Place and Futures (3) – liberal approaches to climate crisis
Writing about place – evoking a vision of contemporary Newcastle/Muloobinba/Mulubinba and some potential futures
These pieces were written on the unceded lands of the Awabakal people, in the western parts of Muloobinba (Newcastle, NSW, Australia), mid-2021 to mid-2022. These very much represent early draft attempts to engage ethnographically with the city I live in and potential future trajectories for it. Apologies for these being a bit of a long read, hopefully interesting though.
2.b. Possible Futures: Scenario two – Fighting climate change without changing the system
In this scenario governments and businesses are finally spooked enough by the worsening impacts of climate change that within the next decade or so there is a large political shift towards actively decarbonising and combating climate destabilisation.
Subsidies for fossil fuel industries are removed and licences for fossil resource extraction are revoked, leading to the closure of these businesses in much of the world. Hopefully a big enough shift in the political winds in Australia sees the many-decades-long relationship between the major parties and fossil industry collapse, and perhaps even a broadly left-wing coalition government of Greens and the progressive elements of Labor, independents, and perhaps even former Liberal party members.
Massive state investment in renewable energy occurs in industrial and post-industrial nations who have benefitted from decades or centuries of fossil fuel expansion. Transition programs are implemented to retrain fossil industry workers and help them find work in renewable related industries. Large components of the decarbonised energy grid are built on the sites of former coal and gas plants, taking advantage of pre-existing infrastructure as well as the local workforce from former coal towns. Carbon pollution tariffs are implemented, making internal combustion engine powered vehicles more expensive to own and run. Incentive programs are put in place to encourage uptake of electric vehicles. Some jurisdictions possibly outlaw petrol and diesel fuelled vehicles with exemptions for approved business or industry needs.
If the ruling government coalition is left-leaning enough they may even fund widespread expansion of public transport, and possibly even wind back the privatisation that has seen services reduced and fares skyrocket in recent years. If the government is more conservative/right-wing of course no such concern for public transport will arise, they will likely instead champion new entrepreneurial enterprises offering hireable electric vehicle transport and renewable powered uber.
International tensions between countries with varying economic and military power all with different ideas on what everyone should be doing about the climate will continually flare up. As in the first scenario above, proxy wars over resources and neo-colonial extraction of lithium and other minerals in the name of global energy transitions (and corporate profits) are likely to occur.
Wild campaign promises and large infrastructure projects in the lead up to elections will be a mainstay. Some energy infrastructure projects may incorporate proper community consultation and leadership, while many will be top-down initiatives that give barely more consideration to local environmental and social impacts than current mining projects do. Unless there is a substantial political shift in Australia towards left-wing policies all of these developments will be implemented using tax-offsets and the vaunted private-public partnership where initial government funding and approval helps kickstart projects that are then run by private businesses for the maximum profit they can extract.
Depending on the political leanings of those in power, the climate ‘emergency’ may be used to justify ‘emergency powers’ with attendant suspension of democratic rights to protest and limits on government interference. This could lead to the same authoritarianism as scenario one, albeit one that puts climate before fossil industry profits. Governments will likely continue prioritising ‘the economy’, corporate interests, and their own sovereign authority alongside a heightened concern for carbon emissions and the impacts of climate change.
Climate mitigation and adaption projects will prioritise key infrastructure and wealthy districts that can use their money and influence to buffer themselves from the immediate impacts of climate breakdown. ‘Key infrastructure’ may include transport and agricultural zones along with energy and industry hubs (and the places where politicians and business owners live). Sensible governments would increase funding supports for agriculture as well as research into climate management and crops more resistant to sustained weather extremes. Some local government areas might also heavily invest in local renewable energy generation and crop production to reduce reliance on national and international supply chains. No doubt many large dams and sea walls will be constructed.
If global and national efforts to shut down fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy are swift and substantial enough, average global warming may well be limited to between 2 degrees (very disruptive globally, catastrophic in some areas) and 3.5 degrees (widespread destabilisation and climate devastation, but with global effort supporting displaced populations hopefully mostly survivable) for at least the next century or so, potentially longer. This is probably the best-case scenario given current action towards the Paris Agreement, but much better than the dystopian first scenario which could well see 3.5-6 degrees of warming by the end of this century with all the widespread chaos that would bring.
With 2-3 degrees of warming there would still be substantial sea-level rise, increased storm intensity, destabilisation of weather patterns, desertification and flooding, massive bushfires, and reduced crop yields. We are already at approximately 1 degree of warming, and the impacts of climate change are very evident in all these areas. Low-lying coastal areas will be hit with sea level rise and stronger less predictable storms. Rural areas will increasingly face floods, fires, droughts (with associated water shortages as we have seen in Australia for the past couple of years), and probably various ecosystem upsets like the 2021 mouse plague. We will have increasing numbers of refugees seeking respite from climate change making their homes unliveable due to desertification and increased political violence. Small Pacific Island nations will still face annihilation from sea level rise, but hopefully at a slower pace than in the first scenario, and perhaps some of them may be able to survive if we limit warming enough. This is also still enough warming to trigger the infrastructure failures and heatwave-linked deaths I spoke of in the first scenario, but hopefully they will be less severe and frequent, with the possibility of managing the impacts through large scale government funded retrofitting and redesigning of housing and infrastructure to cope with the new climate extremes.
So, climate change will still progress, but can be limited and managed with appropriate government intervention and widescale reworking of energy, transport, and parts of the economic system. But pushing for climate mitigation and renewable transition without structural social and economic change will only achieve so much. Newcastle (as well as the rest of the country) will remain a place of widening contrasts as the impacts of climate change and worsening inequality under late-stage capitalism hit those with the least privilege and resources the hardest. Gentrification alongside polluting industries and crumbling housing. Government may implement increased welfare support and housing programs to mitigate the impacts of capitalism on the disadvantaged, but if the swing to right-wing politics and scarcity mindsets continues these social supports will be eroded and removed. Resource extraction and other forms of environmental pollution will keep escalating as market pressures try to squeeze ever more profits out of the biosphere’s dwindling capacity. The direct impacts of severe climate change may be reduced, and society may be able to persist in a form barely changed from today, but capitalism will still destroy the ability for this planet to sustain human civilisation in any kind of long-term and equitable way. A ‘Green New Deal’ and closed-loop resource flows powered by renewable energy within a capitalist framework is a valiant first step for mobilising populations and implementing massive infrastructure changes, but it needs to move beyond the economic and political status quo entirely if we want to have a truly sustainable and socially just world.
This scenario – in its more socially and economically progressive variant – would change the world enough compared to the first dystopian future I sketched out that it could become possible for me to live a relatively recognisable and acceptable life through to my likely life expectancy with a much lower risk of dying from extreme weather events, food and water shortages, or politically fuelled violence. But I do not believe that even the most optimistic version of this future is doing more than kicking the fundamental problems of the way we structure global life down the road a bit further to impact generations just a little bit more removed from us. And these positive changes will be very unequally implemented benefitting the more privileged and fast acting nations the most. Society may not completely collapse by the end of the century as in the worst-case future, but it’s only going to buy us so much time. The capitalist system inevitably degrades environments and drives poverty and political polarisation. I would like to believe otherwise as this is the most positive likely scenario given the current status quo, but I simply cannot manage to. Thus, the need for the much more radically different future I will try to evoke in the final scenario.
