Climate Change as Class War with Matthew T. Huber

A

podcast

URL

https://www.gndmedia.co.uk/podcast-episodes/climate-change-as-class-war-with-matthew-huber

Featuring

Matthew Huber

Climate change as class war. Based around the book Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet.

• ~00:08:47 Professional class have a kind of knowledge-based politics, based on study of environment, etc, something not rooted in daily struggles of life as experience by working class (by the far the majority class).
• ~00:11:01 Environmental politics can't just be about land, forest, etc, it needs to incorporate something for the mass who struggle to survive in the market.
• ~00:17:20 Carbon guilt. Consumer-based tactics vs class-based organising.
• ~00:32:15 Framing politics solely around reduction of levels of affluence is problematic. Sometimes a vision of more or better is needed.
• ~00:34:01 A critique of degrowth as an organising message.
• ~00:37:16 Huber agrees with a lot of the actual programme of degrowth though. But there's a lot of framing issues.
• ~00:40:27 Degrowth often says global south should grow, global north should contract - but it misses the inequalities within countries.
• ~00:41:49 Has a problem with degrowthers anarchist vibe of prefiguration, 'nowtopia', small pockets of non-capitalism that are never joined up.
• ~00:46:20 Electrification is a place to intervene.
• ~00:48:23 Renewable industry is problematic in terms of labour rights. There is an aspect of green capitalism there.

I feel like the criticisms of degrowth might be a bit straw man. But strongly agree with the assertion of needing class consciousness and the working class involved in any eco-socialist environmental movement.