Writing on the Wall

The IPCC has come out with some fairly mixed messages about food security. The headline finding is that up to 3 degrees of warming, global food production will increase. Policy makers have so much else to worry about even as we approach 1.5 or 2 degrees, meaning that food security slips down the agenda.

But as I read the fourth assessment several things made me stop and think. For instance, the IPPC admits that its predictions do not take into account extreme weather events. This is very worrying: ask any farmer and they will tell you that it is not the 364 days of normal weather that scares them, but the one day of flash flooding.

Take the 2003 summer heat-wave in Europe, it reduced agricultural yields in affected countries by between 10 to 40% of the harvests for that year. This is exactly the kind of thing which is set to become much more frequent.
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Johnathon Freedland, one of the few journalists out there with a good grip on global goings on, calls for optimism for lefties worldwide, in the face of a drubbing in Europe:
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Dont be fooled by Europes mood. Globally, the left is reawakening

My comment was that the need for left wing thought globally is certainly there:

There is an obvious risk of revolution world wide. When people have nothing to lose they will take to the streets. If global warming goes above 2 degress there is a good chance of poor people starving all over the world due to a hike in food prices. This trend is already emerging with biofuels.

The left’s big problem has been one of scale: Corporations have gone international, but Unions, and politics have not, hence Blair’s surrender to globalisation.

But social problems are global too, and that is catching up on us. It is currently only the left that is campaigning for a global politics to reign in this ludicrous inequality, and so provide support to the weaker parts.

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There is a very interesting article on Open Democracy, where bean counters have looked at various forms of assymetric warfare (between state and non-state actors, with radicaly different levels of power and resources) and, from the way they have gathered and treated their data set (caveat emptor), they have found that non-violent revolution is more effective:

Madrid11.net | Does terrorism work?

This is pleasing to me, considering the bashing I took for making a stand against violent methods as the best way for the Palestinians to respond to Isreali occupation and ethnic cleansing.

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Here is a reponse to a comment piece in the Guardian, from UN official, about the upcoming IPCC report on the impacts of climate change, particularly in the tropics:
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Tide of suffering

What needs to be borne in mind in this is the high proportion of earnings that the cost of food represents for the poor.

When we talk about climate change, we seem to forget that all these effects, rising sea levels, changes in weather patterns, an overall drying trend globally, will all tend to impact on food production, and thus the price of food.

This is already happening: The world has been in net food deficit for the last couple of years: Not just because of climate change, but because of various forms of environmental degradation, that climate change is likely to make worse.

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There is a heated debate on postmodernism on the World Socialist website:
An exchange with a reader on postmodernism

Here was my comment:

The debate on PM can actually be resolved somewhat by referring to early Marx, and by taking into account more contemporary interpretations of theories of practice.
Marx’s work on alienation actually dealt with the philosphical issues debated here rather well, but in a nascent form. He pointed out the human need for a relationship with the material, as formed by our actions, a way of recognising ourselves in the world. He also pointed out how mechanisms of exchange tended to generalise the fruits of people’s labour, thus obscuring the possibility of people recognizing themselves in the world.

If you carry the analogy from the material to the representational, then you can see that the project of Marxism is to humanise representation as well as production. From this standpoint it is clear that there is a need to pay attention to how people create their realities, and how this is related to their other acts of creation.

An objectivist epistimology is the ultimately alienated product: The whole universe is cast as a system of generalised exchange , where some set of principles of sameness, or evaluation, serve as a universal basis for relating things in a mechanical manner.

If such principles (or formalised truth relations) are not asserted, then you have an “external” reality with its own integrity, but without any basis for one coherant and structured representation of it. Thus the “real” without the “objective.”

Marx was urging us to celebrate human creativity, and human fellowship, founded in mutual recognition rather than alienation. Practice theories, where knowledge and representations are seen as created within specific historical relations and sets of material practices, stand far closer to that original ethic.

This does not imply rejecting forms, or rather practices, of generalisation, but these should be seen as historically situated with their own specific dynamics and standards. That way we are able to see the primacy of the human over the cold world of ideas.

I went to see Tariq Ali speak at Hornsey Library yesterday, promoting his new book “Pirates of the Caribbean.” He spoke about the situation in the Middle East, and then warmed to his main topic, the changing political landscape in South America. He spoke about Chavez, Castro and Moralez. It was an interesting talk, where he mainly pointed out the history of Chavez, and his achievements in terms of poverty reduction, health and education. He also talked about what the US and the UK and Spain got up to, in terms of supporting a coup against him, and the campaign against Chavez in the Media.

One of the most interesting things he said was that a reporter at Al-Jazeera had said to him that Chavez had carried out an hour long interview on their channel, with simultaneous translation into Arabic. The reporter said that AL-Jazeera had never got so many emails: and the bulk of them said one thing. Why is there no-one like Chavez in the Middle East? Why no leaders with a social vision.

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New Statesman - The economics of conquest

New Year’s Resolutions for the world:1) Elected Global Representatives: So that the UN has a direct mandate from “we the people”2) Global Public Service Broadcasting, so that “we the people” have a meaningful forum for democratic debate at a global level3) Taxation on the global commons (most pressingly the atmosphere, but the seas, space, the internet, and knowledge / patents, as well as the electromagnetic spectrum come to mind, as does biodiversity exploitation) to fund this global shebang.

4) The ICC given powers to prosecute people who break international law, even if they are leaders of G8 countries.

5) Oh yes and stop televising state sponsored murders, it’s too depressing.

I went to see Tom Stoppard’s play ‘Rock and Roll’ last night. It was interesting precisely because it was so predictable. I was suprised by how well it fitted with ideas I had been rolling around in my head for a while.

What was predictable in Tom Stoppard’s script was the celebration of ‘not caring’ and ‘doing your own thing.’ In many ways it was an honest social document of idealism caving in to the relativistic individualism of the 80’s, with the fall of communism and the rise of ‘liberated’ consumption.

However the calculated irresponsibility of Stoppard’s play is not just a piece of social history, but also something very contemporary. It is part of a huge denial of reponsibility by the rich and powerful, a denial that has eaten its way in to almost every area of contemporary thought.

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