Environmental politics lecture 2: Power and the environment

———————————————————————————————————————————
Pre-amble
———————————————————————————————————————————
Intersectionality climate and pol
How we look shapes how we see.
How we see (/conceptualise) shapes what is and what is possible.

Theorin: to look at

Construction of di erent problematics.

———————————————————————————————————————————
Political ecology
———————————————————————————————————————————
Env through power
How power shapes env
Material worlds is constituted by power relations
- Access to resources
- Distributions of env goods and bags
So env needs to be seen in socialpol terms
- Physical contours and composition of environmental environs are shaped by power
Key concepts:
- Marginality
- Ecology (syst level)
- Pol econ
Implications
- Nature becomes socially constructed
- Nature is not discrete or static
- So env is a clusterfuck of things, not a single thing
- Entanglement with sociality: It can not be seen as divorced from culture and society. So
the culture/nature dichotomy is bullshit. Nature has not always been, it is something made.
They are interlinked.
- Env degradation is a social problem. So that removes certain xes. Not just tech xes, if it’s
an inherently social issue. A social solution is needed.

Example: Budds
Neolib water policy in Chile
Neoliberalism: free-market babyyyyy. Dom econ ideology

Impacted Chilean econ in 80s —> shaped how Chile interacted with env
- Encouraged export and privatisation of national resources
- So, Chile privatised water rights
- This shit made everything worse
1981:
- neolib re-write water code
- Public property with private rights of use (expropriation only at market val)
- Goal: e cient water use
- It worked for a while. But land-use was directed towards intensive fruit production. Led to
increase in demand —> dwindling supply —> competition water rights —> the well-o
bene ted from this shit (they had the rights in the rst place and had more resources to get
them)

So power shaped:
- Power shaped the competition
- Power shaped neolib shift in the rst place (international pressure: WB, US etc.)
fi
ffi
ff
fi
fi
fi
fi
ff
 Environment shapes power
Mitchell
‘Carbon democracy’
Production and consumption of types of energy supports di erent types of politics.
The energy source of society shapes who is powerful.

Shift to coal —> dem

Because: put power into the hands of workers
- It was interconnected and vulnerable (e.g. to sabotage)
Oil undermined dem.
Because not worker intensive.
Liquid made it easier to transport, especially due to pipelines.
Pipelines were introduced as a measure to undermine workers (can be sabotaged though, but is
less e ective).
Also transoceanic shipping is out of reach for most worker associating. (Panama ags etc.)
Oil can be redirected (so more exible, so strikes are less e ective)

Material properties of nat resources and the way societies use them have an impact on pol.

*Malm mentioned*

(Are carbon credits a manifestation of this mechanism?)

———————————————————————————————————————————
Depoliticisation and post-politics
———————————————————————————————————————————
Depolitization: the removal of something from politics. To remove it from political contestation. It
is not an appropriate topic of public deliberation/contestation.
Depolitization removes shit from the language of power.

Post-politics
Political formation that rejects ideological disagreement.
Pol is about disagreement. So post-pol wants to get rid of politics. Go beyond pol.
No dissensus only consensus.
Positions become universally posited. So they don’t have to be debated.
But to present a position as if it was universal, is to assert power while hiding it.
Lets underlying assumptions go unnoticed. Let’s dominant perspective/power structures go
unchallenged.

Emphasis on expert-led social admin.

Consensus based gov and policy making. It’s all technical and managerial.
Implications:
- Status-quo is entrenched. Heterodoxy is discouraged because it creates dissensus
- Squeezes democracy out of the pictures. Governing becomes technocratic.
- Politics is done allegedly neutral experts, through compromise to preserve existing relations.
Post politics is just a cloaking of power. Making it harder to see, to critique.
It is based on the universal consensus.
It empowers “experts” and disempowers the people.

The post-political formation is a democratic phenomenon. (No Sure that’s what the people who
look at it use it usually use it for dem but it’s not essentially dem)
ff
fl
ff
ff
fl
 Depolitization of environmental concerns
How best to deal with this shit is closed. Because we know what should be done:
- Reduce carbon through commodi cation of carbon
This is framed as a universal value.
It empowers experts over the demos, and silences dissensus.

Look at how we talk about nature.

We mean:
- Floating signi er: an umbrella for random thingies.
Nature becomes a montage all sliced together into one thing.
This cohesive fractal makes it slip into fantasy
- Norm:
Natural as normal, or good.
A timeless normative principle. Nature
- Symbolic desire for harmony
Longing for unity, the romantic utopia. Ede(n)
The fear of disharmony from nature. The revenge of nature.
Nature is a promise (if attended to correctly) and a threat (if you fuck with nature you get merced)

All of these conceptions hide that nature is a unstable concept without any inherent meaning.
To de ne it is to imbue it with pol/social meaning. These ways of looking at nature ignore that.
Nature is not Real.

Our standard ways of talking about nature place it outside of public contestation. It is
depoliticised.

Counter: there are natures this shit is coproduced in content ways.

Basically essentialising nature is reactionary.

Depoliticisation of climate discourse

Framed in a bifurcated way:
- Universal threat to human survival
- Apocalypse
- The threat of nature nally catching up with us
On the other hand, but at the same time
- But keep calm, nothing really needs to change
- We don’t need radical change, just incremental modi cations that reinforce the existing pol
order

How can this contradiction exist?

What unites these 2: depoliticising e ect
- Crisis is a good way to displace social con ict (fuck debate we need to work together to
neutralise the danger). Framed through the language of apocalypse there is no room for
discussion, only expert action. Mobilisation without political issue.
- Framing of transition that changes everything but changes nothing (retain libdem). Keeps it
closed. There are no other options to ght for so why ght? What would we even ght for? The
change is within the order, so it’s closed to politics.
fi
fi
fi
fi
ff
fi
fl
fi
fi
fi
 This shit is a little vague maybe check later.
Fetishisation of CO2
Reducing the complexity of env harm to carbon furthers depol.
Predetermines content of env pol: reduce emissions.
- Abstraction allows for external extrinsic enemy. No need to ght amongst ourselves (no need to
tax the rich). Also humans or homogenous to carbon, so there is no unit of dissensus.
- Turns it into a tech project suited for technocrats (not all those a ected by it: the demos)
Commodi cation of carbon: according to market principles
If the solution is to commodify carbon, than there is nothing wrong with libdem. Just fold carbon
into the market.
Commodi cation also makes env politics a matter of market expansion and regulation. Making it
a subject for technocrats.
Doesn’t help construction of new ways of dealing/understanding nature, so nothing has to
change.

How to (re)politicise the environment?

1) Recognition of indeterminacy of nature
natures not Nature (fuck essentialism)

2) The constitutive split of the people

Politics is division. So embrace that division.
Politics is saying yes and no to di erent paths.
Env is that too.
Don’t ignore that, this shit is helpful.

Vague check again

3) Unconditional democratic demand of pol equality
Politicisation should be helped along by insistence of equality. It can be used towards auth.

4) Real possibility of other socio-ecological futures

We should focus on what can be done. What is actionable. The can’t is a totalitarian impulse.
fi
fi
ff
fi
ff