A few moments before Obama began speaking on Tuesday night, right before Stevie Wonder’s “Signed Sealed, Delivered” came on, Barack’s DJ put on my favorite song by The National, “Fake Empire.” (If you don’t know the song, you might listen to it while reading this 
)
Perhaps it was the music. The song is about our culture’s ability to exist, “half-awake in a fake empire“, ignoring the obviously perilous momentum of our society. Regardless, what I was thinking about on election night wasn’t the political potential of our new President. (Despite an organizing and communication strategy so successful that even radicals ought to take some notes, I’m distinctly unenthusiastic about the thing that in the end is more important: Obama’s policies…but more about that in a minute.)
Rather, what interests me about the Obamenon is the changes in cultural narratives and what they may imply for our movements against social and environmental injustice.
Many of you know me for my cynicism, but I’ll tell you: I am hopeful about some things right now. I hope that we are seeing the beginning of the end of absurd fairy tales about trickle-down economics and US unilateralism. We may see in end to nonsensical notions of “wars on terrorism” (although certainly not war per se), and perhaps even the supremacy of European Anglo-Saxon ancestry and many other concocted cons.
People are sick of this B.S. and I hope we soon bury these myths for perpetuity!
Yet, the distance between the idea of “hope” and what details we have in the “change” department is troubling. Even as the loyalty of the progressive community to Obama expands to unparalleled proportions, it has become clear that Obama’s rhetoric and vision risk – indeed already are – establishing a wide range of troubling new narratives.
Obama’s opposition to gay marriage in favor of civil unions, his rejection of the “extreme” of truly universal health care in favor of some charity and expensive government health plans, and most of his policies on energy do not herald fundamental change, and rather speak of the dawn of a new era of false solutions: half-measures and deliberately deceptive memes like “green biofuels”, “clean coal”, “safe nuclear”, and “clean burning natural gas”.
Don’t get me wrong: there is cause for celebration here in the shifting of the narratives, the shifts aren’t insignificant! The supremacy of faith in market solutions to problems has been shaken. We can now join the rest of the world in a post-climate denial activism. And we can get beyond the endless Bush-bashing and focus on some more substantive issues.
But the question remains: where do we go from here? What now?
Enlightened Europe has shown us one path for addressing the climate crisis:
- Aggressive agrofuel targets that drive up the cost of food, destroy ecosystems, and do little to reduce oil consumption.
- A focus on carbon markets, rife with fraud and self-dealing.
- Co2 reduction target practice that has consistently yielded weak commitments and even weaker action
In our successful drives to wedge our ideas into the mainstream, we are increasingly blind to the counter-revolution, which, seeing the writing on the wall, has been gathering its forces for the next battle. Indeed it’s a battle that’s already in full swing across the pond in Europe.
We’ve see them organizing clean coal rallies at every Democratic Party event.
And we’ve even heard their words spoken through the mouth of our new president: “Green Jobs in Safe Nuclear Power/Biofuels/Clean Coal.”
Are we content with getting our slogans some air time and media hits, regardless of how devoid of meaning they become? Are we trying to get a presidential “Green Jobs” sound byte, or are we demanding a genuinely just transition, climate justice, and an end to environmental injustice?
We – the youth, the blogosphere, the change agents – have shown our potential. Indeed we have played a key role in helping shatter the power narrative of the preeminence of the “Joe Six Pack Conservative American”, that elusive silent majority that distrusts big shifts in ideas and certainly fears people with funny sounding names.
But our victory is at this point only a narrative one and a narrow one at that, one that runs the risk of being hollow, as we are already losing ground on other fronts.
Prepare: the battle of the story is still ahead.
It’s the quest for real solutions, it’s the story of survival for those living all too close to the coal seams and uranium mines, in shadow the shadows of the megadams, and alongside the monoculture, pesticide saturated soy and corn fuels fields
It’s the story of half-measures versus roots causes, the tale of the quick fixes versus the tougher work plodding through the depths of our many social injustices, of ending racism instead of just idealizing a black president. Of ending our submissiveness to corporate power and culture and the long struggle for a more direct, unmediated, and egalitarian democracy.
Don’t let this small momentum soften you. It’s not enough to rally behind a new leader who has given some lip service to our cause. We can no longer except, as The National puts it, to “Turn the light out say goodnight / no thinking for a little while / lets not try to figure out everything at once“, to naively hope that the many less-then-lovely of Obama’s proposals are just pandering to the center.
If we follow our ideals rather than our leaders, we can stop the era of climate damning false solutions before it goes any farther, and take down these fake empires.
Congratulations to President Obama. Now it’s time for us to see some results. Personally, I would like to see some environmental reform. Further, I think it is important for us, as consumers to support ‘green business’. For example, http://www.simplestop.net stops your postal junk mail and benefits the environment.
