Britain, EDINBURGH ANARCHIST FEDERATION - HOW DO WE RESPOND TO CLIMATE CHANGE? DISASTER COMMUNISM OR GREEN AUSTERITY by Robert Lanark

Climate change is already here, although the effects are unevenly distributed. Last winter 
saw a series of storms of record-breaking wind speeds, rainfall, and intensity hit the UK. 
California?s current drought has seen lakes disappear into parched earth. Giant craters 
have begun appearing in Siberia, as methane explodes out of thawing permafrost. This year 
Australia has seen wildfires the size of cities. The theoretical possibility of the 
glaciers of West Antarctica crossing tipping points into irreversible decline is now an 
observed scientific fact. ---- Out of the Woods ? Disaster Communism ---- We exist today 
in a state of ecological, economic and political crisis. Attempts to create international 
agreement on climate change have stalled, probably irreparably ? in likelihood they never 
really moved at all. Domestically, the environment has fallen decisively off the political 
agenda of mainstream political parties, furthermore even when it does appear, politicians 
are structurally and imaginatively incapable of proposing solutions which match the 
rhetoric of an existential threat. This disconnection naturally leads to further 
disillusionment and disbelief.

Radical political parties need to appear competent, to be reasonable and pragmatic and 
thus find themselves in the position where to gain the power required to make radical 
change, they have to accept a framework which makes that change impossible. The 
extra-parliamentary movement that gathered at climate camp and intervened at Vestas has 
been overtaken by ?more-pressing?, ?material? needs with the financial crisis and withered.

The only response capitalism could offer ? if and when it wakes up to the scale of the 
coming disaster ? will be reactionary: austere, racist and aimed at saving the rich at the 
expense of the poor.

Against this backdrop there is an urgent need for an explicitly anti-capitalist 
environmentalism, join us at Forest Centre Plus from 12 noon on November 9th to sketch 
it?s necessity and collectively discuss the form which it might take, rooted in direct 
action, class-struggle and community and workplace organising.