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the event of disaster, the response of the rich hasn’t been to work with
others to ensure the collective security of all those affected. It has
been to use all resources at their disposal to protect themselves and
their property. And increasingly, as in New Orleans, this protection has
come in the form of armed violence directed at those less well off –
people whose desperation, they fear, could turn them into a threat.
The
most forward thinking of the super-rich are aware that we’re heading
toward a future of ecological and social break-down. And they’re keen to
keep ahead of the curve by investing today in the things they’ll need
to survive. Writing in the Guardian in 2018, media theorist and
futurist Douglas Rushkoff related his experience of being paid half his
annual salary to speak at “a super-deluxe private resort ... on the
subject of ‘the future of technology’”. He was expecting a room full of
investment bankers. When he arrived, however, he was introduced to “five
super-wealthy guys ... from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world”.
Rushkoff wrote:
“After
a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest in the information
I had prepared about the future of technology. They had come with
questions of their own ... Which region will be less affected by the
coming climate crisis: New Zealand or Alaska? ... Finally, the CEO of a
brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own
underground bunker system and asked: ‘How do I maintain authority over
my security force after the Event?’
“The
Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social
unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr Robot hack that
takes everything down ... They knew armed guards would be required to
protect their compounds from the angry mobs. But how would they pay the
guards once money was worthless? What would stop the guards from
choosing their own leader? The billionaires considered using special
combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making
guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for survival.”
There’s
a reason these conversations go on only behind closed doors. If your
plan is to allow the world to spiral towards mass death and destruction
while you retreat to a bunker in the south island of New Zealand or some
other isolated area to live out your days in comfort, protected by
armed guards whose loyalty you maintain by threat of death, you’re
unlikely to win much in the way of public support. Better to keep the
militarised bunker thing on the low-down and keep people thinking that
“we’re all in this together” and if we just install solar panels,
recycle more, ride to work and so on we’ll somehow turn it all around
and march arm in arm towards a happy and sustainable future.
The
rich don’t have to depend only on themselves. Their most powerful, and
well-armed, protector is the capitalist state, which they can rely on to
advance their interests even when those may conflict with the
imperative to preserve some semblance of civilisation. This is where
people like Morrison come in. They’re the ones who have been delegated
the task, as Karl Marx put it in the Communist Manifesto, of
“managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie”. In the context
of climate change, this means taking the steps necessary to ensure the
continued ability of the capitalist class to profit even if the world
may be unravelling into ecological breakdown and social chaos.
There
are three main ways in which Australia and other world powers are
working toward this. First, they’re building their military might –
spending billions of dollars on ensuring they have the best means of
destruction at their disposal to help project their power in an
increasingly unstable world. Second, they’re building walls and brutal
detention regimes to make sure borders can be crossed only by those
deemed necessary to the requirements of profit making. Third, they’re
enhancing their repressive apparatus by passing anti-protest laws and
expanding and granting new powers to the police and security agencies to
help crush dissent at home.
Military
strategists have been awake to the implications of climate change for a
long time. As early as 2003, in a report commissioned by the Pentagon,
US researchers Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall argued that “violence and
disruption stemming from the stresses created by abrupt changes in the
climate pose a different type of threat to national security than we are
accustomed to today. Military confrontation may be triggered by a
desperate need for natural resources such as energy, food, and water
rather than conflicts over ideology, religion, or national honor. The
shifting motivation for confrontation would alter which countries are
most vulnerable and the existing warning signs of security threats”.
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