Imperiled Life. Javier Sethness

ideas and practices into the emerging Green movement, arguing against reformists. The Youth Greens asserted that the ecological crisis was a result of social forms of domination, and that humans dominating and exploiting other humans extended into the natural world in the attempt to dominate nature. Thus, for the Youth Greens and its allies in the Left Green Network, resolving the social crisis, by addressing and overturning all forms of social hierarchy and domination, was the only way to solve the ecological crisis.

      We can learn from the ideas and practices of the Youth Greens. At the Earth Day Wall Street Action, Youth Greens assembled the first black bloc in the United States—inspired by the German autonomen, or “those who are autonomous.” Dozens of young people dressed in all black and covered their faces with black bandanas as a way to avoid being identified and surveilled by police. Nine years later, this tactic would gain worldwide visibility at the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. The Youth Greens also developed political principles covering almost every aspect of contemporary life, from gay and lesbian liberation to anti­racism to the practice of direct democracy, viewing all this as interrelated and part of a larger global movement.

      As new movements continue, we need to incorporate an ecological sensibility and understanding of how capitalism—which is responsible for most of the social ills being protested—is also responsible for changing the climate. We will need to fundamentally reorganize society to not only ensure social and economic justice but also preserve humanity. For humanity to thrive, capitalism must die. Climate change is racist. Whether dubbed the 1 percent or the ruling class, the people who control the countries of the Northern Hemisphere are sacrificing the lives of largely poor people of color to maintain their rule and accumulate wealth. The most privileged people on the planet are letting millions of the less fortunate suffer and die. Three hundred thousand people a year are dying, mostly the poor of the Southern Hemisphere, due to the climate catastrophe. This number will only increase every year that things do not change.

      Instead of acting to stop the emission of greenhouse gases, the so-called 1 percent is reorienting its military to adapt to changing climate conditions. The military is the part of the U.S. government that actually takes climate change seriously. The Pentagon, taking climate change as a given, is planning on fighting all the wars that will be necessitated by imperialism within the emerging context of drought, famine, mass death, and millions of refugees. Whereas recent U.S. wars have been in part over the control of oil, future wars will be in response to the destabilizing effects of climate change. It is a vicious dialectic in which oil and coal continue to propel the economy, then wars are fought to maintain control over those resources, and further wars are fought to respond to the results of climate change that stem from relying on those forms of energy.

      To be most profitable, capitalism seeks the cheapest sources of energy. These happen to be oil and coal. Control of these “resources” is also highly profitable. The entire capitalist apparatus is built on the exploitation of oil and coal. Despite all the warning signs and reports from scientists, the dominant economic system is pushing irrationally to exploit the remaining reserves of oil and coal through the ecologically disastrous tar sands mining operations in Canada, fracking and mountain top removal in Appalachia, and oil drilling in pristine areas of Alaska and along the ocean shores. Capitalism has become an obsessive, hungry ghost, wanting more and more, despite its inevitable doom.

      My child will be born this year. If our society does not change fundamentally in his lifetime, the world will be a very different place by the time he reaches old age. In 2112, life on Earth may be unrecognizable. He and his generation will likely ask us what we did to stop this madness when we still had time. Some scientists say we need to reduce carbon output by 90 percent by 2020, and others assert we need to drastically cut emissions by 2015. What is inarguable is that the time to act is now. We know what is happening and what we must do. What stops us? If our children and our children’s children are to have a life worth living, we must act.

      This book is an impassioned plea for sanity, reason, and justice. It breaks through the collective denial we indulge in to call attention to the perilous nature of life. The weather is changing—that is clear. Crucially, though, the climate is changing. This is the long-term, underlying reality behind the changes in the weather. Severe weather events are becoming common, such as floods, storms, and extremes of hot and cold. We all know something is not right. Matters will only get worse unless we act. But to act, we need to know what to do. We need to understand what is happening. Imperiled Life is a critical reflection on what is going on, and why. It contains diagnosis, prognosis, and remedies. The diagnosis is clear, the prognosis is not good, and the remedies are extreme and radical. These are the times in which we live.

      Javier Sethness-Castro, like the critical theorists of the Frankfurt school in whose tradition he writes, invites the reader to come and think with him. This book is an invitation to an honest reflection on our changing climate. It is thoughtful, angry, pessimistic, but ultimately hopeful. It asks us to be bold, remake the world, overthrow capitalism, and create a directly democratic, ecological society, in which we live in harmony with nature and each other. We need a society that does not change the weather or exploit humans, and one that leaves the world a better place for future generations. Enjoy reading and, as importantly, act to change the world.

      —Paul Messersmith-Glavin

      Acknowledgments

      I would like to thank my primary editor Paul Messersmith-Glavin for his solidarity, patience, and kindness over the course of this work. I also am indebted to Cindy Milstein for the copyediting, Josh MacPhee for his book design, Zach Blue for the layout and proofreading, and Santiago Armengod for sharing his wondrous art. Moreover, I would like to recognize and thank everyone with the Institute for Anarchist Studies and AK Press for agreeing to include Imperiled Life in the Anarchist Interventions series in the first place.

      In addition, I am grateful to my mother and father for their support over the years. I would also like to acknowledge my past formal instructors Peter Wright, Michael Mason, David Goldfrank, Robert Bruce Douglass, and Raymundo Sánchez for their enlightenment and aid, along with Binu Mathew and Ian Angus, who kindly served as editors for some of the writings that predate and foreshadow this work. Beyond these individuals, I would like particularly to thank Clark Donley, Brian Lynch, and Daniela McBane, who served as informal editors and advisers on the developing manuscript. I greatly appreciate all those who agreed to provide review blurbs for the book as well. Lastly, I would like to thank the following comrades and colleagues for their love and friendship: Liz López, Jakob Rieken, Aris Chatzinikoloau, Costas Stratilatis, Nancy Moreno, Allen Kim, Marcus Benigno, Sierra Lapoint, Andrew Stefan, Philippe Goute, Cristian Guerrero, Max Hoiland, Jonathan Carl Vogel, Andrew Enciso, Nate Pitts, and Alexei Hong.

      As regards this work’s title, I am indebted to feminist queer theorist Judith Butler’s 2004 work Precarious Life, and the call posited by antinuclear thinker and activist Günther Anders in his 1955 work Hiroshima ist Überall (Hiroshima Is Everywhere): “Imperiled of all lands, unite!”

      I dedicate this work to Bety Cariño, Jyri Jaakkola, the children of Nablus, Betsy Boyd, Vittorio Arrigoni, Javier Torres Cruz, and many others.

      —Javier Sethness-Castro

      Prologue: Cancún and Catastrophe

      We turn a blind eye to what surrounds us and a deaf ear to humanity’s never-ending cry.

      —Alain Resnais, Nuit et Broillard

      The survival of humanity is imperiled. Whereas the prospect of humanity’s collective suicide through nuclear war seemed a plausible threat during much of the twentieth century, today the specter of catastrophic climate change has eclipsed nuclear annihilation in this horrifying role. The dangerous human interference with Earth’s climate systems that has been driven by the ­historical rise of capitalism stands within the near future to destroy the very material conditions on which much of life—humanity as well as other beings—depends for its reproduction and sustenance. Basic reflection bears this out.

      Average global temperatures in 2010 were tied with those of 2005, when Earth experienced the hottest