Thank you for this post, Brian. You sum up our situation beautifully. I voted for Obama, but not for one minute will I call myself on Obama supporter. While it is significant to have elected a black president, it is still more significant that race is the greatest proxy for toxic facilities. $150 billion over 10 years for clean energy is a start, but not going to “get us there.” Enjoy the rest of the week, because electing Obama was a victory. Excuse the football metaphor, but it’s sort of like getting a first down, but we are still on our own 10 yard line, 90 yards to go. So there is work to be done. We won’t get there by being Obama supporters. But if we organize ourselves and friends well enough, perhaps Obama can be made a supporter of the sustainability movement
The history has only started, lets hope the red states dont desire to return to pre 1960s
Let us see this as an opportunity. We no longer have to convince our president and Congress to do something, so we can move on to convincing them to do the right thing.
This isn’t going to be easy, and we’ll certainly have to be fighting false solutions the whole way. I’m hopeful that Obama will move the right direction on coal, but the nuclear support frightens me.
That said, while building new nuclear plants is completely out of the question for me, there may be a strong argument for extending the licenses for some that exist, to produce low-carbon (in terms of immediate marginal emissions, not lifetime emissions) energy from existing nuclear facilities.
If we’re going to radically reduce emissions in the short run, which we must do, we might have to keep some nukes online for a while.
Well, I just heard Obama is apparently considering the Larry “Let the Africans Eat Pollution” Summers, for Treasury secretary.
If that were to occur, it’d speak very loudly my concerns. yikes.
http://www.ksgcitizen.org/media/storage/paper223/news/2001/04/17/OpEd/Toxic.Colonialism.Lawrence.Summers.And.Let.Africans.Eat.Pollution-67754-page3.shtml
he’s also an infamous sexist.
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2006/02/22/summers_to_step_down_ending_tumult_at_harvard/
Nuclear CO2 emissions are about those of wind (both the ExternE study and the IPCC agree on this). While I don’t think Mr. Obama will plaster the country with nuclear plants, we will probably need a few more for a low-carbon transition. As for the uranium mines, ALL energy sources have problems (e.g., someone has to live next to the chemical plant making the solar cells). Hard choices are ahead.
“As for the uranium mines, ALL energy sources have problems (e.g., someone has to live next to the chemical plant making the solar cells). Hard choices are ahead.”
This comment reflects a disturbing and colonialist perspective that is all-too-common among First World environmentalists: “Well, we need to make sacrifices to preserve this First World way of life. As long as it doesn’t affect US!” This is the same attitude that leads to Appalachia being declared a national “sacrifice zone” for coal mining. It’s NIMBYism at its most repulsive.
Yes, someone has to live next to the mines, chemicals plants, waste dumps and all the other toxic industrial infrastructure required by supposedly “clean” and “alternative” energy sources — and I’d say anyone so set on maintaining a high tech lifestyle that they defend these costs should be the one to do so. Because unless you can get the consent of the communities in the Southwest, Latin America or elsewhere where you’re ripping open the Earth for copper or other materials, you’re just replicating the same colonial dynamics that have plagued us for centuries. And this consent is remarkably lacking in communities around the world — which is why mines and state violence go together like coal and carbon emissions.
It may be unpleasant to admit, but there is no just solution to the climate crisis that does not involve a MASSIVE scaling back, simplifying and localizing of the way the First World and large parts of the rest of the world live. How else do you expect to drop greenhouse emissions to zero by 2050 (42 years and counting)?
The hard choice ahead might need be a sacrifice YOU have to make for yourself, not one you make for marginalized communities worldwide.
http://www.rootforce.org/2008/09/01/whats-wrong-with-clean-energy/
http://www.rootforce.org/factsheets/warming/
A high tech lifestyle also means that you can feed, house, clothe, educate, and provide heath care for the 6.5 billion people on earth. It is not colonialism for China, India, and countries throughout the world to desire a better life too. I was trying to make the point that ANYTHING we do on the current scale has impact. 6.5 billion people living off the land in a primitive lifestyle will destroy the biosphere just as surely as excess carbon. We certainly need to use better ways and improve mining and other industrial activities, but in the end, the world needs better technology rather “back to nature” plans that do even greater harm.
Attempting to focus the discourse on “improving” fundamentally destructive technologies ducks the fundamental question: do communities that would be impacted by mining, industrial processing and waste disposal have the right to block such activities by withholding their consent? Is it right to force communities to accept these things for a supposed “greater good”? Is it coincidence that it’s the poor, brown and marginalized who always find themselves getting the short end of this stick?
Clearly, we disagree on our analysis of the problem and solutions. But my point is that any “solution” that accepts the necessity of non-consenting “sacrifice” communities is colonialist — especially when it comes from a beneficiary of First World privilege. Live in your own waste; don’t force it on others.
Ah, but how many are needed to object to veto a development? One? Two? 100,000? I believe the way to go is to extend the benefits of high technology across the globe rather than have 6.5 billion people trying to scratch out a living. Everything I have read is that folks in China and India want better technology and stronger opportunities. I want the “first world priviledge” to be the world’s standard of living.