‘We have two choices: to abandon hope and ensure that the worst will happen; or to make use of the opportunities that exist and contribute to a better world. It is not a very difficult choice’ says Noam Chomsky. But how? If we are to understand political responses to the degradation of our natural habitat and their need for socialist action, we must first seek to understand what is currently happening in our environment and why. This is the objective of the first part of this essay, while the possibilities and obstacles faced by the question what is to be done and the projects for a therapeutic politics of restoration form the second.
The Science of the Ecological Catastrophe
In science, nature is conceived as a complex interconnected set of bio-physical sub-systems, ‘a tightly coupled dance, with life and the material environment as partners’. This dynamic coupling provides the conditions of existence for our species. Overwhelming evidence points to the approaching collapse of these conditions. While cumulative man-made gaseous waste up to the present is unlikely to cause temperature rises to exceed 1.5 degrees, unless physically unprecedented and revolutionary measures are taken from now onwards the biophysical conditions for existence of many human beings are likely to be destroyed within the lifetime of anyone under the age of 20. In the view of one distinguished scientific team, the ‘safe operating space’ in at least three major physical sub-systems (of their set of nine): had quite likely already been exhausted a decade ago by material developments ‘eating away at our own social support systems’. These three are:
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