse or change significantly, it will imperil agriculture worldwide and food will get much more expensive. The rich will be able to cut other expenses to spend more on food, but the poor don’t have other expenses to cut.
Take California, for example, whose agriculture is heavily dependent on getting water from out of state. If we can’t get enough water, we won’t be able to grow food there.
If the Gulf Stream collapses, it’ll affect food production in Eastern North America and Northern Europe.
If India’s monsoon season changes significantly, it will affect their ability to grow food.
Temperatures in parts of Asia are becoming dangerous for life. The rich will continue to use air conditioning and the poor will die of heat stroke.
It’s silly to continue, right? I either haven’t thought about it at all and am just mindlessly repeating the phrase “existential threat”, or I’m mindlessly regurgitating what the scientists say, whom I am stupid enough to trust, like the rest of the sheeple.
I bow before your unmatched wisdom.
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It’s ok to like the IMF, you know. Maybe not love it passionately because that’s weird. But liking it is fine. I’m quite partial to it myself.
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They became the establishment years ago but still try to pretend they are the oppressed and not the oppressor.
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I agree and I have found it annoying at any age. It really gets massively annoying when tenured professors with large salaries and job security start bleating about revolution and decolonization in the breaks between paying their cleaning lady and their lawn mower. “We, the working classes, should fight against the bourgeoisie!” Oh, are you planning to do that before or after your trip to Europe, you insufferable dick.
Really gets to me.
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Ha! Yeah. I mean, I was a dumb anarchist kid once, I sort of get it. But I’m married and a parent now, and hopefully have grown and learned a few things and adapted where necessary. I don’t think we should hold that sort of dumb against young people, but there’s not any virtue in reaching middle age with the same unchanged ideas and loyalties you had when you were twenty. It just means you’ve… stagnated? Fossilized? Like, what happened to the years between? Coma?
Try the Federal Reserve, there’s much more for you to … enjoy.
Start with who really controls the regional Reserve System entities, that’s usually a shock to anyone who’s thinking of it like a “central bank”.
Also, Paulo Freire was right about education, it attracts banker types who want banking systems of education.
So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that some of the most outspoken defenders are within academia.
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What I don’t get is why having the IMF (or anybody else) ban people you disagree with is a good thing. How strong can your idea possibly be if you need to have one of the most powerful global institutions chase around anybody who even slightly disagrees? Also, how can you possibly be certain that tomorrow the IMF won’t start persecuting the ideas that you do like? Seriously that one guy is such a humongous threat it’s worth supporting censorship?
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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